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

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

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.

Of course they do. Did loosing the elections in 04 or 2010 make you want to shift your political stance any? Or did you just rant and rave about the stupidy/lack-of-moral-fiber prevalent in the general electorate?

As for "What's the Next Step?" it's hard to say.

The old guard establishment wing Republicans have lost a lot of face both within the party and with the nation. Whether or not they reassert themselves or are replaced by others remains to be seen

[paft.livejournal.com]

The Democrats as a political party have not been steadily veering to the left as the Republicans have been steadily veering to the right for the past 30 years.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Exactly. It's a pretty asymmetrical transformation.

[vitsli.livejournal.com]

>>steadily veering to the left

And what you call "left" in this context?

[paft.livejournal.com]

The "left" in this country is generally held to be those who advocate socialism or, at the far end of the spectrum, communism, rather than the liberal stance of limited capitalism.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

and where does that leave the right?

likewise what constitutes "limited" in this case in regards to "limited capitalism".

Lets face it, modern progessives are hardly liberal in the classical sense.

[paft.livejournal.com]

s: and where does that leave the right?

Typically being defined as "right wing" rather than moderate in this country involves an emphasis on social issues -- as in opposition to feminism, gay rights, abortion rights -- a covert or overt appeal to white supremacists, and an opposition to Communism that borders on or overtakes McCarthyism.

s: likewise what constitutes "limited" in this case in regards to "limited capitalism".

Capitalism practiced with some level of government oversight as opposed to a laissez-faire system.

s: Lets face it, modern progessives are hardly liberal in the classical sense.

What do you mean by "liberal in the classical sense?" And is that the common usage of the term "liberal" when used in political discussion?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

This is where the conversation will bog down in arcane "well how do you define words." I don't know any serious political observer who doesn't think the Republican party today is significantly more conservative that 40 years ago. And that the Democratic party is also more conservative, but the move for the Republican party has been far more significant. Like I said earlier, the Vote View database shows this, and it's pretty asymmetrical.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Yep. There are people here who don't argue so much as play word games. Faced with hard reality, their premise falls apart.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

The first step If you want to learn someone's mind, or change it, is always to attack the base assumptions.

I don't know any serious political observer who doesn't think the Republican party today is significantly more conservative that 40 years ago. And that the Democratic party is also more conservative, but the move for the Republican party has been far more significant. Like I said earlier, the Vote View database shows this, and it's pretty asymmetrical.

But is that a result of a shift in the parties or a shift in the population?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

The first step If you want to learn someone's mind, or change it, is always to attack the base assumptions.

Yeah I know how it works. And I've seen enough exchanges between Politikitty and LJ conservatives on this subject with her citing Vote Call's extensive database on this subject.

I'm not interested in beating that dead horse any further.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Capitalism practiced with some level of government oversight as opposed to a laissez-faire system.

What level of oversight constitutes "some" and, of far greater import, what is that level of oversight meant to achieve?

What do you mean by "liberal in the classical sense?" And is that the common usage of the term "liberal" when used in political discussion?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism

In contrast modern Liberalism is primarily defined by the fetishization of a group/tribal identity over that of the individual emphasizing the concepts of both collective achievement/reward and collective guilt/punishment.

While this fetishization of the tribe can lead to admirable traits, shared sacrifice for instance, it is prone to acts of oppression and/or genocide if not properly tempered by a strong anti-revolutionary faction or tradition which has been the Right's traditional role.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It should be obvious what the oversight is meant to achieve: no breadlines and no large revolutionary movements hellbent on destroying the established order.

The idea that modern liberalism is this is because contemporary Progressives in the USA have no term they use for themselves so they've co-opted terms that had nothing to do with what they advocate.

BTW, modern genocides have invariably been the products of Right/conservative regimes. Ask the Native Americans massacred by the USA and its 20th Century conservative allies, ask the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, and ask the people of Nanjing whether the people that slaughtered them were Leftists. Most of them would say no, actually, they weren't. Of course the Right has a fetish with dodging responsibility by attributing all that is wrong with the world to the treason of a Left that no longer exists here in the USA, so I'd love to see a conservative US argument that recognizes that the world has really, really changed since 1991. I'm not holding my breath.

[paft.livejournal.com]

paft: Capitalism practiced with some level of government oversight as opposed to a laissez-faire system.
sw: What level of oversight constitutes "some" and, of far greater import, what is that level of oversight meant to achieve?

The Glass Steagal act is one example, and it's meant to prevent what happened to our economy in 2008.

sw: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism

In other words, you're not using the common usage of the term "liberalism" as used in modern political discussion. You're just playing your usual word games.

SW: In contrast modern Liberalism is primarily defined by the fetishization of a group/tribal identity over that of the individual emphasizing the concepts of both collective achievement/reward and collective guilt/punishment.

Uh, no, it's not "primarily defined" that way except by right wingers opposed to liberalism.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The Democrats have never been Left in any way, in any fashion by the strict definition. The Debs/Gompers wing of politics never really fit into the major parties, nor do its successors.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Just finishing up The Campaign of the Century, a look at what happened when former Socialist Upton Sinclair got the Democratic nod for governor of California. Damn, the confusion and distress that created.

Cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria. . . . Damn.

[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?

[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....

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

The Progressivism of TR or Rockefeller would still be considered "Far-Right" by modern progressives, seeing as it owed more to the protestant ideal of charity and a general sense of noblesse oblige, than it did to any concept of class/social justice.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Only if these progressives consider the other Roosevelt Far Right. The claim that it did not owe itself to this indicates a certain lack of familiarity at least with Teddy Roosevelt, but then again I'm talking to a guy who doesn't even know what Stalinism is despite his own ancestors fleeing from the real one. The man behind the Square Deal and the Bull Moose Party genuinely did have a concept of social justice, and you'd need specifics to refute that he did not. Given my usual track record with conservatives I expect a lot of ad hominem and a veritable absence of genuine points to follow.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Given my usual track record with conservatives I expect a lot of ad hominem and a veritable absence of genuine points to follow.

Isn't that all your posts in general?

[paft.livejournal.com]

No, actually, it's not.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

You tell me. People tell me a lot of what I say and what I believe but in practice very few of them seem to *read* what I say or what I believe.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Underlankers has already done a good job of answering this question, but frankly, the GOP of over a century ago is not relevant in this debate. It's more relevant to compare the current GOP with the GOP from thirty, forty years ago -- and yes, that GOP was less in thrall to the far right than the current GOP.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

That's a good question and I think you're correct, When the Al Gore lost the presidency to GWBush in 2000 the Dems doubled down and tried desperately to win back the White House for 2004. Considering 9/11, the anthrax attacks, Gulf War 2, Afghanistan, Gitmo, the missing WMD's in Iraq, etc. 2004 was a desperate election for the left. Unfortunately John Kerry wasn't destined to win the Presidency.

But did the Dems move further left? Hell yeah! What could be further left then a presidential candidate that's Afro-American? Well, he could have been gay as well as black. Next time! Betcha by 2020 you'll have a gay democrat running for president.