Thread: GOP: now & in the future

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Originally Posted by MrG

Originally Posted by sabang

Sure wouldn't be her psych though.

I would. Talk about a candidate for long term therapy she's a gold mine.

Ever since this photo became public, I've never been able to take her seriously.

At least here she has something in her head.

I like the bloke on the lower left- "I'm next".

It's the exact same thing since the Carter Administration, tuned to a fine art during Reagan. It used to be "The poor GOP is being held hostage by that evil alliance with the Moral Majority!"

Then it was "The poor GOP is being held hostage by its evil alliance with the Christian Coalition!"

Then, "The poor GOP is being held hostage by the Contract with America people!"

Then, "The poor GOP is being held hostage by the Neocons!"

Now, "The poor GOP is being held hostage by the Tea Party!"

Its all the same strategy! It's worked for 30 years. They get "taken hostage" by a radical segment they create in order to get votes. The GOP actively sought out the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition, which they later hammered and tempered into Contract with America, Neocons, and Tea Baggers. They use that as an excuse to funnel money from the working class to the corporate class, during which time they hammer away at local and congressional races.

It's no coincidence that every newly named trendy political group just happens to support exactly what the GOP wants to do, and each of its members are already registered GOP.

Then just before the presidential elections, they try to repaint their image into something more moderate and reasonable. "Compassionate Conservative! Romney is a nice Businessman! Look! It's John McCain -- you remember that middle-of-the-road guy, don't you? Bob Dole doesn't have a mean bone in his body!"

At the same time, you have other operatives (Sarah Palin, Paul Ryan, Cruz etc) continuing to stoke the anger necessary to keep that segment of the working class voting against their own interests. They rebrand that country-bumpkin segment every few years, but it's all the same people from the same churches and redneck bars.

The ill-conceived Tea Party shut down of the US Federal Government is going to cost the GOP big time in 2014!

Some longtime Republican donors are unnerved by the GOP’s shutdown strategy

Veteran Republican fundraisers are increasingly alarmed by the defiant stance of hard-line conservatives amid the federal government shutdown, prompting fears that many key donors may be restrained in their giving going into the 2014 midterms.
Some longtime Republican donors are unnerved by the GOP’s shutdown strategy - The Washington Post

Former CBS News vet and O’Reilly Factor regular Bernard Goldberg is hopping mad at conservatives who’ve written him to tell him they will no longer watch him or read him. Goldberg even stooped to suggesting his critics “don’t want to even hear the other guy. You want the other guy dead (in some cases, I suspect, literally dead!)”

At what point does this kind of rage at the audience start hurting Fox’s ratings? Comparing American conservatives to Islamist Iranian dictators? He unleashed on them in a column called “An Open Letter to the Ayatollahs.”

No, not the ayatollahs in Tehran. This is a letter to you, the conservative American ayatollahs who demand purity, just like the ones over there. I’m not talking about all of you, of course. But this open letter is for many of you; maybe even most of you – the ones who say you agree with what I write on this Web site and what I say on the O’Reilly Factor almost all of the time, but as soon as I fall out of lock step with you … you vow to never listen or read another word I say or write. You are the ayatollahs this letter is aimed at...

But what I’ve learned is that while many of you claim to respect people in the public eye who stand up for their views, no matter how unpopular, what you really mean is you respect people in the public eye who stand up for your views. What I’ve learned reading your comments over several years now is that many of you only want your views validated. Nothing else is good enough. You don’t simply disagree with the other guy. You don’t want to even hear the other guy. You want the other guy dead (in some cases, I suspect, literally dead!).

So this feel-good nonsense that you spout – that you admire people who stand on principle – is just something you say to make yourself feel good — about yourself. But you don’t mean it. Like the other ayatollahs, reasoned dissent scares you. You talk tough. But you’re weak.

A bit later, he recalled how conservatives enjoyed his exposes of his tenure at CBS:

When I wrote about liberal bias while I was still a CBS News correspondent, conservatives applauded me. But some of my liberal CBS News colleagues called me a “traitor” because I didn’t toe the party line. They were afraid of dissent. Dissent would force them to consider another point of view, and that’s the last thing they wanted to do. Now I’m called a traitor again – this time by you conservative ayatollahs, for expressing a few opinions you don’t want to hear. Once again, you are what you condemn in liberals.

There is little difference between the authoritarians on the hard left and those of you ayatollahs on the hard right. You’re both closed-minded. You both demand ideological purity.

The ayatollahs in Tehran survive because they will not tolerate dissent. This is all the proof you need regarding their insecurity. You, my American ayatollah friends, are no different. You don’t simply dislike opinions that don’t mesh with yours. You don’t ever want to be exposed to them. At some level you see opinions you don’t share as viruses that may do you in. That’s why, like the ayatollahs over there, you too want to shut down dissent. You too are insecure.

I know, as I said at the outset, that some of you reading this – whether you agree with my views on various subjects or not – are open-minded enough to hear me out. That’s all I ask. It would be nice if more of you took on the ayatollahs with strong comments on my Web site, but that’s up to you. As for the right wing authoritarians who have threatened to never read another word I write, or listen to another word I say, do what you have to do.

The good people in Tehran will not miss their ayatollahs when they finally go. And we won’t miss you, either.

Goldberg did draw this fire in part for a column attacking Eric Bolling and Ted Cruz for being on a "suicide mission" in pushing to defund Obamacare at the risk of a government shutdown (complete with a graphic of Cruz holding a gun to his head saying "Defund Obamacare, or The Idiot 'Gets It.')

He also penned a column telling religious conservatives is was “un-American” to refuse to provide services for a “gay marriage” ceremony. Fining a photographer $6,000 for failing to compromise his religious beliefs was “wise,” wrote Bernie, for there is no religious freedom in a Main Street business:

What they don’t seem to understand is that America is not a theocracy, no matter how much some of them wish it were. What they also don’t understand is that refusing to do business with people, simply because your church doesn’t approve of their actions, is not only closed-minded – it’s also un-American.

Link

If amerka is to have a functioning government again, the dems need to win more than Virginia- they will need an absolute majority in Congress after the mid terms. Otherwise, more of this endless vicious childish bullshit.

Originally Posted by S Landreth

Virginia's next Governor will be a Democrat

Democrat Terry McAuliffe has opened up a significant lead over Republican Ken Cuccinelli in the Virginia governor’s race amid broad public disapproval of the federal government shutdown, according to a POLITICO poll of the 2013 gubernatorial election.

McAuliffe, the former national Democratic Party chairman, is now 9 points ahead of Cuccinelli, the current state attorney general, in a race that also includes Libertarian nominee Robert Sarvis. In the survey, McAuliffe drew support from 44 percent of Virginians versus 35 percent for Cuccinelli and 12 percent for Sarvis.

The major curve ball in the Virginia race, however, is the government shutdown, which is now entering its second week and could be expected to have an outsize impact in a state with such a large population of both civilian and military government employees. McAuliffe has led Cuccinelli in the mid-single digits in both public and private polling; his margin is wider in the POLITICO poll, and the shutdown is the most obvious explanation for that.

keep it up teabaggers, that slash and burn policy will work well for America in the end

Originally Posted by sabang

If amerka is to have a functioning government again, the dems need to win more than Virginia- they will need an absolute majority in Congress after the mid terms. Otherwise, more of this endless vicious childish bullshit.

The backlash against the Republican Party for their shutdown of the Federal Government could very well cost them the House majority in 2014:

POLL: GOP could lose House in 2014

Obstructionism may play well for House Republicans in safely red districts, but a poll done this week suggests that the government shutdown may actually hurt Representatives in competitive districts.
In a poll conducted in 24 House districts over Wednesday, Thursday and Friday by Public Policy Polling, registered voters in 17 of those districts favored a generic Democratic challenger over the incumbent Republican.
The Democrats would need to win 17 seats in the 2014 midterm elections to take control of the House.
Republicans have felt the brunt of the public’s anger for the standoff over the government shutdown. Polls released last week by CBS and Fox showed that Americans blame Republicans for the shutdown by a wide margin.


POLL: GOP could lose House in 2014

Heh...Even that far-left webziene Slate, bursts the bubble re the vilified Koch Brothers

Sorry Liberals, The Koch Brothers Aren’t Behind The Government Shutdown.

Of course not. If they were, it would be handled competently...

Looks like this shutdown could cost the Republicans the house. Suprise Suprise!!

My Princeton colleague Sam Wang, one of the best poll aggregators out there — and one of the people who, if you were reading him, made you smarter than any of Romney’s advisors — takes on the PPP poll of selected Congressional districts. His conclusion:

If the election were held today, Democrats would pick up around 30 seats, giving them control of the chamber. I do not expect this to happen. Many things will happen in the coming 12 months, and the current crisis might be a distant memory. But at this point I do expect Democrats to pick up seats next year, an exception to the midterm rule.



Wang does this with “swingometrics.” We know that Republicans have a structural advantage in the House: Partly through gerrymandering, partly through sheer accident, Democratic voters (especially African-Americans) are heavily concentrated in a relatively small number of districts, so that even when Democrats win more votes overall — as they did last year — a GOP majority is likely. Wang estimates that a swing toward Democrats of 6 percent would be needed for them to retake the House. It don’t mean a thing if they don’t get that swing (sorry, had to put that in.)

So he views the PPP poll in that light — and finds that it does indeed suggest a swing big enough to do the job:

As he says, November 2014 is a long way away. But it’s at least possible that the Republican brand will get worse, not better, over the course of the year, in which case an upset will indeed be in the cards.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/201...eighs-in/?_r=0

On the other hand, the Republicans sure seem like a dying party. Especially if this is what Boner's plan for the shutdown was:

1. Start a fight
2. Give up just before you win
3. Get nothing out of it
4. Look like a total fool
5. Let down your constituents
6. Reinforce the dictatorship

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Too bad that much-touted NBC/WSJ Poll Showing Shutdown Hurting Republicans is a total and complete Fraud:

One-in-five respondents work for the federal government, twenty-percent of those polled. And yet in real life, eight-percent work for the federal government. And he points to it and you can go to the complete poll with the sample and the questions. From the very last page they of the breakdown of where these eight hundred respondents were.

Read how Obama and his minions are spinning his Shutdown Here

There are plenty more polls showing how screwed republicans are. I guess they are all wrong like they were during the election when they had Obama winning.

Grim reading-


We could be witnessing the death throes of the Republican Party


The battle over the shutdown has highlighted the cracks and fissures within the party. The party’s leadership has begun to lose control of its members in Congress. The party’s base has become increasingly shrill and is almost as dissatisfied with the Republican leadership in Washington as it is with President Obama. New conservative groups have echoed, and taken advantage of, this sentiment by targeting Republicans identified with the leadership for defeat. And a growing group of Republican politicians, who owe their election to these groups, has carried the battle into the halls of Congress. That is spelling doom for the Republican coalition that has kept the party afloat for the last two decades.

... What Washington business lobbyists say on-the-record about the House Republicans and about Tea Party activists pales before what they are willing to say if their names aren't used. One former Republican staffer says of the anti-establishment groups, “They want to go in and fuck shit up. These non-corporate non-establishmentarian guys—that is exactly what they are doing. And the problem with that is obvious. What next? What happens after you fuck shit up?” Other lobbyists I talked to cited John Calhoun, Dixiecrats and Richard Hofstadter’s essay on “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” to explain the rise of the populist right. It’s the kind of reference you’d expect to read in a New Republic article, but not necessarily in a conversation with a business lobbyist.
full article- GOP Death Watch: The Final Days of the Republican Party | New Republic


The gop is in one helluva crisis, and it's because a committed radical tail is wagging the dog.
It's actions recently do not bespeak a rational opposition at all, given the damage it has done itself- and America. And 'demands', what demands? They are all over the place- first it was about defunding obamacare, now it seems to have nothing to do with that. Who the hell is in charge of the gop?

Originally Posted by bsnub

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Too bad that much-touted NBC/WSJ Poll Showing Shutdown Hurting Republicans is a total and complete Fraud:

One-in-five respondents work for the federal government, twenty-percent of those polled. And yet in real life, eight-percent work for the federal government. And he points to it and you can go to the complete poll with the sample and the questions. From the very last page they of the breakdown of where these eight hundred respondents were.

Read how Obama and his minions are spinning his Shutdown Here

There are plenty more polls showing how screwed republicans are. I guess they are all wrong like they were during the election when they had Obama winning.

complete and total BS above.

no, let me be more direct....it's a lie.

that 20% figure is not respondents who work for the federal govt. that is a flat out LIE. the 20% said that someone in their household worked for the govt (local, state or federal)...and this includes teachers and military personnel.

http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2...ountry-is?lite

and try to remember two things....

1. rupert murdoch's wall street journal conducted this poll.

2. rafa cruz and his acolytes are doing the same thing mitt romney and the GOP did before the 2012 election..."oh, the polls are biased towards democrats, and can't be genuine".
newsflash morons....more democrats are polled because more americans identify as democrats.

Originally Posted by barbaro

Originally Posted by sabang

Grim reading-

We could be witnessing the death throes of the Republican Party

Not so.

I remember this talk in 1992. Lots of pundits writing articles calling and predicting the demise of the Repubs.

F*cked up? Absolutely. In many ways.

But dying, no. The Governor and Congress, and Senate attest to the fact that the GOP is a full force in the game.

And of course - the US is only a 2 party system. There is no alternative.

The GOP is odd IMO, but weak? No. Dying? Not even close.

I think people are focusing too much on the potus elections.

^ Dunno buddy, the GOP lost the Senate and the White House and could very well lose the House next year... What's left? A lot of Republican governors, but they are, for the most part, much more moderate than the Tea Party lunatics in D.C.

So certainly it could be argued that the GOP is weak and getting weaker.

Personally I think this does a disservice to American "democracy" because IMO our system works best when you have two parties with nearly equal power that balance each other.

After Mitt Romney's huge loss in the last Presidential election the Republicans did a lot of research and soul searching to figure out how to turn their party around, but unfortunately for moderate Republicans their party has been hijacked by the Tea Party radicals who don't care and continue to march the GOP right off a cliff.

The Republican Party is in free-fall, thanks in large part to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).




Just over a week after Cruz successfully pushed House Republicans to shut down the government in a effort to defund the Affordable Care Act, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found just 24 percent of the country has a favorable view of the GOP and even less think well of the Tea Party. A larger portion of Americans blame Republicans for the shutdown than the portion that blamed Gingrich’s Republicans for shutting down the government in 1995-96. If a House election were held today, Democrats would win the popular vote by a 47 to 39 margin — all but ensuring that Nancy Pelosi would regain the speaker’s gavel.


The Eight Craziest Things Ted Cruz Said At Values Voter Summit



If you listened to Ted Cruz’s speech Friday morning at the Values Voters Summit, you would think that he was a conquering general rallying his troops after a great victory — at least, that is, when he wasn’t being heckled for his opposition to comprehensive immigration reform. When the fight to shut down the government over Obamacare began, Cruz told the mostly adoring crowd, “it was abundantly clear this was not a strategy that Washington was going to embrace.” But Cruz and his ally Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) “went over their heads to the American people,” and now those same Washington eminences “fear” those ordinary Americans. It’s as if President Obama was routed the minute Cruz’s shutdown began, and none of what the American people are actually saying about Cruz’s strategy matters.
Buoyed by this vision of himself as conservatism’s Great Hero, Cruz was in a boisterous and jokey mood. Here are eight of the craziest quips from his speech:

1. On Obama’s plot to kidnap him: “So this afternoon President Obama has invited the Senate Republicans to the White House. So after leaving here, I’m going to be going to the White House. I will make a request. if I’m never seen again, please send a search and rescue team. I very much hope by tomorrow morning I don’t wake up amidst the Syrian rebels.”
2. On the press: “The media wants America to give up and allow this country to keep sliding off the edge of the cliff.”
3. On the Constitution: “This is an administration that seems bound and determine to violate every single one of our bill of rights. I don’t know that they have yet violated the Third Amendment, but I expect them to start quartering soldiers in peoples’ homes soon.”
4. On the hecklers who interrupted his speech: “Is anybody left at OFA headquarters? I’m actually glad that the president’s whole political staff is here instead of actually doing mischief in the country
5. On hecklers, again: “It would seem that President Obama’s paid political operatives are out in force. The men and women in this room scare the living daylights out of them.”
6. On hecklers, a third time: “How scared is the President? What a statement of fear, what a statement of fear. Oh, they don’t want the truth to be heard. They definitely don’t want the truth to be heard.”
7. On the Cold War: “Our foreign policy is detente, which I’m pretty sure is French for surrender.”
8. On Vice President Biden: “You don’t need a punchline. You just say his name, people laugh.”


Tony Perkins, who leads the organization behind the Value Voters Summit, called Cruz “a de facto leader of the Republican Party” who was “filling a vacuum” at the top of the party.


The Eight Craziest Things Ted Cruz Said At Values Voter Summit | ThinkProgress


If Ted Cruz is really the leader of the GOP we can kiss the Grand Old Party goodbye...

Bill O' Rino? -

"The Republican Party finds itself in trouble -- big trouble. Obamacare is not going to be defunded, and the GOP will have to make a deal with the president. And you know who's most happy about this? Hillary Clinton, that's who. Hard-right Americans should understand that Democrats will win next year's midterm elections and the presidency of 2016 if the Republican party does not begin to solve problems."

-- Bill O'Reilly

Tony, you make good points on post #943.

And for post #944, I too, think Ted Cruz is an attention whore who is doing damage.

Paul Ryan's popularity has been declining since last year, when he came up with his plan to overhaul Medicare and push granny off the cliff. He now has an interesting young opponent next election.

Son of slain Sikh will challenge Paul Ryan for Wisconsin seat (+video)

Amar Kaleka is pro-gun control and became disgusted when gun control legislation was dashed even though the majority of Americans wanted it. He hopes to work for a more democratic government, in tune with voters, not corporations. Kaleka intends to tap the Indian and Arabic communities for his campaign funds.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-...sin-seat-video


Hope Paul Ryan will go bye-bye.

Originally Posted by misskit

Kaleka intends to tap the Indian and Arabic communities for his campaign funds.

Why would Arabic communities support him?

His dad was shot by some dufus that thought he was an arab. So they might think of him as a useful decoy.

Originally Posted by sabang

His dad was shot by some dufus that thought he was an arab. So they might think of him as a useful decoy.

Regardless, this has gone stupid.