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

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

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.

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Were they wrong?
Did their tactics backfire? If so, why were they so stupid?

We've done the electability thing twice now. I think it's quite clear they were wrong, and that you can't rely on anti-incumbent resentment alone. We even got an inkling of that in 2010 w/the O'Donnell and Reid races.

Had the republicans nominated Santorum, or Perry, or Bachman, do you really think the numbers would have been different? I do, but I think the difference would have been a larger margin for Obama.

I think in all cases, it would have been different, yes. I don't think we would necessarily see any of them win - although Perry would have had the best shot of those three - but I do believe all three would have far exceeded Romney's overall vote total.

The bottom line is, extreme social conservatism can no longer ride the coat tails of fiscal conservatism.

This might be true. But we didn't see extreme social conservatism from the Republican presidential ticket. That's a key issue with this point of view. Someone like Santorum very likely would have turned out extra people against him for the people who he turned out in favor of him because of his social views, but we have to recognize the differences between Santorum and Romney, Santorum and Perry, etc.

> But we didn't see extreme social conservatism from the Republican presidential ticket.

Extreme social conservatism is currently embedded in the republican platform, and it gets showcased by the rings that the candidates must kiss during the primaries. This is what I mean by saying "Playing to that peanut gallery demeans and damages any candidate they want to put into a national race."

Which "extreme" positions are you thinking of?

One example comes to mind....

Faithful to the “self-evident” truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children. We oppose using public revenues to promote or perform abortion or fund organizations which perform or advocate it and will not fund or subsidize health care which includes abortion coverage

Now, lets unpack that...

the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.

This precludes a rape exception for abortion, and may also be construed to preclude a Mother's Health exception, as was enunciated by some candidates who went down on Tuesday.

We oppose using public revenues to promote or perform abortion or fund organizations which perform or advocate it

So, no funding of an organization, for simple advocacy.

These, compared to the current sentiment of the electorate, are extreme.

Okay, so why is that extreme?

Why is anything extreme?

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).

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.

> Perhaps. We could also say that it's a perfectly reasonable position to take given that 40%+ of those
> polled view abortion as murder.

Lets see the poll. Lets see how the question was finessed. Because I can also quote a poll which says that only 13% of those polled support a "no exceptions" constitutional amendment on abortion, and 75% oppose it.,

Here's the thing about abortion as a political issue, that most republicans tend to miss - a lot of people think it's wrong. If they catch a poll question along the lines of "do you think abortion is murder" or "do you think abortion is morally wrong" - they'll say yes.

However, many of those same people will turn around and describe themselves as pro-choice, especially in rape/health cases. It's a situation where just because people personally believe the act is wrong, that doesn't mean they want the government making that call for them. "Personally pro-life and politically pro-choice" or "safe, legal, and rare" are sweepingly common stances on that issue. That's why strong pro-life candidates tend to go down in flames.

Agree 100% with you - I think both sides are ultimately guilty of using the far ends of the debate for their own means, though.

Abortion is a really tricky issue for republicans - because their primary voters want a pro-life candidate, but the general electorate does not. Trying to avoid focus on that issue during a campaign, and not making any significant steps on it while you're in office, is the most winning strategy for them. I hate to say "just leave it alone" - but really, that's the truth. It's not a coincidence that every single republican candidate who made abortion a big part of their campaign wound up losing. Democrats are absolutely guilty of trying to drag the discourse back to abortion way more often then the issue actually deserves - because being politically pro-life is an election loser and the democrats know that.

It's a tricky issue for both sides because it's so hyper-politicized. It's really an unintended consequence of Roe for everyone involved.

It's a lot simpler for democrats, because they're holding the majority view in a very emotional issue it's very easy to get people riled up about. That's why Democrats drag abortion to the forefront so often - they know they have an easy fork there to poke their opponent with.

> I think both sides are ultimately guilty of using the far ends of the debate for their own means, though.

So, where does 'extreme' begin and end?

I think a lot of it has to be about how many people hold the position, where that sits in the electorate, etc.

So, if 13% support an anti-abortion law specifically with no-exceptions,... that's 5 percentage points lower than the number of people who claim to have seen a ghost (a huge 18%, which I find, disturbing, but that's another debate)

It's about double the number of people who think that the Apollo Moon landing was a Hoax (a least according to a 1999 Gallup Poll).

How Fringe is fringe enough?

I think, especially with abortion, you have a situation where we could cherry-pick any poll to make our case. A fringe viewpoint might be, say, calling for imprisonment/execution of those who take part in abortions.

and thus, simply banning it is, in your mind, therefore not extreme, which, while it puts you out of touch with the vast majority of the electorate, it also allows you to try move the window one what's extreme and what's not.

And you claim you're a libertarian. Why don't you stick to entering the uteruses of women who actually want you there? I guarantee you, sir, it is a much smaller number.

and thus, simply banning it is, in your mind, therefore not extreme, which, while it puts you out of touch with the vast majority of the electorate, it also allows you to try move the window one what's extreme and what's not.

Depending on the poll, it's not out of the mainstream nor is it extreme. I need not move any windows - the window is fairly firmly in place.

And you claim you're a libertarian. Why don't you stick to entering the uteruses of women who actually want you there? I guarantee you, sir, it is a much smaller number.

I claim to lean libertarian, and while there are plenty of anti-abortion libertarians in the world, you have, as usual, confused me with something I am not.

I picked a poll that differentiated between regulating against abortion on demand, as opposed to abortion with no exceptions. This is not cherry picking, this is discernment concerning the question at hand. Cherry piking would be looking at five polls that asked the same question, and taking the answer I liked while ignoring the rest.. cherry... PICKING. If I am cherry picking, present me with other polls that ask the same question in principle, but get different results.

> A fringe viewpoint might be, say ...

This says nothing. What percentage of people have to think a thing, before it stops being fringe? If you can't answer that, you have no meaningful definition of 'fringe', and presumably, none for 'extreme'. Therefor you have no plank on which to stand to say that something is NOT extreme, except to say that 'extreme' means nothing to you when discussing ideology.

Edited 2012-11-13 03:37 (UTC)

It's a situation where just because people personally believe the act is wrong, that doesn't mean they want the government making that call for them.

More to the point, recognizing the category of an act is not the same as condemning an act. Abortion, yes, ends a potential life; that doesn't make it a vile act. Life ends all around us, all the time. No reason to fight that.

There's a rail bridge near my hometown that has been graffitti-d with "ABORTION IS MURDER—DO YOU CARE?" for over thirty years. The rail line paints over, and it's back in weeks, sometimes days.

For years, I thought it would be fun to change ABORTION to LISTERENE, PESTICIDE USE or maybe EATING MEAT. There are many, many ways to end life.

Perhaps. We could also say that it's a perfectly reasonable position to take given that 40%+ of those polled view abortion as murder.

No, we couldn't say that, because the data clearly shows that, despite how a significant percentage of people feel about abortion, as a moral matter, most people believe it should be legal in at least some circumstances, which is directly contrary to a platform plank that seems to say it should be legal in none. The Republican platform's position, as well as the position of several of the outspoken and defeated candidates in the most recent election, is extreme.

The issue is sufficiently complex where "under no circumstances" doesn't seem to be an impediment in practice,

I don't know what you're trying to say here. Are you trying to argue that the extreme positions should be understood in the context of what is practicably achievable in the current political environment? If so, you'd have to walk back an awful lot of what you've said about Obama's "extreme" positions.

So the 60% who don't think it's murder are what, chopped liver?

What do you call extreme social conservatism? I predict like every other time I've asked you to define what something is this comment will be decidedly and studiously ignored and if you respond to it it'll be with a 'why would I ever bother' and then you wonder why someone might react to that statement with a 'If you don't ever try, you won't ever know, and as you don't try, you're in no position to say how people would react' and things go on from there. But in reality you've never answered this or the other questions, so I'll repeat them.

1) What is conservatism? Not what it is not, what is it?

2) What is liberalism?

3) What is extreme conservatism?

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

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