Thread: Republican Party: Has it irrevocably fractured?

The best thing that could happen for the Dems is if the repubs split.
The dems would never look back.
But let's face it. The republican party is irretrievably broken.

Originally Posted by Cujo

But let's face it. The republican party is irretrievably broken.

America is irretrievably broken. To many brainwashed idiots. I have nothing in common with the retards down south. This union needs to break up.

Unless the minorities in the south finally get a voice. That can be the only thing that saves America.

Originally Posted by bsnub

nothing you say makes any sense

Exhibit 'A':

Originally Posted by Klondyke

Sorry for that. In case you are really very keen on meaning of my remarks (I know, for you unpleasant), ask kindly somebody in the streets to give you hand..

Originally Posted by tomcat

...those are the ones who will scream loudest about voting fraud, missing ballots, etc...and be totally unpersuaded by unfavorable court decisions...a Cruz or a Hawley will persevere in roping in the tRump vote and then...somehow...try to convince the center that Jewish space lasers are a real threat...

Indeed, but I doubt they have enough votes. The 2018 mid-term results and Nov. 6 2020 election is proof of it. But hey, if the Republicans what to continue down the rabbit hole, let them. The Republican act of self-immolation is a dream come true for any Dem. Here are a few words from Nikii Haley, a trump loyalist, said about Trump this week:

"He went down a path he shouldn't have, and we shouldn't have followed him, and we shouldn't have listened to him. And we can't let that ever happen again."
"When I tell you I'm angry, it's an understatement,"
"He has no future in the GOP."

Originally Posted by bsnub

America is irretrievably broken. To many brainwashed idiots. I have nothing in common with the retards down south. This union needs to break up.

Unless the minorities in the south finally get a voice. That can be the only thing that saves America.

I agree. The US is really a country of at least 4 or 5 people. But let's not forget that there is, to some degree, an urban and urban divide in every country. Urban centers tend to vote progressively and rural, regressively. And if the US Senate was based on the population of each state, the Republicans would have been shut out of power for the last century. Reforming the Senate alone, basing it on population, would transform the US into a more progressive country.

Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai

The Demographics in America are changing and and the Republicans are retreating to the idiot base.

Whether Republicans or Democrats? How the "change" occurs? Do you see the crass difference in the Demographics?

Anyway, there is surely some "change": as per some "unreliable" sources there was a huge "change" in vote spectrum within few years. In some areas where Hillary in 2016 had just few votes, and even Obama before her, suddenly in 2020 the results (for democrats) had soared exponentially... (over night)

Originally Posted by Klondyke

Anyway, there is surely some "change": as per some "unreliable" sources there was a huge "change" in vote spectrum within few years. In some areas where Hillary in 2016 had just few votes, and even Obama before her, suddenly in 2020 the results (for democrats) had soared exponentially... (over night)

If you have problem understanding the reason for this change then ask a specific question and I'll try to answer them with logic.

Originally Posted by lom

understanding the reason for this change

A mathematical miracle...

^But there is an explanation to it:

Counties won and votes received don’t correlate in presidential race
December 19, 2020 AP NEWS

CLAIM: “They want us to believe that Joe Biden won 200 fewer counties than Obama but somehow got 9 million more votes? I don’t think so…”

AP’S ASSESSMENT: Missing context. It’s true that President-elect Joe Biden received more votes than former President Barack Obama did in 2008, while winning fewer counties. Posts questioning Biden’s win based on these metrics lack the key context that the number of counties won does not correlate with the number of votes received nationwide.

THE FACTS: Data from The Associated Press shows that Biden won the presidential election with more than 81 million votes in 2020, but won just 527 of the United States’ 3113 counties.

Comparatively, in 2008, Obama won about 69 million votes, and 875 counties.

Social media users this week claimed it couldn’t possibly be true that Biden received more votes but won fewer counties than Obama, suggesting it must be a clue toward fraud or false reporting in this year’s election.

“They want us to believe that Joe Biden won 200 fewer counties than Obama but somehow got 9 million more votes? I don’t think so…” read a screenshot of a Twitter post shared more than 2,400 times on Facebook.

While that post’s numbers are slightly off, it’s true that Biden legitimately won more votes and fewer counties than Obama. That fact is not indicative of any significant fraud or irregularity, which election researchers have said was not detected in the 2020 election.

Jan Leighley, a political scientist at American University, told the AP the “supposed puzzle identified in these posts is an inappropriate/illogical comparison.”

“The claim implies that these two electoral outcomes (counties won and number of votes cast) should be highly correlated, or are even causal,” Leighley said in an email. “They are not—one is a measure of a geographical region vote, the other the number of votes cast.”

Counties across the United States vary dramatically in size, from populations of a few hundred people to several million. Trump won many smaller counties this year, while Biden pulled majorities in some of the nation’s largest counties, such as Los Angeles County in California and Maricopa County in Arizona.

Biden did win fewer small counties than Obama won in 2008, but he won by higher margins than Obama did in urban areas such as Los Angeles County and Washington’s King County, data shows.

The total number of votes Biden received doesn’t correlate with the number of counties he won.

His higher total vote tally compared to Obama is instead more likely related to higher voter turnout, fueled both by a growing population and a larger portion of the electorate voting in 2020 than in 2008.

About 27 million more people voted for president in 2020 than in 2008, according to the United States Elections Project. Both President Donald Trump and Biden received record numbers of votes this year.

___

This is part of The Associated Press’ ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online, including work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform.

Here’s more information on Facebook’s fact-checking program: How is Facebook addressing false information through independent fact-checkers? | Facebook Help Centre

Counties won and votes received don’t correlate in presidential race

Originally Posted by elche

How far did you get in school again?

That's a funny question - and quite stupid... Did you conclude that from the post I did not write but somebody from the reliable source of APNews.

That's if I would conclude from your post, how old is your grandmother...

Originally Posted by elche

The number of counties has nothing to do with winning the presidency. How far did you get in school again?

I think he's still in it and it's very special needs.

Originally Posted by Klondyke

Did you conclude that from the post I did not write but somebody from the reliable source of APNews.

What you mean to say is that you quoted someone else. I know that. What you implied, as far as I can tell, is that the number of counties has some relevance to the election of the presidency, which it does not. Had you fully read and understood the source from which you are quoting you would not have made the mistake. If you are offended by my previous comment, you have my apologies.

Originally Posted by elche

you have my apologies.

accepted...

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

I think he's still in it and it's very special needs.

Is someone trying to make some sense out of his posts again?

That never ends well.

Most recently, after Mitch McConnell, having voted to acquit, blamed Trump for having responsibility for the failed insurrection copped a mouthful from Trump Then Lindsey Graham came to his defense.
What next? Trump attacks Graham for defending McConnell against Trumps attack?
It's nasty politics.

^ Speaking about that:

The old guard and Trumpism are at war. Can the GOP survive? | Berkeley News


An interesting read




This horrible creation was elected after posting this as a Facebook ad . . . THIS is where the Republican Party is now

CPAC 2021, theme #AmericaUncanceled, has just cancelled a planned speaker for 'reprehensible views'.

Because apparently they felt that they weren't already ridiculous and cartoony enough.

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

'reprehensible views'

Not disgusting enough to satisfy the Cruz/Trump/Paul/Graham part of the party?

A majority of Republican voters said if former President Trump were to start a new political party they would likely join, a new Hill-HarrisX poll finds.

Sixty-four percent of registered Republican voters in the Jan. 28-29 survey said they'd join a new political party led by the former president, including 32 percent who said they would very likely join.

By contrast, 36 percent of Republican respondents said they are either very or somewhat unlikely to join.

The survey found 28 percent of independents and 15 percent of Democrats said they'd likely join a third party led by Trump.

Thirty-seven percent of voters overall said if Trump started a new political party they'd likely join.

Last month, Trump reportedly floated the idea of starting a new political party, however, no concrete plan concerning a Trump-led third party has emerged.

"These numbers show that despite the Capitol riots Trump remains a political force to be reckoned with. He benefits from a diverse base of support making up over a third of voters, voters who are attracted to him on a number of issues that are yet to be properly addressed by, and coopted by, Democratic and Republican elites," Dritan Nesho, CEO and chief pollster at HarrisX, told Hill.TV.

"If Trump were to split from the GOP and create his own party, polling suggests he might well create the second largest political party in the country, knocking the GOP down to third place,” Nesho added.

The most recent Hill-HarrisX poll was conducted online among 945 registered voters, 340 of which self-identified as Republicans. It has a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points.

Poll: 64 percent of GOP voters say they would join a Trump-led new party | TheHill

Originally Posted by bsnub

Sixty-four percent of registered Republican voters in the Jan. 28-29 survey said they'd join a new political party led by the former president, including 32 percent who said they would very likely join.

So actually only thirty-two percent of registered Republican voters in the Jan. 28-29 survey said they'd join a new political party led by the former president, not sixty-four percent!

Exclusive: Defeated and impeached, Trump still commands the loyalty of the GOP's vote
Feb 21, 2021

An exclusive Suffolk University/USA TODAY Poll finds Trump's support largely unshaken after his second impeachment trial in the Senate, this time on a charge of inciting an insurrection in the deadly assault on the Capitol Jan. 6.

By double digits, 46%-27%, those surveyed say they would abandon the GOP and join the Trump party if the former president decided to create one. The rest are undecided.

"We feel like Republicans don't fight enough for us, and we all see Donald Trump fighting for us as hard as he can, every single day," Brandon Keidl, 27, a Republican and small-business owner from Milwaukee, says in an interview after being polled. "But then you have establishment Republicans who just agree with establishment Democrats and everything, and they don't ever push back."

Half of those polled say the GOP should become "more loyal to Trump," even at the cost of losing support among establishment Republicans. One in five, 19%, say the party should become less loyal to Trump and more aligned with establishment Republicans.

The survey of 1,000 Trump voters, identified from 2020 polls, was taken by landline and cellphone last Monday through Friday. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Exclusive: The Trump Party? He still holds the loyalty of GOP voters

Politico has a great essay written my former Speaker of the House, John Boehner, about the breakdown of the Republican Party. It is from his new book On The House.


Panic Rooms, Birth Certificates and the Birth of GOP Paranoia


How America’s center-right party started to lose its mind, as told by the man who tried to keep it sane.


In the 2010 midterm election, voters from all over the place gave President Obama what he himself called “a shellacking.” And oh boy, was it ever. You could be a total moron and get elected just by having an R next to your name—and that year, by the way, we did pick up a fair number in that category.


Retaking control of the House of Representatives put me in line to be the next Speaker of the House over the largest freshman Republican class in history: 87 newly elected members of the GOP. Since I was presiding over a large group of people who’d never sat in Congress, I felt I owed them a little tutorial on governing. I had to explain how to actually get things done. A lot of that went straight through the ears of most of them, especially the ones who didn’t have brains that got in the way. Incrementalism? Compromise? That wasn’t their thing. A lot of them wanted to blow up Washington. That’s why they thought they were elected.




Some of them, well, you could tell they weren’t paying attention because they were just thinking of how to fundraise off of outrage or how they could get on Hannity that night. Ronald Reagan used to say something to the effect that if I get 80 or 90 percent of what I want, that’s a win. These guys wanted 100 percent every time. In fact, I don’t think that would satisfy them, because they didn’t really want legislative victories. They wanted wedge issues and conspiracies and crusades.

To them, my talk of trying to get anything done made me a sellout, a dupe of the Democrats, and a traitor. Some of them had me in their sights from day one. They saw me as much of an “enemy” as the guy in the White House. Me, a guy who had come to the top of the leadership by exposing corruption and pushing conservative ideas. Now I was a “liberal collaborator.” So that took some getting used to. What I also had not anticipated was the extent to which this new crowd hated—and I mean hated—Barack Obama.

By 2011, the right-wing propaganda nuts had managed to turn Obama into a toxic brand for conservatives. When I was first elected to Congress, we didn’t have any propaganda organization for conservatives, except maybe a magazine or two like National Review. The only people who used the internet were some geeks in Palo Alto. There was no Drudge Report. No Breitbart. No kooks on YouTube spreading dangerous nonsense like they did every day about Obama.


“He’s a secret Muslim!”


“He hates America!”


“He’s a communist!”


And of course the truly nutty business about his birth certificate. People really had been brainwashed into believing Barack Obama was some Manchurian candidate planning to betray America.


Mark Levin was the first to go on the radio and spout off this crazy nonsense. It got him ratings, so eventually he dragged Hannity and Rush to Looneyville along with him. My longtime friend Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News, was not immune to this. He got swept into the conspiracies and the paranoia and became an almost unrecognizable figure.

I’d known Ailes for a long time, since his work with George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s. He’d gone to college in Ohio, and since we had that connection, he sought me out at some event and introduced himself. Years later, in August of 1996, when I was in San Diego for the Republican National Convention, I ended up having dinner with Ailes and a veteran broadcasting executive named Rupert Murdoch. At that dinner they told me all about this new TV network they were starting. I had no idea I was listening to the outline of something that would make my life a living hell down the line. Sure enough, that October, Fox News hit the airwaves.


I kept in touch with Roger and starting in the early 2000s, I’d stop in and see him whenever I was in New York for fundraisers. We’d shoot the breeze and talk politics. We got to know each other pretty well.


Murdoch, on the other hand, was harder to know. Sometimes he’d invite me to watch the Super Bowl in the Fox box, or he’d stop by the office. Wherever he was, you could tell he was the man in charge. He was a businessman, pure and simple. He cared about ratings and the bottom line. He also wanted to make sure he was ahead of any political or policy developments coming down the line. He was always asking who was up, who was down, what bills could pass and what couldn’t. If he entertained any of the kooky conspiracy theories that started to take over his network, he kept it a secret from me. But he clearly didn’t have a problem with them if they helped ratings.


At some point after the 2008 election, something changed with my friend Roger Ailes. I once met him in New York during the Obama years to plead with him to put a leash on some of the crazies he was putting on the air. It was making my job trying to accomplish anything conservative that much harder. I didn’t expect this meeting to change anything, but I still thought it was bullshit, and I wanted Roger to know it.


When I put it to him like that, he didn’t have much to say. But he did go on and on about the terrorist attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, which he thought was part of a grand conspiracy that led back to Hillary Clinton. Then he outlined elaborate plots by which George Soros and the Clintons and Obama (and whoever else came to mind) were trying to destroy him.


“They’re monitoring me,” he assured me about the Obama White House. He told me he had a “safe room” built so he couldn’t be spied on. His mansion was being protected by combat-ready security personnel, he said. There was a lot of conspiratorial talk. It was like he’d been reading whacked-out spy novels all weekend.

And it was clear that he believed all of this crazy stuff. I walked out of that meeting in a daze. I just didn’t believe the entire federal government was so terrified of Roger Ailes that they’d break about a dozen laws to bring him down. I thought I could get him to control the crazies, and instead I found myself talking to the president of the club. One of us was crazy. Maybe it was me.


I have no idea what the relationship between Ailes and Murdoch was like, or if Ailes ever would go off on these paranoid tangents during meetings with his boss. But Murdoch must have thought Ailes was good for business, because he kept him in his job for years.


Places like Fox News were creating the wrong incentives. Sean Hannity was one of the worst. I’d known him for years, and we used to have a good relationship. But then he decided he felt like busting my ass every night on his show. So one day, in January of 2015, I finally called him and asked: “What the hell?” I wanted to know why he kept bashing House Republicans when we were actually trying to stand up to Obama.


“Well, you guys don’t have a plan,” he whined.


“Look,” I told him, “our plan is pretty simple: we’re just going to stand up for what we believe in as Republicans.”

I guess that wasn’t good enough for him. The conversation didn’t progress very far. At some point I called him a nut. Anyway, it’s safe to say our relationship never got any better.


Besides the homegrown “talent” at Fox, with their choice of guests they were making people who used to be fringe characters into powerful media stars. One of the first prototypes out of their laboratory was a woman named Michele Bachmann.


Bachmann, who had represented Minnesota's 6th Congressional District since 2007 and made a name for herself as a lunatic ever since, came to meet with me in the busy period in late 2010 after the election. She wanted a seat on the Ways and Means Committee, the most powerful committee in the House. There were many members in line ahead of her for a post like this. People who had waited patiently for their turn and who also, by the way, weren’t wild-eyed crazies.


There was no way she was going to get on Ways and Means, the most prestigious committee in Congress, and jump ahead of everyone else in line. Not while I was Speaker. In earlier days, a member of Congress in her position wouldn’t even have dared ask for something like this. Sam Rayburn would have laughed her out of the city.


So I told her no—diplomatically, of course. But as she kept on talking, it dawned on me. This wasn’t a request of the Speaker of the House. This was a demand.


Her response to me was calm and matter-of-fact. “Well, then I’ll just have to go talk to Sean Hannity and everybody at Fox,” she said, “and Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and everybody else on the radio, and tell them that this is how John Boehner is treating the people who made it possible for the Republicans to take back the House.”


I wasn’t the one with the power, she was saying. I just thought I was. She had the power now.

She was right, of course.

She was a conservative media darling and, by then, the conservative media was already eyeing me skeptically. She had me where it hurt. Even if I wanted to help her, and I sure as hell didn’t, it wasn’t a decision I had the power to make on my own. That power belongs to a little-known but very important group called the Steering Committee.


I knew there was no way the Steering Committee would approve putting Bachmann on Ways and Means. The votes just weren’t there. If I even pushed the issue, they wouldn’t have let me leave the meeting without fastening me into a straitjacket. But then, Bachmann wouldn’t go on TV and the radio to explain the nuances of House Steering Committee procedure. She’d just rip my head off every night, over and over again. That was a headache I frankly didn’t want or need.


I suggested the House Intelligence committee to Bachmann as an alternative, and mercifully, she liked it. It would be a good perch for anyone wanting to build up their foreign policy chops for a run for president, which she was already considering— Lord help us all. None too pleased was the man preparing to take up the gavel as chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers from Michigan, an army veteran who had also served in the FBI. So I took my lumps from Rogers, and Bachmann took her seat on the committee.


The funny thing is, Michele Bachmann turned out to be a very focused, hardworking member—even though she spent a few months later in 2011 on a short-lived campaign for president. She showed up to the committee, did her homework, and ended up winning over her fellow members with her dedication. Mike Rogers was impressed—and I have to admit, so was I. The whole situation ended up working out well for everyone. As one of those old Boehnerisms goes, “Get the right people on the bus, and help them find the right seat.”


In January 2011, as the new Republican House majority was settling in and I was getting adjusted to the Speakership, I was asked about the birth certificate business by Brian Williams of NBC News. My answer was simple: “The state of Hawaii has said that President Obama was born there. That’s good enough for me.” It was a simple statement of fact. But you would have thought I’d called Ronald Reagan a communist. I got all kinds of shit for it—emails, letters, phone calls. It went on for a couple weeks. I knew we would hear from some of the crazies, but I was surprised at just how many there really were.


All of this crap swirling around was going to make it tough for me to cut any deals with Obama as the new House Speaker. Of course, it has to be said that Obama didn’t help himself much either. He could come off as lecturing and haughty. He still wasn’t making Republican outreach a priority. But on the other hand—how do you find common cause with people who think you are a secret Kenyan Muslim traitor to America?

Under the new rules of Crazytown, I may have been Speaker, but I didn’t hold all the power. By 2013 the chaos caucus in the House had built up their own power base thanks to fawning right-wing media and outrage-driven fundraising cash. And now they had a new head lunatic leading the way, who wasn’t even a House member. There is nothing more dangerous than a reckless asshole who thinks he is smarter than everyone else. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Senator Ted Cruz. He enlisted the crazy caucus of the GOP in what was a truly dumbass idea. Not that anybody asked me.

Panic Rooms, Birth Certificates and the Birth of GOP Paranoia - POLITICO

Originally Posted by bsnub

You clueless bot stfu. It is almost like you respond via some Kremlin language translator. Clearly the code needs work because nothing you say makes any sense.