Where to Now for the GOP - Presidential Elections

[blackboard79]

Romney was doing well.

He was doing so well in the Opinion Polls.

Wonder why he lost.

Maybe the Hurricane on the East Coast showed the God was on the side of Obama!

Check out the exit polls and you will get your answer to why he lost, had nothing to do with a hurricane.

[Bigfella]

Romney was doing well.

He was doing so well in the Opinion Polls.

Wonder why he lost.

Maybe the Hurricane on the East Coast showed the God was on the side of Obama!

Antimony pretty much stole my post. The polls that showed Romney doing well at various points in the campign turned out to be the least accurate on polling day. Unfortunately for Romney GOP internal polling was among that group. They based their models & sampling on a serios of assumptions that turned out not to be correct. Apparently Romney & co were genuinely surprised by the result (or that is what they were saying, anyway). The hurricane may have moved a few votes Obama's way, but he didn't need them. Of the states that were impacted much only Virginia was ever a swing state, and Obama would have won without it. In fact, he would have won without Virginia, Florida AND Ohio.

As Antimony also pointed out, Nate Silver of the NYT was so close to 100% correct on the result that it is scary. Shek originally put me on to him during the last election & so far he has done brilliantly. If you want a fairly readable analysis of future US election polling as it unfolds he is your guy. Worth a read.

The 'why' for Romney is the big question. I think the short answer is that he & his party are relying on too narrow a base of people to consistently win national elections. As I pointesd out elsewhere - the GOP has only won the national vote once in the past 6 presidential polls. Worse, the dems have a virtual 'lock' on about 230 EC votes in 16 states. That means they only need to win a couple of other big states or a few more smaller ones to get over the line. GOP voters are more likely to be older, white & male. Women, people under 35, homosexuals & most significant ethnic groups vote Democrat, in some cases by very large margins. This loose coalition not only represents more Americans, it is growing. When I get some time I'll drag in some more detailed stuff.

[Monash]

GOP voters are more likely to be older, white & male. Women, people under 35, homosexuals & most significant ethnic groups vote Democrat, in some cases by very large margins. This loose coalition not only represents more Americans, it is growing. When I get some time I'll drag in some more detailed stuff.

So the key question becomes, how does the GOP adapt to encompass a changing US demographic without alienating current core constituencies who often hold view's on certain topics e.g gay rights and immigration etc that are diametrically opposed to those of the voters they need to attract? "Tea Party" Republicans will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the kind of policy shifts required. An interesting dilemma.

[Mihais]

So the key question becomes, how does the GOP adapt to encompass a changing US demographic without alienating current core constituencies who often hold view's on certain topics e.g gay rights and immigration etc that are diametrically opposed to those of the voters they need to attract? "Tea Party" Republicans will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the kind of policy shifts required. An interesting dilemma.

Ohh,the answer is simple.Make the GOP more like the Dems.I'd say even more like the Dems than they're already.Than watch how its core constituency fades away,either trough old age or disgust.After that we'll see how they manage to run a first world economy with third world people.Educashunz is da sh!t,but Dem voters tend to :a.quit school or b:''study social sciences'' (read as having no idea on the important stuff,like engineering,medicine,research,entrepreneurship or warfighting).

[Parihaka]

Yep, it's simple really. GoP becomes more Dems than the Dems. America becomes the EU and fades gently into obscurity, hopefully without taking the rest of us with it the way the fading European empires tried to. Who knows, when the dust finally settles in Europe something new and vigorous will rise again and so might it be in the Americas.
Meanwhile those of us with an eye to the future will go fishing and be polite to ascendant powers.

[Roosveltrepub]

Ohh,the answer is simple.Make the GOP more like the Dems.I'd say even more like the Dems than they're already.Than watch how its core constituency fades away,either trough old age or disgust.After that we'll see how they manage to run a first world economy with third world people.Educashunz is da sh!t,but Dem voters tend to :a.quit school or b:''study social sciences'' (read as having no idea on the important stuff,like engineering,medicine,research,entrepreneurship or warfighting).

My two nephews are going for Doctorates in hard science one studying the antiflammatory effects of anthrax and implications for possible medicine and the other the evil alternative energy and my Brother inlaw sells temperature controls many to defense contractors and I made precison toolsforthedefenxse industry......my sister did become useless speech therapist....hardly the false stereotype you present now lets look at the actual demographiscs....The higher the per capita income in a state other than Alaska the higher the percentage ofObama votes....mmmmmm poor minorities????? Exit polls 2012: How the vote has shifted - The Washington Post As you see foreducational level it is with in a few points at all levels....Oh and my dad the democrat was an MIT educated Engineer and my Mom a RN...

It seems odd juxtoposed against the republican hostility toward eduction,strong constiuency who support bible science and economies ofthe most conservative states being dependent on investment of liberal tax dollars


I am glad you called itwar it isnt defense.We are threatenedin no real way by any two powers let alone one beyond nuclear destruction
Doyou believe NY-NJ-CT-CA-MA have third world economies or amazing generators of far more federal tax revenue than theyrecieve and huge creators of wealth? CA a third world economy???NT???CT??? LOLOLOLOL It's like saying germany is a third worldeconomy dragging down the euro...The difference in Income between CT and MI is akin to Germany and Spain

[Parihaka]

Interesting poll, first time I've seen a decent breakdown.

Very heavy race bias in voting, least bias but still present along historical norms amongst whites.

Poll itself discriminates by settling category of 'white evangelical' as separate than 'religious' back of the bus anyone :))

Balanced between parties by those with a reasonable education apart from those still studying, poor education heavy bias democrat

Income strong dem support amongst poor otherwise balanced, same results reflect in issues 'health care' and 'cares about people like me.'

Truly a watershed has been passed.

[Parihaka]

Fascrinatin....

A grand bargain is a grand betrayal: The forgotten, lonely world of facts

That the United States is centre-right and Obama must needs compromise on slashing the welfare state is a myth.
A grand bargain is a grand betrayal: The forgotten, lonely world of facts - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

"Facts are stupid things," Ronald Reagan once said, hilariously misquoting Founding Father John Adams, your typical elitist Enlightenment intellectual, who actually said, "Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." But in the contest between the real world of John Adams and the fantasy world bequeathed to us by Ronald Reagan, stupid and stubborn are on both on the side of the latter... and the latter is winning, hands down, as can be seen in President Obama's pursuit of a so-called "grand bargain" that would cut far more in spending than it would raise in taxes. In the Reaganite fantasy world of Washington DC, Obama represents the left. In the real world? Well, take a look for yourself.

There is a political party in the United States whose presidential candidate got over 60 million votes, and whose members - according to the General Social Survey - overwhelmingly think we're spending too little on Social Security, rather than spending too much, by a lopsided margin of 52-12. The party, of course, is the Republican Party.

There is as an ideological label claimed by over 100 million Americans, who collectively think we're spending too little on "improving and protecting the nation's health", rather than spending too much, by a 2-1 margin: 48-24. The labelled ideology, of course, is conservative.

Combine the two categories and the two spending questions, and you find that a 51.4 percent of conservative Republicans think we're spending too little on either Social Security, health care or both. Only 28.7 percent think we're spending too much, and just 7.3 percent think we're spending too much on both.


Inside Story Americas -
Is the radical right on the rise in the US?
That's 7.3 percent of conservative Republicans in support of the position taken by leaders of both political parties - Republicans, who want to slash the welfare state drastically while making permanent tax cuts for the rich, and Democrats, led by President Obama, who wants a more "balanced" approach, with $2.50 cut from spending for every $1 added in taxes. Other Democrats, particularly in Congress, are trying to push back against Obama, without letting their slips show, and Obama is doing his best to hide what he's up to, but there is simply no way to get $4 trillion in cuts - almost $1 trillion already agreed to and another $3 trillion in his current proposal - without deep spending cuts that even a majority of conservative Republicans oppose.

Yet, as the Guardian reports, Obama's grassroots campaign organisation is being kept alive after the campaign, and pushing this far right agenda is their first emailed call to action. "It's now clear that ordinary citizens will also be subjected to a full bore messaging campaign to persuade them that they should regard this counterproductive sacrifice as good for them," notes leading econoblogger Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism. She also notes, correctly, that "most Americans have a simple response to the notion of 'reforming' these popular programmes: Cut military budgets and raise taxes on upper income groups".

Something we can all agree on

The figures cited above come from the General Social Survey of 2010. The GSS is the gold standard of public opinion research in the United States. Social scientists reference it more often than any other data source except for the US Census. The GSS has been asking these same questions since the 1970s, with similar ones added to its list over time. The responses to those questions reveal a much broader truth - the American people like the various different functions of the welfare state, regardless of their political ideology or affiliation. They like spending on highways, roads and bridges, mass transportation, education, child care, urban problems, alternative energy, you name it.

For example, in 2010, if we combine six questions - adding education, mass transit, highways and bridges, and urban problems to Social Security and health care - then the percentage of conservative Republicans saying we spend too much on all of them drops to a minuscule 0.4 percent, while two-thirds (66.5 percent) say we are spending too little on at least one of them. They may philosophically subscribe to the idea of shrinking government, but pragmatically they know what works and they want more of it, not less. Americans are famously described as being pragmatic, rather than ideological, and in this respect, at least, that political cliche is absolutely right.

Indeed, 2010 was only remarkable as a year in which anti-welfare state hysteria had been whipped up to a fever pitch. If one looked instead at the combined surveys for 2006, 2008 and 2010, then two-thirds of conservative Republicans (66.6 percent) thought we were spending too little on one or both of health care and Social Security, compared to just under one in seven (14 percent) who thought we were spending too much on at least one. A mere 5.1 percent thought we were spending too much on both.

In the world of stubborn and stupid, America is a centre-right nation, and it really does make no sense that Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney. He's trying to compromise with the Republicans because he has to: Their insistence on slashing the welfare state represents the overwhelming consensus of American political opinion, regardless of the last election's results. But in the forgotten, lonely world of facts, none of that is true.

The need for a restatement

While GSS data since 1973 repeatedly confirms this pattern of welfare state support even from self-identified conservatives, the pattern was actually first described and discussed in the 1967 book The Political Beliefs of Americans by Lloyd Free and Hadley Cantril, two towering pioneers of public opinion research. Their book was based on surveys conducted in 1964, almost a full decade before the GSS data begins. The disjunction between what they called "operational" liberalism and ideological conservatism was one of the dominant themes of their book (they identified ideological conservatism by agreement with a set of five questions about government interference versus individual initiative). In the final section of the final chapter of the book, titled, "The Need for a Restatement of American Ideology", they wrote:

"The paradox of a large majority of Americans qualifying as operational liberals while at the same time a majority hold to a conservative ideology has been repeatedly emphasised in this study. We have described this state of affairs as mildly schizoid, with people believing in one set of principles abstractly while acting according to another set of principles in their political behaviour. But the principles according to which the majority of Americans actually behave politically have not yet been adequately formulated in modern terms...

"There is little doubt that the time has come for a restatement of American ideology to bring it in line with what the great majority of people want and approve. Such a statement, with the right symbols incorporated, would focus people's wants, hopes, and beliefs, and provide a guide and platform to enable the American people to implement their political desires in a more intelligent, direct, and consistent manner."

This, of course, never took place. Two major political figures who might have helped foster such a restatement - Dr Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert F Kennedy - were assassinated the next year. Philosopher John Rawls' Theory of Justice actually embodied that restatement in a brilliantly simple abstract metaphor, the veil of ignorance, but his ideas never found the sort of symbolic amplification that Free and Cantril rightly recognised as crucial.

Instead, American politics took a much darker turn, one led by the indulgence of racist animosity, whose influence only became more deeply embedded over time, even as its initial expression was formally abandoned, and condemned. This turn can even be seen implicitly there in Free and Cantril's data. It's not just the case that Americans as a whole are schizoid - operationally liberal (65 percent according to their data) while ideologically conservative (50 percent). It's particularly true of a crucial subset: 23 percent of the population is both operationally liberal and ideologically conservative. And here's the kicker: The proportion of people fitting this description was double that in the five Southern states that Barry Goldwater carried in 1964 - the only states in the nation he carried aside from his home state of Arizona.

What this clearly implied, we can now see with hindsight, is that this population could be tipped either way, and was particularly vulnerable by tipping on the issue of race. Even though Goldwater himself abhorred making racist appeals, activists and even party organisations working for him had no such qualms, and the states he carried reflected that. Indeed, we can even see this today in GSS data, by looking at differences within the broad spectrum of support for government spending.


Counting the Cost - The economics of political change
If, for example, we consider two different spending questions which bear on dealing with the problem of global warming - support for spending on the environment and for developing alternative energy (a new question just added in 2010) - we find a difference between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, but the difference is entirely within the realm of overwhelming support. Democrats say we're spending too little versus too much on both by 57.8 percent to 0.3 percent - a factor of almost 200-to-1 - while Republicans agree by "only" 29.8 percent to 6.6 percent - a factor of more than 4-to-1. For liberals, its more than 80-to-1 (65.2 percent to 0.8 percent), while for conservatives its better than 5-to-1 (29.6 percent to 5.7 percent). So the differences are stark - but they're all in the realm of overwhelming support for more spending. It's like comparing a rabid football fan to another rabid football fan with season tickets for his extended family.

When we look at spending on poor people and blacks, however, the picture is starkly different. Liberals once again say we're spending too little rather than too much on both by an overwhelming margin, 25-to-1 (39.8 percent to 1.6 percent), but Republicans are evenly split (10.5 percent to 10.4 percent). For liberals the ratio is roughly 20-to-1 (35.3 percent to 1.8 percent), while for conservatives it's 3-to-2 (15.6 percent to 10.0 percent). But when you combine the categories, that's when the depth of the difference really stands out. For liberal Democrats, the ratio is 200-to-1 (40.8 percent to 0.2 percent), while for conservative Republicans it's more than 2-to-1 in the other direction (6.4 percent to 13.8 percent). In short, the one way to get conservative Republicans to be operationally conservative is to talk about poor people and blacks - in 19th century terms "the undeserving poor". And yes, since you asked, they really do still think that way. If you want to know where Mitt Romney's talk of the 47 percent came from, you need look no farther than this.

Just the facts

But America rejected Romney's vision, didn't they? As the last few million votes are still being totalled, his percentage of the vote has dwindled down... to 47 percent, ironically. And yet, Obama's reasoning, even his "progressive" argument to his base is articulated within a conservative framework, one that highlights the deficit as the focus of hysterical concern, even when it tries to sound sensible and sober. Thus, the email call to his volunteers mentioned above said that Obama was "working with leaders of both parties in Washington to reduce the deficit in a balanced way so we can lay the foundation for long-term middle-class job growth and prevent your taxes from going up".

The idea of a bipartisan plan to grow the economy by balanced deficit reduction is understandably quite popular. It ranks right up there with the pizza-beer-and-ice-cream-heart-healthy-weight-loss-diet plan: The perfect solution for a fact-free world. But, as a recent letter from 350 economists points out, "[T]oo many in Washington are fixated on cutting public spending to balance the budget, not on how to put people back to work and get our economy going", but "there is no theory of economics that explains how we can deflate our way to recovery". To the contrary, as they pointed out, the opposite is true: "As Great Britain, Ireland, Spain and Greece have shown, inflicting austerity on a weak economy leads to deeper recession, rising unemployment and increasing misery."

But it's not just this popular proposal is a fantasy. It's also not really that popular if you ask folks about specifics. Which is just what Democracy Corps and Campaign for America's Future did with an election eve poll. In particular, they asked about all the major components of the Simpson-Bowles Plan, the informal background for Obama's "balanced deficit reduction plan". Every single component they asked about was deemed unacceptable by landslide majorities.

"Capping Medicare payments, forcing seniors to pay more" was rejected 79-18.
"Requiring deep cuts in domestic programmes without protecting programmes for infants, poor children, schools and college aid" was rejected 75-21
"Cutting discretionary spending, like education, child nutrition, worker training, and disease control" was rejected 72-25.
"Not raising taxes on the rich" was rejected 68-28.
"Continuing to tax investors' income at lower rates than workers' pay" was rejected 63-26.
"Reducing Social Security benefits over time by having them rise more slowly than the cost of living" was rejected 62-31.
Turning to the subject of preserving Medicare:

"Capping Medicare payments, forcing seniors to pay more" was rejected 79-18.
But - taking a very different approach, "Save Medicare costs by negotiating lower drug prices from drug companies" was supported 89-8.
Robert L Borosage warned in a cover story for the Nation magazine, which cites some of these same strong views opposing what the fantasy rhetoric hides. "The grand bargain not only offers the wrong answer; it poses the wrong question," Borosage writes. The right question, of course, is what to do about the stranglehold of wealth and income inequality that has developed over the past 30+ years, and how to secure the future of the 99 percent that have been left behind. "The call for shared sacrifice makes no sense," Borosage argues, "given that in recent decades, the rewards have not been shared."

A truly progressive vision, stubbornly rooted in the world of facts would focus like a laser beam on the right question. This is what FDR's New Deal was all about at bottom - rebuilding the nation's prosperity from the bottom up. The economic soundness of his approach can be seen in the decades of broadly shared prosperity that followed in his wake. The political soundness can be seen in the polling data cited above - particularly the measures of conservative support. Those are the stubborn facts that President Obama ought to be attending to. And leave the stubborn fantasies behind. It's time he set aside his love affair with Ronald Reagan. John Adams is waiting in the wings.

[Bigfella]

Fascrinatin....

A grand bargain is a grand betrayal: The forgotten, lonely world of facts

That the United States is centre-right and Obama must needs compromise on slashing the welfare state is a myth.
A grand bargain is a grand betrayal: The forgotten, lonely world of facts - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

In what respect Pari? I'm not seeing anything new here. The support for 'welfare' among self-described conservatives has been know for a while, they just don't use that term when they are the ones getting it. The 'government is the problem' message has elements that are popular, but it also has elements that are not. Most folk are one big tax bill away from being Paulite libertarians, one act of corporate malfesence away from lining up the 'capitalist running dogs' up against the proverbial wall & one economic downturn away from demanding the return of the 'Great Society' (for their families, anyway). As former PM Paul Keating once so eloquently put it "in the race of life always back self interest. At least you know its trying".

[FJV]

The welfare state goes back to Bismarck and beyond.

Welfare state - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Otto von Bismarck, the first Chancellor of Germany, created the modern welfare state by building on a tradition of welfare programs in Prussia and Saxony that began as early as in the 1840s, and by winning the support of business. After the founding of German Social Democratic Party in 1875 by which Marxian socialists and the reformist followers of Ferdinand Lassalle were fused, Bismark became even more worried about this essentially moderate socialism. He also feared that recent Paris Commune would happen within his country. He viewed socialism as anarchical, republican and potentially revolutionary for a monarchist empire. Using two attempts to assassinate the emperor(in neither case by Social Democrats) as excuse, Bismarck implemented Antisocialist Laws from 1878 to 1890 to prohibit socialist meetings and socialist newspapers[7]. In compromise, Bismarck introduced old age pensions, accident insurance and medical care that formed the basis of the modern European welfare state. His paternalistic programs won the support of German industry because its goals were to win the support of the working class for the German Empire and reduce the outflow of immigrants to the United States, where wages were higher but welfare did not exist.[8][9] Bismarck further won the support of both industry and skilled workers by his high tariff policies, which protected profits and wages from American competition, although they alienated the liberal intellectuals who wanted free trade.

Wanting to preserve existing institutions is being conservative.
Conservatism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Conservatism (Latin: conservare, "to retain") is a political and social philosophy that promotes retaining traditional social institutions. A person who follows the philosophies of conservatism is referred to as a traditionalist or conservative.

Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism and seek a return to "the way things were".[1][2] The first established use of the term in a political context was by François-René de Chateaubriand in 1819, following the French Revolution.[3] The term, historically associated with right-wing politics, has since been used to describe a wide range of views.

A lot of the rightwing "conservatism" is fake, for instance Libertarianism, which does not want to preserve things, or go back to the way things were.

[Parihaka]

In what respect Pari? I'm not seeing anything new here.

The total lack of anything remotely viable that would allow everyone to have everything they want. This is why conservatives will value the ideology of the entitlements listed but will still vote pragmatically.

[JAD_333]

Wanting to preserve existing institutions is being conservative.
Conservatism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Real conservatives, if you can find one, are not any more protective of existing institutions than liberals. In fact, they may be less so. Their real interest is in managing the government's finances more frugally than the other guys, that is, the folks known as liberals. There is no arguing that fact, but you can argue endlessly on the merits of each side's justifications.

The label is less meaningful when used to define people's positions on social issues. Opponents of same-sex marriage, for example, are usually labelled conservative, whereas, in fact, if they do happen to be conservative, their opposition to same-sex marriage has nothing to do with that. I know liberals who are rabidly against same-sex marriage.

[zraver]

Conservatives will win when they put America first. The church and its doctrines are not America, neither are multi-national corporations, special interests, global policing and the 1%. America is the land and the people and the liberty we are meant to enjoy. When the repubs focus on job creation, immigration reform and a balanced budget and refuse to be drawn into mud wrestling over social issues and have a candidate who can articulate the idea of liberty, then they will win.

[JAD_333]

Obama and Romney plan to have a sit-down this week. Obama says he thinks Romney has some good ideas. He may be simply patronizing Romney's supporters to ease the disappointment and earn some bipartisan brownie points. I was trying to imagine what role Romney could play in an Obama administration beyond informal adviser. Would he take a cabinet position a la Lincoln's team of rivals? I can't see it.

[JAD_333]

Conservatives will win when they put America first. The church and its doctrines are not America, neither are multi-national corporations, special interests, global policing and the 1%. America is the land and the people and the liberty we are meant to enjoy. When the repubs focus on job creation, immigration reform and a balanced budget and refuse to be drawn into mud wrestling over social issues and have a candidate who can articulate the idea of liberty, then they will win.

If the economy is going great guns 4 years from now and the dems are perceived to be primarily responsible, they'll win it again. Of course, that could all change if the dems nominate a dog and the GOP nominates a towering figure acceptable to moderates, conservatives and independents alike.

I don't think it's wise for either party to hold itself up as more loyal to America than the other party. There was a little of that this last time around, and it didn't get the GOP far. It's always good to articulate the idea of liberty as established by the founding fathers, but it's not enough to carry an election unless the other guy goes too far left, which is unlikely. Who knows what the hot issue will be 4 years from now.