Is history repeating itself? Is the GOP following the Whigs?

[Crazed Rabbit]

I was never overly enamored of the Tea Party, but I've begun to actively dislike them as I find out how more of their focus is on being more conservative on social issues than the GOP establishment (and thus less supporting of small government that wouldn't dictate on social issues), instead of actually focusing on fiscal conservatism and not caring so much about social conservatism.

CR

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I was never overly enamored of the Tea Party, but I've begun to actively dislike them as I find out how more of their focus is on being more conservative on social issues than the GOP establishment (and thus less supporting of small government that wouldn't dictate on social issues), instead of actually focusing on fiscal conservatism and not caring so much about social conservatism.

CR

Decent point. Dictating social mores should be, at best, reserved to the states. The Feds need to focus on national issues. Taxation and economics are a better focus to galvanize action. The cadre of social issues is more off-putting to the middling crowd.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Social conservatism is THE reason the GOP is on the wane. It will take a concerted effort by all aspects of the party to re-brand themselves as something constructive.

Unfortunately for middle of the road GOPers that concerted effort is unlikely. First party leaders have to acknowledge the need for a total re-branding (unlikely) then they would have to convince my generation that the last twenty years or so are in the past by adopting their own progressive policies that pass the twenty-something cynic smell test (very unlikely).

A tough issue for the GOP. While social conservatism is not THE issue for a majority of Republicans, it is THE issue for a surprising portion of grass roots party activists -- and those people matter to getting candidates elected. That was one of the leverage tools Robertson and Falwell manipulated during the 1970s. They were part of the "Reagan Revolution" even though the Reagan administration was a little leery of much of the Moral Majority legislative agenda.

Reagan, though mostly a social conservative himself, did NOT do a lot of preaching about it -- focusing most of his efforts on economic issues, de-regulation, and hammering communism. He spoke in favor of traditional values, but the only legislative/executive measures he acted on were regarding the right to life -- and even there he was fairly limited.

[ICantSpellDawg]

As I've stated in the past, I am a social conservative but I also want to get the government out of our lives. I live like a social conservative and do whatever I can to undermine government authority over our personal lives. I think that the gay marriage debate is the dumbest debate I've ever heard of, but it doesnt mean that they don't bring up good legal points; what business is it of the government who I love or share my life with? Why do they need to value or accept who I love or live with? Contracts need a mediator, but I don't need you to value my lifestyle and, I'd prefer that you didn't.

On the abortion issue, the thing is homicide. Unacceptable and people who kill their kids rather than be responsible and use birth control should be ashamed of themselves. I understand the duress that they are under but their ethics are hideously grotesque.

Hey, free birth control for ever insured person. There is even less of an excuse not to destroy your childs life for your own selfishness.

[Montmorency]

be responsible and use birth control

Isn't that what they're doing?

[Crazed Rabbit]

I think one peeve of mine with the social conservative issues voter is that they (talking generally here) support 'values" candidates who have very little chance of getting elected. But even if they do get elected the politicians won't be able to pass any social conservative issues/whatever into law. Abortion won't be banned, nor will gay marriage. These voters just get the GOP portrayed -rightfully - as out of touch and clinging to issues that are less and less relevant to increasing numbers of people - for no potential benefit even if they do win.

CR

[Beskar]

I can tell that your opinions have shifted, Crazed Rabbit. Not shifted as in, away from your ideological fundamentals, but your opinions of the Tea Party and such.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Its time we get smarter about our priorities. Lindsay Graham is talking about an abortion bill. Nonsense at this point as it won't pass the Senate and would never be signed into law by this President, it would be vetoed out of hand. To me, this is a pointless vote grabber for morons. We have some priorities that can be worked on - tax reform, immigration reform, and healthcare reform. Right now, democrats are reeling from a major credibility hit on health care. Let's get in there and help them fix it.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Graham is an Israel-firster on foreign policy, that's hardly pragmatist.

[Xiahou]

Lindsey Graham is an excellent pragmatist, and one of my favorite Republicans. The fact that he is backing the far right is a sign that he doesn't think the future is with moderation. The same can often be said of McCain.

Personally I desire a strong and sensible Republican party, if only so that the Dems are held to task. They get very lazy without opposition and the Republicans have an uphill battle to be competitive in 2016.

How Republicans can't win in 2016

If demography is destiny, Republicans can't win the presidency by acting more like Democrats. The GOP's best shot in 2016 is not to nominate a moderate. They must nominate a conservative who can attract more conservative voters to the polls, just like President Obama built his own coalition and increased the relative electoral power of each constituent part. Not that it will be easy.

The GOP's last two nominations were moderates- and they both lost badly. Clearly, it's not the way forward.

[Lemur]

That analysis assumes that there is a great swath of ultra-conservative voters just waiting to be had in some kind of parity with the rise of the liberal youth vote. That is not the case.

This. A thousand times, this.

Rightwing Americans have a number of ways in which they convince themselves that they are the majority. Evidence does not bear this out, and they are ill-served by believing it. Voters are more nuanced, issue-by-issue, and in general far more pro-government than their representatives.

[D]espite the far more strident conservative tone of political discourse since then, support for government spending has varied somewhat cyclically since then, but only within a relatively narrow range, as recorded by the gold standard of public opinion research, the General Social Survey [data archives here].

The GSS asks about more than two dozen specific problems or program areas, asking if the amount we’re spending is “too little,” “too much” or “about right.” Not only do most Americans think we’re spending too little in almost every area — most conservatives also think the same. Indeed — hold onto your hats — even most conservative Republicans feel that way as well.

Take Social Security and Medicare, for example: two top “entitlements” that Republicans insist must be cut significantly, and that Obama has repeatedly indicated he would cut … if Republicans would agree to raise revenues as well. Progressives long have argued that these programs need more revenues, not less spending, so it’s not surprising that liberals surveyed by the GSS think we’re spending too little on such programs. Combining GSS data from 2000 to 2012, and asking about Social Security and spending on “improving and protecting the nation’s health” (GSS’s closest match with Medicare), liberal Democrats thought we were spending “too little” rather than “too much” on one or both by a margin of 87.1 percent to 2.4 percent — a ratio of over 36-to-1. But all other groups of Americans held the same view, even conservative Republicans — just not by the same overwhelming amount. They “only” thought we were spending “too little” rather than “too much” by a margin of 59.2 percent to 13.1 percent— a ratio of 4.5-to-1. With figures like that — all well to the left of Democrats in D.C. — it’s no wonder that conservatives in Congress always talk about “saving” Social Security and Medicare, and forever try to get Democrats to take the lead in proposing actual cuts.

[Xiahou]

And McCain and Romney lost because they were old white men whose talking points "evolved" to meet the needs of the fringe lunatics as the primaries progressed. Very transparent tools of a very select political minority. That's what the Republicans need to stop doing.

It's fairly well documented that Romney lost because the base stayed home.

Read the article, it's pretty obvious that you didn't even click on it.

[a completely inoffensive name]

GO ahead and nominate a "true conservative" I will eagerly await the election results.

[Ironside]

It's fairly well documented that Romney lost because the base stayed home.

Read the article, it's pretty obvious that you didn't even click on it.

As long as the GOP nominates someone plausible, they start off with 46 percent of the vote and a large chunk of the electoral college.

One flaw is about that plausible. And another is that they will have counter reactions. Appeal to the "true conservatives", and the Democrats gets a bonus (the 2012 voter turnout was very high for US standards and not because Obama was super popular) and you'll also start to lose the Republicans that doesn't like those "true conservatives".

[Husar]

The Republicans have one thing going for them that the Dems will never have: an Aura of efficiency. Yes, they are acting like nihilistic tards right now, but they are acting like nihilistic tards with a purpose. If a moderate Republican came out and presented his party as "Democrats, except we actually get stuff done" they would have a shot. That would mean dropping the social conservative crap, and it would mean agreeing to the need for a real social safety net, but that's how they would win.

In other words, Americans are tired of the two-party system and would rather move to a USSR- or DDR-style one-party-system. What happened to democracy offering representative representation for all the various interests?

Your country is really screwed, man...

[Xiahou]

I read the Article. Its full of wishful thinking. When it comes to the Romney campaign there is hardly anything that was fairly well documented. Everyone got everything wrong, but now all of a sudden Republicans have a crystal ball to look at? And it says the same crap they were saying in 2012!? Yeeeaah lemme know how that works out in 2016.

Wishful thinking on the part of who? Marc Ambinder isn't a GOP flack, last I checked.

Democrats are going to vote for the Democrat nominee- there's not much helping that. At best, the GOP can convince some Dems that their nominee is so awful that some of them stay home.

Exit polls showed Romney winning independents in 2012, but that didn't save him. The GOP is in a tough spot demographically. They need to turn out every conservative voter they can if they hope to win. You're not going to do that by running to the center.

By the way, I knew you didn't read the article because I realized a couple hours after I posted it that the link was broken (since fixed).

[Beskar]

They need to turn out every conservative voter they can if they hope to win. You're not going to do that by running to the center.

"You are not going to get every conservative voter by being in a position which all conservatives can agree on, you will have to go to the loony extreme!"

Recipe for massive fail...

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I think it is a mistake to assume that conservatism and its values no longer appeal to the American electorate. Most of us are still imbued with those values, raised to view the USA as something special, and to seek something better for our future and the future of our children.

Since Reagan, far too many of the conservatives have been small minded and mean. Being the party of "Hell no!" is not an agenda and a hope for the future and too readily degenerates into picayune obstructionism.

Conservatism cannot be about who we were. It must be about who we are and who we dare to become. I don't hear that from Paul, or Cruz, or Palin, or Christie, or Jeb Bush, or Bachmann. Reagan's magic was that he did NOT dwell in the past despite being, in many cases, the oldest fellow in the room when he spoke. Until the GOP truly comes to embody a vision of what the future should be -- and not just what we believe it shouldn't be -- we can expect the same results we've enjoyed of late.

I generally think the Dems are headed in the wrong direction, and they have their share of small minded would-be leaders as well, but some of them have vision and a sense of "becoming." At times, some of them can inspire.

I have seen any number of GOP leaders who I find admirable. It has been some time since I was inspired.

[Lemur]

Exit polls showed Romney winning independents in 2012, but that didn't save him.

True fact, but more importantly, he didn't win indies by much (5 points is the most generous reading). Certainly not enough to change the outcome. Same phenomenon with Kerry, who won indies by 1%, which was nowhere near the margin he needed to win.

From an article on this exact subject:

[V]oter's choice to identify as an Independent can change by the day. Republicans who were disenchanted with Romney might have been more apt to identify as Independent, as Democrats were in 2004 when they were dissatisfied with Kerry.

In 2012, a much more reliable indicator of success — and a better example of the "swing" vote — came from voters who identified as "moderate." In every critical battleground state, Obama won the moderate vote. In Iowa, he captured more than 60% of it. Overall, Obama beat Romney by 15 points among moderates.

Most of us are still imbued with those values, raised to view the USA as something special, and to seek something better for our future and the future of our children.

These seem like common American values, and not particular to the right wing. American conservatism has its particularities and defining features that set it apart, but love of country and belief in a better future are not among them. (Clarification: I believe those two values are pretty much universal among most all Americans, including rightwingers.)

GO ahead and nominate a "true conservative" I will eagerly await the election results.

Cruz/Palin 2016 would be amazing.

[Pannonian]

These seem like common American values, and not particular to the right wing. Declaring that centrists and lefties do not believe these things is normal Fox News-style rhetoric, but I don't see that reflected in anything resembling reality. American conservatism has its particularities and defining features that set it apart, but love of country and belief in a better future are not among them.

It's one of the peculiarities of British politics that old-school socialists and Tories got on well together, despite their class differences and political opposition, as they both fundamentally believed in duty to the underprivileged, and only disagreed on the degree and how to do so. It was Thatcherism that made an ideology of prizing the individual over the society, and both socialists and Tories detested her. Although, in retrospect, we can see that Thatcherism routed all other political ideologies. I wonder if US politics will similarly see two seemingly opposite parties routed by a radical third political ideology.

[Xiahou]

The Tea Party is unique in American politics in that everyone hates them.

The tea party has lower unfavorable ratings than Obama.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Chris Christie isn't a Moderate moderate, like Romney was. Christie is staunchly pro-life, as pro-gun as any Republican President over the past 100 years, against gay marriage, pro-market. He broke the backs of the Teachers Union. He won New Jersey by winning the PR game as a Conservative. Big C.

Is he a libertarian? Unfortunately no. Is he a TEA partier? I'm not sure what that is, by the definitions presented. Chris Christie is Conservative candidate, whose only liberal move has been to take Government funding to relieve the coast of NJ during their time of need and actually speak to minorities like they matter in the life of the nation.

He will be the most Conservative Republican President we've ever elected.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

The tea party has lower unfavorable ratings than Obama.

I'm thinking of a bad old joke about one leper bragging to the other about having more fingers......