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.

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Comments

[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.

[404.livejournal.com]

Pot calling the kettle black much?

[paft.livejournal.com]

People who actually invoke that cliche in this context are rarely able to back it up, and frequently give little evidence of knowing exactly what it means.

Do you have an argument to present, or are you just here to snipe?

[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.