Posted on 03/10/2014 12:20:45 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Stopped right there
This analysis is all wrong. The author seems tone deaf. He doesn’t understand the internal dynamics of the conservative movement or the party in the least.
This is an example of social science type analysis gone horribly wrong by applying some formal methodology that does not at all capture what is going on. Never the less, it is extremely unsophisticated, positing essentially a single axis to score voters, rather than breaking down voters by where they stand on different issues and then seeing what clusters together, which would be the normal way to do serious, sociology type analysis of something like this.
The claim that there is some “moderate/liberal” group of Republicans that supported both McCain in 2008 and Paul in 2012 is truly insane, as is the claim that Huntsman drew his nearly non existant support from the same faction or tendency as Paul. The rest of it is similarly weak, if not as obviously absurd. He ignores that there is a lot of deception in politics where the candidates mislead people as to where they stand and that people often choose candidates based on criteria like personality and social pressures to conform. He doesn’t grasp the ways that the various tendencies in conservatism relate to each other and why they support certain candidates. He puts too much stock in posturing by candidates.
I’m surprised a piece this awful got past the editors. I have hard time believing that someone read this and said “okay, publish it as is.” I would have demanded a total rewrite from scratch with a new thesis. It’s not salvageable.
Instead of using the terms everyone else does, like libertarians, neoconservatives, paleoconservatives, fiscal conservatives or the religious right, he invents new, incoherent categories that seem to bear little resemblance to any real people. No mention of the different tendencies of different age groups is another glaring flaw, but I guess that doesn’t matter if you think there has been no changes in the tendencies since 1996.
The idea that the party’s voters are basically the same as in 1996(hint: a quarter of the GOP voters in 1996 are dead now and another quarter were not voting then), the claim that the most conservative voters are secular, inside the beltway types interested mostly in economic issues...huh? Does he really think that the most hardcore conservatives in the party are the people who work as political apparatchiks in DC? Does this guy know any conservatives? No mention of the sense of betrayal that so many conservatives feel towards folks like Bush and McCain and how many people have changed various views over the years. No mention of the Perot campaign or the internal division of the early 90’s between the Buchanan faction and the NWO supporters that foreshadowed the tea party/establishment divide of today.
Just terrible.
It also has a pro-liberal, anti-conservative slant, suggesting that moderates of some kind are the main tendency and that real conservatives are tiny group, but have too much power and influence in DC.
I see three or four recognizable groups in the GOP: An old money faction (Bush, Rockefeller...), the religious right, libertarians, and populist groups like the TeaParty.
Democrats MUST NOT EVER REGAIN POWER !
At least they BETTER unify around that
And that (of course) includes RINO's
I do not have the background you have but I noticed a couple of things. First, he only goes back to 1996. Why not to 1976? He seems to go out of his way to discount Ronald Reagan.
The second thing I noticed - and the writer may have mentioned this later on and I just did not read it - is that some of these states where the winner wins are open primary. We can only wonder what the results would have been if all primary states were Republican only.
Speaking of Reagan, I again heard the spin this weekend that even Reagan could not win the Republican electorate in this type of atmosphere. To that I say BS! I think that the majority of these people who say that still do not understand what Reagan was about. He always spoke in positive terms of how great this country is and can still be into the future. And people believed him because he always came across that way. His actions were the same as his words and people responded to that. I think that is the reason so many are split concerning todays crop of Republicans. Most of them, their actions do not match their words.
Anyway - once again - great rebuttal and post on your part.
I have been writing for quite a while that there are three factions in the GOP: the conservatives, the libertarians, and the Aristotelians (aka GOPe). For a Republican to win the White House, s/he must coalesce two of these factions; otherwise enough GOP-leaning voters will stay home to give the WH to the Democrats.
Reagan won in 1980 because he coalesced the conservatives and libertarians, and while the GOPe despised him, his sop of having GHWB on the ticket was enough to keep them from actively sabotaging his campaigns. Bush 41 won in 1988 because enough conservatives and libertarians were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, and lost in 1992 because he had betrayed them—after-the-fact polls show that even without Perot, Clinton would still have won the election. Dole in 1996 ran with the strong support of only the GOPe, and lost. GWB lost the popular vote in 2000, won the election only because he convinced enough conservatives that he was one of them, and convinced enough GOPe-ers that he could keep the conservatives at bay. McCain could have coalesced the conservatives and the GOPe, if only he had let Palin be Palin, and Romney let the conservatives slip through his fingers by not continuing to take the fight to Obama after the first debate.
It is no accident, I think, that the three standard-bearers as presently constituted are Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Jeb Bush, representing the conservatives, libertarians, and Aristotelian GOPe, respectively. The only candidate who could coalesce the conservatives and libertarians a la Reagan is Sarah Palin, but a Cruz/Paul ticket might have the same effect—it wouldn’t work the other way around, because Paul’s isolationism won’t sit well with enough conservatives. In short, what the GOP needs is a figuratively-smoke-filled back room, where the conservative and libertarian faction leaders coalesce around a Cruz/Paul or a Palin/Cruz ticket, and then meet the GOPe’s choice (probably Jeb, perhaps Christie) on the primary battlefield.
Junk.
First off—open primaries are killers. Get rid of them, or get bad candidates, it’s really one or the other.
Secondly—ever hear of a guy named Ronnie? HE got us only forty-nine of the fifty-seven states, is all. Why begin your rant at 1996? Politics began long before that.
AND-Sara who?
The Taxed Enough Already Party is the first serious threat to the parasitic hold that Professional Politicians in “both” political parties have on those of us who are Taxed Enough Already.
The Professional Politicians in “both” political parties have been uniting to suppress us since November, 2010.
The Democrats have been, and continue to, suppress us through the brute force of the IRS, DOJ, NSA, and other Gestapo-Style Federal Agencies that we are forced to finance.
The RINOs are suppressing us by their Public statements and critical cave-in votes to Democrats.
Thus, the RINOs and Democrats have united against us.
Fair enough: BRING IT !
Both the RINOs and the Democrats have Professional Politicians who are dependent on their ability to control those of us who still pay Personal Federal Income Taxes, in order to continue to be on our payroll.
What better way to control us than to make us slaves to them who are the masters of us?
“Both” Political Parties in our current Communal Federal Government understand that the purpose of naming a Master/Slave Federal Government Program an “Entitlement” is to deceive the enslaved population into believing that becoming slaves to a Master is something to be desired, and thus reduce the probability of a slave rebellion.
The Master/Slave Entitlement of Obamacare is the most Communal of all of the Federal Government Master/Slave Entitlement Programs, because it can legally collect monies and/or property after death of the Entitled Slave, or from their surviving family members.
FORWARD, the RINOcare RINOS!
FORWARD, the Obamacare Democrats!!
FORWARD !
Wrong, wrong, wrong. This is essentially what happened in 2008. It wasn't a smoke filled room, but the evangelical movement (via Dr. James Dobson) attempted to narrow the field of more conservative candidates to coalesce around just one.
One by one, those that cared to court the evangelical vote - Newt, Fred Thompson, Alan Keyes, Duncan Hunter and Mike Huckabee - visited with Dobson to "kiss his ring" and seek his blessing. The more moderate candidates - Giuliani, McCain & Romney - and libertarian Ron Paul chose not to make that pilgrimage. Shortly after these visits, a story "leaked" that Dobson "didn't think Fred Thompson was a Christian" which Huckabee used to great advantage. Dobson never refuted the statement, but denied being the source of the leak.
Thompson, who was near the top of GOP polling, lost steam heading into southern state primaries. Huckabee, a social conservative with more moderate views on taxes & immigration, and McCain benefited from Thompson's decline and drop from the race. "Dobson's Choice" turned a wide-open GOP race into a 3-man battle - Romney, McCain & Huckabee - which left intelligent conservatives without a real choice and killed conservative enthusiasm for any GOP candidate until after eventual nominee McCain selected Sarah Palin as his VP nominee.
Let's not repeat that error. Let the campaigns battle it out on ideas. I really don't want politically inept people like Dobson making my choices for me.
Establishment” and the “insurgents game on time to phase out the good old boy club.
How about we actually give a conservative a chance?
Some good points, but it is off a bit. Michigan has an open primary where dems and independents vote. McCain won 2000 due to Detroiters wanting to embarass John Engler. In 08/12, Romney was the establishment pick ibstead of McCain. It’s social conservative although religion is a private matter here.
While I liked the overall commentary, I object strenuously to the above description. This faction may be a small tribe within the GOP, but it is the most intellectual, realist and pragmatic group. This faction is NOT DC elitist and not necessarily secular. Unlike the GOPe Jebs & Christies, they prefer to be anti-DC outsiders. Unlike the libertarian Paulistas, they do not fear religion or candidates who use faith as a component of their conservatives. Unlike the strict single-issue evangelicals like Huckabee, they favor fighting social issues on a Constitutional basis rather than via divisive legislation.
They were the inspiration behind 1994's Contract with America. They were and remain the leaders within the Tea Party movement. They are Palin & Cruz supporters who admire Dr. Ben Carson. They are the ONLY true 3 stool leg conservatives - economic, social and defense.
What does that mean, that you don’t support efforts to outlaw abortion on military bases, or gay marriage in the military, or are OK with homosexualizing the military after centuries of it having been against the law?
It means presidential candidates stating that they are opposed to special rights for any group. It means candidates declaring themselves to be supportive of DOMA or existing immigration law or [insert issue here].
It means presidential candidates declaring themselves to be pro-life rather than having narrow special interest groups demanding candidate rigid fealty to minutiae within a hypothetical piece of legislation that may or may not ever pass in Congress.
So we can't legislate against abortion on military bases, or alter federal marriage legislation from 1780 and 1794, or on recognizing gay marriage in immigration?
Legislate whatever you want. Lobby Congress. Lobby the citizenry. And if passed legislation reaches the President's desk, lobby the executive.
But don't be so obsessive on whatever particular tangent of your single issue that you disqualify a really strong presidential candidate on an issue in which you largely agree.
A conservative candidate who is personally and morally opposed to abortion, but advocates that abortion is not defined within the US Constitution and is a 10th Amendment issue best left to the states is just as pro-life as the buffoon who advocates against abortion solely on the pie-in-the-sky passage of a Right to Life Amendment. Which candidate is more likely to save more unborn lives?
Now throw in the issues of immigration and cap and trade taxation. The buffoon supports amnesty and higher taxes, while the conservative does not. Dobson was so blinded by his absolutist position he embraced the buffoon who told Dobson what he wanted to hear on abortion.
The truly cruel part of all this is that Dobson got nothing from his grand bargain in 2008. McCain owed Dobson nothing and gave him just that. McCain owed Huckabee in part, but gave him nothing. Conservatives were given Palin as a VP choice (well, at least for a month). And the GOPe still controlled the party.
The time to push single issues is after, not before an election.
Do you get it now?
No thanks, I hear you calling for more liberalism, but that is simply your political choice, it is what your prefer, and so you want to promote it, try to advance it, and the candidates that fit your agenda.
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