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

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

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?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

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.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

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.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

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.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

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.