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The Republican party is in a death spiral... (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter adonis
- Start date
squistion
Footballguy
Barack Obama:
"What happened to the Republican Party? Its central organizing principle in foreign policy was the fight against Communism, and now they're cozying up to the former head of the KGB."
(via ABC) https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1038106192797736960
"What happened to the Republican Party? Its central organizing principle in foreign policy was the fight against Communism, and now they're cozying up to the former head of the KGB."
(via ABC) https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1038106192797736960
urbanhack
Fight The Power!
WTF
https://reason.com/blog/2018/09/07/house-passes-bill-that-would-reclassify
private prisons must need more business.
https://reason.com/blog/2018/09/07/house-passes-bill-that-would-reclassify
private prisons must need more business.
Amused to Death
Footballguy
For some reason I don't think its about private prisons.
Republicans in the House passed a bill this morning that would reclassify dozens of federal crimes as "crimes of violence," making them deportable offenses under immigration law. Criminal justice advocacy groups say the bill, rushed to the floor without a single hearing, is unnecessary, is overbroad, and will intensify the problem of overcriminalization.
Rove!
Footballguy
https://www.yahoo.com/news/sen-ben-sasse-admits-apos-123735369.html?bcmt=1
I don’t blame him but I would prefer he stick it out with the GOP. Probably make it easier to get re-elected in Nebraska when his term expires. I see him as one of the good guys in the Senate
I don’t blame him but I would prefer he stick it out with the GOP. Probably make it easier to get re-elected in Nebraska when his term expires. I see him as one of the good guys in the Senate
adonis
Footballguy
What do you think you see in that video? Because I don't see anything implying double standards.
Especially, when compared to Trump's actions towards all things Russian.
Rove!
Footballguy
It looks like he is telling Medevev to go and tell Vladimir that after the election he will have more flexibility in cozying up to Vladimir...
adonis
Footballguy
If you can't differentiate between Obama's approach to Putin/Russia and Trump's approach, there's not much to talk about here.
James Daulton
Footballguy
What, you're telling me that a 5 second sound clip from Obama with zero context isn't proof that he was collaborating with Putin?
Rove!
Footballguy
There’s always:
Russian reset
Uranium One deal
flaccid response to the annexing of Crimea
That one, five-second sound clip, is much more evidence than has been produced against President Trump in almost the past two years.
Johnnymac
Footballguy
Just stop with this bull####. Its complete BS,and if you are actually honest with yourself you know it too.
But I guess pissing off liberals is your game. Pathetic.
It's not "my game"....just an added bonus.
But then again....pissing off liberals is not very hard to do.
They seem to wake up in a bad mood.
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toshiba
Footballguy
I think you confuse being in a bad mood and angry with not wanting to let stupid statements, false accusation, bigotry, racism, sexism, ... go unchecked.
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toshiba
Footballguy
toshiba
Footballguy
toshiba
Footballguy
I know it might be hard to understand from someone who runs off of fear and anger to think other people are motivated differently, but some of us are.if you say so...
You don't run off in fear and anger....
you just lay your head down and drift off into dreams of Utopia...
Then...you wake up and remember who lost the election and who won it.
You gather yourself and run to your keyboard so you can log on with like-minded people....safe in your bubble again.
...and the cycle repeats itself....day...after day....after day...
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toshiba
Footballguy
See this is where your motivations show, you think that you make all liberals mad and you finally stuck it to us. But in all reality I don't really focus too much on what happened in Nov 2016. We are where we are and the only way to actually make a difference is to use the present and make it better. I am not angry, I am actually in a pretty great mood.
Skoo
Footballguy
toshiba
Footballguy
Sorry I missed the last few sentences of your edit...
I like how you act as you know random people online. Is it this type of ignorance and assumptions that lead you to the conclusions about life you make. It must be hard to be so negative all the time and have so much anger.
Here are some pointers for your day,...
- Call someone in your family and tell them you love them.
- Help a stranger during lunch.
- Complement someone you don't know.
- Hug a friend.
- Stop by your local animal shelter with a bag of dog and cat food.
- smile
These simple things, that take very little time, will help remove some of that anger that fuels you. Strip away the anger I bet you are not that bad of a guy.
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Oh...I TOTALLY agree with your list.
I am convinced that there are many people out there who follow THIS list...
- Wake up...log on...check for Trump updates
- Listen to MSM while preparing for work
- Tune the car radio to NPR and listen for Trump news while commuiting
- Log on the computer at work...check any Trump updates that may have been missed.
- Log onto a Liberal forum....catch up on others' opinions of Trump
- Make personal opinion points about Trump...based on what's been heard so far.
- Keep Liberal talk-show playing in the background. Do some work, checking in with your Liberal forum from time to tiime
- Go to lunch and share Trump talking points with liberal friends who have followed the same routine so far today.
- Finish work....do everything in reverse
- Do it again tomorrow
They would be a lot happier if they just assumed that SOMEBODY knows something that they don't and look for results.
(PS...flags at half-mast today)
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James Daulton
Footballguy
I love how Trumpers love to classify any criticism of Trump as this TDS. Meanwhile they're the only ones who believe this nonsense.
Trump is a horrible person, horrible POTUS who if it weren't for super-heating the economy through ultimately misguided tax cuts would not have a single accomplishment to his name. Other than making the US the laughingstock of the world.
And don't give me any nonsense about appointing SCOTUS judges as some kind of accomplishment. A freaking monkey could do that just as bigly.
Trump is a horrible person, horrible POTUS who if it weren't for super-heating the economy through ultimately misguided tax cuts would not have a single accomplishment to his name. Other than making the US the laughingstock of the world.
And don't give me any nonsense about appointing SCOTUS judges as some kind of accomplishment. A freaking monkey could do that just as bigly.
TobiasFunke
Footballguy
Trump is obviously horrible and I certainly haven't hidden my feelings about him. But I think part of the anger is also due to the denial of democracy. Trump won the presidency even though 3 million more people preferred another candidate. Yes he won fair and square based on the system in place, but that doesn't make it any less egregious a denial of the clear will of the people.
And to make matters worse he is the second straight GOP president to reach the Oval Office after losing the popular vote, although Bush did win the popular vote for his second term (I suspect Gore would have won a second term as well given the events preceding that election).
Compounding that, those two presidents will have nominated 4 of the 9 Supreme Court justices when this Kavanaugh disaster runs its course.
Compounding that, gerrymandering has given the GOP an edge in the House far beyond what they should have if we had proportional representation. That edge may let them control the House after the upcoming midterms even though there's zero chance they'll get more votes.
Compounding that, the Senate is set up in a way that distinctly favors the GOP and the voters who support them and marginalized the residents of the coastal states that lean further left.
Compounding that, many of the people who comprise this disenfranchised "silent majority" are members of minority groups that have been historically ignored and marginalized as well, something that continues today through voter suppression among many other things.
And compounding all of that, the President ignores every one of these things, and generally ignores the majority of people who feel that our democracy is not functioning properly, in favor of antagonizing them and playing to his base.
Anyone would lose their minds in such a situation. Frankly it's amazing we've stayed as sane as we have. Imagine how Republicans/conservatives/Fox News would sound right now if the situation were reversed. Say if we'd elected Sean Penn as President even though he lost the popular vote, and he and Al Gore had swung the court far to the left, and Penn had antagonized the right-leaning majority at every turn, and the House was gerrymandered to protect liberals despite the will of the people, and the Senate gave disproportionate power to California and New York at the expense of the midwest and the south. They'd be apoplectic. We might have a literal civil war on our hands.
shader
Footballguy
There are a lot of things for you to be angry about. Trump provides these moments quite often. But the popular vote isn’t one of them, because it’s 100% irrelevant. It’s like a team that won the super bowl whining that they had the best regular season record.
Obviously the analogy isn’t perfect, but the point is the same. The rules were clear beforehand. People don’t get to whine about the popular vote, because that’s not what determines who the president is.
James Daulton
Footballguy
Agree with this. Maybe we should re-look at the popular vote vs electoral but when the election was held the popular vote meant nothing.
toshiba
Footballguy
It's too bad you think like this. It really does poison your mind. I can't imagine running around with so much hate and contempt for so many people.
Go pet a dog today.
TobiasFunke
Footballguy
You're missing the point, and this is a bad analogy. This isn't sports. The end game isn't merely to determine winners and losers based on some fairly arbitrary pre-established framework. There's a larger goal with respect to democratic elections, and that is to have a government that represents the will of the people. If it fails to do that, the people have a right to be angry.
Also, I'm not saying the results should have been changed because the rules are dumb and they produced a bad result. I'mjust trying to explain one of the many reasons that people are so angry. If you don't think conservatives would be just as angry if the same thing happened with the electoral college (let's be honest, probably even more so considering how they reacted to a majority-elected president between Bush and Trump), you're simply not being honest with yourself. And that's before we get to all the other ways that the current framework represses the will of what is at this point a clear majority. The fact that "the rules" allow it doesn't make the resulting anger any less justified. What if "the rules" marginalized you, or your city or state or region, or Christians, or some other demographic to which you belong? Are you telling me you'd just shrug your shoulders and just say "those are the rule!" and carry on? Sorry, but I find that very difficult to believe.
ETA: Also it just occurred to me that even in sports, when there's a pointless rule that results in an outcome that seems unjust, people do get super mad and the leagues generally try to fix it going forward. The Tuck Rule is gone. The NFL revisits the catch rule seemingly after every controversial big play, most notably Dez and Jesse James. The NHL changed the rule on the crease after the Brett Hull controversy. The NBA changes its replay rules whenever there's a big review/non-review that seems to go the wrong way. So your analogy was not only flawed, if anything it kinda supported my point.
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The Future Champs
Footballguy
Ever wonder why your boy keeps claiming to have won the popular vote, while his supporters in here have made the same claim repeatedly?
Johnnymac
Footballguy
sho nuff
Footballguy
TobiasFunke
Footballguy
Hey GB, I thought of another counterexample. What if the electoral college had simply disregarded the will of the people and elected Hillary Clinton president? Or Rachel Maddow? Or John Walker Lindh? Totally within the rules in the many states that don't require electors to vote a certain way, which of course were clear beforehand.
Do you think Republicans would have whined about it? According to you they shouldn't, because the electoral college determines the president, not the general election
The Commish
Footballguy
I suspect he's correct though. The same can be said for the dopes on the right. We have people here who admit that they only talk politics IRL with like minded people. There's no question that they only listen to radio that agrees with them, watch TV that agrees with them and look at sites on the internet that agrees with them. What Opie is pointing out is that there is a fringe element. What he doesn't seem to understand is that the fringe exists when you go far enough right just like when you go far enough left. It's not an earth shattering take. It's pretty much "water is wet" sort of statement. His error is in his insinuation around the quantity.
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fatness
Footballguy
Right mounts campaign to make Jim Jordan the GOP leader
Sure guys, go with this, it's a winning strategy.
Sure guys, go with this, it's a winning strategy.
fatness
Footballguy
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CentralPA
Footballguy
Actually some have spoke out against Trump but haven't officially called it a racist statement.
adonis
Footballguy
Yeah, that's why it got the "nearly" qualifier rather than leaving it out. A handful of folks have expressed some level of disappointment.
msommer
Footballguy
That is not a death spiral. That is more like shedding it's skin, or perhaps the salamander leaving it's tail behind...
The vast majority of the people denouncing it really have nothing to worry about because they are either retiring or in states with almost no opposition. Easy to buck authority when they aren't your boss in the near future.
Amused to Death
Footballguy
Why Republicans can’t break free from white nationalism
After the 2012 election, Reince Priebus, then the chairman of the Republican National Committee, commissioned an “autopsy” investigating what the GOP needed to do to remain competitive in a country growing less white by the day. The report noted that “many minorities" think Republicans don’t “want them in the country,” and called for the party to embrace immigration reform, or see the party’s appeal “shrink to its core constituencies only.”
But then Donald Trump came along. And once he’s gone, Republicans are going to need a whole new autopsy.
You can see it in the way GOP officeholders have reacted to the president’s latest eruption of racist bile. But first, I want to look at some key inflection points that brought Republicans to where they are today, and set them on a path they will find almost impossible to deviate from even as their long-term prospects get worse and worse.
Around the same time that 2012 autopsy was being prepared, four Republicans and four Democrats in the Senate tried to fashion a comprehensive immigration reform that would be acceptable to both parties. Their bill included a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and beefed-up border protections. It passed the Senate by a 68-to-32 vote. But the bill died in the House after then-Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) decided his tea party members would never go for it.
One of the so-called Gang of Eight, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), suddenly found himself vilified by conservative media as a traitor to the cause. He ran for president in 2016 anyway, and discovered, like other Republicans, that his party wasn’t after what he thought it was.
It turned out that what Republican primary voters wanted was a xenophobic bigot who wasn’t shy about making explicit appeals to white nationalism. In terms of the effect Trump was having on the party, the most revealing moment may have been one that few noticed. It was when Rubio, his campaign faltering, aired an ad in which he said, “This election is about the essence of America, about all of us who feel out of place in our own country.”
The cruel irony was that the whole point of Marco Rubio was supposed to be that he didn’t feel out of place in the new America. Young, bilingual and fond of quoting hip-hop lyrics, Rubio was supposed to be the one who could translate conservative ideology to a diverse electorate. And, now, here he was trying to sound like a 70-year-old white guy angry because he heard someone speaking Spanish down at the grocery store.
It failed, of course. And Trump managed, through a series of fortuitous events — the help of the Kremlin, the backstop of the electoral college — to become president despite losing nationally by nearly 3 million votes.
As you watch Republican lawmakers run the other way when asked about Trump’s latest racist comments, remember that they are caught in a dilemma. They know they had a long-term problem before Trump, and he has made it worse. How would you like to try to convince minority voters that the GOP welcomes them?
But those same Republicans also know that their constituents are the very people who put Trump in the White House. His voters don’t just tolerate Trump’s racism, they cheer it.
The GOP also knows that its power is built on a series of structural factors — the electoral college, the fact that the Senate gives the same two votes to Wyoming’s 577,000 voters (84 percent white) as it does to California’s 39.6 million (only 37 percent white), and a more advantageous distribution of voters across congressional districts — that enable them to hold power even when they lose.
To make the most of those structural advantages, they’ve added other efforts, including aggressive gerrymandering and voter suppression, intended to make it as difficult as possible for African Americans, Latinos and young people to vote. All of which has combined to not only make the GOP the party of white people, but make it a party that must stay the party of white people, lest it lose the power it does have.
In the short and medium term, this strategy — appeal only to white voters, keep them as threatened and angry about increasing diversity as possible, and rig the system to give their votes more weight — is extraordinarily effective, morally abhorrent though it might be.
But it gets more difficult to pull off by the year. And when it stops working, Republicans will be faced with a choice: Overhaul their identity to become an inclusive party, or cling to the whites-only strategy even more fiercely.
If they did the former, it would be risky: It might produce temporary setbacks as some of their angry white voters become disinterested in a party that fails to provide them the red meat of hate and fear that Trump so enthusiastically serves up. But it would also create a way forward that could keep the party relevant in years to come.
The problem is that politicians have a hard time seeing past the next election. And if they conclude, “Forget about 2030 or 2040, the only way we can win this next election is to dance with the white nationalists that brung us,” then that’s what they’re going to do.
- Paul Waldman
After the 2012 election, Reince Priebus, then the chairman of the Republican National Committee, commissioned an “autopsy” investigating what the GOP needed to do to remain competitive in a country growing less white by the day. The report noted that “many minorities" think Republicans don’t “want them in the country,” and called for the party to embrace immigration reform, or see the party’s appeal “shrink to its core constituencies only.”
But then Donald Trump came along. And once he’s gone, Republicans are going to need a whole new autopsy.
You can see it in the way GOP officeholders have reacted to the president’s latest eruption of racist bile. But first, I want to look at some key inflection points that brought Republicans to where they are today, and set them on a path they will find almost impossible to deviate from even as their long-term prospects get worse and worse.
Around the same time that 2012 autopsy was being prepared, four Republicans and four Democrats in the Senate tried to fashion a comprehensive immigration reform that would be acceptable to both parties. Their bill included a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and beefed-up border protections. It passed the Senate by a 68-to-32 vote. But the bill died in the House after then-Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) decided his tea party members would never go for it.
One of the so-called Gang of Eight, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), suddenly found himself vilified by conservative media as a traitor to the cause. He ran for president in 2016 anyway, and discovered, like other Republicans, that his party wasn’t after what he thought it was.
It turned out that what Republican primary voters wanted was a xenophobic bigot who wasn’t shy about making explicit appeals to white nationalism. In terms of the effect Trump was having on the party, the most revealing moment may have been one that few noticed. It was when Rubio, his campaign faltering, aired an ad in which he said, “This election is about the essence of America, about all of us who feel out of place in our own country.”
The cruel irony was that the whole point of Marco Rubio was supposed to be that he didn’t feel out of place in the new America. Young, bilingual and fond of quoting hip-hop lyrics, Rubio was supposed to be the one who could translate conservative ideology to a diverse electorate. And, now, here he was trying to sound like a 70-year-old white guy angry because he heard someone speaking Spanish down at the grocery store.
It failed, of course. And Trump managed, through a series of fortuitous events — the help of the Kremlin, the backstop of the electoral college — to become president despite losing nationally by nearly 3 million votes.
As you watch Republican lawmakers run the other way when asked about Trump’s latest racist comments, remember that they are caught in a dilemma. They know they had a long-term problem before Trump, and he has made it worse. How would you like to try to convince minority voters that the GOP welcomes them?
But those same Republicans also know that their constituents are the very people who put Trump in the White House. His voters don’t just tolerate Trump’s racism, they cheer it.
The GOP also knows that its power is built on a series of structural factors — the electoral college, the fact that the Senate gives the same two votes to Wyoming’s 577,000 voters (84 percent white) as it does to California’s 39.6 million (only 37 percent white), and a more advantageous distribution of voters across congressional districts — that enable them to hold power even when they lose.
To make the most of those structural advantages, they’ve added other efforts, including aggressive gerrymandering and voter suppression, intended to make it as difficult as possible for African Americans, Latinos and young people to vote. All of which has combined to not only make the GOP the party of white people, but make it a party that must stay the party of white people, lest it lose the power it does have.
In the short and medium term, this strategy — appeal only to white voters, keep them as threatened and angry about increasing diversity as possible, and rig the system to give their votes more weight — is extraordinarily effective, morally abhorrent though it might be.
But it gets more difficult to pull off by the year. And when it stops working, Republicans will be faced with a choice: Overhaul their identity to become an inclusive party, or cling to the whites-only strategy even more fiercely.
If they did the former, it would be risky: It might produce temporary setbacks as some of their angry white voters become disinterested in a party that fails to provide them the red meat of hate and fear that Trump so enthusiastically serves up. But it would also create a way forward that could keep the party relevant in years to come.
The problem is that politicians have a hard time seeing past the next election. And if they conclude, “Forget about 2030 or 2040, the only way we can win this next election is to dance with the white nationalists that brung us,” then that’s what they’re going to do.
- Paul Waldman
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TripItUp
Footballguy
George Will’s latest book, a 600-page defense of what he considers the foundational principles of conservatism, never mentions the name of Donald J. Trump.
On this week’s podcast, Will discusses his new book, “The Conservative Sensibility,” and says that the sensibility as he defines it is currently “in the ranks of the homeless.”
“It’s a persuasion without a party, which is fine,” he says. “It may have to hope that the Republican Party, when it ceases being a cult surrounding the particular personality of the 45th president, that it will snap back. I’m not sure it will. But for the moment, it is homeless
On this week’s podcast, Will discusses his new book, “The Conservative Sensibility,” and says that the sensibility as he defines it is currently “in the ranks of the homeless.”
“It’s a persuasion without a party, which is fine,” he says. “It may have to hope that the Republican Party, when it ceases being a cult surrounding the particular personality of the 45th president, that it will snap back. I’m not sure it will. But for the moment, it is homeless
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