Diagnosis
Is the party over for the Republicans? National Journal thinks the Republican Party as currently constituted is done for.
Democrats are effectively courting voters with diverse views, but the Republican capacity to appeal to voters beyond their party's core coalition has collapsed.You can't win national elections with a regional party that constitutes about 30% of the population. As with any campaign, military or otherwise the first thing to do to gain success is to look at the maps. And the electoral map tells the story. The party owns the most culturally conservative parts of the nation and nothing else.
First let us look at issue failures. Anti-abortion messages failed in two states. One of them being friggin South Dakota. Medical Marijuana was favored in Mississippi. Mississippi? Yep. Mississippi. And pot was decrimed in Michigan. Oh yeah. Gay marriage was voted down in California. By Democrats. Whoop te do. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. So what are the odds of a social conservative winning the Governorship in California? Zip. Nada. Bupkiss. Why waste your time?
Now is the party ready to face the map? Of course not. It generally takes 8 to 12 years of being bloodied to get the rank and file and the leaders to come to their senses. Next stop? Democrats gain seats in the Senate to the point of a filibuster proof majority. Stop after that? A veto proof majority.
There is one consolation. A lot of RINOs have been purged from the party. Which according to the purists is a good thing. Yep. Sure is. Fewer votes in the legislature is a really good thing. We still have another 50 Hose seats that are manned by the not so pure. And we could do to lose another 8 to 10 Senate seats to have a REAL™ Republican Party. Fortunately the geniuses who got us where we are still have the reigns. And if we get new leadership? Odds are, given the base, it will resemble the old leadership.
So my friends, what do you think the party has to do to get more votes? You know where I stand. And it has made me none too popular. Where do you stand? What is the cure?
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Another analogy.
Grade School. The popular girls say girls with curls have cooties. They chastise anyone who associates with Girls with curls. The Girls with curls really don't have cooties, but the popular girls keep repeating it until everyone believes it.
Two proposed solutions.
#1.
Make the girls with curls straighten their hair.
#2.
Make the Popular girls stop telling lies about girls with curls.
From the perspective of the girls with curls, one solution is cowardly while the other is brave.
Straighten you hair (and there after keep a low profile) so they will quit making fun of you, or punch the arrogant little bitches in the mouth and possibly get beaten up.
I can tell you which method works better in practice, and I bet you can too.
Maybe this isn't how you see the current landscape, but it is how a lot of people see the landscape.
David
Well I'm not suggesting any one do anything.
If some girls want to take the easy way out and straighten their hair - fine. If other girls don't care about being popular - fine.
As I said - by 2020 the Republicans will all have straight hair.
It takes time for reality to set in.
It only took 50 years to partially roll back FDR. It might take only 49 to partially roll back Obama. If we are lucky.
As I see it Republicans have two choices: losing national elections based on sound moral social conservative principles.
Or taking a more libertarian view and getting the government out of the economy.
So far the Republicans have chosen the former. Good. What we need are minority of people with sound social principles ruled by a majority of Socialists.
Get back to me in 4 or 8 years and let me know how it is working for you. You will be softening a little by then. When you start screaming in sufficient pain I think you will jettison your sound moral principles as election issues and focus on economics. Hope it is not too late.
You see the two as separate. Many of us see them as interdependent.
It is like trying to separate the E-Field from the M-Field in an Electro-Magnetic wave.
David
Au contraire I see Economic Liberty and Cultural Liberty as inseparable.
But whatever. The Jesus Party™ will be making great gains in the next election. Count on it. And then I will have to eat crow. Won't be the first time.
Oh, one more thing. For what it's worth, Many denominations have been preaching apocolypse ever since I can remeber. I have heard warnings for the last 40 years that what is happening now is inevitable.
Much of the Religious Social Conservative community believe that "in the last days" Christians will be persecuted and hounded and that the living will envy the dead.. and so on.
The fact that so much which was considered absolutely outrageous back decades ago (gay marriage, massive numbers of abortion, not being able to buy or sell without the mark, (my uncle interprets the social security system as the mark of the beast) a pervasive hatred of Christianity.. etc.) as being predictions/prohpecy comming to pass.
A bunch of Christian denominations and their followers are perfectly willing to commit Hari-Keri .sp. politically. They figure the only thing they've got to loose is their Immortal soul. Bwuhahhaha !!!
(Laughing Demonically)
Kinda tough to present them with a persuasive argument. Like you said before, maybe we should just soothe the monkeys.
David
Actually, Simon, the opposite is true to what you suggest when you said:
"So far the Republicans have chosen the former. Good. What we need are minority of people with sound social principles ruled by a majority of Socialists.
Get back to me in 4 or 8 years and let me know how it is working for you. You will be softening a little by then. When you start screaming in sufficient pain I think you will jettison your sound moral principles as election issues and focus on economics. Hope it is not too late."
If the LUA crowd is all about monetary/economic issues, as you have said, then they would have realized that social conservatives want the same monetary/economic issues. NOPE, the LUA crowd didn't give one whit about economic issues this time around. They knitpicked social conservative issues, and voted for the "Communist" as you say. Yeah. Sure. THAT made alot of sense.
As I've said all along, with social conservatives you get the whole package - fiscal conservatism AND support for America's historical and traditional heritage.
After this election, we now know that the fickle middle-of-the-road crowd MIGHT vote for economic security...and then again might not, because the Left certainly isn't going to vote for less government and low taxation.
So, I guess we'll be hearing from the LUA crowd in 4 to 8 years, wishing they had allied themselves with social conservatives.
It's the other way around Simon. It's the other way around.
The "Jesus" party (thats what the liberals and media call it) isn't going to win anything if it becomes common place to refer to it as such.
Apart from that, I have a pretty good idea of how things are going to turn out, and it has nothing to do with religion.
Socialist ideas will cause an economic collapse. The great Depression will have become a picnic. After reality intrudes the spell will be broken and austerity will force the foolish behaviour to stop.
Conservative principles will reassert themselves and we will begin the long slow slog back to prosperity, but be no wiser the next time we get to the same point in history.
The wild card is of course technology. It is currently the only thing that's made it possible to sustain so much of the current idiocy.
In any case, I'd like to take credit for the idea, but I belive it belongs to this guy.
http://www.commonsensegovernment.com/article-09-15-03.html
David
Is there something wrong with the comments page, or am I doing something wrong ? Several times I have posted a comment and later go back to check on it and it isn't there.
(I posted about Alan Keyes just yesterday.)
David
Exactly right, David!
"Socialist ideas will cause an economic collapse."
"...After reality intrudes the spell will be broken and austerity will force the foolish behaviour to stop."
"Conservative principles will reassert themselves and we will begin the long slow slog back to prosperity, but be no wiser the next time we get to the same point in history."
History is cyclical, and our election cycles are the projection of that history. I've always wondered why we insist on dabbling with liberalism (and its cohort, secularism), knowing that it will eventually burn us. The short answer is...people.
King Solomon even said as much, when he said in Ecclesiastes 1:9,
"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."
"As I've said all along, with social conservatives you get the whole package"
You get a package which includes the issues upon which there is agreement across factions and even potential cross party appeal along with a poison pill of issues that polarize the right, along with everyone else.
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