Moderate Republican: Republican Party is sacrificing long term strategy

[Daelak]

Chris Ladd, a moderate republican who specializes in showing what is really happening in the republican party, states that the republican party will cease to be a national party by 2016 due to the republican party unwillingness to change and court new voters. Their unwavering platform in the face of change will force them to splinter off or reform their entire message, and 18 of the 24 senate seats up for grabs in 2016 are all held by republicans in purple/blue states. Do you think demographic change will force the GOP to change their message? Or do you think it will all come crashing down in a beautiful explosion on 2016 when they lose 18 senate seats, 10 house seats, and the presidency?

http://blog.chron.com/goplifer/2014/...on/#28114101=0

[Bakis]

Maybe an opening for a much needed 3rd party even though in reality it would still be a 2party system with dem/splinter & GOP.

[Reeve]

I don't think it'll be anything quite that dramatic in 2016.

[Independent voter]

There are black Republicans, gay Republicans, female Republicans, Hispanic Republicans, etc. Each of these groups has it's own organization. The gay Republicans call themselves Log Cabin Republicans.

So Republicans have been reaching out for a very long time it's just that minority groups tend to think their odds are better with Democrats.

I don't think the Republicans are going anywhere, they'll just shift to the left a bit if they can't find enough voters.

[Daelak]

I don't think it'll be anything quite that dramatic in 2016.

I don't know this guy has some pretty compelling data.

http://goplifer.com/2014/06/02/why-t...g-win-in-2014/

[Beazy]

Who knows at this point.

We will have a better picture when we can start tracing the "campaign donations/contributions" from the wall st. heavy hitters. Until then, who knows.

[Fexus]

It will evolve and court the voters it has to to win elections. Political parties are not ideological movements. They exist for exactly one reason: to get people elected.

[Endus]

I don't know that it'll happen in 2016, but the emergence of the Tea Party within the Republican Party, and the shenanigans that were the 2012 primaries, all lead me to suspect that a schism is coming. The Tea Party is radicalizing itself, and many Republicans are resisting that, and I can see it becoming an official split. Heck, the Tea Party already has a separate name. I'd even argue that the only reason it hasn't happened already is that they all recognize that splitting the vote does conservatives no good, but I don't think the widening gap is going to allow that to continue.

But maybe it'll be 2020 or 2024, rather than 2016.

[Auxora]

Republicans already know they needed to change their message, it already happened with the 2014 elections. And with the Koch Bros money they'll be able to effectively buy enough seats to remain relevant. It's been surprising how effective the anti-Obamacare message ended up being. You wouldn't think just repeating a message that something is bad over and over, without much good factual reasoning behind it other than generalizations that it'll cost jobs or be bad for the economy, would work. But apparently if you just repeat the same message over and over enough, eventually many people will start to believe it and agree. And that tactic working has pulled in enough voters to remain as a powerful party.

[GennGreymane]

RON PAUL 2016!

for real we need some third party love. We need some new blood and the 2 party (actually 1) party system needs to stop.

[Cthulhu 2020]

There are black Republicans, gay Republicans, female Republicans, Hispanic Republicans, etc. Each of these groups has it's own organization. The gay Republicans call themselves Log Cabin Republicans.

So Republicans have been reaching out for a very long time it's just that minority groups tend to think their odds are better with Democrats.

I don't think the Republicans are going anywhere, they'll just shift to the left a bit if they can't find enough voters.

There's 1 or 2 prominent examples of each, with many female, but the party's stance remains firmly rooted in old prejudices against all of those groups. But they're all more or less trust fund babies as well. Their alignment with the Republican party is rooted squarely in family tradition and "don't touch my money", not so much the party's archaic social policies.

[Daelak]

Who knows at this point.

We will have a better picture when we can start tracing the "campaign donations/contributions" from the wall st. heavy hitters. Until then, who knows.

I don't think anyone alive has seen such a fractious republican party with all the potential presidential candidates. All will go through a negative primary season just due to the ideological purity conservative republicans demand as an aging white party.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't know that it'll happen in 2016, but the emergence of the Tea Party within the Republican Party, and the shenanigans that were the 2012 primaries, all lead me to suspect that a schism is coming. The Tea Party is radicalizing itself, and many Republicans are resisting that, and I can see it becoming an official split. Heck, the Tea Party already has a separate name. I'd even argue that the only reason it hasn't happened already is that they all recognize that splitting the vote does conservatives no good, but I don't think the widening gap is going to allow that to continue.

But maybe it'll be 2020 or 2024, rather than 2016.

I think he is alluding to the fact that 24 republican seats are up for election, a dangerous amount to defend especially in a presidential election year, the election where democrats actually come out and vote. Especially since Democrats already get 251 EVs without doing anything at all.

- - - Updated - - -

It will evolve and court the voters it has to to win elections. Political parties are not ideological movements. They exist for exactly one reason: to get people elected.

But the question is how long will that evolution take? We are about to see the beginning of the reformation, so it could be 8,40 years before they will become nationally competitive again.

[Lenonis]

There are black Republicans, gay Republicans, female Republicans, Hispanic Republicans, etc. Each of these groups has it's own organization. The gay Republicans call themselves Log Cabin Republicans.

So Republicans have been reaching out for a very long time it's just that minority groups tend to think their odds are better with Democrats.

I don't think the Republicans are going anywhere, they'll just shift to the left a bit if they can't find enough voters.

Convincing people to vote against their own self interest is not reaching out to voters. To even try to claim the GOP is gay friendly is laughable.

EDIT -- The GOP is poised to take a shellacking in 2016. They won't lose the house but they'll lose most of their recently gained federal power. It will depend on how the party reacts to that at that point. If they decide it is because "they aren't conservative enough" the party is likely done for on the federal level. Otherwise they will have to move to the middle, at least on social issues, to gain enough voters to stay viable.

[Fexus]

But the question is how long will that evolution take? We are about to see the beginning of the reformation, so it could be 8,40 years before they will become nationally competitive again.

I would imagine pretty quickly. The Republican party certainly isn't dead (although a lot of people wished it was). Mitt Romney got over 47% of the popular vote in 2012. It wasn't really a landslide by any means.

[THE Bigzoman]

Convincing people to vote against their own self interest is not reaching out to voters. To even try to claim the GOP is gay friendly is laughable.

No such claim was made.

[Garnier Fructis]

It's nothing gerrymandering can't fix.

[Lenonis]

No such claim was made.

The phasing was odd. Just because gay republicans exist is not proof that the party has reached out to gay voters.

[Cthulhu 2020]

I would imagine pretty quickly. The Republican party certainly isn't dead (although a lot of people wished it was). Mitt Romney got over 47% of the popular vote in 2012. It wasn't really a landslide by any means.

It's become party loyalty at this point. People put themselves on a team and vote for that team. A lot of the time they'll take political alignment tests which tell them that they're Democrat in belief and they get all "wtf this test is bogus!" They don't seem to realize how batshit the GOP representation in Washington has gotten.

[Reeve]

I don't know that it'll happen in 2016, but the emergence of the Tea Party within the Republican Party, and the shenanigans that were the 2012 primaries, all lead me to suspect that a schism is coming. The Tea Party is radicalizing itself, and many Republicans are resisting that, and I can see it becoming an official split. Heck, the Tea Party already has a separate name. I'd even argue that the only reason it hasn't happened already is that they all recognize that splitting the vote does conservatives no good, but I don't think the widening gap is going to allow that to continue.

But maybe it'll be 2020 or 2024, rather than 2016.

Idealogically a split makes sense, but politically it doesn't. Neither the Tea Party nor the "moderate" Republicans would be large enough to win national elections.

[Fexus]

It's become party loyalty at this point. People put themselves on a team and vote for that team. A lot of the time they'll take political alignment tests which tell them that they're Democrat in belief and they get all "wtf this test is bogus!" They don't seem to realize how batshit the GOP representation in Washington has gotten.

I would imagine there's an amount of disillusion on the left with the Democrat party. As far as the parties are concerned, however, they don't care until people start speaking with their votes, because votes are literally the only reason they exist.