What is to Become of the GOP?

What is to Become of the GOP?

www.politico.com

Arlen Specter’s break from Republicans is the latest in a trip-hammer series of reversals that leaves the GOP more beaten and less popular than either major party has been in decades...

... the Specter divorce is both symptom and cause of the GOP collapse — leaving the opposition party on the brink of irrelevance in Barack Obama’s Washington and facing few obvious paths back to power.

(visit the link for the full news article)


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Before the mods tamper or delete this because the title of this thread is not the same as the article... WAIT... I did this for a purpose... the links and all are to get this on breaking news and nothing more because the mess the GOP is in is important.

What is to become of the Grand Old Party?

There used to be moderate and liberal branches of the GOP and they kept the party balanced but over the past 30 years and especially since Reagan the party has tilted ever further to the right.

Now with the loses in 06 and now 08, the party seems posed to lean even further right... at a time when most people don't identify with either the party or what it stands for.

In my humble opinion if it follows limbaugh and other extremists urgings and continue its rightward tilt it is going to continue losing elections until it collapses all together or splinters into ever smaller factions.

Either way its no formula for winning elections.

While I am a self declared liberal and agree with the Democrats more than I do the Republicans... I do not want a one party state regardless of the party.

So the question is... what is to become of the GOP and will it fall or return to some form of relevance?


www.politico.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

It will reboot and be lean, mean, and on point without RINO's...

This is not by the way an attempt to bash the GOP rather it is an attempt at a serious dialogue about the state of the party...

It does not matter one iota whether I agree with the GOP or not it is in the nation's best interest to have viable parties and if either cease to be so the nation as a whole suffers.

Many GOP's will run as independents, get elected, and will reunite with the party once the party reforms itself.

They will still be Republicans at heart with a Republican type agenda.

reply to post by jam321

That's an interesting idea... I am not so sure it would work though considering that they would still be the same people with pretty much the same ideas.

I would think that the party if it is to survive is to do what the Democrats did which was to move towards the middle until someone actually comes along with fresh ideas...

as it stands right now I don't see a single Republican out there who has even a snow ball's chance in hell of replicating for the GOP what Obama did for the Democrats.

The GOP will fragment into 2, perhaps 3 factions. The Christian faction being the largest, the corporate whores being the next largest and last but not least, the neocons, where the true power lies ala the CIA/intelligentsia.

Rush and the other AM talking heads do have a large audience, granted, but never enough to stage even a halfassed comeback. But don't count the neocons out; they are smart, well funded and ruthless.


In other words; the Republican Party as we once knew it,
is dead! May the GOP RIP.


s&f



[edit on 29-4-2009 by whaaa]

reply to post by whaaa


IF the GOP fails to reconstitute itself enough to win some seats back in 2010 (its not enough to just hold onto what they already have) its going to be an ugly civil war within the party come 2012 and if Obama wins then...

I think it will fracture... if it doesn't before.

Personally I am in favor and have been for decades in adopting the parlimentary system... but I am a realist enough to know its not going to happen.

A nation can stand liberalism for only so long before it starts to run a country into the ground.

The UK is a good example - they had the great MacMillan years (conservative), followed by the disastrous Wilson and Callahan years (liberals) then the resurgence of the UK with Thatcher (conservative) and now their accelerating spiral into insanity under the Blair/Brown liberal nightmare.

They are due for a conservative cycle.

The Republican party is in disarray right now, but the US will need them again very soon when the true disaster of the Democrat election victory becomes apparent in a few years. They have until 2012 to get their house in order and it was more than unfortunate that the worst Republican president in living memory handed control of the country over to people who will ultimately be shown to be even more incompetent than he was.

I think Churchill put it best with one of his few stolen quotations (from Francois Guizot):

"If you're not a liberal when you're 20, you have no heart. If
you're not a conservative when you're 40, you have no head."


[edit on 29-4-2009 by Retseh]

Originally posted by RetsehThey are due for a conservative cycle.

The Republican party is in disarray right now, but the US will need them again very soon when the true disaster of the Democrat election victory becomes apparent in a few years. They have until 2012 to get their house in order and it was more than unfortunate that the worst Republican president in living memory handed control of the country over to people even more incompetent than he was.

But from my perspective the GOP actually isn't conservative. They only make noises like conservatives to appeal for votes. Didn't work to well in the last election did it? As GWB said....

"You can fool some of the people twice and maybe I can find Crawford with both hands"

Well, the GOP may be shrinking but I don't think it will ever disappear. Remember, just a couple of years ago everyone was talking about the Democratic party was dead with no hope of a comeback. Now they're on top in every sense of the word. The tide comes in, the tide goes out.

But the tide isn't going to come back in again for the GOP until they come in with some good ideas. Their inability to compromise some of their social views (abortion/homosexuality) is beginning to hurt them as young conservatives vote Democrat over social issues, not fiscal ones. The christian conservatives hijacked the GOP years ago and it looks like it has run its course.

It's just very difficult to believe the GOP at this point in their history because they have no good ideas, they haven't changed since Obama took office, and they seem just as interested in the Democrats in re-election, NOT our best interests.

Originally posted by whaaa

But from my perspective the GOP actually isn't conservative. They only make noises like conservatives to appeal for votes. Didn't work to well in the last election did it? As GWB said....

"You can fool some of the people twice and maybe I can find Crawford with both hands"

I am inclined to agree, they have weakened their stance as true conservatives.

But - I don't think that Reagan himself could have pulled off a victory after 8 years of the disastrous Bush administration.

If the nation can hold itself together for the next 4 years, and yes that includes you Texas, we should be ok.

reply to post by The Cyfre


Are you saying that they would benefit from acting more, any actually, bipartisanship?

Yes it's true the MSM is repeating this mantra over and over in hopes it becomes true. The GOP is not dead. McCain got over 59 million votes which is over 10 million more than Clinton got in 96 and pretty close to what Bush got in both his wins. Add to the fact McCain was a terrible candidate that did not energize the GOP base nor attract many independents. I did not vote for him in the primary but was not left with much choice in the general election.

Grass roots movements are sweeping across the U.S. despite the current administration and MSM's attempts to ignore/characterize them as fringe loonies.

In the unfortunate two party system we have here once America has enough of one party they turn to the other. Rinse and repeat. Reagan/BushSr, then Clinton, then GWB, now Obama. It's a normal cycle. It wasn't that long ago Repubs had the white house, senate, and house. Now the Dems do. As history shows us in time the cycle will repeat itself. Thinking one party is dead because of the current position of the cycle is a short sighted way of thinking.

It reminds me of the global warming view. Ignoring the fact that the earth has heated up and cooled down in cycles going back millions of years and just focusing on the current 20 year trend and thinking it will only continue to get hotter. Keep thinking the Dems will only continue to win.

Originally posted by Retseh

If the nation can hold itself together for the next 4 years, and yes that includes you Texas, we should be ok.

Very true! But who will take credit for holding the nation together after being handed a sack of **** by the neocons? Obama perhaps? Get ready for another JFK style dynasty.

It's a brave new world, welcome to the monkey house.

I love politics! It's like watching the WWF or a pretty ballet. It don't amount to a hill of beans, but it kills a little time and it's entertaining.

Originally posted by intrepid
reply to post by The Cyfre

 

Are you saying that they would benefit from acting more, any actually, bipartisanship?

No, I don't think so. I think Republicans in office would definitely benefit from bipartisanship, reaching across the aisle, but only if they stay true to their ideals in the process. It would have to be a true compromise and not just cow-towing to Democrat demands.

I think Republicans would definitely benefit if they had some fleshed out ideas that will appeal to the American public, but I sure haven't seen anything lately. We're clearly in an "ACT NOW!" phase and the Republicans want to take a minute, size up the situation and just... wait a second. That mght be a smart thing to do but nobody is listening to that right now, so instead of making them look smart by thinking it through, they look hesitant and scared to act.

I keep thinking back to their response to the Obama budget. The GOP budget they released (a week late) was TERRIBLY done and was perceived more as a joke than anything else. The only thing it reminds me of is when I was in high school and forgot to write a paper, so i'm scrambling to get my book report done while everyone else is reading theirs. When it comes time to read mine, it's not thorough, rushed, not thought out, and it's clear that i half-assed it.

I'm not getting this from the mainstream media, it's my own personal opinion based on my own observations. Can't blame everything on the MSM, can you?

Hopefully it crumbles into dust along with all the fake conservatives so the people who still want limited government and personal liberty can stop wasting their time pretending the Republican Party cares anything at all about those values.

Say it over and over: limited government, personal liberty.

The Dems hate it. The Reps pretend to love it to get the support they need for their moral policing and empire building.

The sooner their charade ends the sooner we can move on toward liberty.

The two parties in charge have just been pushing for less personal liberty and expanded government going on twenty+ years now.

Unless of course I'm wrong and people really do love nanny state government, censorship, bans, and the rush of bombing foreigners. Maybe they do? Promise continued war, bans and bigger government and you win elections over the other guy promising war, bans and expanded government so who knows.

People are idiots and slaves and I grow tired of having their mob rule dictate how my one and only very short life must be lived.

The problem with most of these arguments so far is that they hold fast to the idea that Republican=conservative and historically speaking that is no more true than Democrat=liberal.

The one thing that came out from this election... as far as I can tell anyway... is that people were sick of the same ole same ole... McCain is a conservative, there is no doubt about that... he may not be as conservative as some of you might have liked but that is besides the point... he is conservative, and the voters rejected him.

I have seen posters claim before that neither bush minor or the current batch of Republicans in congress are conservatives or conservative enough and still that misses the point...

which is that right wing conservatism has never been a majority in this country and probably never will and if the GOP continues to cater to that very narrow base then it is going to continue losing elections... certainly for the near term and probably for the long term as well.

That in and of itself is part of the reasons why Specter bolted the GOP. Yes he knew he would lose in the Republican primary but that really misses the point...

Specter like all elected officials are supposed to represent all the people of their district or state... not just the party.

Originally posted by grover

That in and of itself is part of the reasons why Specter bolted the GOP. Yes he knew he would lose in the Republican primary but that really misses the point...

Specter like all elected officials are supposed to represent all the people of their district or state... not just the party.

SBT Arlen Specter has been a political hack that represents TPTB since the 1960's. I could care less which party he belongs too as he does not have the peoples interests at heart. "The Honorable" Mr. Spector has been neither a Republican nor a Democrat through out his political career. He's leaving the Republican Party for purely political reasons - to get re-elected and nothing more.

As a right leaning Independent, I am more than happy to have SBTS join the Dem's. I think that's where he belongs. Another rat jumping ship to save himself. He's quite a guy!!!!

Edited for grammar


[edit on 29-4-2009 by Oldnslo]

To underscore my argument:

"Anyone who tells you the Republican Party is on its way back is smoking grass," said GOP strategist Frank Luntz. "For the party to win, it has to have a broad base. They've lost the broad base."

Republicans are losing ground in a fast-changing America where women, minorities and the young make up bigger and bigger slices of the electorate, and they all tend to vote Democratic.

"The changing demography is not on the side of the Republican Party," said Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway. "Republicans seem to be waiting for the single to get married and the young to get old."

One reason why Democrats made inroads into the Republican South in last year's presidential election by taking Virginia and North Carolina is the rapid growth of the Hispanic vote there, she said.

Another problem is the Asian-American vote, which went solidly Republican a generation ago but went 2-1 for Barack Obama in 2008.

It wasn't just the choice between Obama and Republican John McCain — the Republican brand itself is suffering.

www.mcclatchydc.com...

So if no one is buying the conservative argument anymore how can the GOP possibly win by hewing even more strongly to it?

[edit on 29-4-2009 by grover]