I'm looking for practical suggestions for what the GOP can do to revive itself over both short and long run timeframes (e.g., 2009-2010, 2009-2020, 2009-2050).
Whether the GOP deserves revival is a question for another time.
P.S. Here's an interesting excerpt from a comment:
It's easy to imagine Barack Obama nodding along to that, but then tsk-tsking over anybody coming right out and saying that lucidly what he believes.
As an exercise, translate the above paragraph into Obamaese, retaining both its meaning but also applying levels of plausible deniability.
Whether the GOP deserves revival is a question for another time.
P.S. Here's an interesting excerpt from a comment:
The only reason to gain political power is to exercise it to reward your supporters and punish your opposition. Someone who runs implicitly or explicitly on the platform that they will not exercise their power to help their supporters will never win an election under unlimited democracy.
It's easy to imagine Barack Obama nodding along to that, but then tsk-tsking over anybody coming right out and saying that lucidly what he believes.
As an exercise, translate the above paragraph into Obamaese, retaining both its meaning but also applying levels of plausible deniability.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Posts
197 comments:
Appealing only to married church-going whites isn't working too well.
As you've pointed out, growing share of minority votes isn't an effective strategy.
So what's left is to increase its share of the white vote. The swing white voters appear to be (1) educated high-income secular whites (2) union members. Both groups are large, but #1 is growing and #2 is shrinking.
Endless cheap shots at "swipples" doesn't strike me as much of a start.
It's not clear to me that the people who run the GOP, namely executives at big corporations, actually want to win the presidency or control of congress.
Right now the corporate elite have an effective veto over all major decisions because they can filibuster proposals they don't like.
Nominating someone like Huckabee who could win the presidency puts this control at risk. So they will probably just anoint a safe sure-thing loser like Romney.
The whole "activist" and right-wing media infrastructure prospers when it is in the opposition, so they have no real desire to win anything either.
No more government preferences or special protections, by race, by ethnic group, by gender, by sexual preference, by veteran status, by disabled veteran status, by company size, etc. etc.
As a practical matter the GOP needs to win back the North Eastern elite that used to be it's bread and butter. The "Southern" strategy of false populism is no longer effective, and increasingly transparent. But really everything is cyclical, on economic issues (not social issues) the USA has moved very, very far to the right compared to where it was from 1932-1980 (a fact conservatives like to forget). Everyone screaming about "socialism" should look at what life was like in the USA in the 1950s with a top marginal tax rate in the 90s, there was one regulated phone company, agriculture and all transport were highly regulated, and powerful labor unions were still a force in politics. It's only natural that there be an adjustment. The easy (if cynical) way for the GOP to regain power in 8 years is to let Obama do whatever he wants, try to look like a party of grown-ups rather than a freak show, and then reap voter dissatisfaction in 2016. I.e. do exactly what the Conservatives in Britain are doing.
They seem to have the southern white working class Protestant male vote sewn up (as to whether they *deserve* it.. *sheesh*).
As you've said though, they have a big opening to appeal to northern white working class Catholic males, the 'Ricci' vote. They also have openings for lower-middle-class public-sector white females, the Schwarzenegger Democrats, in places like California.
Obviously they aren't going to abandon low taxation or cheap labour as policies, but some degree of job security, limiting Mexican/illegal immigration, and noises on limiting affirmative action would help. Maybe trying to temper Obamacare without being too obviously in the pocket of rapacious insurance corporations.
Have the right-wing media (Fox) make more noises about how great all those conservative Catholic Supreme Court judges are, including Clarence Thomas but also Scalia, Alito, Roberts.
Keep John McCain out of sight. Keep Sarah Palin in sight.
Whites are easy, they don't ask for much. Blacks aren't going to vote against Obama, but unionised whites just might.
Why try to revive them before you've decided they're worth it? Seems a bit baffling, not to mention a waste of time and energy, potentially.
Drive a wedge between the black and Hispanic elite and the working masses on immigration.
How, after all, could the multicolored elite insist that closing the borders was some secret capitalist Republican plot?
Many if not most American Hispanics know they are competing with semi-civilized Indios from Oaxaca and don't like it.
They are also at the mercy of MS-13and other violent hispanic gangs.
Black folks know damn well that hispanics hate them and are in competition with them for jobs.
They also know that only white folks give a damn about affirmative action, and when white folks are gone, their free ride is at an end.
Remember when Jack Kemp talked about enabling black folks to rule the highrise ghettoes they were stuck in? The first thing the largely female tenants' committees did was start expelling black trash who let their junkie-ass relatives live in their welfare apartments and deal junk. No sympathy. Cold as ice. The weepy white liberals finally had to step in and tell them they couldn't eject gutless black grannies who sheltered their dope-dealing grandkids.
The lesson is clear. Folks at the bottom need to be encouraged and enabled to reject open borders the way Kemp enabled them to ruthlessly rule ghetto high rises.
This would be a winner for the Republicans, I am sure.
Shorter-run: all out assault on Obamacare and the other initiatives
Stop promoting low IQ pseudo-leaders like Palin and Huckabee
Communicate like Ross Perot on the deficits and such, and stand for reducing the size of the government
Reduce healthcare costs by banning malpractice suits, taxing obesity and mandating minimum copays on any visits and tests
Longer-run:
Ban fed and state government guarantees on anything, including public sector pensions
Get the government out of the housing business
Reduce the combined federal and state governments to under 25% of GDP
Ban racial preferences in all forms
Eliminate income tax at the fed and state levels and replace it with a consumption-based tax
Pass a common-sense immigration reform, similar to the points systems in the rest of the OECD: rewarding education, language and employability
Plan going into the political speech writing business, Steve? Give David Frum a call or try Hayek's Why I Am Not a Conservative.
Adopt your "citizenist" approach. Face bluntly the fact that immigration must stop so that wages will rise. That will transfer wealth to the citizens in a way consonant with market principles.
Recover environmentalism as a conservative value. That also calls for restrictions in immigration. Face up to it. Make it clear that there will be fewer minorities than otherwise, but that it is for the greater good of citizens.
They could do what the Democrats did during the Bush years: Give Bush everything he asked for -- the old "give 'em enough rope" strategy. Worked wonderfully for he Dems, not so great for the country.
Hire Jared Taylor to run the RNC.
New Republican platform
1) Federal medical coverage for everyone under the age of 18. Administration to set limits.
2) Mortgages: Since the government knows how much taxes everyone has paid for life and the appraised value of all real estate, a federal computer program can offer low cost mortgages directly to taxpayers.
3) Immigration: Set up a national ID system.
4) State usury laws take precedence over federal.
5) Provide a secure bank account for every citizen with two account numbers, one for the owner, the other for payees.
Start making plans for secession.
Long run: Democrats have always understood (and taken action on) the idea that the most important thing in any election is control of the press. Rupert Murdoch was miraculously out bid by the Dolans (of Cablevision and TV channel News 12 fame)for purchase of Long Island Newsday, the major paper in a market of well over two million poulation. Newsday, News 12, and the New York Times basically control much of the news in this area of Metro New York, and thus exert tremendous influence over all state-wide elections. One of those Republican billionaires we used to hear so much about needs to step up to the plate and take control of a major media outlet (the New York Post does not count for much, you can read the whole thing in one short subway ride, unless you count baseball coverage as news). FOX Channel 5? A step in the right direction.
It needs to stop pandering for Hispanic votes and commit 100% to being the party of the white middle class.
Run on an implictly white platform, which is to say hardcore fiscally conservative and concede gay marriage and abortion. Paint the Dems as the party for beggardly mooches looking for a handout, make it embarrassing to be a Dem supporter. Oh, and Contract With America v2.0, with a focus on the budget and cutting spending.
The word "socialist" appears to hurt their feelings, use this instead of liberal, which was hardly a pejorative to begin with. "Marxist" is good too, that brand is shot.
Bootfuck the neo-cons and anyone within two degrees of PNAC from the party, embrace a less imperial foreign policy, and focus on domestic issues. Make the Dems wear the Afghanistan and Iraq issues, they voted for both and Obama is turning out to be every bit the warmonger Bush was.
I for one think we're post-political, that we get the parties the media and the powers that be give us; still, it's a fun exercise.
A purge with public executions; always a crowd pleaser.
Neshobanakni
Short-term: frame 2006-08 as the average voter being "punked" (fooled, hoodwinked, astroturfed as a conservative) by the Democrats/Obama. Paint Obama as a closet socialist with zero business experience, overwhelmed and only a "fancy talker" useless without a teleprompter.
Long-term: develop a generational strategy based on solid principles to *eventually* get to energy independence, fiscal sanity, tax/regulation simplification, constitutional limits, sensible environmental stewardship - something like "20 Year Vision for America" similar to the "Contract with America".
http://www.thesolutionparty.org/ which just launched looks promising.
The GOP should propose that the federal government should return to the roles set for it by the Constitution.
I know that is radical but it just might work.
Demographic warfare:
1. Encourage its members to have babies
2. Homeschool the kids or have them go to private school
3. Convince the kids that the Democrats are evil
4. Convince the kids to repeat steps 1-3.
The world of politics is to a huge extent run by the media. They determine what can and can't be said as well as which opinions are cool and which ones aren't.
The GOP collects hundreds of millions of dollars from contributors every election cycle. Why not ask a group of them to spend money on creating a truly conservative answer to CNN, Fox News and MSNBC instead? I suspect that the return on such an investment would be politically positive.
A news channel would do more good than an entertainment channel, but even an entertainment channel would help. Imagine a rival to HBO that does smart, cool stuff that's not culturally subversive? For the entirety of the 20th century smart kids were routinely poisoned by the idea that culturally subversive stuff is cool. What if somebody presented a real alternative to MTV or to whatever it is that now gives kids clues on coolness?
MTV was popular among my generation not because it was good at music or TV or at anything else besides self-promotion. It was popular because it was in our faces all the time. The young are natural followers, they're programmed to do and think what they're told more than adults. What if a rival voice appeared, pointing them in a different direction?
Very few people think logically about anything, and even fewer think logically about politics. The average young person rejects stuff like HBD or traditional moral values because he'd heard these things referred to as uncool, mean, evil, whatever a million times in the media. If you have that kind of power, you can declare the sky or random letters of the alphabet evil, and the average guy will follow you.
There is no second voice in the arena. No one seriously competes with the media on this. What if somebody did?
Short run -- let the democrats be in charge for a while. That worked for the dems, it will work for the republicans. Both sides should learn to ignore the media hype that it is the end of the world every time they lose an election.
Long run -- I think the best plan is to run against the collapse of most liberal dominated states like New York and New Jersey. But that is not perfect. States dominated by liberal unions, like california or new york, are totally doomed. States run by upper class conviction liberals -- like Massachusetts or Minnesota -- are much better off. But I think both suffer by comparison with Texas.
Steve:
I think the GOP needs to run on a few principles (not gimmicks) such as following Constitutional law and getting the federal government out of state business, significantly reducing the size and activities of the federal government including budgets, mandates to states, and number of departments.
The GOP should rededicate itself to the Bill of Rights, and flatten income tax so that everyone pays some income tax and thus has a stake in America.
Affirmative action, quotas, minority set asides, gerrymandered voting districts to guarantee minority domination; all violate the equal protection clause and the concept of equal justice under law.
And perhaps most important, the GOP should value American sovereingty, security, and citizenship by opposing illegal aliens, open borders, and amnesty. We need tough and enforced employer sanctions and a real fence over all 2000 miles of the southern US border.
For me, GOP will be a more attractive choice when the influence of social right in GOP is diminished.
I consider myself an economic conservative, and a social progressive. Currently, I am a registered Democrat but would like to see a centrist party emerge in the future. Until then, I will keep voting for centrist democrat and republican candidates.
We need to find a demographic group that isn't shrinking and make that the new party base. Since average IQ and educational attainment are both declining, and the general standard of living has been falling for the last 60 years, I suggest a continued and expanded effort to paint Democratic politicians as elites who don't understand what it's like to be an average, uneducated, blue-collar American and don't have average people's interests in mind.
The GOP cannot count on the support of big business and the wealthy in an era when wealth is increasingly stored overseas and the military's role is forever diminished from its importance even as recently as 40 years ago.
To me, the key to understanding politics is to think of the sun priests of the Incas. The contract with the sun priests was that if you gave them generous sacrifices, they would give you a a bountiful harvest. If they broke their contract and there was no bountiful harvest, the people would kill the sun priests and get a new batch of sun priests who knew what the hell they were doing.
Assuming there continues to be no bountiful harvest, the GOP can get back into power simply by presenting a convincing case that they are the sun priests who can deliver. In other words, they need economic experts that can rout out the false priests such as Krugman, Summers and Orszag. Get Niall Ferguson from Harvard, Simon Johnson from MIT, and David Rosenberg, formerly of Merrill Lynch on board.
Do it Old School. Tell the voters that there can be no bountiful harvest until the false priests are [figuratively] killed. The people are already in a mood to kill the false priests; they just want to be convinced that new, replacement sun priests will be up to the job.
1. tie "health care reform" to a jobs program for incompetent NAMs (in code, of course)
2. prioritize closing the border--as if we were preparing for war (make it an economic emergency; don't mention HBD)
3. tie patriotism to self reliance, hard work, and small government
4. start addressing group differences; end affirmative action
5. tie diversity pimps like Sotomayor to anti-American worldview
That's a good place to start--all attainable goals.
Illegal immigration remains our country’s poisonous tree, the fruits of which are the ailments of our society. Our ever burgeoning costly health care system, our failing public schools, our overcrowded prisons and clogged court rooms are problems that can be attributed to the open border anarchy both parties either welcome or ignore.
Republicans could and should argue for stronger border control. If we had a sound immigration policy most of our other problems would take care of themselves; at the very least they would be easier to solve.
Last week Steve had a post about the enormous number of troops we have stationed at bases in Germany and Japan. Those soldiers could be used to secure our southern border.
Will a Republican candidate offer this solution? Lord, hear our prayer.
Abandon all futile hope of getting any statistically significant vote from nonwhites, feminists, and marginals and do whatever it takes to get 75% of the white vote.
But, you knew that.
*Come out against quotes.
*For tax and spending cuts.
*Militarizing the border.
*For deportation of all illegal aliens.
*English only.
*Privatizing education and medicine (take away the AMA and NEA monopolies)
*Abolish farm payments (and Ag dept)
*Drill for oil and gas.
*Reform immigration (fewer 3rd worlders)
They won't do any of this, of course.
1) Price controls on university tuition and on the various associated academic expenses like books, housing and lab fees. Existing student population should be allowed either student loan debt forgiveness or discharging their debts in bankruptcy.
2) Opposing immigration in all of its forms.
3) A stealth attack on the intellectual property rights of Hollywood, the music industry and the publishing industry. For example, peer2peer file sharing should be legalized.
4) End the Iraq and Afghani wars by collapsing the national security issue into the immigration issue.
5) End all off-shore outsourcing. It does not work and people are worried about their jobs.
6) Realize that white people are your constituency and that you should do what is in their best interest. At the same time, you should learn to hate your enemy as much as he hates you and craft policies to destroy the Dems.
7) Implement affordable family formation.
Even in the Age of Obama, there is still a large segment of the population that wants adult governance.
What the people running the Rotary Club like businessmens' association (no insult to the Rotary Club intended) don't understand is that the are engaged in a *war*, without physical weapons but with stakes as high as any war, the total control of society.
Whoever is going to try to stop the growth of the socialist has to be prepared to deal with intense vilification. Schwarzenegger's Year of Reform in California is an example.
The opposition should put out debaters to all the forums of government, administration, and debate- city council and water district meetings, but also blogs and message boards, just as the socialists do. They need to be opposed at every step.
People liked the Contract With America but the congressional Republicans didn't have the stones to force it through- they got rolled by Bill Clinton. The government shutdown marks the beginning of the decline of Reagan era conservatism into what we have now.
For those who mock the Republican Party- who else is going to do it? I don't think a third party is in the offing. Either people with enough backbone take control of the Republican Party or we will have only formal opposition.
Here's an idea - how about "run candidates in elections in 2010 and 2012?"
The electorate will be so fed up with the Democrats in a year and in 3 years time that they will vote for anyone that's opposing them.
Seriously - NO ONE gets reelected in a time of failing economy, foreign policy incoherence and (I believe) impending revelation of malfeasance and scandal.
What we are seeing in terms of the town halls, the 50% approval rating and the North Carolina poll showing significant minorities don't even trust Obama when he says he is an American citizen is the tip of a very large iceberg looming for the Dems in 2010.
The GOP doesn't have to do much. Obama's numbers will be in Bush territory soon if everything doesn't magically turn around, somehow.
It won't.
Chris in Texas
I don't know, it's pretty obvious to me that the two party system is oppressive to third parties, so we have to play the "party in the party" game. There is too much tension between Republicans proper and the Dominionist Christians. The Dominionists need to find their own party dedicated to conservative values. The rest of the party can make decisions based on liberty and practicality. In short give the hardcore Christians the heave-ho.
A while back, you wrote of a divide and conquer strategy. I wonder, has anyone thought of applying this to the Hispanic population? Activists love to talk about Latinos as a united group, but anyone with a basic knowledge of Latin America knows they are and will always be divided, by nationality, class, and race. It may be impossible to attract large numbers of African-Americans to the GOP, but I think otherwise with the Hispanic population. Think of Ben Vargas, the New Haven firefighter. You wrote that the GOP should be the party of Frank Ricci, why not Ben Vargas too? In other words, there exists a large, assimilating, upwardly mobile group of Hispanic origin people in this country who may be maleable on the immigration question, who really do want to be American. Just as you argued that Bush and Rove were unable to realize the racial dynamic of Texas did not apply to the country, perhaps the racial dynamic of California (your state) does not apply to the country.
When are you going to write that book?
Quit spending my money in such a way that Democrats look infinitely more prudent, ditch the jesus-freaks, quit the anti-gay crap, and forget about drugs or abortions or anything that doesn't affect anyone except those who choose them. I understand pure libertarianism can never work. I'm not an idealist. But if the GOP doesn't get off this thoughtless, born-again, authoritarian, and imperialistic idiocy, then I'll start advocating for the Democrats, as a significant number of thinking people have already done.
Run a high-profile libertarian figure, and make non-binding libertarian noises in the future. There's a good number of libs disaffected with politics in general, and if you can draw them into politics on your side, that will be a boost of a few percentage points. Corollary: make fewer God-noises. It's not like they'll vote Dem anyway.
steve on second thought forget the jeb bush thing.....and forget the hopelessly white and disturbingly religious mitt romney.......
the dual citizenship billionaires who run republican land will install the young non-white governor of louisiana at the top of the 2012 gop ticket.........and anyone who doesn't support him will be denounced as a racist.......
and like a good boy he will support open borders and off-shoring of manufacturing and banker bailouts and the reengineering of america as a non-white non-christian component of the north american union.......
and all of this will be done because that's how the top donors of the gop roll....it's what they do.....
The GOP can win by running a scare campaign designed to appeal to blacks and whites depicting a future in which Mexican social workers suck up all the tax money enforcing pedestrian helmet laws.
There is only one winning strategy for the GOP in both the short and long term: The GOP should explicitly appeal to White and Asian interests, which often coincide. Namely, no affirmative action and less immigration. Or, as you suggested before on your site, split the Democrats by posing a reasonable choice between AA or immigration, and make sure the White public hears about it loud and clear. All the while the GOP plan should be to take advantage of the Democrats' squabbling to get rid of both.
There really are so many messages along these lines that the GOP could use to shore up White support, even among White liberal women. Why is the Black-on-White rape (and Black-on-Asian rape?) rate so high? Why are Whites counted as Hispanics in hate crime stats? Take quotes from liberals of 30 or 40 years ago, like Pres. Johnson saying the Immigration Act wasn't going to overload the States with non-Europeans, or MLK's statement that he didn't want AA programs, or Cezar Chavez opposing illegal immigration. Use the Democrats' own words against them. The Dem's will become quickly confused because they are psychologically unprepared to debate such obvious statistics and well-reasoned arguments, beyond name-calling and finger-pointing that have worked so well in the past.
The GOP should then begin to point out wildly inaccurate predictions on how quickly Blacks could reach educational and economic parity with Whites after integration. Point out that immigrant groups from all over the world have fared well in the CA school system, with the only exception being Hispanics. Above all, point out all the good things that the country has tried to do for NAM's. No need for White guilt.
If the GOP was already on this racial track, it would be making hay over Obama's meddling in Gates' arrest.
Throughout it all, the GOP should do everything it cannot scare off wealthy and generous Jews with racist rhetoric.
The Republicans could easily destroy the Democrats by making immigration their central issue, but we all know the reason why that will not happen.
Moldbug is right. The Republicans can't possibly accomplish anything meaningful. Conservatives are the Washington Generals.
The rest of the party can make decisions based on liberty and practicality. In short give the hardcore Christians the heave-ho.
Yes, that's the way the Republicans can win! Kick all the Jesus freaks out of the Republican party!
Game's over for the DemosKrats when the Republicans dump the Xtians!
1. push for a balanced budget amendment to the constitution.
2. establish a core principal that government cannot interfere with the terms of contracts between sellers and buyers.
What can the GOP do? How about not sell itself out to corporate interests? How about representing the interests of voters rather than the interests of billionaires?
1. Crackdown on illegal immigration and severely curtail legal immigration. Yes, the media will demonize the GOP, but they do that anyway.
2. Return the party to its pre-WW2 belief in protectionism. Joel Kotkin recently wrote the country's essential economic problem was "persistent overconsumption amid underproduction". I'll emphasize the underproduction. I don't expect a return to the 50% tariffs of the old days. But if a more modest tariff gives the federal coffers a boost and helps out US manufacturers, I'm all for it. Guess I've been reading too much Pat Buchanan and Eamonn Fingleton.
3. To borrow from Henry George, either levy a federal land value tax or encourage states to pass them. Bring in revenue and discourage speculating in housing.
4. Have some sort of land lottery or land auction. The federal government owning 60-70-80 some percent of a state (like the example of Nevada) is ridiculous. Basically, follow Steve's suggestion in "The Dirt Gap" to settle more of the West.
5. Colonize space. So many metals and resources, so many people bottled up on Earth. (Yeah, I know. I'm a scifi geek)
6. Damn the greenies. Nuclear power!
-Vanilla Thunder
We need to stop the flow of and the indoctrination of socialist/commies to our/from within our country so:
1. Stop illegal immigration and reverse the immigration laws from the past 40 years.
2. Abolish the department of Education
3. Make Congress have to adopt any measure it decides to impose upon the people
4. Anything that can return to States power versus fed power.
5. Abolish the minimum wage.
6. Destroy the words racism and racist.
7. Take race off of the Census returns.
Maybe write about how the GOP of the South can advocate secession from the Union, for America is past the point where a true conservative can when the White House.
The GOP can not be reformed. A new party is needed. I imagine the party being an "America First" type party along the lines of what Pat Buchanan advocates (e.g., pro-white, no immigration, ending free trade, more states rights, ending all wars and having a very limited foreign policy, ending the Fed, etc.).
This can be achieved via a "Ross Perot Revolution" where a third party candidate wins the election or via a "Ron Paul Revolution" type deal where the GOP is taken over and dissolved to start a new party.
Anything else will just allow the current neo-cons to weasel their way into leadership again via their RINO candidates.
Well since my first post got censored, will you allow me to point out that in just a few short years, it will be MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for the GOP to win any national elections?
Of U.S. Children Under 5, Nearly Half Are Minorities
By D'Vera Cohn and Tara Bahrampour
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
washingtonpost.com
Whites will be minority group by 2042, Census predicts
By Kat Glass | McClatchy Newspapers
Thursday, August 14, 2008
mcclatchydc.com
...Non-Hispanic whites will drop below 50 percent of the population as early as 2042, according to U.S. Census Bureau projections to be released Thursday. That's about 10 years earlier than demographers previously had predicted, said Grayson Vincent, a demographer for the Census Bureau...
"It's a different kind of student body than we've known during the '50s and '60s and '70s, when a lot of our education policies were shaped," said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington research center.
"If we don't invest in educating and training African-American kids, immigrants and Latino kids, we won't have a middle class," said Mark Sawyer, the director of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Politics at the University of California at Los Angeles. "We'll have a very, very poor disposable class that's largely black or brown"...
It's already MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for the GOP to win state-wide elections in California:
Students by Ethnicity, State of California, 2007-08
ed-data.k12.ca.us
Hispanic: 48.7%
White: 28.5%
Asian: 8.2%
Pacific Islander: 0.6%
Filipino: 2.7%
Black: 7.4%
American Indian: 0.8%
Multiracial: 3%
The "GOP" - or anyone else trying to play the game of demos kratia while advocating classical notions of a free republic based upon the rule of law - can NEVER win when faced with those kinds of demographics.
NEVER.
As in not from now until the end of time.
NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER.
Will. Not. Happen.
PS: And if Komment Kontrol will be so kind as to allow this post, then can we get back to my original suggestion of secession?
Make Lew Rockwell's 30-day plan the party platform, and nominate Sarah Palin to tout it in 2012.
I'd also add, promote legislation to make immigration a matter for the States to regulate, like it was prior to an 1854 SCOTUS ruling.
The Republican party should just go away and die. If there's any hope for conservatism in America it will be in the form of a new party untainted by neo-conservatism, fundamentalist Christianity, Zionism, and HBD-denialism.
In other words, there exists a large, assimilating, upwardly mobile group of Hispanic origin people in this country who may be maleable on the immigration question, who really do want to be American.
Two words: Dream. On.
That "large... group" has to be 50% plus epsilon.
Will. Not. Happen.
NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER.
Chris in Texas-
The goal is not just to get nominal Republicans in office. We need Republicans who will:
A. Defeat immigration and the disintegration of the white majority, to keep the country from devolving into pure racial spoils politics.
B. Make America competitive with the world in industry again - vocational ed, deregulation, nuclear energy, dismantling the parasitic race and education industries, getting our debt/deficits under control...
C. Restore freedom of speech and freedom of association, simplify the tax code, reduce our foreign entanglements, and generally reduce the footprint of the federal government.
Just electing another batch of neocons isn't going to help anything. They want to turn this country into a third-world fascist hellhole just as much as the Dems.
Is it possible to get some real patriotic heavy-hitters into office? I'll have to think about that. But I couldn't care less about a Republican revolution if it just means a slightly longer road to serfdom.
"split the Democrats by posing a reasonable choice between AA or immigration"
Err... the Democrats will just choose "both", and the Republicans will be seen as opposing both. Politics would be pretty easy if you could pick your opponents' issues.
The GOP had its chance: Sarah Palin was an indicator yet the inner circle of the GOP and its sycophants mau mau-ed her: her sin was being outside the elite circle. The parties are the same: just different members of the ruling elites and their secret organizations.
No society has ever voted themselves back from the situation we are in. We are now an unlimited democracy. Anyone who gets into political power essentially has the majority of the economic output of the nation in their hands.
Sure, if those who have a monopoly on force take too much in too many ways we get California - a bankrupt public sector, but that is merely an inevitable end, there is much profitable looting to go on in the meantime. When I read that Arizona had NJ like income and sales taxes, I knew the end was neigh. Arizona?
For Repubs to run on limited government is like someone spending all their savings on buying a car and deciding never to drive it. The only reason to gain political power is to exercise it to reward your supporters and punish your opposition. Some one who runs implicitly or explicitly on the platform that they will not exercise their power to help their supporters will never win an election under unlimited democracy.
The press loves unshakeled democracy because the press has the largest bullhorn in the room and has undue influence in a vote. Now they are going to see what the ancient Greeks experienced time and time again. Mob rule.
Anonymous said: "A while back, you wrote of a divide and conquer strategy. I wonder, has anyone thought of applying this to the Hispanic population?"
How about applying this in general to different groups that vote for the Dems/voted for Obama?
Like how about trying to win back the White women voters who were wowed by Obama by dividing them off from the rest of the liberals.
Show how their interests -- specifically (very specifically) how their children's interests -- will not be served by the Dems. It will be the children of minorities/immigrants that will benefit most from the Dems.
If they don't turn and vote Republican, maybe at least it will start some in-fighting between White women voters vs. other Democrats.
After 2004, the Democrats were considered a moribund, and for good reason. In 2009, the Republicans are in a similar situation. The major turning point in the Bush Administration, when everything unraveled and it was no longer tenable to support Bush, was the Katrina disaster. Here's some news: Obama is making his own Katrinas with his stupid comments and his health care blitzkrieg. He's not even a year in and it already feels like his second term.
It's not a question of whether the pendulum will swing. It's very plausible that Republicans will gain a robust number of Congressional seats, though perhaps not a majority, and even win the White House. The only thing they have to do is point at Obama.
The question is how well they will govern, and it's quite simple how they can govern well: spend less than they make, don't enter stupid wars, and get popular support by cutting immigration. They have all of the right ideas, there are just too many idiots in office, because you'd have to be an idiot to want to be a politician with how hungry the news media is for a good scandal.
@ Anonymous:
"In short give the hardcore Christians the heave-ho."
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Those Christians that many demonize are the folks who work the phones, attend the fundraisers and raise the kids that will become your poster people for Affordable family formation (AFF). As Roger Stone once said, "You need the Christian Right on your bus, but don't let them drive it." By arguing for AFF, curbing illegal immigration and by lowering the size and scope of the federal government you appeal to all the poles in the big tent: libertarians, economic conservatives and the Christians. What led McCain to pick Sarah Palin? He had zero appeal to religious conservatives. When you read Nate Silver's stuff about how no one was working McCain's campaign centers for GOTV, it's clear that those folks (the backbone of the GOP) didn't believe in Johnny Mac (for good reason). And he lost.
GWB, for all his faults, could get out the conservative right vote. And that's why he won (barely) two elections.
In talking to local Republican party members they believe the party hierarchy is too entrenched to understand what those out doing the hard work are up to. Maybe the RNC and its organs need its own "throw the bums out" moment.
I suggest this presidential ticket: Ryan Seacrest and Paula Abdul
It may cost the Republicans their true conservative base, along with informed and educated voters on all sides, but with a campaign crafted around music, dancing, plus Twitter and Facebook networking, Republicans could capture the greatest prize in American politics, the stupid majority.
And best of all, we wouldn't have to suffer through anymore change.
I just blogged about how changing demographics will affect the two main parties in 2050. The main conclusions:
There will be a 59/41 Democratic advantage, with today's racial party affiliations and 2050's demographics.
This could be offset to parity with a 14 point swing towards the Republican Party by whites.
Just to let you know what we're up against.
Defunding the left would be a good thing for the GOP's long-term interests. Stop guaranteeing student loans (reducing college attendance), allow rampant music and movie piracy, get rid of public schools and replace them with vouchers. A lot of liberals who are currently paid to propagandize our youth would then be unemployed.
Oh...also changes in divorce law to make marriage a better deal for men.
I agree with Truth(er). Appealing to the white base, and expanding it, will do it for the GOP. Not just talking, but delivering. Some additional thoughts:
- On immigration, a little enforcement goes a long way. Target no the illegals themselves, but the businesses that hire them, do their banking and send their remittances. Not only will this handle illegal immigration, but it will put a nice dent in the Democrats' fundraising.
- Tax breaks for the middle class, especially loan forgiveness on graduate degrees and/or medical degrees and huge tax breaks for having kids. Win support among the educated and drive up the birthrate.
- Disband the empire. No bases in Europe or Asia, pull out of the Dar al Islam. Shuts up the war protesters, gives some moral high ground, and saves a lot of money and trouble.
- Protective tariffs. Save American jobs and ignore the free market neo-cons.
- Balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, including a mechanism for paying off the national debt. This will not only bolster the economy, but it will change the way Washington does business. They will actually have to find funding for projects by cutting it elsewhere in the budget.
http://vondottshammer.blogspot.com/
Debate is never going to work. You need to use populist rhetoric to undermine left-wing commercial interests.
Loon_Jobbie said...
umm...always do the exact opposite of what the MSM claims must be done to save the Republican Party.
As an independent, what the Republican party could do to reform or get my vote:
1) Either get rid of or greatly reduce the influence of the Christian fundamentalists on the Republican party. They need to be put in the back seat or even the trunk, and not let anywhere near the driver's seat ever again.
Their stance on abortion, stem cells, sex education, family planning and foreign policy greatly limits our ability to implement smart strategies to better deal with overpopulation, welfare reform, resource depletion, using science to develop better medicine, and reforming foreign policy.
2) Oppose immigration, especially illegal immigration. Fine employers who hire illegals and deport many of the illegals already here.
3) Strongly oppose affirmative action in all forms. The idea of trying to get banks to lend to those with no money is essentially a form of "affirmative action" home ownership, and should be ended. Restore regulations on risky investments.
4) End the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. No more pre-emptive wars. Start cutting military spending and closing down some unneeded bases around the world. We can't pull out over night, but we need to move in the right direction.
5) Throw overboard "conservatives" like Palin and her ilk. They are a large part of a greater Republican image problem.
6) Like Truth(er) said, attack the intellectual property rights of Hollywood, the music industry and the publishing industry. No more ridiculous $500,000 fines on otherwise law-abiding citizens for "illegally" downloading music.
7) Get rid of the anti-science wackos(closely related to my 1st recommendation).
8) More strongly attack the welfare state. Semi-privatizing social security is still a good idea, but the way Bush and company pushed it was a disaster from the start. Reforming welfare should mean doing whatever can be done to revive eugenics as a practical, humane practice of simply limiting the growth of those who are a net drain on society, of all races and classes. No illegal aliens should EVER be allowed to use welfare or food stamps. Ideally, the state governments should be funding their own welfare.
9) Incentives for those who use or develop alternative energy. A wise environmental policy, along with resource conservation(this should be linked with eugenics and overpopulation).
10) Legalize marijuana.
11) English-only education.
How about be conservative instead of neo(pseudo)conservative on issues like immigration, individual rights, small government, fiscal responsibility and self-destructive foreign adventurism.
Neocons are largely just status-seeking elite liberals. The neocon's penchant for militarily tilting with windmills in godforesaken hellholes is more destructive than what Obama does domestically. On nearly every big issue like the bailout, amnesty and massive entitlement growth there is little to no difference between Obama and Bush2.
Better to let the Dems have the Whitehouse and work for onservative opposition at the House level than have a Pres. McCain undermine any possible effective opposition to things like amnesty.
Some blogger, I forget who, wrote that republicans should take some lessons from the european parliament elections, where right wing parties surprised a lot of people by doing well, even in the middle of the economic mess. One reason the right did well in europe was because of immigration. He also said republicans should run against wall street, since so many democrats came from wall street or have ties there.
tie "health care reform" to a jobs program for incompetent NAMs (in code, of course)
Why does that need to be "in code" when it's already out there in broad daylight for all the world to see?
EXCLUSIVE: Panel sees race bias in health care bill
Jennifer Haberkorn
Originally published 04:45 a.m., August 11, 2009
Updated 01:30 p.m., August 11, 2009
washingtontimes.com
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights says some little-noticed provisions in the House health care bill are racially discriminatory, and it intends to ask President Obama and Congress to rewrite sections that factor in race when awarding billions in contracts, scholarships and grants.
The commission also fears the programs, which are designed to improve health care in underserved areas, will not be effective.
In a draft of a letter the commission approved Friday, the group raises constitutional questions about giving preferential treatment to minority students for scholarships, and about favoring medical schools and organizations that have a record of sending graduates to areas with inadequate health care services...
The draft letter also cites testimony from Dr. Amitabh Chandra of Harvard University who said the idea that expanding the number of minority physicians and providing "cultural competence training" will bridge the health status gap is "grounded in hope more than science," according to the draft language...
Reading lots of Mencius Moldbug has made me ever more pessimistic about electoral politices. Steve, have you read his stuff?
summary:
http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/
blog:
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/
"How about be conservative instead of neo(pseudo)conservative on issues like immigration
The neocons were actually split on immigration.
NRO was against the amnesty bill in 2006 and 2007, albeit weakly, while the Weekly Standard was generally for it.
In any event, the main forces behind amnesty were not the neocons. The main drivers for amnesty were country club Republican business interests, Bush's unexplainable adoration for the Mexican people, and Rove's attempt to "win the Hispanic vote" for the GOP.
Ross Perot lost to Bill Clinton. So that's not the model I'd look for.
"Low IQ" = not from an Ivy, which for most voters looking for indicators of "trust" i.e. the pol won't sell them out for elite moneyed interests (such as say, Romney who is one of them culturally and class-wise) is a plus not a minus. Obama is pretty dumb, at times, and Hillary even dumber.
I like Coldequation's view on defunding the Left. I would also encourage free piracy and downloading, and confiscatory taxation of foundations, particularly the largest endowed ones which are all predictably liberal. I'd go after Harvard, Yale, and the Ivies by making their degrees value-less, by allowing anyone with a "C" average in HS to attend, free of charge, by "nationalizing" them.
Basically the problem politically is that so much WEALTH has sloshed around the West making various middlemen like David Geffen, George Soros, Warren Buffett, Mark Cuban, and others fabulously wealthy and able to trump votes with dollars. This also leads to the assertion of what Kotkin calls in the New Geography Website the Liberal Gentry, i.e. coastal elites, trumping everyone else.
The solution is to destroy the wealth basis of the elites. No dollars, no dollars trumping votes.
Electorally speaking, Seniors (ObamaCare death boards, abolishing Medicare, Wait lists), White Women (wait lists for Breast Cancer screening and treatment, Affirmative Action Doctors), and White Union Workers (they lose their plans and get tossed into the public bin) need to be picked off one by one. White women don't for the most part "care about sons" (they wouldn't be single mothers in increasing numbers if they did) but DO care about their own health care, rationally. [I think White Women rationalize choices and feminist AA preferences and cannot confront being feeling driven, the effect on sons.]
What we are seeing now on ObamaCare is NOT GOP driven: it's grassroots, people angry, self-organizing, with almost no GOP input other than silent bystander.
The other task is to run on WAGE GROWTH, which appeals and creates turnout in the BASE. That means, no immigration, capital investments by Government, and LOTS AND LOTS of Military Spending.
A follow up:
As much as we can. Buy 500 or a thousand F-22's. Build another 12 Carriers and fleets. Replace the B-52 with a new, long range heavy bomber. And nuke up like crazy. With new warheads and twice our arsenal.
This is smart politics: you create instantly a mass of Defense Workers, and indirectly maybe pump up employment so that unemployment declines to perhaps 3%, and with immigration restrictions and sudden orders for everything from raw materials to finished goods, wages increase dramatically. This is how Reagan got re-elected, when it looked shaky in 1983, because the economy kick-started. True, Military spending is not a permanent solution but it gets industrial production out of the dumps.
Having a huge big military is a proven way to deter attack. We tried having a non-existent military in the 1930's and got Pearl Harbor as a result. If we'd had 15 Carrier groups steaming around the Pacific in 1940, Japan would have simply dropped plans to attack us. Given that Hot Air reports three Taliban attacks on Pakistan's nuclear weapons depots the ability to frighten down to the tribal level (where the Taliban/AQ operate) is critical, and takes both equipment and men.
The GOP needs a simple message: low taxes, high wages, NO immigration, HIGH defense spending (equals high wages) and deterring WMD attack by a big military able to smack a PEOPLE without reservation any where, any time, but otherwise leaving them alone.
This plays to historic strengths as the GOP = Party of Security, and as the world becomes more chaotic and unstable due to internal strife in important nations and global economic recession, that's a winning message. Not "let's run away -- we're afraid of them."
The key is military spending -- it's a dagger in the heart of SWPL because it takes trendoids and makes them into well paid engineers and such, who's prosperity depends on GOP control the way say, California Govt Unions depend on Dem control and spending.
"top guaranteeing student loans (reducing college attendance"
No...enforce price controls on university tuition for future students and debt forgiveness for the grads.
You can't stop a benefit like student loan guarantees, but you can reduce the total outlay.
It's interesting to see the enormous disconnect between the suggestions here and what would actually guarantee electoral (and more importantly fund raising) success for the GOP. Stopping illegal immigration is not on the agenda for either power, and won't be. Not a chance in hell. Sailer likes to point out the supposed paradox of the GOP importing people who will vote Democratic - but of course it's not a paradox at all because the corporate interests that fund the GOP want cheap obedient workers, and Mexicans are better than blacks or whites as far as most employers are concerned. Political parties are just labels to keep the masses stirred up and too busy to notice what's really going on.
Let the bashing of Christians begin...
"republicans should run against wall street, since so many democrats came from wall street or have ties there."
Bingo, the battle for big government is over, we lost. The question is, should government spending reinforce Affordable Family Formation or weaken it?
I think Mike Huckabee was on the right track, unfortunately for him the primaries came a year too early. Run against Wall Street--- and the bailouts, unlimited immigration, free trade and outsourcing that simply enrich investment bankers (and the Democratic National Committee). Obama hasn't hesitated to help out Wall Street every step of the way, so he's done half of the GOP's marketing if they'd only take the opening.
Dick Morris made a great point back in the day, when a political party actually succeeds in a long sought goal (I believe his example was the GOP winning the Cold War), that party is thrown off balance because it can't keep going back to the well to win votes.
The best thing that could happen for the Republican party is if liberals get their dream health care plan-- the Medicare For All proposal that Anthony Weiner and John Conyers are pushing. Besides being the most efficient plan administratively (Medicare has the staff, databases and payroll tax system already in place), it will suddenly rob the Democrats of their strongest issue. Since Obamacare mandates every American get health insurance whether they can afford it or not (billions in new insurance premiums under penalty of law), hang the insurance industry rent seeking on the Democrats.
Finally, the GOP should push Charles Murray's "In Our Hands" guaranteed income plan funded by eliminating entire government agencies and entitlement programs. Though Murray included universal health care in his regime.
Murray's Alaska-style annual payout ($10,000 per adult was his number) would increase the standard of living of middle class Americans at the same time as it surplused tens of thousands of government workers. Limiting it to US citizens with HS diplomas but no felony convictions would save money and make it more targeted to Americans who play by the rules.
Find a candidate who can state controversial truths or "hate facts" without sounding like a wierdo. A candidate needs to be able to deliver a line like Ronald Reagan's "They've bought into my philosophy, I haven't bought into theirs." Focus groups and Rovian kingmakers have their place if they can identify a candidate who sounds presidential and is at the same time someone you would like to have a beer with. I don't mean to ignore the issues everyone else is talking about, but Tom Tancredo and Ron Paul aren't the answer. Also, a candidate whose high school Spanish is good enough to read an ad for Univision explaining why uncontrolled immigration is bad for American citizens of Mexican descent would be a real asset, more for defusing liberal hostility than for actually getting many hispanic votes. And you could say things in Spanish that you couldn't say in English.
Many good points have been made here already, but I'd like to add these:
1) Organize like Obama's cronies (unions and ACORN) and be just as pushy. It's good to see people stand up in these town hall meetings.
2) Go after voter fraud in the cities really hard.
3) As mentioned above, have an implicitly (not explicitly) pro-white agenda. (e.g., close borders, end AA)
4) Expand acceptable discourse on race, which involves a greater media and entertainment presence. Under the rubric of this would be the following:
a) make people aware of the actual scope of AA and who benefits (i.e., many people who aren't socioeconomically deprived).
b) make people aware of the facts of HBD through surrogates. It's important that genetic studies go forward and that the results become widely known.
c) make white people aware of the true scope of NAM bad behavior.
d) Try to establish a cultural presence with an altenative, non-PC entertainment industry. We should try to make movies like the old days that glorify the achievements of Western Civilization (like the original 4 feathers, Zulu, the alamo (John Wayne version), etc.) and give an accurate portrayal of NAMs (i.e., they should be allowed to be portrayed as criminals and not just doctors, scientists and computer programmers). Leftist positions and dogma should be mocked for their non sequiturs.
One project that I think would be excellent would be to film George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman books sticking true to books, including their accurate depiction of non-whites (as well as whites) behaving badly and savagely in their self interests and thier rather un-PC language. They would be a good antidote to the PC portrayals of non-white (think Ridley Scott's preposterous Kingdom of Heaven) and help inure the white public to non-PC speech and topics. The recent advances in CGI a la Beowulf would make these films more filmable on a grand scale. It would also allow one to taylor the characters' appearances. For instance, filming the book "Flash for Freedom" dealing with the American slave trade would be a good antidote for the typical Hollywood portrayals of the topic and with CGI the whining, surly mullatto that Flashman is forced to escort North could be made to vaguely resemble Obama (both physically and, more important, in voice).
I'm looking for practical suggestions for what the GOP can do to revive itself over both short and long run timeframes (e.g., 2009-2010, 2009-2020, 2009-2050).
Why? Just let it die it's so corrupted at this point that it's not worth salvaging. Let a real conservative party that takes the interests of the people rise up in its ashes.
Also I'm getting really tired of you capitulists who want the GOP to turn into a pro-abortion/gay rights party. Your a bunch of liberals in sheeps clothing.
To help with the rhetoric:
The key constituency that Republicans need to get is: the American stakeholder.
The American Stakeholder has families who have been here for generations, has worked hard to build this country, and has expected to give it to their children and their grand-children as an inheritance. Most importantly, the American Stakeholder has no place to go if conditions in America worsen. They are stuck, and therefore have the most to lose if mismanagement destroys this country.
The various immigrants, foreign political tourists, subversives and collaborators all have one thing in common: they can leave. These parasites, whether sending remittances home or exploiting the social capital, all have the option of going back to Mexico or to China or to India or to Monaco (courtesy of the nearest Gulfstream G5 on standby.)
Where does the American Stakeholder go?
"actually represent the longterm economic interests of most Americans..."
Who exactly comprises "most Americans?"
"Start making plans for secession."
Who exactly is going to secede?
I am really disheartened by this thread. You people seriously think that conceding *gay marriage* it is a winning strategy? Let's not think about the right or wrong of it for a moment. Just consider the tactics that have been used to push the issue. You want to concede to people who are willing to play those kinds of games? People who are willing to destroy civil society for their own personal interests? Gay marriage should NEVER be conceded because its advocates are TERRORISTS. Again, this has nothing to do with the abstract morality of gay marriage. I'm Irish-American; I think the UK should get out of Ireland; that doesn't make the IRA not terrorists.
Abortion, exactly the same thing. Right or wrong aside, abortion advocates are liars and they have always been liars. They lied about support for abortion before legalization, they lied about the number of deaths from illegal abortions, they are lying today about covering up statutory rape. You can't build a good house out of this crappy wood.
A lot of people have suggested forgiving student loans.
Has anybody really suggested this? If it's a possibility I may not start paying mine back.
Riffing off of Affordable Family Formation:
Springboard what's left of "family values" rhetoric into concrete family policy.
There's no way a nation of single women voters and illegitimate children will back limited and wise government, so those habits must be undermined before they become even more permanent.
Likewise, a nation whose politics and culture are geared towards homosexual concerns is not long for this world. Some normalcy must be preserved, if restoration is to be possible.
Emphasize responsible pro-fatherhood policy and implicitly argue that every feminist/gay quota and issue takes away a job or a favorable policy from a husband who has a family to support. Take a look at the policies at http://profam.org
This would shore up GOP-leaning voters (white men and married women) and would only adversely affect the less responsible sectors of the non-white population, who don't vote GOP anyway. This approach could even help pick off a few non-mythical "family loving" minorities. Social dysfunction becomes more obvious in economic hard times.
Keep Sarah Palin in sight.
The top priority of GOP strategists should be to keep Palin out of sight.
Sarah Palin was an indicator yet the inner circle of the GOP and its sycophants mau mau-ed her: her sin was being outside the elite circle.
Her sin was being unable to hold an adult conversation. That's the first criterion of the Presidency.
The tendency of the GOP to put forth figureheads who are transparently ignorant (Reagan, George W Bush, Palin) is a symptom of liberal dominance in political mindshare. The Jewish liberal meme of "nasty WASP elites oppressing everyone else" (i.e. Caddyshack) has gained so much traction that the GOP is afraid to put out a knowledgeable well-spoken candidate, instead favoring folksy idiots. The GOP might be better served to put out a Mitt Romney-esque businessman, but he can't appear ruthless and he can't have Romney's phoniness.
Focus minority outreach on the black vote rather than the Hispanic vote. On immigration and same sex marriage, there is more synergy with the black vote than the Hispanic vote. With respect to abortion, if you show the mitigating affect of abortion on the black population, and then you present the pro abortion views of eugenicists, you can peel off 25% of the black vote. Doesn't sound like a lot, but that margin would make Illinois a red state. That's huge!
Stop being the political wing of the US Chamber of Commerce.
Fighting amnesty and Obamacare will probably be sufficient so long as the economy still sucks. Creating a unified front (apart from McCain, natch) against "immigration reform" would be a spectular boon. (And, needless to say, failing to do this eliminates any hope of victory a few years down the road.)
For 2012, give up on Romney. Too much of the base will never accept him as a Mormon, a northeasterner, a pretty boy and a waffler. There's no hope there.
The real danger is that the economy will still be crap in 2010, but that the media will have either conned the public into thinking that recovery is just around the corner, or that everything would be so much worse were it not for the glorious works of the ObamaNation. I'm not aware of any real way to counter this. They can point out all the past failures of massive stimulus spending, but those failures already existed the first time around and hardly anybody gave a damn, including many repubs.
Those calling for the expulsion of religious conservatives are insane. It's been said again and again, but it needs repeating: The GOP had an unpopular war, a collapsing economy, a candidate who was easily pegged as a clone of GW and an opposing candidate that the media loved and who made the public feel wonderful about themselves. That's what lost the election not abortion/gay marriage. That McCain got that much is amazing, and religious conservative are surely heavily responsible. Appealing to the social values of married church-going whites will work just fine so long as you don't botch every other part of your platform.
Sailer likes to point out the supposed paradox of the GOP importing people who will vote Democratic - but of course it's not a paradox at all because the corporate interests that fund the GOP want cheap obedient workers
I don't know if it's a paradox so much as a sign of the stupidity and short-sightedness of business leaders. As sure as the sun rise, the immigr4ants will make the US a bad place to do business.
Of course the actual individaul businessmen may think that they'll have made their stash by the time the roof caves in. But that just illustrates the most basic point which the right forgot in its embrace of libertarianism - businessmen can be counted on to destroy the free market system.
The GOP needs to become an avid champion of frugality, reform monetary policy, and urge Americans to take their collective medicine in times of future economic downturns so as to avert disastrous accumulating bubbles. In short, they must become the party that promotes privation.
whites have been drilled down so badly since the Civil Rights Act that they would vote for the GOP if they just got a tiny bit of any of the following:
- limiting immigration
- limiting AA
- little more job and healthcare security
- less foreign (Neocon) wars
In the short run the Republicans are likely to rebound as people start to blame Obama instead of Bush for their problems. Of course this depends on how the country does in the next few years which is largely out of the Republican's control. While waiting for the Democrats to foul up the Republicans need to appear to be a reasonable alternative.
This means coming up with some sort of practical governing agenda. Ranting about the evils of government and how it can't do anything right doesn't really encourage people to put you in charge. The Bush policy of populating government with incompetent partisan hacks and cronies didn't work out too well.
Apart from nuking up, the carrier fleet thing and invading Pak, testy made a lot of sense in his posts. What I particularly liked was taxing the foundations, taxing assholes like Soros (who operates in the US but is registered in Cayman and pays zero tax and maintains a low legal profile in the US), junking the Ivy leagues and making quality technical education free for everyone (which is the case in Germany where you can get a top notch technical education for 125EUR/Semester). Draining the elites financially is key. Funny thing about the names of the financial elite testy listed: would there be a commonality amongst them, other than the insane amount of money they control?
These reactions to Gatesgate and other Obamanese race politics reminds me of the early years of the battle for white rule in Southern Africa. Dan Roodt, an Afrikaner activist in South Africa, once said that the Afrikaner was ahead in the curve of white dispossession. You can add that the Rhodesians were even farther ahead. He was right. If whites in the US want to look in the crystal ball, all they need to do is look at the history of white dispossession in Rhodesia and South Africa.
As an exercise, translate the above paragraph into Obamaese, retaining both its meaning but also applying levels of plausible deniability.
To me, politics isn't about statistics or sacred documents or repeating the same old partisan positions. Politics is about people -- talking to people, understanding their concerns, helping them overcome their problems -- in a very personal way.
Most recent Obamaese translation of this message:
"I don't want the folks that created the mess -- I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them just to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess.
"I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking," Obama said.
The GOP would be completely crazy to tell the "Jesus freaks" to get lost. They make up a huge proportion of potential Republican voters. They may not vote Democrat - though they used to (Jimmy Carter '76?) - but they don't *have* to vote Republican.
Competing for SWPLers by pandering to the left-media is an idiot's game. If they're fully cultural-Marxist indoctrinated they'll vote Democrat. If not, then appeal to them on right-liberal principles like Equal Protection - no to Affirmative Action - and Reality-Based policies. Compared to here in the UK, even the right of the Democratic party is much less cultural Marxist dominated and much more classical-liberal.
noseworm:
"whites have been drilled down so badly since the Civil Rights Act that they would vote for the GOP if they just got a tiny bit of any of the following:
- limiting immigration
- limiting AA
- little more job and healthcare security
- less foreign (Neocon) wars"
That's right - like I said, it doesn't take much to get white votes, which are around 75% of votes.
Re the black vote - white interests often coincide with black interests, eg on limiting immigration. But blacks have shown no sign of voting their interests, at least above local level (locally they will vote black to keep the Hispanics out of office). There's a lot of racial animosity in the US, especially from blacks against whites, and Republicans are going to remain the 'white party' no matter how they try to pander, because Republican blacks get classed as race traitors and discounted.
Policies that favour working-class whites, especially males, will also favour some working male blacks, and this may give a bit more of the black vote. But the impact is marginal, as Sailer has demonstrated. Most black voters are women. Black women *really* do not like white men. I have some experience of UK politics and I can tell you that the one group the Tories *absolutely* cannot reach is black women - Muslim votes by contrast are much easier to get! And British black women seem to hate white men a lot less than American black women do. So, forget the black vote, it's not happening.
airtommy:
"The top priority of GOP strategists should be to keep Palin out of sight."
No - the visceral hatred she engenders in the Elites is taken as a personal insult by working and lower middle class whites. It gets them riled up, exactly what the GOP needs. Without Palin, Obama would have had the normal landslide victory you'd expect following on from the Bush administration's awesome incompetence, mendacity, and general failure. Her effect on the GOP base was electrifying and if McCain was not a big bag of crap, it would have actually made them competitive to win, an incredible occurrence.
The only reason to gain political power is to exercise it to reward your supporters and punish your opposition. Someone who runs implicitly or explicitly on the platform that they will not exercise their power to help their supporters will never win an election under unlimited democracy.
[Obama]Friends, you know, today my, and your, single great hope is change but, working together my greatest achievement will be to let change shine on a new generation, to turn the light on wherever the shadow of the future is dark. The opportunity is incredible, we stand holding a lantern into this bleak wilderness, one of our innumerable misunderstandings, and I hear these voices, whispers from the ghosts of our Founding Fathers, and they say something to me, and that is to betray our hope and our change is to fail at the very principles of our great democracy.[/Obama]
The single most useful and worthy thing that the GOP can do is to re-affirm its traditional commitment to apolitical science and progressive technology. The party of Lincoln, Hoover and Eisenhower was always a party of scientific progress. The party of GW Bush and Gingrich is embarrassment to the nation that first put a man on the moon.
The Republican War on Science is bad enough on its own demerits - on issues ranging from Global Warming, evolutionary biology and tobacco smoking. It leads to incredibly bad habits on policy, such as the rise of wishful thinking on major, empirically-grounded issues of national interest eg Iraq.
Its also crazy as it alienates the smartest people in society, namely scientists. No way can the Republicans hope to make progress in the long-term with that demographic off-side.
Ike's sci-tech advisor was John von Neumann. Enough said.
Cliff, the majority of Americans are against gay marriage.
Who cares about the GOP. They aren't going to save us. They can't save us. We need something else.
I would like to read the responses to that other question. The one you say is for another time.
Install policies that promote and reward thrift and savings, as opposed to the rampant consumerism and the Wall Street type banking sector dominance of the modern era.
This could include many things - immigration restriction, contracting the amount of debt in the economy etc.
If people really believe that living a certain kind of lifestyle gets rewarded in modern America, they can believe in America as a meritocracy again. Part of the problem is that we see too many people these days who are "rich" who we can't say really deserved it.
Am I the only one who thinks it's bizarre that the conservative establishment/media still talks about the Iraq war like most Americans support it?
America turned agaisnt that war shortly after the 2004 election. Pro-war snetiment then dropped like a stone according to polls. That's what caused them to lose the 2006 congressional elections and the presidential election more than anything. It seems that the permanent regime has manage to sidestep opposition to the war by running phony anti-war democrats like Obama.
"Cliff, the majority of Americans are against gay marriage."
This is probably true, but if their goal is to prevent gay marriage, the right is undermining itself by making it an issue. Most people probably didn't support the idea the first time they heard it, but the more people attack it, the more voters in the center will figure letting a small minority do something that doesn't directly affect them is better than letting the religious right tell people what to do.
I think it would be big boost for the party if the RNC called for public executions of the people responsible for lying the US into Iraq and the folks who engineered the housing bubble and banker bailout ... oh wait ... never mind.
Lose the religious right demo. God, I hate religion. Nothing like religiosity to divide up people. To quote Jim Gaffigan, "(Religion Zealot voice): See that group of people over there with almost identical beliefs as me? I want to kill them..."
"The Republican War on Science is bad enough on its own demerits - on issues ranging from Global Warming, evolutionary biology and tobacco smoking."
Are you insane? Leftists call evolutionary biology and its conclusions, at least when applied to humans, fascist.
Leftists only believe in evolution when it applies to grass and butterflies. Believing that it applies to humans is very, very right-wing. Go hang out at gnxp.com sometime.
The vilification and virtual death of anthropology and its replacement by pseudo-scientific PC crap of the Margaret Meade variety was a left-wing project. The idea that the left is more scientifically-minded than the right is false. It's a product of media brainwashing.
What sciences are more important than anthropology and human genetics? Well, the left is against these sciences. It substitutes them with unscientific crap.
"Obamaese" -- naah
suggestions:
"Obamish"
"Barackish"
"Obamics" (from Ebonics, but perhaps better used to describe BO's disastrous economic ideas)
"Obamanese"
1/ In the short term do nothing. since Obama's policies won't work.
2/ In the long term do everything you can (tax credits?) to make children more affordable for the groups that support you.
I'm absolutely amazed at the hostility here against Christians (I'm used to the attacks against Jews). Who's having the babies Conservatives need to even be around tomorrow, (never mind win elections)?
I estimated the Democrat/Republican split in 2050 given the Census Bureau racial predictions.
2050 Voting Demographics
This is a pretty easy question. Look at this post over at secular right: http://secularright.org/wordpress/?p=2270.
That post shows that there is sharp ideological polarization among elites, and weak ideological polarization among proles, and that there are 3X as many proles as elites.
So, there is nothing Repubs can do to get elite Democrat votes, cause Matt Yglesias is just not going to vote for Republicans no matter what. On the other hand, there is a huge pool of working class cultural conservatives who vote Dem on economic issues.
So, Republicans should move towards becoming pro minimum wage, anti immigration, anti free trade, pro welfare state. They should not drop God, guns, and gays. Not only would this improve their following among working class whites, but it would probably improve their standing among Hispanics as well, especially if they could find a way to use affirmative action as a wedge to exacerbate Hispanic-Black tension.
Following the advice of David Frum or Secular Right or some of the commenters above would be pure poison for Republicans --- it would lose them their base while gaining them nothing among the SWPL set.
Steve was not asking "How can Republicans make my commenters happier," he was asking how Republicans can improve their electoral prospects. It is actually amazing how poorly the commenters here distinguish between what they want and what would work. I, myself, am anti-minimum wage, anti-economic regulation, anti-welfare state, but those are the issues the Repubs need to soften on to improve their electoral prospects.
In power, they need to do the prosaic things that non-stupid political parties do: de-fund, harass, and otherwise hurt their opponents while funding and strengthening their supporters. Repubs held the House from 1994-2008. Did they defund NPR? Did they reduce funding to universities? Did they find a way to spew gvt money to conservative think tanks?
They did the opposite. Doubling funding of the NIH. They lined the pockets of Wall St, which is getting more SWPL and Dem friendly every year. They did fine sending money to defense contractors, but this is pretty much the only thing they did in their interests --- and even this they screwed up by doing the funding via starting unpopular wars. They accepted crude bribes from Indian tribes and etc instead of building party institutions . . .
They say you can't eliminate big government, well, how about making big government cannibalize itself instead? You know, make another big new government body, except this one's here to turn the rest into garage sales.
You could get the public behind this by giving them their taxes back in the form of cash (Jim Bowery's suggestion, if I'm not mistaken - I can't ever really figure out what he's talking about to any level of certainty).
~Svigor
(this is in addition to the obvious, like a freedom platform where we stop the government telling people with whom they must and must not associate)
"Truth(er) said...
"top guaranteeing student loans (reducing college attendance"
No...enforce price controls on university tuition for future students and debt forgiveness for the grads.
You can't stop a benefit like student loan guarantees, but you can reduce the total outlay."
I agree with your proposal for price controls for tuition, but not to reduce costs. Our goal should not be to make universities solvent. Our goal should be to make them insolvent, so that they are shuttered, and the professors turned out into the streets.
Immiserate the proffesoriate.
Whatever other policies we follow, the academic guild must be destroyed, so that they stop poisoning the minds of impressionable kids.
All these people who say that the "conservative" party (whatever party that may eventually prove to be) should stop opposing gay marriage - why should we listen to you? Conservatives already let a snake into their tent with the neocons - no need for more.
I would agree with you on the point of abortion however I don't think the GOP should embrace it, however they should stop talking about it. Does anyone really care anymore? It seems that the people who are availing themselves of abortions are mainly blacks and white feminists. Let them. It means fewer opponents in the future.
Another thing the Republicans would need to do, is to publicly renounce George W. Bush and his policies. We also need to renounce and shut up idiots like Sean Hannity. Conservatives shouldn't be supporting torture or pointless foreign adventures.
I also think there's nothing wrong with the GOP that won't also be wrong with its replacement.
America needs a long, open discussion on politics. In other words, Americans need to get their heads straightened out about a great many things (things the media's been lying to them about for decades).
Then, Americans need mechanisms to enact their will upon legislators. So the GOP or its replacement, makes no difference. Might as well keep the GOP, it's already in place and functioning.
Platforms, slogans, and politicians ain't gonna do it. We need a cultural counter-revolution, a long march through the institutions, a vast right-wing media, etc.
~Svigor
Jared Taylor has a clue as to what's needed; he named his magazine for it.
Anything short of an American Renaissance won't be enough.
~Svigor
Propose a change to the US constitution, so that the USA moves out of the two party system. Then I see Steve Sailer`s "The Party of the American Citizens" attaining 10 percent of the vote forcing the elites take peoples view on immigation seriously. That`s how it`s done in the Europe outside UK.
GOP would benefit because different parties would make more conservatives to vote and there could be a GOP lead coalition goverment.
Roissy is a latent republican voter. Roosh V is a lazy-SWPL but when faced with a choice about Hugo Chávez and X, he´ll vote for X because no matter what X is, it is still better than Hugo.
the sexual revolution as whole generates dozens of losers for each single winner in both genders. In the end, Whiskey is right, despite sounding lunatic many times.
the only way for the gop is to:
- put the Christian Right in the back seat
- appeal to the sexual losers (which tend to be racist and form the rank and file of the HBD movement). If all sexual losers start believing in HBD, it will become mainstream
- not all sexual losers will vote Republican (I.e. Black women), but sexual losers who are also fiscal losers will be the new backbone of the party
- fiscal losers should be gained back through small-government policies
These 'economic conservative/social centrist' weenies are a waste of space. Their 'economic conservative' principles get tanked at the drop of hat. Witness the fact that they generally vote Dem rather than GOP, despite the fact that the 'bible thumping' of the GOP is 99.9% noise while the Dems make it their business to issue debt to pay for everyone's abortion on the planet.
Get better candidates than McCain and GWBush. Seriously, these guys are Republicans?
I know Palin liked to dis 'elites'. That's fine. How about actually doing something for the little guy then? Wrapping yourself in the bible and hating gays and abortion doesn't count.
Damn. Rove really screwed things up.
Lucius Vorenus said...
Start making plans for secession.
This is of course the answer, but Steve won't go there. What neo-cons are to Israel, Steve is to California. Seriously, Steve, just give it up and move to Texas.
"...Maybe write about how the GOP of the South can advocate secession from the Union, for America is past the point where a true conservative can when the White House. ..."
I agree with this. Critical is to repeal the ability of the federal government to take citizens directly. Better to have the feds get their money from state governments.
Bill Clinton probably had the right degree of religiosity to be electable. I suspect he is really an agnostic but he was an active member of the baptist church and tried to reach out to the evangelicals. His stand on gay marriage was important in getting himself reelected. Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy were very low key about their religious beliefs. This blog probably has a disproportionate number of atheist readers such as myself, so take this with a grain of salt, but I really think Mike Huckabee would rub swing voters the wrong way, even though I sometimes like the guy.
It's seems to me that the basic problem is that we lack a critical mass of people in the US who understand how wealth is created and what limited government is and why it is desirable. I would like to see the party spend a lot of money on creative media to teach these principles to the American people. No one who understands either of them would vote for someone like Barak Obama.
(Cliff Arroyo)
"the majority of Americans are against gay marriage"
No shit, Sherlock. But it's a longterm looser as a major (or minor) party platform.
The GOP should just drop it and refuse to talk about it beyond meaningless drivel about how it should be decided at the state level and how people live is up to their personal conscience (the same with abortion).
Agressive stances on either issue drives away too many moderates to be worth the effort.
And, again, marriage is a really dumb place to draw the line and guarantees eventual loss on the issue. The real issue is same sex couples setting up housekeeping together. Once enough couples have done that then denying them legal recognition harms the institution of marriage more than letting them in would (by disconnecting longterm cohabitation from marriage).
I have no illusions that the GOP will follow through though. They've transparently done everything they could to _not_ overturn Roe v. Wade so as not to lose it as a rallying point for the evangelicals and by now they seem addicted to self-righteous failure.
Fielding a personable, genuinely likable candidate would help a lot.
"I don't want the white men that created the mess -- I don't want the white men who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want white men just to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess.
"I don't mind cleaning up after white men, but don't do a lot of talking," Obama said.
The only reason to gain political power is to exercise it to reward your supporters and punish your opposition. Someone who runs implicitly or explicitly on the platform that they will not exercise their power to help their supporters will never win an election under unlimited democracy.
My friends, the reason I am here today -- the only reason I am here today -- is to carry forward that grand and historic mission you have chosen me for: to take back the country for the people not the politicians; for the workers, not the big corporations; and for those who have been excluded, not the insiders. To those who have hoped for a change, to those who are with us, I say: your time has come. Truly it has been written that the last shall be first. To those who oppose us, who stand for the tired policies of the past, who would judge us, who would discriminate against us, I say: stand aside. Progress is a like a train: you can either get on board, or the train will run you down.
The president must be a leader. The president is truly the president of all the people. He is the president not only of those who voted for him, but those who voted against him. And in this great country, everyone deserves a fair hearing. Everyone has the right to speak. But in this world of inequality and unfairness, this country stands for something, something great, yet self-evident, "that all men are created equal". I cannot lie to you: I can no more say that I will not strive to forward the great cause of equality and than I can disown my own grandmother. And I will never fail to exercise my power to win that historic victory. If I would not do that, not only would I lose this election, I would not deserve to win it. That is what democracy means: rule of the people.
The Republicans need to ween themselves off of large corporate donors. That is the one thing that has kept them from leaping into the immigration debate.
If the Republicans would collect small donations the way the Democrats did and use the internet as a way of organizing small donors they would be freer to speak their minds.
(Cliff Arroyo)
My version of the quote in Obama speak:
"Some people might ask me why I wanted to be president in the first place and to be truthful I sometimes wonder that myself. But then I look at the state of this great nation, where so many good people, through no fault of their own live lives on the edge, the edge of poverty, the edge of crime, the edge of oppression. And I see many other people who through no virtue of their own live lives of privilege, the privilege of plenty, the privilege of peace and the privilege of security.
And I see others in the middle, confused about who to trust, afraid of their neighbors who might not look like them and unsure of a future where they seem destined to have less say in how they live their lives.
And then I see the office of the president of the United States and think that maybe that's the place to start, that's the place to help set things right, the place to start to bring justice to this entire nation.
And now that the good people in this country have supported me, chosen me and have called on me to lead them I will not let them down. I will not shirk my duty, I will do everything I can to even out the scales, share the rewards of bounty and the burdens of setting the past right."
(I can't stomache reading it closely enough so there may be some spelling and sentence errors, but you get the idea)
The Republicans should sell themselves as the Party of Competence. They should call for a Medical Congress to weigh all the options for a revamped medical system. Ask for the leading clinicians, statitisticians,and economists to confer on a non-political solution. Get the leading clinics - Mayo, Cleveland, UT, Chicago, etc to nominate candidates.It is obvious the Democrats are hacks.
"give up on the fag bashing.
back off on abortion."
Fag bashing? - strawman
abortion? - yeah, I would rather pay thousands of dollars a year in higher taxes so I can sleep at night knowing teens in Mississippi won't have to tell mom they are having an abortion.
When people's minds have turned to such mush, social decline can't be far behind.
"Cliff, the majority of Americans are against gay marriage."
This is probably true, but if their goal is to prevent gay marriage, the right is undermining itself by making it an issue. Most people probably didn't support the idea the first time they heard it, but the more people attack it, the more voters in the center will figure letting a small minority do something that doesn't directly affect them is better than letting the religious right tell people what to do."
Letting stupid people do what they want is in itself stupid and destructive. Look at the last election. We let stupid people vote.
The original constitution limited voting rights to men, 21 and over, who were property owners. Do you want to wager the average intelligence of a male property owner is higher than those who are not property owners?
Universal suffrage is stupid because it lets stupid people vote.
Most of these suggestions are extremely partisan. Politics is not a football match. Politics involves exchange of ideas, elites, stakeholders etc.
Muslim immigration gave immigration a really bad name in Europe.
Honor killings, crime, subjugation of women, terrorism, antisemitism, aggressive demands, ...
Muslims manage to pretty much piss everybody off. Feminists, Gays, people concerned about crime or immigration in general, Jews, high culture elitists, .......
It is now acceptable to discuss negative implications of immigration in polite society. Some state senator, congressman or mayor in a part of the USA that is affected by Muslim immigration could make this his issue.
The solutions to stop Muslim immigration are largely the kind to reduce immigration in general. (anchor baby issue, family reunion, ...)
Health care reform could be a blessing in disguise. What if it becomes a financial disaster and the SWPL crowd realizes that the USA can't become Sweden because of immigrants?. If you've got a welfare state, you need to care about who can join the club.
-
Anonymous Reader from Austria
Politics involves exchange of ideas
You're insane.
Politics is demographics.
Nothing more, nothing less.
"Universal suffrage is stupid because it lets stupid people vote."
Universal suffrage is irresponsible because it lets irresponsible people vote (who also, only by coincidence, of course, happen to be stupid.)
Somewhat OT for this thread, but
here's an idea I've seen:
Every American citizen who's over 21 and breathing gets ONE vote.
BUT, every MARRIED man who supports his family and who is a net-taxpayer gets an EXTRA vote. Call it a reward to men who do the right thing. Call it an enticement for parents to stay together so the kids can grow up with their moms AND their dads. Call it the family vote. Market it as "for the good of the children."
If he's a net taxpayer, he won't be voting for ruinous gov't giveaways to the unproductive. If he's married, it'll encourage couples to marry. If he's with the kids, it'll help kids grow up happy.
Who won't like this plan? Feminists. Unproductives looking for a handout. Single moms.
Who WILL like this? The same demographic that likes affordable family formation and votes Republican.
2009 - 2050?
The GOP is screwed, but then so is the whole country.
Prediction: The GOP will continue to nominate candidates, at least at the national level, who hold the same attitudes toward immigration as McCain and Bush. Since that will move the party further to the left, the Democrats will themselves move even further left since the two can't occupy the same ideological real estate. So we'll have a religious/socialist party (the GOP) and a secular/atheist neo-communist party, the Democrats.
There will probably still be a sizeable number of conservatives for quite some time, but whether the GOP can count on them is questionable. I see a 3rd party on the right eventually forming, maybe even portending the breakup, or at least soft partitioning of the country into semi-autonomous regions.
virtually all of the above comments focus on insidery baseball stuff that comes off in equal parts as bitter and cynical. us-vs-them demographics talk that runs counter to basic american assumptions about getting a fair shake. libertarians versus christians-- a non-starter. red vs blue states-- giving up on half the country-- really? ignoring the very real appeal and authenticity that sarah palin represents. things like that.
i'm struck by amity schlae's take in her Forgotten Man book-- that the ideological tide had turned when in 38 Wilkie stepped up at a time when roosevelt's identity strategy was beginning to predictably turn back on itself. if not for the war...
i'd look for people with ideas who can communicate. huckabee seems reasonable. so does newt. maybe palin. contract 2.0 is a good idea. concentrate on the economic principles of free enterprise and the rule of law (yes this includes LEGAL immigration defense/reform), which is all 90% of us care about anyway. the rest is nonsense we only can afford to care about in the good times.
but if the great american people don't sense positivity and inclusiveness, it won't matter how much you triangulate and gerrymand it.
this all said as a dispirited x gen Reagan Youth wasp who feels like he got royally pwned the last ten years by BOTH parties
The GOP or any conservative party will never get a substantial amount of the vote from any group that is entitled to affirmative action and is a net benificiary of such. Simply put, they're bought and paid for, and you can't overbid the democrats, don't even try. Most of your votes are going to therefore have to come from Whites and minorities that don't get affirmative action. Ultimately, you're going to have to make an argument like this:
1) All other groups play identity politics and vote for their group interest
2) If you don't do so also, you're screwed
3) If you can't stop the other groups from bloc voting, you must do so also
4) We will promote your group interest
5) The most urgent of all group interests is the maintenance of its majority status (to Whites)
If you're not in the majority group, Whites are the best majority group to live in the tents of (to minorities that don't get affirmative action..e.g. Indians and most Asians)
6) We must ask of any political proposal---is it good for our group? If so, we should fight for it, if not, we should vehemently oppose it.
7) To hell with being perceived as 'nice' or 'respectable'. You're going to be called the worst sorts of names regardless of what you do, so go for the jugular.
8) To hell with the unwritten rules of political engagement. A law means what a majority of the judges say it means...an impeachable offense is what the requisite quorum says it is. When you have the ability, smash your foes.
Nearly all the bad ideas on this thread have one thing in common: they ignore the existence of the female half of the population. You'd have an easier time repealing female suffrage than running the GOP without the Christian right. All of you internet tough guys whinging about science and fagbashing and abortion - what political volunteering have you done in your life? How much money do you donate? Now how much brute work and dollars do you think comes from married Christians? At least twice as much as comes from you, because the women are working and donating as you, but I have a hunch it's a lot more than twice as much. A LOT more.
The majority of Americans find homosexuality distasteful despite countless attempts by hollyweird libs to normalize homosexuality. Republicans are right to oppose attempts to normalize depravity.
"I agree with your proposal for price controls for tuition, but not to reduce costs. Our goal should not be to make universities solvent. Our goal should be to make them insolvent, so that they are shuttered, and the professors turned out into the streets."
Yes, the idea is to defund the universities. Yet, you cannot come out and say that. You have to say that you want to make education affordable for everyone and that you find it unconscionable how universities can charge so much money and essentially throw students into debt bondage.
Likewise with peer2peer legalization. Make a big stink about privacy, how it is unconscionable that big companies can peer into people's computers to see if they possess something illegal or can monitor their traffic. We don't allow cyberstalking or breaking into people's homes to see if they are doing something wrong.
Here's a woman's issue that is tailormade for the GOP:
None of the national feminist organizations will touch the c-section rate or the constant battle on the part of the medical profession to criminalize homebirth. A lot of you just stopped reading right there because it's chick stuff and it bores you, but *women are half the population.* And half that population faces a medical establishment that likes to tell us what to do when we're pregnant, up to and including pushing us into unnecessary abdominal surgery.
There is organized birth activism in the US that is nonpartisan but it doesn't have to be. I know a lot of true blue Democrat voters who were disgusted at the treatment of Sarah Palin's reproductive decisions. In particular, the GOP missed a huge opportunity when they didn't go after people criticizing her for flying with an amniotic fluid leak. This is a HUGE wedge into the Democratic party's apparent lockhold on socially liberal white women - the fact that "reproductive choice" apparently means the choice to have an abortion ONLY, not the choice to manage your own care when pregnant.
It stuns me, truly, that nobody is picking up on the simmering rage among women who feel that the feminist establishment they supported all their lives has totally abandoned them on this issue. If the GOP runs Sarah Palin in 2012 and doesn't push real reproductive choice as hard as possible they deserve to lose for being stupid.
Anyone who thinks that ditching the abortion and family values stuff is a lifesaver for the GOP forgot that Steve isn't asking what the GOP can do to make it more like you. He's asking what the GOP can do to win more elections.
Turns out that all those white affordable-family-formation types tend to be pretty conservative on social issues. Sorry, but that's just how it is. Gay marriage opposition typically polls *better* than the GOP does. And does better at the polls too. And anyone who thinks they are in favor of being "left alone" but who favors a Supreme Court barking orders on social policy is talking out his arse.
Very interesting article on health care plans.
http://johndenugent.com/blog/2009/08/12/forget-canadian-and-british-health-care-the-franco-german-system-works/
Make sure Atheists (just like neo-cons) get nowhere near the levers of power. Just go back to the Democratic party where you belong or your mother's basement.
If the Republicans would collect small donations the way the Democrats did and use the internet as a way of organizing small donors they would be freer to speak their minds.
Traditionally the Republicans have gotten more of their money in small donations than the Dems.
Offer the middleclass the biggest boon possible: screw the poor, the harder the better.
Every single social program should be designed to help the poor as little as possible and the middle 70 percent as much as possible.
Here's an example: nationalize primary education. At the end of 5th grade test every student using an nationwide SAT-type test, and then jettison the bottom 15 percent. This every two years and at the end of the 11th grade you'll have about 52 percent. Use 12th grade as college prep and spend the money saved on all the kids kicked out of school on the remaining 52 percent.
That is how you screw the poor, as hard as possible, to the benefit of the middle class.
Class warfare!!!
Against the poor.
Okay, look, I'm not as angry now as I was earlier in the day.
But, for the record, may I at least be allowed to point out that global temperatures peaked way back in 1998 [eleven years ago], that the sun has just about quit making sunspots in the last year, and that the earth is now experiencing the most rapid cooling of our lifetimes?
If so, then please offer my gratitude to Komment Kontrol.
Thanks.
Find the next Reagan and ride him 'til he drops. i.e. the GOP needs a leader who can communicate true conservatism.
Defeat gay marriage at the ballot box and abortion at the supreme court. No one talks about these 2 issues but their supporters and running dogs. So shut up about it already.
Bill:
"
Following the advice of David Frum or Secular Right or some of the commenters above would be pure poison for Republicans --- it would lose them their base while gaining them nothing among the SWPL set.
Steve was not asking "How can Republicans make my commenters happier," he was asking how Republicans can improve their electoral prospects. It is actually amazing how poorly the commenters here distinguish between what they want and what would work..."
Excellently put.
I think the comment above about criminalisation of home births and the huge Caesearean rate may be onto something. But how to turn this into a vote-winning issue?
Targetting Democrat-supporting media such as Hollywood & the music industry through IP law reform sounds a good idea, but they also send a lot of money to Republicans. Who benefits from legal filesharing? Mostly young people. Would this get them voting Republican? I think it's doubtful.
One thing Republicans should look at is ways to reduce heavy cultural Marxist indoctrination at University. My wife said about my brother in law that he left high school with an empty head, and at a relatively conservative US State University they filled his head with c-M gibberish, leftist conspiracy theories and such. The 'liberal education' approach of US Universities seems to facilitate this, everyone gets exposed to Marxist Humanities professors. Making it possible to avoid those guys would pay long-term dividends.
All Pat Buchanan all the time. No immigration of any kind. No family reunification. No Somali asylum. No H-1b. No Agjobs. No student visas except 1 for 1 one year exchanges from Oxford and Cambridge or other real schools. Send the illegals home. Worker and student id.
Stop affirmative action, public housing, end the unCivil rights laws at every level, and have the Congress apologize to white America for ethnic and cultural cleansing.
The GOP needs to not only start talking about race but they need to start demanding that the Government begin keeping records of ways that whites are discriminated against. To use Steve's guns of singapore analogy, the GOP needs to start being able to claim that they tax system is racist, that black crime is racist, and that illegal immigration is racist.
I don't know if anybody else noticed but the Democrats really jumped recently when Obama was labled a Nazi. The reason is simple. A) It used the left's favorite weapon to attack and one which they don't really have a defence against either B) It allowed whites to discuss race which breaks the left's nuclear monopoly.
The key is for whites to become victims and use satire, something the left does everyday.
Emphasis (and act on) the following three principles: (1)fiscal responsibility, (2) fiscal responsibility, and (3)fiscal responsibility.
"Right or wrong aside, abortion advocates are liars and they have always been liars. They lied about support for abortion before legalization, they lied about the number of deaths from illegal abortions, they are lying today about covering up statutory rape.:
Newsflash: the advocates of anti-abortion laws also lie bigtime.
My 85 year old friend knows personally of botched-abortion deaths, though I couldn't tell you if they represented a higher percentage than the "advocates" stated.
Abortion will never go away. 20% of all pregnancies were aborted in the LATE 19th CENTURY. One Italian I know said that when the no-abortion laws were struck down in Italy, you could hear the din of women in the streets banging on trash cans in sheer joy. I guess that's one way of showing how you feel. The Irish have been crossing to England for decades to have their abortions. Poet Brendan Behan once threw a party for a friend of his who had just had one. I don't get the "party" aspect of that, but probably it had something to do with the terrors of illegal abortion and the stigma of illegitamacy in Ireland at that time, though I think it mostly about freedom.
That goes to show what people are willing to go through.
If you want to keep abortion political (it shouldn't be),then advocate for peer pressure against pregnancy, and for birth control among teens from the moment of puberty. Concentrate on the low-IQs, because they're the ones most likely to be affected. They do this in Europe and other civilized places and it works.
Traditionally the Republicans have gotten more of their money in small donations than the Dems.
That's the impression I had as well. Didn't GW get tons of money from mom and pop?
~Svigor
The RNC should promote a single plank platform:
Instead of all these transfer programs, tax credits, corporate welfare programs, just send each adult citizen a monthly check -- everybody gets the same amount -- and let us take care of each other in the way we see fit.
This would destroy the Democratic party's political infrastructure after sweeping all contested seats for the Republicans in the mid-term elections.
Eugenia: They do this in Europe and other civilized places and it works.
Damn straight!
1.30 TFR - no society in recorded history has ever recovered from it.
ALLAHU AKBAR!!!
Electoral tips from iSteve readers? What's next, dating tips from Mensa?
20% of all pregnancies were aborted in the LATE 19th CENTURY.... Irish.... English... blah blah blah...
Hmm, do all those people have something in common?
Oh yeah, they won't exist in a century or two. Italian will be a dead language in 200 years!
Anyway, you moron, saying that abortion won't ever go away because of abortion rates in the 19th century is like saying we need to put up with horseshit in the streets because people did in 1890. We have really good birth control now, and we understand the human menstrual cycle. All the people in the 19th century had were lousy barrier methods and they had no clue at all that women aren't always fertile.
"None of the national feminist organizations will touch the c-section rate or the constant battle on the part of the medical profession to criminalize homebirth. A lot of you just stopped reading right there because it's chick stuff and it bores you, but *women are half the population.* And half that population faces a medical establishment that likes to tell us what to do when we're pregnant, up to and including pushing us into unnecessary abdominal surgery.
There is organized birth activism in the US that is nonpartisan but it doesn't have to be. I know a lot of true blue Democrat voters who were disgusted at the treatment of Sarah Palin's reproductive decisions. In particular, the GOP missed a huge opportunity when they didn't go after people criticizing her for flying with an amniotic fluid leak. This is a HUGE wedge into the Democratic party's apparent lockhold on socially liberal white women - the fact that "reproductive choice" apparently means the choice to have an abortion ONLY, not the choice to manage your own care when pregnant.
It stuns me, truly, that nobody is picking up on the simmering rage among women who feel that the feminist establishment they supported all their lives has totally abandoned them on this issue. If the GOP runs Sarah Palin in 2012 and doesn't push real reproductive choice as hard as possible they deserve to lose for being stupid"
Anonymous, whoever you may be:
I'm skeptical of the running Sarah Palin part, but as a single guy I was wholly ignorant of the c-section and homebirthing issues you've mentioned. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
-Vanilla Thunder
If the Republican Party got rid of the Christian Right, that would be the end of the Republican party, as the Christian Right is the last remaining group that actually votes Republican. The new Christian third party that arose would soon become the second party and the Republicans would dwindle.
Basic pre-1960s (at the latest; going back a few more decades might be better) morality should be the starting point for any conservative movement or consevative party worthy of the name; correct views on economics, foreign policy, etc. are extremely important but are the edifice rather than foundation. Many of you have it backwards.
And technology is not the answer to everything. I haven't read Flash for Freedom, therefore I don't know whether it would make a good movie or not, but if it features a character played by an actor CGI-altered to look like Obama, it will be stupid regardless of whether the script, acting, etc. are any good.
oh wow this is eye opening...lol at all the nerds here who think the secret to GOP resurgence is dumping every position that distinguishes them from Democrats
I would actually prefer the GOP take a stab at defending conservative and traditional values rather than chase the SWPL bus (which they can never do) by courting the mentally ill (homosexuals) and the mentally incompetent (internet libertarians--guys, why are you so worried about abortion when you will never get laid)
joining the "heather has two mommies (and they should be able to marry YOU BIGOTS)" chorus will be the fastest way to burn this house down, though...I'm all for it, the GOP is filled with dead wood and could use a cleansing bonfire
Udolpho -
Is that really you? What happened to your blog? It was utterly brilliant. I'd kill a man for some new posts. For Christ's sake, Whit Stillman's new flick will come out before your next blog post.
If you're going to comment here, don't taunt us by using your abandoned blog's name as a pseudonym. Just join the fray as another anonymous. Udolpho is as Udolpho does.
As an independent, what the Republican party could do to reform or get my vote:
1) Either get rid of or greatly reduce the influence of the Christian fundamentalists on the Republican party. They need to be put in the back seat or even the trunk, and not let anywhere near the driver's seat ever again.
What is the source of your bigoted attitude towards Christians?
And a follow on question - why do you imagine that they posses great influence in the Republican Party?
The Republican War on Science is bad enough on its own demerits
There is no "Republican War on Science", you clown. And if you want people to regard you as intelligent, which I suspect you do, don't cite Wikipedia as your source of information.
The real issue is same sex couples setting up housekeeping together. Once enough couples have done that then denying them legal recognition harms the institution of marriage more than letting them in would (by disconnecting longterm cohabitation from marriage).
I can safely assure you that same sex couples are not ever going to engage in longterm cohabitation in any serious numbers.
That detail aside, cohabitation and marriage two radically different things, which do not impinge on one another.
The party of GW Bush and Gingrich is embarrassment to the nation that first put a man on the moon.
You pitiful buffoon, Bush and Gingrich were much greater supporters of space exploration than any of the modern day Democrats.
Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy were very low key about their religious beliefs.
Ronlad Reagan invoked God more often than George W Bush did.
"There is no second voice in the arena. No one seriously competes with the media on this. What if somebody did?"
He would be instantly destroyed by the powers that be, by any means necessary. The first attack would be: "You are antisemitic!" - repeatedly loudly one million times from every "first voice" medium. The "second voice" medium would reply: "No, we aren't! That's absurd!" - and, to prove its good intentions, would hire some neoconservatives, and maybe invite representatives of the ADL to join the board. Within a year it would be a Fox clone. And this is the best outcome, not the worst.
"Give up on the fag bashing."
So opposition to the radical homosexualist agenda is "fag bashing." Sounds like special pleading.
Homosexuality used to be massively unpopular. Has anything changed? Are those changing it Republicans?
Sure, accept the disintegration of our society. No problem. But DON'T increase taxes!! (except in case of emergency, such as war, recession, increased homelessness, necessary investment in high technology, the construction of a Harvey Milk memorial center, etc., etc....)
Have the government fund a very large percentage of the tuition of AMERICAN university students who study engineering and science and can maintain at least a B average.
I notice a lot of knickers getting knotted at the thought of ditching fundie xtians as well as denunciations of "atheists". Those fundie xtians have sure been great at helping promote public conciousness of hbd. Oh, wait they're creationists..... Ok, so they been enabling leftists on that particular front, but when it comes to foreign policy they've been staunchly conservative disfavouring wars fought at the behest of foreign interests as well as disdaining most inverventionism. Oh wait, now that I think about it, they're mostly pro-war. The fact is, Christians of various stripes have been driving politics in america in a leftwards direction. They're not the only ones of course. Maybe its true of "atheists" too, but for those of us who don't believe in any of the Abrahamic faiths, its much more difficult for us to present our values as having holy backing. I can't just put on some dog collar and announce that God (however you define it) wants whatever I want. Martin Luther King wasn't "Reverend" Martin Luther King for no reason. Those Catholic priests telling us we must "welcome" every refugee have got their precious bible to quote. I haven't got that. Why don't you Christians reign in your co-religionists before denouncing non-Christians and atheists?
The Republican Party needs to get back to being a Nationalist party instead of the party of Pro-Israel Evangelicalism, Eastern Establishment Globalism, and Straussian Neo-Conservatism. Free trade, out sourcing, and open borders are the reason this recession has and will drag on so long. The low skilled jobs have been wage busted so that illegals are the only one's willing to take them and the semi-skilled, good paying manufacturing jobs are mostly gone, and according to Obama during his speech at the Getty Center in 2008 they are "jobs that are not coming back". Let's not forget about insourcing with all the visa programs importing workers to depress professional wages.
The social issues will work themselves out, but I see nothing wrong with righting the wrong brought upon by Roe Vs. Wade. Even if it does not get overturned, it would be an opportunity to use current medical technology to show how well developed an otherwise easily abortable child really is. At least lets have it brought before the Supreme Court again if for no other reason than to replace the shoddy case law that it was established with. The basis for civilization for marriage is a man and a woman, and there is no need to change our stance on that. There are not enough gays willing to cross party line to make that issue worth ceding. Consensus nationally is against gay marriage.
Going Conservative Lite will only encourage more bloodletting. McCain lost because the conservatives wouldn't waste their vote on Juan McAmnesty, not only because of Obama's popularity.
The fact is, Christians of various stripes have been driving politics in america in a leftwards direction. They're not the only ones of course. Maybe its true of "atheists" too
Maybe? Maybe?
For a guy who started out so certain of his "facts", you got awfully uncertain very quickly.
James Kabala said:
“And technology is not the answer to everything. I haven't read Flash for Freedom, therefore I don't know whether it would make a good movie or not, but if it features a character played by an actor CGI-altered to look like Obama, it will be stupid regardless of whether the script, acting, etc. are any good.”
James, condemning anything without reading it is stupid (kind of like Bubba denouncing the Bell Curve and at the same press conference saying that he hadn’t read it).
Here’s a summary of “Flash for Freedom” on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_for_Freedom!
Here are two reviews/descriptions from Amazon:
Review:
'His best yet' Auberon Waugh
A portion of Flashman's followers, who have tracked the peregrinations of that Victorian rotter through European-based adventures in survival, may find this excursion on the American slavery scene a bit too strong. If there's anything that bothers Flashman about slavery it's the smell and occasional gore, to which he's introduced after being shanghaied [by his wealthy Scottish industrialist father-in-law to get him out of sight after being (falsely for a change) accused of cheating at cards with Disraeli and Lord Bentinck] aboard a slave ship captained by a piratical whip-wielding former [Oxford] don given to Latin homilies. After a trip to Africa to pick up cargo, Flashman lands in America, shifts identity, gets involved [actually is impressed into service by] with starchy Abolitionists [under the false assumption that he’s a Royal Navy secret agent working against the slave trade], finally escapes with a female slave (there's a chase across the ice before he has a chance to desert her) and is almost netted by a government inquiry. Abraham Lincoln (who recognizes another "humbug "when he sees one), appears twice as Flashman's savior, scum on the groundswell of history. Another bawdy progress with much jolly "rogering" (the sex euphemisms have a period charm) and very black humor handle with care. (Kirkus Reviews)
Product Description:
A game of cards leads Flashman from the jungle death-house of Dahomey to the slave state of Mississippi as he dabbles in the slave trade in Volume II of the Flashman Papers When Flashman was inveigled into a game of pontoon with Disraeli and Lord George Bentinck, he was making an unconscious choice about his own future -- would it lie in the House of Commons or the West African slave trade? Was there, for that matter, very much difference? Once again Flashman's charm, cowardice, treachery, lechery and fleetness of foot see the lovable rogue triumph by the skin of his chattering teeth.
The “Obama-like” character, George Randolph, does not play a major role in the book. While trying to escape custody of the US government after being arrested while crewing aboard a slave ship, Flashman falls into the hands of abolitionists who mistakenly believe that he’s a Royal Navy secret agent working against the slave trade and is sympathetic to their goals. They force him into escorting Randolph, described as a haughty and insufferable mulatto, via the underground railroad. The abolitionist leader, Crixus, makes reference to how intelligent Randolph is for a negro and then adds that he has mostly white ancestry (portraying the hypocrisy of the abolitionists (allegory for modern white liberals) who view blacks as their little pets). On the course of their journey together, Randolph is extremely unpleasant and uppity. When reading the book, I couldn’t help having a vision of the character as Obama, exuding the disdain of ‘the self-styled negro intellectual.’ Flashman eventually ditches Randolph to save his own skin when the latter is recognized by his former master on board a Mississippi steamer.
Flashman cont'd:
Having an Obama-like Randolph character would be a good jab at Obama, but the real importance of the book is its honest portrayal of the slave trade, including the sale of blacks by other blacks (in this case, King Gezo of Dahomey), instead of whitewashed portrayal as in, say, Roots. The book indulges in politically incorrect stereotypes/archetypes, lampooning liberal moralism and corporate greed, as well as portraying whites and (especially) non-whites as realistic, complex characters that are neither wholly good or bad. Like many of MacDonald Fraser’s books, they portray the good, not just the bad, about white civilization and impact upon the world in the 19th century and shows that non-whites were not just victims or high minded actors. MacDonald Fraser’s books revel in the glory of the British empire/Western Civilization, while at the same time showing it ‘warts and all.’ There is a distinct message: Yeah, we may sometimes have been bastards, but so is everyone else and, since we’ve done a damn sight more in advancing civilization than everyone else, we should feel proud of ourselves vis-Ã -vis those other bastards. Though presented as the farcical adventures of the scoundrel, Sir Harry Flashman, the subtext of the stories as a paean to British/Western Civilization and un-PC depictions and attitudes towards race would be a good thing for beaten-down and demoralized Westerns to internalize if they want to stand up and preserve their civilization.
It ain't atheists settling thousands of Somalis and Nigerians in the American heartland - it's
.. the United States government. An entity not noted for its dedication to Christianity, regardless of which party is in power.
Those fundie xtians have sure been great at helping promote public conciousness of hbd. Oh, wait they're creationists..... Ok, so they been enabling leftists on that particular front
Uh, sure. Because the lefties are creationists. Or something.
I think your bong is missng you.
Anoymous: Um, I said the script might be good, but dumb use of CGI would ruin it. If you want to make the entire film animated, maybe an Obama look-alike character would work, but I would be creeped out by a real actor with a fake face, and so would most people. Reams about the quality of the book have nothing to do with my point.
My underlying point is that the people who have given up on traditional morality (which may not include you, but certainly includes other commenters here) retain a magic faith in technology, even dehumanizing technlogy such as giving an actor a fake face.
If it makes you feel better, you do make the book sound interesting.
"Anonymous said...
Flashman cont'd:"
I second everything you wrote about Flashman. One can not praise George MacDonald Frazier too highly. His books are not merely completely politically incorrect, they are well written, historically accurate, informative, and highly entertainting. In short, they are ripping good yarns. I recommend them to everyone I meet (well, to every white man, anyway).
"Uh, sure. Because the lefties are creationists. Or something."
Missing the point. Since HBD and creationism are antagonistic, the creationist fundies ain't helping HBD; and this sin of omission helps the left, which opposes HBD more directly. Get it?
Ad hom references to bongs aren't intellectual discourse but trash talk, by the way. They leave a bad impression of your character.
"It ain't atheists settling thousands of Somalis and Nigerians in the American heartland - it's... the United States government. An entity not noted for its dedication to Christianity"
Most Volags are church groups - Christians - and agitate the Federal government for opening the borders wider to Third Worlders, on Christian religious grounds. These are some of the main fanatics wrecking America.
A typical example. (Read and digest the flash quotes in the upper right-hand panel.) It's not just Catholics, though. Protestant churches such as the Methodist and the Lutheran are just as bad.
KMac has written an article about one of the deepest and oldest roots of American "antiracist" ideology (and no - it ain't the Jews) (PDF download): here
Some say the Christian rhetoric of many Volags is just a screen for corporate interests. However, it's certainly an effective screen: solemn blue-eyed churchies fall for it from coast to coast.
After all, how Christ-like is it to refuse to open your heart, your arms, and your community to the suffering people of the world, hm?
I predict that the retort will be that these people aren't followers of the "true Christ." Just like the Soviet Union wasn't following "true communism." Yawn.
James Kabala said:
"Anoymous: Um, I said the script might be good, but dumb use of CGI would ruin it. If you want to make the entire film animated, maybe an Obama look-alike character would work, but I would be creeped out by a real actor with a fake face, and so would most people. Reams about the quality of the book have nothing to do with my point."
You didn't read carefully James. I did say to do the film in CGI like the recent film Beowulf where actors are filmed against green screen and the tailored to look like the story demands (e.g., Ray Winstone becomming the 6'7" Beowulf). CGI is getting quite good and you can make the characters look real. The Flashman novels are quite expansive and it would be much cheaper to do them this way. Additionally, given that Flashman is historical fiction, it would be nice to actually use photos, paintings, and sculptures to make the characters look like they acutally looked (e.g., Abraham Lincoln looking like Abraham Lincoln). This isn't a misplaced faith in technology, it is simply a tool to do something cheaply that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive. Additionally, if you want to film something as un-PC as the Flashman novels without debasing them, it would be easier to use CGI because that would obviate one of needing to use non-white actors who might object to playing the roles.
Anon. said
"non-white actors who might object to playing the roles."
In actual practice, there are few of those. You can find any race of actor who will play virtually anything. Occasionally you will step on a "land mine" actor, someone who is all PC'ed up, but in my experience it's rare. Show people are exhibitionists and (without strict agents) will appear in almost anything that promises to be fun (and pays well).
Also, unless you're making something horrible like The Turner Diaries, you'll find actors of all political stripes including roughly your own. Try it; I believe you will be very surprised.
Yes, David, and Castro, Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, Trotsky, Lenin, Marx, the Khmer Rouge, et al, were not practicing "true atheism". What if, instead of just reflexively stopping at all manner of deragatory labels, you actually engaged Christians in a thoughtful manner? For the life of me, I can not find where John Adams, Kirk or Burke were insulting of Western Civilization's core belief.
God Bless you David and I sincerely mean that.
Atheism is not a doctrine preaching mass murder. But Christianity as a doctrine does preach definite positions including self-sacrificial altruism toward outgroups. These positions should be criticized roundly.
No, the retort that Christians are solely responsible for mass immigration and thus must be destroyed is not that they aren't true Christians, but rather:
1- There are countless Christian groups and the nation is overwhelming Christian. Finding explicit examples of Christian support for immigration is trivial. (This is also a counter to the idea that "obviously religion causes all war" thesis. Since we've no alternate secular history, we really don't know how they'd act, relatively speaking.)
2- Dems generally support immigration, Repubs are more commonly opposed. Secularists are overwhelmingly liberal. Thus, w/o looking at explicit numbers, it stands to reason that secularism will do nothing to help you anti-immigration cause, unless we fantasize that the trivial secular wing of the GOP is solely responsible for any and all immigration opposition. If this wing hand any influence, the GOP would be the party of abortions, genetic engineering, cyborgs etc. This isn't the case.
>Dems generally support immigration, Repubs are more commonly opposed.<
Where do you get that?
The Democratic rank-and-file are largely on the same page as the leadership: they want illegal immigration.
The Republican rank-and-file, by contrast, are largely NOT on the same page as their leadership: the official GOP is dedicated to illegal immigration ("immigration reform") just as much as the Dems are.
No? Then I suppose John McCain isn't a Republican. The Bushes aren't, either. And Reagan wasn't, either.
In truth, there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the Democrats and the official GOP on immigration; merely the style is varied. Dems wave the snazzy rainbow flag of multiculturalism in support of increased immigration, while the Republican leadership waves the pretty Red White 'n' Blue.
In the meantime, far from the Leadership Councils, the Republican rank-and-file potter around their homes, trading emails in support of Bush and McCain and solemnly explaining to each other that "I'm not a racist, I don't mind them coming here, I just want them to work for what they get!"
That is the truth, and that is pathetic.
Or maybe you know a type of Republican wholly different from the type I see here in Southeast. I hope so but doubt it.
Even more doubtful is the profoundly scientific position that pointing out serious flaws in Christian doctrines and attitudes is the same as wanting to "destroy Christians." For the religious, criticism is evidence merely that the critic is of Satan (e.g., the equivalent of Pol Pot et al). This sort of thing, too, is increasingly a Republican trait. And it too is pathetic.
David, I see you don't like the tables turned. I do believe your seat in the Democratic party is still warm. Perhaps you should stay. With that said I believe you should take a page from Mr. Mangan or Mr. Darby in the way they interact with Mr. Auster regarding Christianity.
It is my experience that many Christian churches are just as infected with Liberalism as a typical cafe'. That is something to discuss in a respectful manner.
Hee hee hee!
Where haven't I been respectful, Anonymous? Is sharp criticism disrespectful? I note my criticism isn't answered; instead, I'm assured I'm being prayed for.
I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the Democratic Party, hot or cold.
Not believing in Jesus = Democrat, Pol Pot, Hitler, Satan, and "God bless you and I actually mean that." Intellectual firepower at its finest.
When you behave like a boob, don't get huffy if people treat you like one. I am praying for you.
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