A Problem of Shrinkage

[Banquo's Ghost]

it looks like labour could face terminal decline from obselescence:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...don-Brown.html

If they could come back to government after the Winter of Discontent via the nadir of Michael Foot, they can come back from anything. Brown may well have condemned them to a long time in the wilderness again, but the party is likely to reinvent itself. Plus, many commentators are describing the coming election as a good one to lose - the winner is going to have to implement some very nasty tax increases and severe public sector cuts. (Excellent, one might say, but the feeble-minded electorate loves to believe that they can have it all, and will baulk at anyone who tells them the party cannot continue).

The Conservative Party has performed the same resurrection trick. After Major's defeat, pretty much everyone said they were finished - and like Labour before them (and despite that lesson) they retreated into the core vote, elected some astonishingly silly leaders rather than the moderate heavyweights they had available, in a desperate spiral of searching for "purity". A party that for fifty or more years had been the "natural party of government" (through pragmatism of an exemplary standard) made itself utterly irrelevant. Finally, more by accident than judgement, they ended up with Cameron and came back towards the centre. Like New Labour, they are ideology free, but Brown is such a spectacularly incompetent leader, he gifts them endless opportunity whilst all the Tories have to do is watch and laugh. There's no evidence of an appetite for a Tory agenda, but no-one outside of a mental institution is considering voting for Brown. Yet if he hadn't been yellow to the very spine, Mr Brown may well have won a snap October 07 election and Cameron (who was on the verge of being dumped by his own party) would have made the same foot note in history as Iain Duncan Smith.

Such are the vagaries of power. The Republican party looks as if it might be in danger of imploding in the way some do when they think their core is all-important, but they'll recover their senses. Maybe not soon, but that will depend on the Democrats - it is almost always the government that loses elections, not oppositions that win them. In my opinion, the biggest obstacle facing any US party trying to rebuild is the primary system. As I understand it, only candidates who can mobilise the core vote have much of a chance these days, and thus those who then face the wider electorate (where they need to change significantly to appeal to those voters who currently don't like them) are often unappealing.

[Furunculus]

i agree with you, it takes a lot of hard work over a long time to become completely irrelevant to the voter, quite how the whigs/liberals have managed to perpetuate such a feat is beyond my imagination.

[ICantSpellDawg]

If they could come back to government after the Winter of Discontent via the nadir of Michael Foot, they can come back from anything. Brown may well have condemned them to a long time in the wilderness again, but the party is likely to reinvent itself. Plus, many commentators are describing the coming election as a good one to lose - the winner is going to have to implement some very nasty tax increases and severe public sector cuts. (Excellent, one might say, but the feeble-minded electorate loves to believe that they can have it all, and will baulk at anyone who tells them the party cannot continue).

The Conservative Party has performed the same resurrection trick. After Major's defeat, pretty much everyone said they were finished - and like Labour before them (and despite that lesson) they retreated into the core vote, elected some astonishingly silly leaders rather than the moderate heavyweights they had available, in a desperate spiral of searching for "purity". A party that for fifty or more years had been the "natural party of government" (through pragmatism of an exemplary standard) made itself utterly irrelevant. Finally, more by accident than judgement, they ended up with Cameron and came back towards the centre. Like New Labour, they are ideology free, but Brown is such a spectacularly incompetent leader, he gifts them endless opportunity whilst all the Tories have to do is watch and laugh. There's no evidence of an appetite for a Tory agenda, but no-one outside of a mental institution is considering voting for Brown. Yet if he hadn't been yellow to the very spine, Mr Brown may well have won a snap October 07 election and Cameron (who was on the verge of being dumped by his own party) would have made the same foot note in history as Iain Duncan Smith.

Such are the vagaries of power. The Republican party looks as if it might be in danger of imploding in the way some do when they think their core is all-important, but they'll recover their senses. Maybe not soon, but that will depend on the Democrats - it is almost always the government that loses elections, not oppositions that win them. In my opinion, the biggest obstacle facing any US party trying to rebuild is the primary system. As I understand it, only candidates who can mobilise the core vote have much of a chance these days, and thus those who then face the wider electorate (where they need to change significantly to appeal to those voters who currently don't like them) are often unappealing.

I see where you are coming from - these are rational thoughts and expectations. On the flip side, the US is a different place than Britain and the difference is more than just locale. Republicans could implode just like the tories in a monumental desert-destined defeat. Or not.

I do like the Idea of the big tent. We need to include everyone who supports at least one pillar of that tent. This shouldn't be a hard sell. There are plenty of Republicans who seem to have their heads on straight and can convince people in a crowd that they have decent ideas.

I'm not all that afraid. I plan on changing my registration to Republican as my own counterbalance. I was an Independent when they were in power and I will be a Republican when they are out of power. Democrats havn't won the social debate, they havn't won the economic debate (they are barely letting anyone know what the plan is here) and they've essentially caved on the foreign policy debate into a transcendent pan-party ideology.

We just need to wait for their large scale failure on one of those pillars to inflame sensitivities JUST enough to get people to stop thinking that the GOP is the enemy of hip and smart. PLUS we have to welcome more "smart".





Which pillar will it be?

[Banquo's Ghost]

I see where you are coming from - these are rational thoughts and expectations. On the flip side, the US is a different place than Britain and the difference is more than just locale. Republicans could implode just like the tories in a monumental desert-destined defeat. Or not.

I do like the Idea of the big tent. We need to include everyone who supports at least one pillar of that tent. This shouldn't be a hard sell. There are plenty of Republicans who seem to have their heads on straight and can convince people in a crowd that they have decent ideas.

I agree that there are significant differences.

The challenge of 21st century Big Tent Republicanism is one that faces a lot of "conservative" parties these days. It is the huge chasm between the ideologies of fiscal/small government/libertarian conservatives and social conservatives. The former is entirely predicated on reducing and removing government and societal control of citizens' lives. The latter is entirely about regulating citizens' lives down to their very morality, and invariably relies on one single tradition (usually religious) to set the parameters of that control. This of course, is directly antithetical to a free and pluralistic society.

As with the European Union in Britain (it tore apart the Tories for years, but for no reason as the allegedly pro-Europe Blair proved) sacred cows split parties. If the GOP finds the courage to ditch social conservatism and embrace the fiscally responsible constitutionalist soul* it used to have, it will reappear as a powerful force that really appeals to middle America, particularly in these gravely worrying times when an alternative to government largesse and associated power grabs is sought by many, I suspect.

* Including dumping the foreign entanglements.

[ICantSpellDawg]

I agree that there are significant differences.

The challenge of 21st century Big Tent Republicanism is one that faces a lot of "conservative" parties these days. It is the huge chasm between the ideologies of fiscal/small government/libertarian conservatives and social conservatives. The former is entirely predicated on reducing and removing government and societal control of citizens' lives. The latter is entirely about regulating citizens' lives down to their very morality, and invariably relies on one single tradition (usually religious) to set the parameters of that control. This of course, is directly antithetical to a free and pluralistic society.

As with the European Union in Britain (it tore apart the Tories for years, but for no reason as the allegedly pro-Europe Blair proved) sacred cows split parties. If the GOP finds the courage to ditch social conservatism and embrace the fiscally responsible constitutionalist soul* it used to have, it will reappear as a powerful force that really appeals to middle America, particularly in these gravely worrying times when an alternative to government largesse and associated power grabs is sought by many, I suspect.

* Including dumping the foreign entanglements.

There are differences between social conservatives and those who would rule the nation as a theocracy. Ron Paul is agaisnt Abortion, Banquo - in fact he was the only candidate to go to the march for life during the election year.

Most Democrats believe that people should be able to have sex with whomever they'd like at all times and murder their own children as long as they are out of sight. BUT they believe that if you don't wear a seatbelt or recycle you are a monster and should be arrested/killed. Illogical dichotomy is not an exclusive hallmark of the right.

[Banquo's Ghost]

Most Democrats believe that people should be able to have sex with whomever they'd like at all times and murder their own children as long as they are out of sight. BUT they believe that if you don't wear a seatbelt or recycle you are a monster and should be arrested/killed. Illogical dichotomy is not an exclusive hallmark of the right.

I didn't claim it was.

But, your hyperbole aside, the Democratic party seems to have forged a consensus towards the middle ground which eludes the GOP at present. And it is the GOP's return to power which we are discussing.

[ICantSpellDawg]

I didn't claim it was.

But, your hyperbole aside, the Democratic party seems to have forged a consensus towards the middle ground which eludes the GOP at present. And it is the GOP's return to power which we are discussing.

I agree with your point, although I'm not sure that their policies are middle ground. I think they've fielded a talent in Obama and he is using that talent to "put lipstick on a pig" as it were. He has made previously distasteful ideas go down more smoothly, not because he has worked out the kinks, but rather because of the way he words his agenda.

The party is in office because a number of Republican policies have failed miserably. Like you've said, elections are usually lost by the party in power rather than won by the usurper. Obama has been a miraculous talent BUT, as most posters believed, Hillary Clinton would have won the election handily if he had not been present - and she is one of the least politically talented politicos in recent history. I bleeive that a Dog scratching its way out of a paper bag would have been elected before a Republican after the last 8 embarrassing years. Nontheless, talent like Obama managed to make his way to the top of a vacuum and seal the deal, probably for a while.

I give him endless credit. He has put garnish on a glass of pee when the united states is trying to get the taste of GOP vomit out of their mouths.

[Askthepizzaguy]

I believe the same hyperbole can be used for the so-called right:

Most Republicans believe that people who are born with a same-sex preference are horrible sinners who will burn in hell and don't deserve equal rights, freedoms, and protections as straight people. They also don't seem to care about that one percent or so of people who are born hermaphroditic or otherwise sexually irregular, due to intelligent design of the human species. Of course, due to that design, doesn't that mean God welcomes his creations as he made them? BUT they believe that the government has a right to intrude into the bedrooms of consenting adults. If you don't believe that we should allow people to become obscenely rich while others are dying from curable disease, then you're a godless communist. They believe that anyone from Mexico, south America, China, or Arab countries are a threat to this country, regardless of being legal immigrants or second-generation. They think that it is OK for people to own any kind of assault weapon and that's the same as legitimate hunting or home defense firearms. They harp on and on about the rights of the people and the big bad government, then they remove people's rights both domestic and foreign and support the use of torture, in spite of their moral grandstanding on other issues like the life of the unborn, and paint the people who think if a woman has been raped by her father and would not like to have the child and that should be legal as being some child-murdering monsters, overlooking a woman's sovereign right to govern her own body from invaders. If a person is in your home uninvited, don't you have the "right" to shoot them on sight in many states? How is that different, in any way shape or form, from abortion? They also seem to think anyone who votes Democrat must be a pot smoking hippie who should be arrested/killed.

This kind of rhetoric gets us nowhere. Twisting the extremes of a party and then attributing that to the entire party is a pretty strong example of a straw man argument.

[Xiahou]

There are differences between social conservatives and those who would rule the nation as a theocracy. Ron Paul is agaisnt Abortion, Banquo - in fact he was the only candidate to go to the march for life during the election year.

There's plenty of common ground between social and economic conservatives. Respecting social tradition isn't incongruous with wanting a smaller, less costly government- the two line up in numerous ways. In fact, I'd say a consummate conservative would want both respect for tradition and a return to a smaller government such as we had pre-New Deal.

[ICantSpellDawg]

There's plenty of common ground between social and economic conservatives. Respecting social tradition isn't incongruous with wanting a smaller, less costly government- the two line up in numerous ways. In fact, I'd say a consummate conservative would want both respect for tradition and a return to a smaller government such as we had pre-New Deal.

Xiahou, that goes beyond mindless criticism - I don't think it will fly. Social conservatives are moronic zealots who have nothing in common with anyone and should be left on the proverbial curb.

Everybody knows that.

[Xiahou]

Here's an article on a recent Pew survey:

The results also suggest that the public recently has rejected the GOP for poor performance, not because it disagrees with the party's positions on key issues. That means beleaguered Republicans looking to rebound must convince voters they are still good stewards of those values while improving the GOP's image and morale.

To which I respond "DUH!". Again, America is a right-leaning country. Voters didn't reject conservatism, they rejected the GOPs failure to follow it.