Future of Republican Party

[Cyber Wolf]

Given all that, if they're so ready, I wonder what's taking them so long to split. If it's a matter of a petition and a nod from the White House to do it peacefully, do they really think they'll get it now? Or in the next 4 years?

If they want to fight their way out, that should be quite interesting. They just better keep the fighting out of Louisiana.

[Spexxvet]

Why aren't red states patriotic?

[SamIam]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

~snip~ everyone currently on a Texas military base would just change their letterhead, that's all. Unless you're imagining that Texas secedes but somehow has to hand over everything within our borders, which you may be sure they wouldn't agree to. ~snip~ More likely, Texas would offer amnesty to any Mexican willing to join this new Texas army, to fight in the inevitable civil war that breaks out when the federal government tries to take back its fighter jets.

Minor point, but I find it pretty unlikely that everyone on Texas military bases would just change their letterheads. Military personnel stationed on bases in any of the 50 states are from all over the US - not just the state that their current duty assignment happens to be located in. Plus, members of the military are generally rotated to different places every 3 years. Their loyalty is to the Pentagon and the US as a whole – not to Texas and not to any other state they might find themselves stationed in.

And the Pentagon is going to withdraw American troops from what is now a foreign country unless the decision is made to fight Texas to force it back into the Union. The departing troops will be ordered to take all weapons, tanks, fighter planes, aircraft carriers etc. with them – you never ever leave equipment for enemy forces to use if it can be avoided. Anything that can’t be shipped out will be destroyed.

The Texans can try to capture sophisticated US weaponary with their hunting guns and their coon hounds, but even with the help of the Mexican mafia, they’ll be outgunned.

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by Cyber Wolf

Given all that, if they're so ready, I wonder what's taking them so long to split. If it's a matter of a petition and a nod from the White House to do it peacefully, do they really think they'll get it now? Or in the next 4 years?

Because the vast majority of us are not morons. No one here is even talking about the petition, only the news outlets from out-of-state. In a state this big, it's a given that there will be over 25,000 dumbasses in favor of any issue. No one here pays the secessionists any mind, they've been around forever.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

In a state this big, it's a given that there will be over 25,000 dumbasses in favor of any issue.

Not to mention the fact that anyone can sign any state's petition, so all you need is 25,000 dumbasses total, let alone from one state.

[Big Sarge]

Secession will never happen. It is simply a way of making a political statement.

Spexxvet - It all boils down to States' Rights

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

Spexxvet - It all boils down to States' Rights

I wonder how many states would have opted out of the Iraq war?

[Undertoad]

They had the option of not sending National Guard troops

[BigV]

Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult

Both parties are rotten - how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot. The main reason the Democrats' health care bill will be a budget buster once it fully phases in is the Democrats' rank capitulation to corporate interests - no single-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation of drug prices, a craven surrender to Big Pharma.

But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.

To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics.

...

It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.

...

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

...

This constant drizzle of "there the two parties go again!" stories out of the news bureaus, combined with the hazy confusion of low-information voters, means that the long-term Republican strategy of undermining confidence in our democratic institutions has reaped electoral dividends.

...

Thus far, I have concentrated on Republican tactics, rather than Republican beliefs, but the tactics themselves are important indicators of an absolutist, authoritarian mindset that is increasingly hostile to the democratic values of reason, compromise and conciliation. Rather, this mindset seeks polarizing division (Karl Rove has been very explicit that this is his principal campaign strategy), conflict and the crushing of opposition.

As for what they really believe, the Republican Party of 2011 believes in three principal tenets I have laid out below. The rest of their platform one may safely dismiss as window dressing:

1. The GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors.
2. They worship at the altar of Mars.
3. Give me that old time religion.

It's a good article, substantial. It was written about 14 months ago so some of it feels like we've seen the ending (of the most recent episode) already. But the article is still well worth reading. I don't know what it says about the future of the Republican party, but it sure hits the nail on the head as to their past and present.

[DanaC]

That was really interesting, V.

[Lamplighter]

That lost me in the first four words, but I read on.
Then it lost me again at the end of that first paragraph.

- no single-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers;
and no negotiation of drug prices,

The single-payer status is accurate, but the justification is not.
That was the compromise by the Democrats in order to get even
a single Republican Senator to vote in favor of Obamacare.
The second is solely the previous Republican President's banner to bear.

But I do realize these are the meanderings of one misguided Republican soul.
Oh wait, I'm being redundant

[Lamplighter]

Transient acantholytic dermatosis spreading among Republican Party...

From Wikipedia:

Grover's disease often starts quite suddenly.

It results in very itchy spots on the central back, mid chest and occasionally elsewhere.
Frequently, it follows sweating or some unexpected heat stress.<snip>

Grover's Disease is mainly seen in males over the age of forty[4]
and the papules are most commonly found on the mid chest.
Sometimes the features of Grover's are found in people who do not itch or have a conspicuous rash.

It is thought that Grover's disease affects chiefly white adults in the fifth decade or later,
and appears to be around 1.6 to 2.1 times more common in men than in women.
Grover's disease appears less commonly in darker-skinned individuals, but has been reported.

This from the latest Google News:

http://www.businessinsider.com/grove...-taxes-2012-11
Business Insider
Brett LoGiurato
11/25/12

Some Top Republicans Are Breaking With Grover Norquist On New Revenues

Add Republicans Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Peter King to the list
of top party members in Congress who are increasingly breaking
with conservative Grover Norquist's "Taxpayer Protection Pledge."

All three said on Sunday talk shows that they are willing to add
more tax revenues as part of a deal to avert the so-called "fiscal cliff"
in January, a position that is becoming commonplace among Republicans
despite the fact that it would violate Norquist's pledge to not raise taxes.
<snip>

[piercehawkeye45]

On the other hand....

So here is the Republican Party reinventing itself. The GOP majority in the Ohio legislature rushes to defund Planned Parenthood in its post-election session. The orange-tinted speaker of the House proposes to undo Obamacare through “oversight” in the name of “solving our debt and restoring prosperity.” Never mind that health-care reform doesn’t raise the deficit but reduces it. Or that “a new low,” 33 percent of Americans, the anti-Obama bitter-enders, still favor repealing the law (PDF). And a rising star in the GOP future, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, offers a dim view out of the pre-Darwinian past that maybe the Earth was created in seven days—and that since “theologians” disagree, we should teach “multiple theories.”

This doesn’t sound like rethinking, or thinking at all, but like the reflex and revanchism of a party that doesn’t comprehend or simply can’t respond to the dimensions of its 2012 defeat. There’s not just the delicious irony that maladroit Mitt Romney, the 47 percent man, will end up with 47 percent of the vote. Outside the South, President Obama defeated his opponent 55 to 45 percent, winning a landslide there as well as in the Electoral College. The bottom line: Romney got elected president of the old confederacy.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...on-losses.html


The article really annoyed me...

If the votes of only those aged 30 and older counted, Mr. Romney would be president. Young people will suffer most from the massive debt run up by the Obama administration. But Americans aged 18-29 voted for the president, 60-37, because incessant indoctrination by their teachers and professors in college outweighed rational self- interest.

Few young people today perceive what's in their interest because they are so massively ignorant of history, civics, economics, geography, physics and basic math. They've been told what to think, but they haven't been taught how to think logically.

If Republicans keep trying to get their message across chiefly through campaign advertising, they can't hope to compete with the constant messaging from the dominant institutions of our culture.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...se_116244.html

[infinite monkey]

If the votes of only those aged 30 and older counted, Mr. Romney would be president. Young people will suffer most from the massive debt run up by the Obama administration. But Americans aged 18-29 voted for the president, 60-37, because incessant indoctrination by their teachers and professors in college outweighed rational self- interest.

Few young people today perceive what's in their interest because they are so massively ignorant of history, civics, economics, geography, physics and basic math. They've been told what to think, but they haven't been taught how to think logically.

If Republicans keep trying to get their message across chiefly through campaign advertising, they can't hope to compete with the constant messaging from the dominant institutions of our culture.

oh ffs. The old "young people are too dumb to know anything they aren't nearly as smart and in the know as us older folks and they are easily brainwashed with incessant indoctrination by the liberal teachers" crap. Since the beginning of time.

If we're not careful, women voting will make a HUGE difference in outcomes, too. Let's not let the young or the women listen to any of that 'constant messaging' because they are 'so massively ignorant of history, civics...'

What a tard.

[Lamplighter]

@pierce, "revanchism" is my new word for the day...