Presidential Race 2016

[The_Bitter_Cynic]

Tonight on America’s Next President!!, Trump to dump the FOX

[Murbella]

Watch the viewer counts of Fox debates drop to a quarter of previous numbers.

[RichVR]

I certainly don’t recall the last primary season as having any entertainment value a all. How early was Romney essentially a given?

[Miramon]

I certainly don’t recall the last primary season as having any entertainment value a all. How early was Romney essentially a given?

I thought that was the primary season where every wingnut had his day leading the pack for a while? Or was that the one before? They all sort of blur together.

[Murbella]

I thought that was the primary season where every wingnut had his day leading the pack for a while? Or was that the one before? They all sort of blur together.

I think that was this one.

[HumanTon]

I certainly don’t recall the last primary season as having any entertainment value a all. How early was Romney essentially a given?

What, you don’t remember Michelle “I’m just as crazy as I look” Bachmann winning the Iowa straw poll? Rick Perry swooping in at the GOP’s savior and then bombing miserably during the debates? Herman “999” Cain soaring into the lead and then free falling because it turned out 999 was the number of women he’d harassed? That was quality entertainment, and all before Thanksgiving 2011.

[Pyperkub]

What, you don’t remember Michelle “I’m just as crazy as I look” Bachmann winning the Iowa straw poll? Rick Perry swooping in at the GOP’s savior and then bombing miserably during the debates? Herman “999” Cain soaring into the lead and then free falling because it turned out 999 was the number of women he’d harassed? That was quality entertainment, and all before Thanksgiving 2011.

You are forgetting the entertainment factor of the Santorum Google-Bomb too.

[Pyperkub]

I think the demise of the Republican Party in the New England, and the collapse of the Democrats in the South explains so much of this.

Jay Cost writing about the issue in 2002.

The Democrats abandoned positions that were popular across the country choosing to focus on the issues that resonated with suburban and urban America. Rather than focusing on what brought poor Americans together, they would focus on what made towns and cities different. They would embrace socially divisive issues.

The changes in the Republican Party mirrored those of the Democrats. The New Englanders wing simply died, and the leadership shifted to a younger generation of southerners. Where the Republicans once appealed to Americans across the country, they now focused on the countryside and the south. The South is not America and a party rooted in our culture will have great trouble getting anything done. And that’s not to say that we are unusually stubborn, or prone to ill will. It’s the regionalism which is the problem. Regional parties focus on issues which are broadly popular in their sections of the country. Issues which ensure their local success, but in turn doom them nationally.

Where the old parties were obliged to work together to overcome their internal contradictions, the new parties revelled in their narrow and ideologically pure identities. Rather than reach out to ensure electoral success, they turned inwards to and relied on every stricter purity tests to achieve victory.

This was a recipe for acrimony and gridlock.

I think it’s important to articulate that distinction.

I’m going to need to see some sources (a link to the Jay Cost piece would be a good start), as I find a LOT wrong with this opinion - first off being that it ignores (glosses over) the effects of Vietnam and the Civil Rights Act and Religion (Moral Majority movement, etc.). I’m tempted to say it whitewashes some things, but I’ll refrain for now.

[BrianRubin]

I certainly don’t recall the last primary season as having any entertainment value a all. How early was Romney essentially a given?

You are a fool sir. How could you forget Awww Shucky Ducky?

[Timex]

Herman Cain gave us the best BLR of all time.

There was also his crazy chief of staff putting out the commercial that basically just had him smoking and being creepy.

[LMN8R]

Huckabee is such a petty and deplorable human being:

[Miramon]

Yeah, and what makes Huckabee even worse than the usual backbiting scumbag of a politician is he pretends to cloak himself in religious sanctity. But it’s mere sanctimonious bullshit. The wonderful thing is how badly he’s done politically of late, almost as if his base can see past that facade too.

But as regards people of faith as politicians: Much as I generally dislike them in that role, can you imagine a young Fred Rogers running for President this time around? He’d win 99% of the vote just based on sincerity and goodwill alone, without even a platform or a party. But of course he was far too wise – no doubt too heedful of his personal spiritual cleanliness too – to get into politics in his real life.

[HumanTon]

I think the demise of the Republican Party in the New England, and the collapse of the Democrats in the South explains so much of this.

The Democrats abandoned positions that were popular across the country choosing to focus on the issues that resonated with suburban and urban America. Rather than focusing on what brought poor Americans together, they would focus on what made towns and cities different. They would embrace socially divisive issues.

The changes in the Republican Party mirrored those of the Democrats. The New Englanders wing simply died, and the leadership shifted to a younger generation of southerners. Where the Republicans once appealed to Americans across the country, they now focused on the countryside and the south. The South is not America and a party rooted in our culture will have great trouble getting anything done. And that’s not to say that we are unusually stubborn, or prone to ill will. It’s the regionalism which is the problem. Regional parties focus on issues which are broadly popular in their sections of the country. Issues which ensure their local success, but in turn doom them nationally.

The Republicans woes today do look superficially similar to the Democrats’ woes circa 1968-1972 - dissension in the ranks! inability to establish clear party favorites in Presidential years! embrace of issues that look divisive to the moderates of the day!

But it’s only a superficial resemblance. What happened to the Dems during the 70s did indeed have big costs to their party at the time. But the Dems also planted seeds that paid off decades down the road. The Dems of the 70s put a big premium on reaching out to women and minorities, and those efforts eventually made the party much more future-proof than the GOP. Democratic policies that looked divisive and self-destructive to pundits in 1975 - like embrace of gay rights - look prescient now. And it’s during the 70s and 80s that Dems locked down the (non-Cuban) Latino vote. The Dems may have looked terrible at the 72 convention, but all that in-fighting happened because they were adding more seats to the table and expanding the party.

Today’s GOP is the polar opposite. The party is shrinking, not growing. And more importantly no one is planting seeds for the future; instead they’re salting the earth. Despite the efforts of every party leader since Reagan to expand the party, the main concern of rank-and-file GOPers right now is making it clear they’re the party of old white people and young brown people are not encouraged to join. (Witness the fact that the rank-and-file forced Rubio to walk back his own amnesty plan, thereby depriving the party both of a chance to appeal to Latinos and sabotaging one of the party’s few actual rising young stars.)

And this has little to do with regionalism per se. It’s just that the GOP is the old white person’s party and old white people tend to be found in parts of the South and (especially) in rural areas. A factoid to support this: New England Republicans are alleged to be extinct, but the governor of Maine, Paul LePage, is not only a Republican but a bona-fide wingnut. And guess what? In addition to being rural, Maine is the whitest and grayest state in the USA.

[Miramon]

Of course the governor of Massachusetts is Republican, as have been others recently, including needless to say Mitt Romney. But I think that is more a reaction against the gross corruption of the Democratic machine in the state than a positive statement of support for the GOP.

[HumanTon]

Well, Mass Republicans would count as Democrats in many places in the country.

But LePage is … something else altogether. (He compared the IRS to the Gestapo, when the NAACP asked him to observe MLK day in some way he laughed and said “they can kiss my ass,” etc. etc.)

[inactive_user]

Regarding governorships, until maybe 10 years ago (maybe even 5) state-level GOP parties and platforms were often waaaaaaaaaaay more reasonable than the post-Goldwater federal loons. Minnesota is pretty darn blue, and did fine under several Republican governers over the latter half of the 20th century.

Of course, now the whole thing is fucked from the ground up and you have assholes like Walker declaring total war on political enemies and ideological targets and seriously fucking up a previously functional state like Wisconsin. So yeah, that whole dead-end branch of thought should be spotlighted and shamed out of rational discourse.

[RichVR]

What, you don’t remember Michelle “I’m just as crazy as I look” Bachmann winning the Iowa straw poll? Rick Perry swooping in at the GOP’s savior and then bombing miserably during the debates? Herman “999” Cain soaring into the lead and then free falling because it turned out 999 was the number of women he’d harassed? That was quality entertainment, and all before Thanksgiving 2011.

I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m a… fraid.

[Jason_Levine]

Regarding governorships, until maybe 10 years ago (maybe even 5) state-level GOP parties and platforms were often waaaaaaaaaaay more reasonable than the post-Goldwater federal loons. Minnesota is pretty darn blue, and did fine under several Republican governers over the latter half of the 20th century.

Of course, now the whole thing is fucked from the ground up and you have assholes like Walker declaring total war on political enemies and ideological targets and seriously fucking up a previously functional state like Wisconsin. So yeah, that whole dead-end branch of thought should be spotlighted and shamed out of rational discourse.

It’s not just governors and it’s not just Republicans. It seems like on both sides of the political spectrum ideological purity has become more important than governing and even more important than general electability. We see it in the Republican swing to the far right (discounting Trump who I really don’t think believes in anything but what will get him the most air time) and the Democrats swing to the left with Bernie Sanders. We even see it in the UK with the Labour Party’s embrace of pre-Thatcher socialism. Never mind that most of the electorate is somewhere in the middle, so that Republican governors could get things done in blue states and Bill Clinton could be very effective with a Republican congress. Nowadays following the pure, extreme line is everything.

[Miramon]

I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m a… fraid.

It’s okay, Hal. You’ll be a cosmic star-child soon. In the meantime, though: shutting down :)

[The_Bitter_Cynic]

I wonder.

There’s Joe Biden sitting there listening to the pope.

It would interesting if he decides to run for President after being moved by the Pontiff’s words.

Just a thought.