So, Republicans -- What's the Next Step?

[paft.livejournal.com]

There's been some discussion here about the right wing response to the shocking, I tell you, SHOCKING re-election of President Obama and the over-the-top reaction we've been seeing. A lot of it has involved personal idiocies from Freeper vowing everything from cutting off disabled Obama supporting relatives from support (I kid you not) divorcing spouses, spitting on neighbors, moving into bunkers, etc.

And there have been some hints of payback from people actually in a position to hurt either Obama supporters or perceived Obama supporters. The CEO of the same coal company that forced employees to spend a day without pay listening to a Romney speech laid off over a hundred employees on November 9th after publicly reading an unctuous and insulting "prayer," and on Thursday a man claiming to be a business owner in Georgia called C-Span and boasted about cutting employee hours and laying off two people because of the election. “I tried to make sure the people I laid off voted for Obama,” he said.

The fact remains -- Obama won.

Attempts at limiting the franchise and making it hard to vote didn't help Republicans. It just pissed off a lot of voters to the point where they were willing to stand in line for seven hours to vote for a Democrat. Threatening to fire employees if Obama were re-elected didn't help Republicans. It just highlighted the insidious damage Citizens United has done to our political environment. Attacking blacks, women, gays, and hispanics didn't work. It just galvanized a large portion of black, gay, female, hispanic, etc. voters into fighting Republicans.

So my question is, Republicans, what's the next step?

A couple of weeks ago, Frank Rich wrote a piece in Salon about the fact that losing an election does not seem to make the Republicans reassess their extended march to the right. They just double down and march further to the right.

Is that what's going to happen, Republicans? Because I have to tell you, you've been marching to the right for so many years you're on the verge of stepping off one hell of an ideological cliff. Are you going to openly embrace the genteel racism of Charles Murray? Are you going to openly work to limit the vote only to people of a certain income level? Is the aim going to be disenfranchising large portions of the public and telling the rest, "vote for us or we'll fire you?"

Just curious.

*

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Because blacks and women only vote Democrat, and they're all convenient hive minds.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm sure you think that. You have no evidence to show they are only heard by the Left, as you have no definition of Left, Right, Liberal, or Conservative. At least that's my opinion of why you can't seem to bother answering questions as to what these ideologies are, as opposed to what they are not.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

The next Step....

After loosing in Ohio, and loosing among women by 11%....

http://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/blog-4158-republican_anti_abor.html

Cooperation between competing right to life groups revived controversial legislation to restrict abortions that now looks like it will be considered in the legislative lame duck session, which begins next week. [...] Called the heartbeat bill because it would prevent an abortion when a fetal heartbeat is detected, sometimes as early as six weeks before women may know they’re pregnant, HB 125 split the Ohio right to life movement because of differing philosophies about the measure.

Double Down, baby. Double down.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I wish you as much success with this as Mitch McConnell had in making Obama a one-term President.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

If you have evidence that it is a GOTV issue, rather than a psychic invasion of Invisible Pink Unicorns, by all means present your case.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

Why is anything extreme?

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

Your love of country astounds.

[vitsli.livejournal.com]

THEY?
I'm about the Congress, not the President.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

how so?

In what way are the politics of the modern GOP more to the right than the GOP of 1900 (http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29630)?

can you articulate it?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

* It's widely understood that Obama killed it in GOTV and Romney did not. Heck, Romney's GOTV program crashed on election day. Massive failure.

* Romney may not meet McCain's vote total, and we have significant decreases from 2004.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

people being stupid about religion

Women voted Mourdock down, and it isn't because they are "stupid about religion".

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Sell that narrative baby!

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

In a sense it was, because far too many people - and media outlets - took the comment as something along the lines of God approving of rape, or Mourdock being pro-rape. It's incredibly stupid, and those who bought it should be considered as such.

[hikarugenji.livejournal.com]

I think that the GOP's core issues don't necessarily create a demographic problem but the way they express those ideas and some of the fringe elements serve to alienate non-whites.

For instance, the GOTV efforts aimed at Blacks were greatly aided by the Voter ID laws, which made many Blacks feel a moral imperative to vote because they felt like this was hearkening back to the pre-Civil Rights era when whites were able to use the legal system to effectively prevent Blacks from voting. Romney's extreme positions on immigration in the primaries made a lot of Hispanics afraid of him as president.

If the GOP can stick to the core issues of fiscal responsibility, limited government, and conservative social issues, they can attract minorities as long as they don't do other things to actively push them away.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

Didn't notice, nor think it's worth noticing. Kinda besides the point, really, unless this is one of those random humor bits that tend to get lost on me because it's the internet where intent is less clear.

My apologies if that's the case.

[oslo.livejournal.com]

By your own methodology (see here for some data (http://www.aei.org/files/2012/01/20/-attitudes-about-abortion-39-years-of-polling_131350993384.pdf)), we can properly describe a platform that seems to be against any form of legal abortion as "extreme."

I don't know that opposing public funding to groups that advocate or perform abortions is "extreme," but certainly Republicans have taken "extreme" positions on opposing such groups, including by imposing regulations that make it so burdensome to operate as to be practically impossible (potentially amounting to a violation of the Takings Clause).

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Perhaps. We could also say that it's a perfectly reasonable position to take given that 40%+ of those polled view abortion as murder. The issue is sufficiently complex where "under no circumstances" doesn't seem to be an impediment in practice, even if I agree with your point of view on this in theory.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

So is it not equally a GOTV issue of sorts when certain groups prey on racial and/or racist fears to drum up the vote? If the left is better at raising the false idea that voter ID laws are racist and designed to disenfranchise than the right is at the opposite, is that an issue of demographics or something else?

If the GOP can stick to the core issues of fiscal responsibility, limited government, and conservative social issues, they can attract minorities as long as they don't do other things to actively push them away.

This is my general point, I agree.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

> It's widely understood

And yet Obama's vote totals are less this year than last? How do we distinguish this assertion from the narrative republicans deploy to insure their policies are not to blame?

> Heck, Romney's GOTV program crashed on election day

True. But just how significant is GOTV? How do we test with, versus without GOTV efforts? In short, how do we prove the case?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

And yet Obama's vote totals are less this year than last? How do we distinguish this assertion from the narrative republicans deploy to insure their policies are not to blame?

Yes. Overall turnout is down, and Obama lost with independents. That's why his share is lower, yet he made up for it with superior base GOTV.

True. But just how significant is GOTV? How do we test with, versus without GOTV efforts? In short, how do we prove the case?

Well, Romney, McCain, basically without. 2010, Walker recall, 2004 Bush, basically with.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

They, the Democrats, won the House popular vote.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The old Republican Party had an element of progressive politics embodied by people like TR and Rockefeller. That element's been engulfed by the GOP adding an oversized bunch of reactionaries to the ones already there. The GOP, in other words, lost a vital part of the Party that tied it to Abraham Lincoln. There is a reason that the most vehement critics of Lincoln today are all from the mouths of the party he founded....

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Nope. The organization's actual name was Citizens United Not Timid. They naturally figured the vulgar acronym would cost them sympathy and so they went with CU instead. Of course it's hard to defend a movement with an acronym like that as honest, God-Fearing conservatives as it is..........which is exactly why you'll never see the people who need desperately to believe in either the End of the World or the Obama-Communist meme mentioning this.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Its because women dont like being forced to carry rape babies to term. I have confirmed this by speaking to women IRL, can you find many women who think as you claim?

[hikarugenji.livejournal.com]

The timing, rhetoric, and nature of the voter ID and early voter restriction laws made it very easy for Democrats to argue that they would disproportionally disenfranchise Black voters.