Why the Republican Party is Going to Die

It may still have a pulse, but how long will it last? Could there be an Elephant in the room they have refused to deal with? Read on:

A Republican intellectual explains why
the Republican Party is going to die

CLEVELAND — Avik Roy is a Republican’s Republican. A health care wonk and editor at Forbes, he has worked for three Republican presidential hopefuls — Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Marco Rubio. Much of his adult life has been dedicated to advancing the Republican Party and conservative ideals.

But when I caught up with Roy at a bar just outside the Republican convention, he said something I’ve never heard from an establishment conservative before: The Grand Old Party is going to die.

“I don’t think the Republican Party and the conservative movement are capable of reforming themselves in an incremental and gradual way,” he said. “There’s going to be a disruption.”

Roy isn’t happy about this: He believes it means the Democrats will dominate national American politics for some time. But he also believes the Republican Party has lost its right to govern, because it is driven by white nationalism rather than a true commitment to equality for all Americans.

[...]

His history of conservatism was a Greek tragedy. It begins with a fatal error in 1964, survived on the willful self-delusion of people like Roy himself, and ended with Donald Trump.

“I think the conservative movement is fundamentally broken,” Roy tells me. “Trump is not a random act. This election is not a random act.”

[...]

Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He himself was not especially racist — he believed it was wrong, on free market grounds, for the federal government to force private businesses to desegregate. But this “principled” stance identified the GOP with the pro-segregation camp in everyone’s eyes, while the Democrats under Lyndon Johnson became the champions of anti-racism.

This had a double effect, Roy says. First, it forced black voters out of the GOP. Second, it invited in white racists who had previously been Democrats. Even though many Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act in Congress, the post-Goldwater party became the party of aggrieved whites.

“The fact is, today, the Republican coalition has inherited the people who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — the Southern Democrats who are now Republicans,” Roy says. “Conservatives and Republicans have not come to terms with that problem.”

[...]

“Conservative intellectuals, and conservative politicians, have been in kind of a bubble,” Roy says. “We’ve had this view that the voters were with us on conservatism — philosophical, economic conservatism. In reality, the gravitational center of the Republican Party is white nationalism.”

Conservative intellectuals, for the most part, are horrified by racism. When they talk about believing in individual rights and equality, they really mean it. Because the Republican Party is the vehicle through which their ideas can be implemented, they need to believe that the party isn’t racist.

So they deny the party’s racist history, that its post-1964 success was a direct result of attracting whites disillusioned by the Democrats’ embrace of civil rights. And they deny that to this day, Republican voters are driven more by white resentment than by a principled commitment to the free market and individual liberty.

“It’s the power of wishful thinking. None of us want to accept that opposition to civil rights is the legacy that we’ve inherited,” Roy says.

He expands on this idea: “It’s a common observation on the left, but it’s an observation that a lot of us on the right genuinely believed wasn’t true — which is that conservatism has become, and has been for some time, much more about white identity politics than it has been about conservative political philosophy. I think today, even now, a lot of conservatives have not come to terms with that problem.”

This, Roy believes, is where the conservative intellectual class went astray. By refusing to admit the truth about their own party, they were powerless to stop the forces that led to Donald Trump’s rise. They told themselves, over and over again, that Goldwater’s victory was a triumph.

But in reality, it created the conditions under which Trump could thrive. Trump’s politics of aggrieved white nationalism — labeling black people criminals, Latinos rapists, and Muslims terrorists — succeeded because the party’s voting base was made up of the people who once opposed civil rights.

“[Trump] tapped into something that was latent in the Republican Party and conservative movement — but a lot of people in the conservative movement didn’t notice,” Roy concludes, glumly. [...]

So what does this mean for the future of the GOP? Read the whole thing. It has embedded links and video to back up what it's saying. I've heard portions of this argument over the years, but the author here has done his homework and tied the facts together nicely. The way he ended the article speaks especially well to what we are looking at today. Sad, but true.

     

"Demographics tend to be political destiny"

Republicans’ 2016 math problem, explained in two charts

It's easy to overthink elections. I do it all the time. But at its most basic level, demographics tend to be political destiny. And that's why Dan Balz's column over the weekend, which details the difficult demographic realities facing the Republican Party in 2016 (and beyond), is so important. [...]

Read the whole thing for the two charts, embedded links and more. I think it explains a lot.

     

The truth may hurt...

... but it's better than living with a delusion. This article is brutally honest about some things many of us realized earlier on, but some are only just coming to understand now:

You Betcha I Was Wrong About Sarah Palin

[...] In fairness, Palin was once a reform-minded governor who enjoyed an 88 percent approval rating. But something happened on the way to Des Moines. I suspect the most vicious attacks (especially the “Trig Truther” stuff) radicalized her and embittered her, but I also suspect she also took the easy way out. Instead of going back to Alaska after the 2008 defeat, boning up on the issues, continuing her work as governor, and forging a national political comeback, she cashed in with reality-TV shows and paid speaking gigs.

This isn’t an original or new observation, In fact, back in July 2009, I wrote: “The tragedy of Sarah Palin’s recent press conference announcing her resignation as governor of Alaska flows from the sense that so much potential has been wasted.”

The trouble with taking the easy way out is that it doesn’t last forever. The people who truly last in this business don’t rely on shortcuts or good looks or gimmicks; they survive on work ethic, wit, and intellect.

[...]

Is it possible that Kathleen Parker saw something I didn’t when she attacked Palin? I saw it as strangling the conservative baby in the crib; Parker probably saw it as snuffing out a monster.

Such is the plight of a writer; I got some stuff right, and my position was justifiable at the time, but in hindsight I regret contributing to the premature deification of Sarah Palin.

I still say she was an incredibly talented political force, but she squandered her opportunity for greatness, and instead became a fad. And it’s worth considering that maybe her early critics saw some fundamental character flaw—some harbinger of things to come—that escaped me. [...]

Read the whole thing, for embedded links and more. This guy was a real Palin booster. When people like him say the things he's saying, well, perhaps it really IS over. At least I hope it is. Time to move on.

     

GOP must "Get Beyond Deportation"

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul Says GOP Must Appeal To Hispanics, Get ‘Beyond Deportation’

[...] This certainly was not the first time that Paul, since being elected to the Senate in 2010, has attempted to connect with Hispanics and other minorities.

However, Republicans’ interest in his policy vision and his vision for broadening the party base continues to grow as he ascends in the very, very early 2016 polls and travels the country. Recent stops have included those in Democrat-heavy Detroit and at the University of California, Berkeley.

Paul said Tuesday that Republicans need to focus on such issues as reforming the country’s work visa system and improving educational and employment opportunities for minorities.

However, the GOP must first make clear it is not “just the party of deportation,” he argued.

“The bottom line is that the Hispanic community … is not going to hear us until we get beyond that issue,” Paul told attendees at a symposium sponsored by the conservative Media Research Center and the American Principles Project. “They’re not going to care whether we go to the same church or have the same values or believe in the same kind of future of the country until we get beyond that. … We’ve got to get beyond deportation to get to the rest of the issues.” [...]

It's been pretty obvious for quite some time. But there is a segment of the GOP that has been too slow to wake up to the reality of changing demographics. Not to mention, popular opinion. Two realities that decide elections.
   

GOP supporting Gay Marriage?

Many in the party are moving in that direction:

Conservative effort underway in push for gay marriage

There are some prominent names in there. I'm not surprised. In so many ways, the battle to stop it is a lost cause, for many good reasons:

The inevitability of Gay Marriage

Whatever you think of it, it's here, and it's not going away. Deal with it. The GOP has much more important battles to deal with, and should not waste any more time and resources on a battle they have already lost.
     

GOP reaches out, goes high tech with an online portal to write it's "Commitment to America"

GOP about to go online with 'Commitment to America'

Washington (CNN) -- Remember the 1994 "Contract with America" that propelled Republicans back into the majority of the House of Representatives with its author Newt Gingrich as their speaker?

Well, 16 years later, it's back to the future -- the GOP is again drafting a blueprint designed to take back control of Congress. But this time, it is looking for authors everywhere, and if you want help write the 2010 GOP "Commitment to America," you can take out your iPhone or BlackBerry and point your browser to a new GOP website coming soon.

[...]

The online portal will allow anyone to log on and create a personal "profile," similar to Facebook. Users will be able to vote up or down on other people's submissions -- similar to the "like it" thumbs-up feature on Facebook. Proposals can be sorted by how popular they are, or how many "votes" they receive.

Visitors to the site will be anonymous and those setting up profiles can choose their own names, but the site's managers will verify e-mail addresses and postal codes. There will be a filter to weed out offensive language.

California Rep. Kevin McCarthy is leading the effort and he said if Republicans want to connect with voters, they have to prove that their policy proposals aren't cooked up by a group of insiders in Washington.

House GOP Leader John Boehner of Ohio tapped McCarthy, 45, to craft the 2010 equivalent of the 1994 "Contract with America." But McCarthy said he doesn't want his effort to be compared with Gingrich's '94 playbook and said he's using the "Commitment to America" as a temporary name that's likely to change after the public weighs in.

That's where the new technology comes into play. To connect to other popular social media sites, the GOP's website will also have Twitter and Facebook components. Like those sites, users can participate in the ongoing political debate from their laptops or from mobile devices like iPhones and BlackBerrys.

To encourage people to come back and be part of an online community, users will accumulate "points" every time they submit an idea or engage in a debate. McCarthy compared this to getting frequent flyer miles or points with an airline.

But users won't get prizes or free flights, just the bragging rights that they are helping the GOP write its agenda.

The site will include a few major topics like "jobs," and "the economy," but won't have any specific proposals laid out by GOP lawmakers. McCarthy said the goal is for "the public to take ownership."

The site will allow a continuing debate about the merits of the party's policy priorities. Once it goes live, Republican House members will have a widget posted on their Congressional web pages that will link to the main GOP "commitment" site on a real-time basis.

Although the software to do all these things is already available to the public -- NASA uses a similar web portal -- Republicans pointed out that no other political organization has yet used it this way.

McCarthy described the effort to come up with the party's policy priorities as a three-phase project. [...]

Hmmm. It sounds... interesting? I tend to think of anything to do with "social networking" as shallow crap, but then I don't use most of that stuff either. The article goes into some detail as to how it should work. It is pretty cutting edge. I suppose we shall have to wait and see what results from it, before we know it's merits. I think it's a good move for the GOP, and if they can make it work, it could be a great move. We shall see.
     

The Republican culture war continues: Carrie Prejean's sex tape V.S. Meghan McCain's boobs

Carrie Prejean Sextape Video: Meghan McCain "Unnerved" by "Hypocrisy"

NEW YORK (CBS) Meghan McCain, the daughter of 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, has taken to task fallen beauty queen Carrie Prejean and opponents of same-sex marriage, in the wake of news that the former Miss California USA has filmed a sex tape.

Meghan McCain, who calls herself both a Republican and a strong supporter of same-sex marriage, said that she is "unnerved" by the hypocrisy shown by Prejean, the 22-year-old "anti-gay marriage champion," and politicians who use gay-marriage as a moral "trump card in any situation" while sex scandals, normally abhorrent to conservative moral codes, don't seem to bother them a bit.

"Making a sex tape is never acceptable," McCain wrote in an editorial posted on the news website The Daily Beast . "I find it even more disturbing that as long as you oppose gay marriage, filming yourself having sex is taken more lightly."

"Does anyone else see the hypocrisy in this kind of thinking? And hypocrisy is something the Republican Party can’t afford to have right now as the GOP struggles to find its identity," McCain wrote in the piece posted Monday.

[...]

McCain, who was in a photo flap herself recently for "tweeting" a busty picture of herself to her followers on Twitter, wrote "If you’re a Republican, is it better to be in favor of gay marriage or to make a sex tape?"

"It seems that as long as you are against gay marriage, any scandal in your life can be overlooked or overcome. When you are in favor of it, however—and I have been very vocal about my support—that position defines you," said McCain.

"Many believe that it was Carrie Prejean’s anti-gay marriage views that cost her the Miss USA California title earlier this year. My question is: When it comes to Republicans, is your position on gay marriage what determines your fate within the party?" [...]

All the more reason not to make social issues the spearhead of the Republican Party platform. With George W. we had eight years of social conservatism at the forefront of the party, at the expense of fiscal conservatism, and look where it's gotten us.

I don't say abandon social issues. I say, put at the forefront of the party, as the spearhead, issues like fiscal conservatism, economic growth and job creation, issues that a majority of voters can agree on. The culture wars should occur primarily in the culture, not the GOP.

Not all Republicans agree on the definition of conservative. Not all Republicans are social conservatives. We need to emphasis in our party the things we do agree on: balanced budgets, a strong defense, free markets, and hopefully, individual sovereignty and the freedom to make our own choices.

Under such a platform, social issues would benefit indirectly, because INDIVIDUALS would have the freedom to make their own choices, and be free to fight the culture wars. If we instead fight each other and succumb to a politically correct socialist nanny state, you can kiss it ALL goodbye. 2010 is the last call. The GOP needs to get their Big Tent set up, and quickly.

Follow the link above for photos (Prejean, Meghan's boobs)


Also see:

The GOP: a Political Vehicle, or an Ideology?
 
   

The GOP: a Political Vehicle, or an Ideology?

It needs to be the former, not the latter. From Neal Boortz:

REPUBLICANS VERSUS CONSERVATIVES

Have you been following this House election in upstate New York? The Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava has some stiff competition, and it isn't from the Democrat candidate. It is from Conservative party candidate Doug Hoffman. Republicans Sarah Palin and Tim Pawlenty have thrown their support behind Hoffman in what is turning out to be a clash of principles ... what does it mean to be conservative versus Republican?

This Scozzafava woman has some positions that don't sit all that well with the Republican base. Truth is, she's probably running as a Republican only because that area has a history of voting Republican in congressional elections.

But wait until next year. The midterm elections of 2010 may be our last chance to save this Republic. No .. .I'm serious. With the anti-capitalists we have running the show right now the time is short. It may be next year ... or never. Watch the Republicans though. Despite what's at sake, Republicans are going to engage the idiotic abortion litmus test. Candidates are going to be judged primarily on whether or not they want to use the police power of government to force women to continue with pregnancies they want to terminate. This one question will be the beginning and the end of all deliberations as to whether or not to support particular Republican candidates. Makes sense, doesn't it? The future of this country is at stake and these abortocentrists are going to be doing the work of the Democrat party.

Bold emphasis mine. It's ironic how conservatives can actually help Democrats get elected, by sandbagging Republican candidates who don't pass the "litmus test". Conservatives and Democrats, working together to defeat the GOP.

Arguing over who is "good enough" is politics, part of the political process. But is it also sometimes a luxury? How much time do we have, right now, to fight within our own party? I suspect Boortz is right; time is running out. I've posted before about Democrats who want to permanently marginalize the GOP, as a stepping stone to actually eliminating them completely.

Instead of tearing down the GOP, conservatives would serve themselves and their causes better to get involved in their local GOP, and stop trying to dictate to other localities the candidates they should choose. Applying Red state standards to our Blue state candidates usually means a victory for Democrats (as it did here in Oregon). Thus our party grows smaller.

The GOP is a political vehicle, not an ideology. It's time to car pool, not fight over the steering wheel and try to kick each other out of the car. Flexibility and diversity of opinion in our party can a strength; it can be the difference between the GOP's survival, or it's perishing like the dinosaurs.


Related Links:

A long lament about Republican errors

Christian moralizing as a party platform

The Republican Winners, and Their Message

     

Permanantly Marginalize the GOP?

Is it working? If the Dems have their way, it will:

Obama strategy: Marginalize most powerful critics

This is the first of a two-part look at the marginalization of the GOP. Tomorrow: GOP officials fear that the party's image is being defined increasingly by boisterous conservative commentators.

President Obama is working systematically to marginalize the most powerful forces behind the Republican Party, setting loose top White House officials to undermine conservatives in the media, business and lobbying worlds.

With a series of private meetings and public taunts, the White House has targeted the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the biggest-spending pro-business lobbying group in the country; Rush Limbaugh, the country’s most-listened-to conservative commentator; and now, with a new volley of combative rhetoric in recent days, the insurance industry, Wall Street executives and Fox News.

Obama aides are using their powerful White House platform, combined with techniques honed in the 2008 campaign, to cast some of the most powerful adversaries as out of the mainstream and their criticism as unworthy of serious discussion.

[...]

The campaign underscores how deeply political the Obama White House is in its daily operations — with a strong focus on redrawing the electoral map and discrediting the personalities and ideas that have powered the conservative movement over the past 20 years.

This determination has manifested itself in small ways: This president has done three times as many fundraisers as President George W. Bush had at this point in his term. And in large ones: Beginning with their contretemps with Limbaugh last winter, Obama’s most important advisers miss few opportunities for public and highly partisan shots at his most influential critics.

It’s too early to tell if the campaign is working, but it’s clearly exacerbating partisan tensions in Washington.

“They won — why don’t they act like it?” said Dana Perino, former White House press secretary to Bush. “The more they fight, the more defensive they look. It’s only been 10 months, and they’re burning bridges in a lot of different places.”

White House officials see things differently. They see an opportunity to corner critics of the president’s policies, especially on health care and financial regulations, and, in the process, further marginalize the Republican Party.

Privately, officials have talked with relish for months of the potential to isolate the GOP as a narrow party of white, Southern conservatives with little appeal to independent-minded voters.

This won’t happen overnight, but a combination of demographics — especially the explosion of a Hispanic population that has been voting for Democrats — the near-extinction of Republicans in the Northeast and the steady rightward drift of the GOP’s grass-roots activists at least makes it a plausible goal.

By design or not, nearly every Republican whom Obama has nominated for a White House job — Ray LaHood for Transportation, Judd Gregg for Commerce and John McHugh for the Army — represents an area Democrats can take back if the sitting Republican is gone. None is from the South.

So is the strategy working? White House officials point to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll to argue the answer is emphatically yes. Only 20 percent of those surveyed identified themselves as Republicans, the lowest in 26 years of asking the question. [...]

Of course, the "Uber" conservatives who want to kick all the "RINOs" out of the party are playing right into the hands of this strategy. I've heard Leftists talk about this during the many years I lived in San Francisco.

They would say that the best way to destroy the Republican party is to first marginalize them. The best way to do that, is to encourage the most shrill and intolerant among the GOP to take the lead, and make them as visible and publicized as possible; make them the "face" of the GOP, to drive away moderate and independent voters.

It's a strategy they've been using for a long time, with the help of the MSM, most of whom are Democrats. And it looks to me like it's definitely working.
     

An American "Christian Democrat" party?

In Europe, there are a number of "conservative" parties that call themselves "Christian Democrats". They were founded by religious people wanting to offer an alternative to secular socialism: Christian Socialism.

In many ways, Mike Huckabee seems to be trying to create such a movement within the GOP:

"The GOP's Time for Choosing"

The Democrats in the USA have gone so far left, they have fallen off the table. But they have also grabbed onto the table cloth on their way down to the floor, and are dragging everyone else to the left as well, even the GOP.

When conservatives become socialists, they extinguish themselves. Look what's happened to Europe's conservatives. Read the linked article. The GOP must not go there. American conservatives must never make the same mistake. Huckabee is on the wrong side of the aisle.
     

Why Fred is The Man for the GOP

I believe Fred Thompson is the ideal choice for the GOP's presidential candidate. Patrick has had some many really good posts on his blog about Fred. Here are links to a few of the latest ones:

The Media and Fred Thompson

Fred Thompson, Reagan Conservative

Law professor Garnett supports Thompson

Rush Limbaugh Should Endorse Fred Thompson Now

The more I hear about Fred, the more I like him. I heard yet another talking head on Fox News today, complaining that Fred is not a viable candidate because he's not "exciting". Please. Have we become a nation of morons, wanting our political candidates to "entertain" us? If that is what our nation has become, then I doubt that it can survive. Nor should it.

Yet I don't think the American people are that dumb, no matter how much the MSM panders to the lowest common denominator. In fact, the MSM seems to be just getting in the way in the whole vetting process. I hope they become increasingly irrelevant. They already have for me. I'm sick of THEIR agenda.

I have joined the Blogs for Fred Thompson blogroll, and urge you to do the same if you are so inclined.

GO FRED GO!