Where to Now for the GOP - Presidential Elections

[Blademaster]

Old cynic here speaking. It really doesn't matter. Just wait your turn. I had thought the Tricky Dicky killed the GOP forever. Then, Jimmy Carter came along. Ronald did wonders and handed over to Bush who excelled as a war leader ... only to lose to Clinton. That ladies man yielded to a farmer whom in his first term insulted everyone of his country's allies ... and then proceeded to ignore Canada during the US's darkest hour and the one country who stood up the brightest during the US's darkest hour.

Obama is having his turn ... and truth be told, he's the more likeable man than Romney ... Obama is your friend. He's not your leader.

I will say this. Obama is not your Chretien.

Over 60 million people say otherwise. Otherwise President Bush was never our leader by your standards in 2000. Obama is our leader whether you like it or not. Also, Romney has even far more less convictions than Obama by your standards.

[Double Edge]

I know this is going to sound odd, but the GOP's problem is one thing and Romney's problem in losing the election is another. I agree the GOP has been co-opted by some extreme elements whose stances on some key issues seem insensitive to ethnic minorities. But Romney's loss is more a story of superior campaign tactics winning the day. I'll grant that had public perception not been that the GOP's position on immigration and women's issues was hard-nosed, things might have turned out differently, but that perception was in part created by the opposition's clever tactics.

The lesson for the GOP is to exert more discipline on its Congressional candidates and tone down primary viciousness, whereas, all things being equal, the lesson for the next GOP presidential candidate is to be smarter and more nimble tactically. Another problem for the GOP in 2016 is Hillary. Will she run? She says no. If not, all the other dem hopefuls may be slugging it out in primaries next time around. Gonna be interesting.

So if this were a sports match you're basically saying the better team won.

This answers WHO won not so much WHY they won.

What was so superior about the Democrats campaign tactics.

[tbm3fan]

Do note that as a Legal immigrant I actually do not like illegal immigration. However, when we give police the power to (or appear to give the power) to stop and ask for identity and/ or immigration status, there is an apprehension that this power would be misused.

My wife is a legal immigrant also. Citizenship achieved last Sept. 2011. Naturally I did the formal work to get her to that point and consequently do not look favorably upon people who come in illegally. Have even told contractors they cannot work on my property with an illegal and so I do the work myself. Still I voted democratic because of all the other things I didn't like even more as noted above. My wife, who comes from a very poor background, heard Romney talk and immediately didn't like him based on experiences in her previous country. So she voted for Obama and was excited to do so.

There is a lot of talk here about what the Republican Party should do like change some of what they stand for or stand pat. All this is coming through the eyes of those on the inside trying to look out. That doesn't work as any marketing expert would tell you. They need to get out there and interview those who voted against them and find out first hand why that was. They need to talk to defectors and find out why they left the Party. They need first hand information straight from the horse's mouth. They need to take they info and put it to use as they heard it rather than spin it to suit their own preconceived notions. I am not seeing this being done at all. So like a company selling widgets, which are falling out of favor and does nothing to see what their customers need so they can expand their sales, the Republicans are doing the same.

[Zinja]

zinja,
then this breaks the false argument that minorities vote exclusively dem due to race/ethnicity issues.

Correct. Its 'what's in it for you'.

zinja,
so, why do low income whites tend to break for republicans?

Because Obama had already framed the battle as the rich 1% against the poor 99% which to the ear of the man on the streets was heard as the rich 'white' against the poor 'minorities'.

zinja, also, given that minorities broke so overwhelmingly for obama, that would argue quite a few middle-class/wealthy minorities voted for obama.

I don't know where you get that statistics. But if there are more white rich people,there are even fewer rich minorities. And to suggest that they voted for Obama is neither here nor there.

zinja,
it also does not explain why asian-americans, a high-income group, also broke for obama.

Asians have immigration issues too.

zinja,
well, if that's the real reason why obama won, and republicans will not do the same, then given demographics republicans had better get used to being in a permanent minority. i don't think that will happen.

They only need to deal with the immigration issue.

if you followed my earlier conversation, apparently not white people because they're politically mature...;)

Apparently you missed this bit "..The same would be true in black, white, or asian gatherings.", how convenient astralis. Lets not stoop to that level shall we :).

zinja,
ah yes. here's the funny thing; when republicans advocate economic policies that primarily benefit the wealthy, it's not class warfare, but just a pragmatic method for 'job creators' to benefit the nation. but when democrats advocate economic policies that primarily benefit the poor/middle-class...suddenly...:)

It is hardly class warfare when the same 1% is already paying 40% of individual income taxes while earning 13% of the income.

There is no law that forbids anyone from being rich. It is class warfare when you set up laws to negatively target a certain segment of society by virtue of their class.

Btw, if you have been following my previous comments you will notice that I am not against raising taxes for rich people per ser, it is the reasons for the raise that im against.

[Zinja]

zinja,



is this...pandering? ;)

No its not pandering. I have said it before i will say it again. The tea party position on immigration is neither moral nor does it make economic sense, virtues that are at the center of GOP philosophies.

[Parihaka]

zinja,
then this breaks the false argument that minorities vote exclusively dem due to race/ethnicity issues.

Why do you assume that? Certainly the Dems target groups based on their ethnicity/race, and the statistics of the election demonstrate they were successful.....

[tbm3fan]

On Fox News election night, BIll O'Reilly explained the meaning of the election: the "white establishment" was now outnumbered by minorities. "The demographic are changing. It's not a traditional America anymore." And these untraditional Americans "want stuff. They want things. And who is going to give them things? President Obama. He knows it, and he ran on it."

O'Reilly's analysis is echoed across the conservative blogosphere. The (non-white) takers now outnumber the (white) makers. They will use their majority to pillage the makers and redistribute to the takers. In the process, they will destroy the sources of the country's wealth and end the American experiment forever.

I just love this stuff. They just keeping giving and giving ways to scare off people. I did mention Russ and Ann, but forgot this guy also.

[bonehead]

BH:

We Americans make a virtue out of success and people who think like you make it into a vice. Of course, the wealthy try to influence politics, They have interests just like the NAACP, the Sierra Club, and hundreds of other groups have. How do you explain Buffett, Brazos, Springsteen...supporting Obama. Who attended the $40,000 a plate fundraising dinner for Obama? Surely not you.

You are railing against a myth. The rich as a whole are more concerned about the country than you would think. It was wealthy and influential leaders at the start of WWII who converted industry in a matter of months to produce war material at unheard of volumes. Stanford U and dozens of others were started by wealthy men and women. Are there any rich jerks out there? Sure. But no group is immune to jerks. And both parties welcome money from the wealthy.

Pretty offensive JAD

I am an American. Therefore, you can take the people that think like you are Americans and those that think otherwise are some how not American BS and stuff it. I do not believe in being rich is a vice, but I am not going to fawn all over them because they have more money than I do either. You can be successful without having 500 million in the bank as there are many ways to measure success. What I do rail against is when people at the top try to enact a system that gives them the lions share while the rest take it in the shorts. Now, what say you, do the republicans pander to the rich, yes or no? It's a simple question so there is no need to dance around and evade any further.

[astralis]

pari,

Why do you assume that? Certainly the Dems target groups based on their ethnicity/race, and the statistics of the election demonstrate they were successful.....

as do republicans, of course.

but just because both political parties -target- groups based on ethnicity and race does NOT mean that said ethnicities will vote -solely- on basis of race.

[Julie]

The team of FBI agents that unearthed the emails between David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell also discovered this gushing draft memo from Speaker of the House John Boehner to President Obama. They didn’t know what to do with it, so they sent it to me.


Dear Mr. President:


Seeing that YouTube video of you choking up while thanking your campaign volunteers in Chicago reminded me of how much we have in common, even though we are from different political parties. You sometimes cry; I sometimes cry. You like golf and cigarettes; I like golf and cigarettes. You just got re-elected; I just got re-elected, too. Congratulations, partner.

I was also happy to hear your remarks when you said that the American people want cooperation and consensus, not dysfunction. It sounds like what you are interested in is a replay of the relatively cordial deal we cut in December 2010 to extend the Bush tax cuts for two more years, not a do-over of the knock-down, drag-out fight we had over the debt-limit increase in May, June, and July of 2011. That’s my preference, too.

I heard you when you said over the weekend, “I will not ask students or seniors or middle-class families to pay down the entire deficit while people making over $250,000 aren’t asked to pay a dime more in taxes.”

So here’s where we’re at on that, just for the record. The Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — applies a new 3.8 percent Medicare tax on investment income for couples earning $250,000 a year or more. That goes into effect Jan. 1, 2013, and while I have the votes in the House to repeal it, Republicans don’t have the votes in the Senate to repeal it, much less to override your veto of a repeal. So the truth is, you’ve already won this point — people over $250,000 are going to be asked to pay more in taxes.

Not just “asked,” either — they are going to owe additional taxes on non-payroll income such as dividends, capital gains, annuities, royalties, and rents that previously had not been subject to the Medicare tax.

This is not “a dime,” it’s about $30 billion a year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. (And since you and your new best friend Bill Clinton so often refer to the Clinton administration as the era of tax-rate perfection, let’s remember that state income tax rates have soared since President Clinton left office. In Connecticut the top rate went to 6.7 percent in 2012 from 4.5 percent in 2000. In California, it’s headed to 13.3 percent in 2013 from 9.3 percent in 2000. In New York state, the top income tax rate went to 8.82 percent from the 6.85 percent it was at the end of the Clinton administration. New York City applies its own income tax, which has also gone up, on top of that. If you really want to bring back the Clinton-era tax rates, go talk to those Democratic governors about rate reductions.)

But we’ll go even further than the Obamacare tax. We’ll offer up something that Mitt Romney was talking about in the presidential campaign, which was limiting the value of tax deductions for upper-income taxpayers.

As Greg Mankiw, the chairman of the economics department at Harvard and a Romney campaign adviser, pointed out over the weekend, capping itemized deductions at $50,000 for each filer and keeping tax rates where they are today would raise $749 billion in tax revenue over ten years, with 79.9 percent of that coming from the top 1 percent of taxpayers.

And if the Obamacare Medicare tax, the increase in state income taxes, and a new limit on deductions aren’t enough for you, we’ll go even further in the direction of balancing the budget on the backs of the rich by doing something the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, talked about in his interview with The Wall Street Journal published this past weekend. McConnell “wants means-testing for programs like Medicare. Warren Buffett’s always complaining about not paying enough in taxes,” the Journal quoted Mr. McConnell as saying. “What really irritates me is I’m paying for his Medicare.”

So those are my “gives.” Let’s get to the “asks.” All the other rates — income, capital gains, dividends, payroll — stay the same for another four years as they were in 2012.

I would go down to two years on this if you want to make the 2014 midterm elections about this issue, but I think it’s better for reduction of uncertainty to go at least four years out.

The one exception is the corporate tax rate, where even you’ve said that for international competitiveness reasons we need to bring the rate down.

My people are going to be annoyed by these increases in the Medicare tax and by the ceiling on deductions. But since the corporate taxes are really paid in the end by the shareholders, a cut in the corporate tax rate would allow me to say to Republican donors that on a net basis they’re coming out unscathed, while you can go to the Democratic base and say, “We finally forced those rich bastards to pay more taxes — I mean ‘asked people like me to pay a little more.’” It’s a win-win.

Piggyback an immigration reform bill and a Hurricane Sandy supplemental on top of this piece of must-pass legislation, the same way you did student loans on Obamacare.

Every Republican will vote for the entire package and explain to their constituents that it was a vote for extending the Bush tax cuts, for entitlement reform, for corporate tax cuts, and for avoiding the defense cuts that would have been part of the sequester. Sound like a deal?

Yours,
John Boehner

I’m not endorsing this, just passing it along as a sign of the possibility of an Obama-Boehner post-election romance that has the potential to be more fruitful, policy-wise, than whatever happened between Gen. Petraeus and Paula Broadwell.

Obama-Boehner Tax Dance Already Over

[Parihaka]

pari,



as do republicans, of course.

but just because both political parties -target- groups based on ethnicity and race does NOT mean that said ethnicities will vote -solely- on basis of race.

I've seen less of that on the Repub side, unless you count economic and security issues as race/ethnicity based. But certainly there is a very small percentage of Americans across the political spectrum who will vote solely on basis of race.
When you examine white voting, this election is within historical norms

Source
However, Blacks, Hispanics and if I understand correctly Asians reflect a highly partisan bias toward the Dems, effectively block voting. As each of these groups represent differing needs and cultures, with different issues, whence comes the bias?

[Gun Grape]

Yes Romney got a healthy chunk of the white vote--59%. But 40% still voted for Obama. This tells me whites are not voting for white interests alone, but for their view of what's best for the country. Had just 20% of blacks and 30% of Hispanics done the same and voted for Romney, he wins.

As long as we keep telling ourselves that the "other side" doesn't care about the country, we will continue to lose their vote.

Do you think that no one that voted for Obama voted for "Whats best for the Country"?

Is anyone surprised that the Libertarian Party got more votes that they ever have?

Your candidate (Romney) gets less votes that the Republican that you tried to make sure didn't get elected (McCain) and the 3d party candidates score higher that they ever had. Maybe instead of blaming "The Blacks, The Hispanics, the Jews or everyone but White, married, middle aged protestant church goers we could look inward to see where we are losing support.

( More thoughts later, as i read through the thread)

[USSWisconsin]

I've seen less of that on the Repub side, unless you count economic and security issues as race/ethnicity based. But certainly there is a very small percentage of Americans across the political spectrum who will vote solely on basis of race.
When you examine white voting, this election is within historical norms
[ATTACH]30706[/ATTACH]
Source
However, Blacks, Hispanics and if I understand correctly Asians reflect a highly partisan bias toward the Dems, effectively block voting. As each of these groups represent differing needs and cultures, with different issues, whence comes the bias?

The way I read the graph, white Americans were disgusted with Watergate in 1976 and blamed Republicans, otherwise there is a modest trend toward support for Democrats. which started after Reagan.The 2012 "drop" in this support is statistically insigniificant.

I wonder about these polls, perhaps a certain kind of voter takes the time to answer them?

[JAD_333]

Pretty offensive JAD

No offense intended.

[Parihaka]

The 2012 "drop" in this support is statistically insigniificant.

I agree. I'm contrasting it with the +90% black, +70% Hispanic & Asian bias toward the Dems.