The GOP: A party that cannot change

[homersapien 11,373]

Meet the new GOP, same as the old GOP....

 

Opinion by

James Downie

Digital opinions editor

November 29, 2020

 

In the span of an hour, CNN’s “State of the Union” featured both new and old faces of the Republican Party. First, host Dana Bash interviewed Sen. Roy Blunt, who has held elective office from Missouri for most of the past 35 years. Then she welcomed Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) and Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), both newly elected members of the House. Though all three looked very different, they sounded much the same.

All three were in harmony when it came to supporting President Trump’s continued attempts to undermine democracy by questioning the election results. “The president should also use every legal avenue that he can to present evidence,” said Mace, after another week that saw Trump campaign lawsuits tossed out of court for lack of evidence. Even after Bash noted that “there is absolutely no evidence of widespread voter fraud,” Malliotakis simply repeated the talking point: “I believe that he is within his legal rights to be questioning any irregularities that have — may have surfaced.”

In response, Bash dryly noted, “I’m guessing it’s probably fair to say that neither of you thinks that the election that each of you won was rigged.”

Blunt, who at least has the virtue of experience, did little better. Asked whether Joe Biden is the president-elect, Blunt dodged the question time and again. He first tried to hide behind the fact that “there is no official job of president-elect.” (That’s technically true, but it didn’t stop Blunt from applauding “President-elect Trump” four years ago.)

Then Blunt blamed the media for setting up a “straw man.” He finally admitted that Trump’s lawyers haven’t presented any proof of voter fraud “in a way that was acceptable to any court.” But then he offered his own opinion: “I think there was some element of voter fraud.”

Perhaps desperate to find some room to maneuver, the Republicans chose to go back in time. “Our conservative message … is a compassionate message,” said Mace, echoing the “compassionate conservatism” message of George W. Bush in 1999 and 2000. “What we stand for are freedom, liberty,” said Malliotakis, “We don’t believe we should be destroying free-market principles. We don’t believe in [the] Green New Deal.”

Swap out “Green New Deal” for “Obamacare” or the “Clinton health-care plan,” and those sentences could have been spoken by any Republican in the past 20 years. Blunt went a little further than his new colleagues, and suggested Medicare and Medicaid might have been mistakes.

It is probably unrealistic to expect the GOP tune to change. Blunt rose to national prominence during the 1990s, when a Democrat left the country in decent shape, but conservative hysteria, driven by right-wing media, led to the election of a Republican who threw all that away with reckless decisions.

Malliotakis and Mace are entering Washington four years after another Democrat left the country in decent shape, but conservative hysteria, driven by right-wing media, led to the election of a Republican who threw all that away with reckless decisions.

Yes, the blunders differ — a disastrous war and a recession for Bush; a horrific pandemic “response” and a near-total loss of norms for Trump. Trumpism lacks the niceties that led too many observers to give “compassionate conservatism” the benefit of the doubt 20 years ago. And today’s GOP is far more open about its contempt for American ideals of equality and justice than 20 years ago.

The Republican Party of 2020 may look different from its earlier incarnations, but the fundamentals remain the same: The party is fearful of change, partial to fearmongering, hostile to free elections and running short on competence.

Don’t be surprised if the GOP of 2030 looks a lot like that, too.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/29/gop-party-that-cannot-change/

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A complimentary piece by Michael Gerson:

 

The GOP deserved to lose even worse. Here’s why it didn’t.

Opinion by

Michael Gerson

Columnist

November 19, 2020

 

Is there always so much sobbing at Democratic victory parties?

For the first time in my adult life, I publicly endorsed a Democratic presidential candidate. He won in a convincing fashion. But now, my new comrades, after an initial burst of celebration, are in a deep funk.

The reason? While the country shifted away from Trump, it did not turn against the GOP. And the GOP has not turned against Trumpism. To the contrary, the Republican loser has convinced some 70 percent of Republicans that he was cheated out of a victory. Expected Democratic gains in Congress did not materialize. And large increases in Democratic turnout were nearly matched by Trump reinforcements — 10 million more voters than he had in 2016 — that seemed to emerge from thin air.

“Figuring out how Trump won an additional 10 million votes,” argues my Post colleague E.J. Dionne Jr., “is one of the most important questions in politics.” His theory? “Given Trump’s intemperate and often wild ranting in the campaign’s final weeks and the growing public role in GOP politics of QAnon conspiracists, the Proud Boys and other previously marginal extremist groups, these voters may well be more radical than the party as a whole.”

I am not usually the person others rely upon to cheer up a party. The bright side, in my view, is often the glow of an approaching meteor. In this case, the political party of George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney does seem well and truly gone. More than 73 million Americans voted for a presidential candidate excited by exclusion, attracted to authoritarianism and prone to conspiracy theories. Doesn’t that indicate a party driven by prejudice and illiberalism?

It does, in part. Every Republican who did not support Trump because of his bigotry supported him in spite of it. But this is an incomplete picture of our politics: The facts do not refute Republican blame, but they do complicate it.

Complication No. 1: According to the 2020 exit polls, 35 percent of voters said that the economy was their most important issue. Of this group, the overwhelming majority — 83 percent — voted for Trump.

This may strike us as absurd, since Trump’s failed management of the covid-19 pandemic is what deepened the recession. But a large number of voters in 2020 disagreed with this assessment. Plenty of Americans seemed to like Trump’s economic management before the pandemic, didn’t blame him for the pandemic itself, and believed he would do a better job after the pandemic lifted.

It is true that the overwhelming majority of voters — 81 percent — who saw the pandemic as their largest issue voted for Democrat Joe Biden. But this group constituted just 17 percent of voters — less than half the number citing the economy. And Biden never even made much of a case against Trump’s management of the economy during the pandemic. Trump won the economic argument against him largely because it was more assumed than made.

Complication No. 2: Trump did modify his 2020 message in a significant way. Except for absurdly claiming that his border wall was near completion, he did not focus on immigration as he had previously. During the 2016 presidential election and the 2018 midterms, Trump’s final appeal was to stop an imaginary flood of Hispanic drug dealers, gang members and rapists from entering the country. In 2020, Trump’s main appeal was fighting socialism and maintaining law and order.

The president’s record on immigration is brutal and horrendous. But in the relative absence of anti-immigrant messaging, Trump made direct appeals to Latino voters across the country. And it turns out that a good number of Latino voters like border security, hate socialism and are vulnerable (like others) to populist demagoguery. In Latino-majority Miami-Dade County, Trump went from roughly 333,666 votes in 2016 to about 532,833 votes in 2020.

Complication No. 3: Some of the most respected voices in Democratic politics have located significant image and policy problems on the Democratic side. House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (S.C.) has warned that Democrats lose electoral momentum when they are associated with issues such as socialized medicine and defunding police departments. Calls to defund the police, he argues, have the possibility of “doing to the Black Lives Matter movement and current movements across the country what ‘Burn, baby, burn’ did to us back in 1960s. We lost that movement over that slogan.”

When intemperate activists control the image of the Democratic Party, it puts needless distance between Democrats and the political center of the country.

None of this justifies or excuses Trump’s extremism or Republican cowardice. The GOP deserved to lose even worse than it did. But it would help in this cause if the Democratic Party had a more compelling economic message, didn’t take Hispanic voters for granted and avoided being defined by its own excesses.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gop-deserved-to-lose-even-worse-heres-why-it-didnt/2020/11/19/3dfa53ae-2aa4-11eb-9b14-ad872157ebc9_story.html

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-the-gop-is-sticking-with-trumps-election-deceit/2020/11/18/469b82a2-29dd-11eb-8fa2-06e7cbb145c0_story.html

 

.........Going forward, figuring out how Trump won an additional 10 million votes is one of the most important questions in politics. Here’s a plausible and discouraging theory: Given Trump’s intemperate and often wild ranting in the campaign’s final weeks and the growing public role in GOP politics of QAnon conspiracists, the Proud Boys and other previously marginal extremist groups, these voters may well be more radical than the party as a whole. This means that Republicans looking to the future may be more focused on keeping such Trump loyalists in the electorate than on backing away from his abuses.

Trump’s bitterest harvest could thus be a Republican Party with absolutely no interest in a more moderate course and every reason to keep its supporters angry and on edge. Ignoring reality and denying Trump’s defeat are part of that effort.

Opinion by

E.J. Dionne Jr.

Columnist

[Grumps 3,704]

If the GOP championed equality for blacks in this country and is a party that cannot change, then by definition the GOP is still the party defending the rights of blacks, right? I guess the other option is that your argument lacks any substance. Which is it?

[AUFriction 1,179]

17 hours ago, Grumps said:

If the GOP championed equality for blacks in this country and is a party that cannot change, then by definition the GOP is still the party defending the rights of blacks, right? I guess the other option is that your argument lacks any substance. Which is it?

The article is a little misleading, but so is your statement. The Republican Party did free the slaves, but a series of major party realignments have essentially made the parties opposite what they are now. The Republicans of the 1800s were a progressive party while the Democrats were a conservative party. 

 

To the article itself, I don't really agree. The Republican Party has actually shifted quite a lot over the last 2 decades. They went to being a party that on Nolan's model would be considered pretty close to true conservative, having libertarian and small-government anti-federalist views to something that straddles the conservative and populist line and is more of a big government statist party. This shift in the republican party has left a massive void in US politics. A lot of this country holds small government views, and there's a sizable portion of the population that has libertarian leanings. Neither party right now satisfies those groups at all. So a lot of political theorists have suggested that we'll either see the Democratic Party move more libertarian or we'll see the Republican Party revert closer to what it was pre-Trump. Some have even speculated that we may even see a legitimate third party for the first time emerge in the near future. Not sure I buy that though since the major news networks refuse to let third parties into debates. 

[TitanTiger 20,481]

14 hours ago, homersapien said:

Complication No. 3: Some of the most respected voices in Democratic politics have located significant image and policy problems on the Democratic side. House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (S.C.) has warned that Democrats lose electoral momentum when they are associated with issues such as socialized medicine and defunding police departments. Calls to defund the police, he argues, have the possibility of “doing to the Black Lives Matter movement and current movements across the country what ‘Burn, baby, burn’ did to us back in 1960s. We lost that movement over that slogan.”

This is a salient point.  And it begs the question of, "Why don't the Democrats learn from this?  Time and again they allow the wrong set of people to set the message for the party.  So instead of steering the conversation toward a worthwhile reassessment of police tactics, over-militarization of local police departments, more emphasis on de-escalation, and exploring alternate ways to handle issues such as interactions with people struggling with mental health issues, we get "defund the police."  To the average American that sounds like "let the criminals have free rein" or "bring on the anarchy!"  It's dumb.

[TexasTiger 12,858]

12 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

This is a salient point.  And it begs the question of, "Why don't the Democrats learn from this?  Time and again they allow the wrong set of people to set the message for the party.  So instead of steering the conversation toward a worthwhile reassessment of police tactics, over-militarization of local police departments, more emphasis on de-escalation, and exploring alternate ways to handle issues such as interactions with people struggling with mental health issues, we get "defund the police."  To the average American that sounds like "let the criminals have free rein" or "bring on the anarchy!"  It's dumb.

It is dumb, but it’s largely a creation not a Dem policy position. Dems get saddled with fringe views on the left no matter how rare and Republicans avoid getting saddled with fringe views on the right no matter how common they are.

[Grumps 3,704]

18 hours ago, AUFriction said:

The article is a little misleading, but so is your statement. The Republican Party did free the slaves, but a series of major party realignments have essentially made the parties opposite what they are now. The Republicans of the 1800s were a progressive party while the Democrats were a conservative party. 

 

To the article itself, I don't really agree. The Republican Party has actually shifted quite a lot over the last 2 decades. They went to being a party that on Nolan's model would be considered pretty close to true conservative, having libertarian and small-government anti-federalist views to something that straddles the conservative and populist line and is more of a big government statist party. This shift in the republican party has left a massive void in US politics. A lot of this country holds small government views, and there's a sizable portion of the population that has libertarian leanings. Neither party right now satisfies those groups at all. So a lot of political theorists have suggested that we'll either see the Democratic Party move more libertarian or we'll see the Republican Party revert closer to what it was pre-Trump. Some have even speculated that we may even see a legitimate third party for the first time emerge in the near future. Not sure I buy that though since the major news networks refuse to let third parties into debates. 

Thanks for your input! My only point was that it is silly to say that the republican party cannot change. Both parties will change however they think it is necessary to win elections. I am not convinced that there is a such thing as a party platform anymore.

[homersapien 11,373]

19 hours ago, Grumps said:

Thanks for your input! My only point was that it is silly to say that the republican party cannot change. Both parties will change however they think it is necessary to win elections. I am not convinced that there is a such thing as a party platform anymore.

Well, we shall see. 

As the article stated, the proposed time frame for the change in question is 2030, or about 10 years, not 170+ years.  (Guess you overlooked that in formulating your response, huh?)

But yeah, they likely will be something different in 170+ years, if they still exist, which is doubtful. 

Meanwhile they will be a recent, shameful memory.

[homersapien 11,373]

Trump’s latest Fox News rant was one of his most dangerous. Republicans can’t ignore it.

Opinion by Editorial Board

November 30, 2020

 

PRESIDENT TRUMP’S Sunday Fox News rant ranks as one of the most dangerous of his presidency, and that is saying something. Mr. Trump issued claim after incoherent claim about vote rigging — machines switched thousands of votes, dead people voted, mail-in ballots were “phony,” poll watchers “weren’t allowed.” The United States just conducted probably the most secure, transparent presidential vote in its history; Mr. Trump calls it “the most messed-up election we have ever seen.” Proving there is no core national institution he will not besmirch, Mr. Trump attacked the judicial system for failing to ratify his lies and suggested that the Justice Department and the FBI are in on the conspiracy.

Either the president is delusional, or he is willing to knowingly tear down the democracy to deny that he is a loser. Either way, everyone else in a position of trust has a responsibility to defend the nation’s democratic system against Mr. Trump’s sustained assault. Some Republicans, mostly at the state and local levels, have done so, at times under extreme public scrutiny, counting the votes and refusing to manipulate the electoral process to overturn the popular will. For conscientiously overseeing the vote in his state — and standing up for its integrity against baseless attacks from Mr. Trump and the state’s two U.S. senators — Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his family have received threats. He and other election officials have had to accept security details.

“It’s time to stand up and be counted,” Mr. Raffensperger said. “Are you going to stand for integrity? Or are you going to stand for the wild mob? You wanted to condemn the wild mob when it’s on the left side. What are you going to do when it’s on our side?”

The response of most national Republican “leaders” has been to sit on the sidelines, or worse. Three weeks after the major networks called the race for President-elect Joe Biden, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) refused Sunday to refer to Mr. Biden as president-elect, arguing that the label is not “significant.” He managed to admit that the election was not “rigged,” but he also claimed that “there may have been ballots that shouldn’t have been cast” in Georgia and that “there were some things that were done that shouldn’t have been done. And I think there was some element of voter fraud.”

The label matters, and so does GOP senators’ endorsement of the fiction that fraud and irregularities are a substantial problem. Should Mr. Trump persuade millions of Americans that the voting system is corrupt, he could inaugurate an era of dangerous instability; a future candidate in a closer election might succeed in overturning a fair vote by exploiting the doubts and leveraging the fear that the president has instilled.

For weeks, Republicans dodged by saying Mr. Trump was entitled to make his case in court. Well, he has had his chance. He has failed. Judges, including those appointed by Mr. Trump, have made clear the election was not stolen. The dodge has run its course.

“I think the democratic process is strong and can certainly survive this discussion,” Mr. Blunt said. That would be true if he and others would stand tall and refute Mr. Trump’s toxic lies. As long as they allow the poison to circulate, they are abetting the weakening of that democratic process.

 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-republican-dodge-on-trumps-lies-has-run-its-course/2020/11/30/0a0030c4-3354-11eb-a997-1f4c53d2a747_story.html

[TitanTiger 20,481]

The parallels between Trump’s election fraud claims and his birtherism nonsense are striking.  Always hyping amazing new smoking-gun evidence that never comes, the vague “many people are saying” method of floating rank speculation and made up crap, and the "I'm just trying to uncover the truth" lie.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  And the groupies never see through it.

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

17 hours ago, Grumps said:

Thanks for your input! My only point was that it is silly to say that the republican party cannot change. Both parties will change however they think it is necessary to win elections. I am not convinced that there is a such thing as a party platform anymore.

I thought the below was an interesting perspective.  Essentially arguing that Trump and the party's capitulation to him has become Mccarthy 2.0

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/01/politics/gop-silence-trump-false-election-claims-mccarthy/index.html