Author Topic: What's wrong with the Republican party?  (Read 1874 times)

Hawkmoon

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What's wrong with the Republican party?
« on: February 21, 2021, 02:08:40 AM »
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Ben

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #1 on: February 21, 2021, 08:33:05 AM »
Quote
Sexual predator John Weaver spent his career in the orbit of GOP candidates like John McCain, Jon Huntsman, and John Kasich (given his proclivity for Johns, it’s no surprise Weaver was eager to have young men prostitute themselves for jobs).

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Ron

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #2 on: February 21, 2021, 09:16:42 AM »
They've been compromised, controlled opposition for a long time.

The Republicans role is to relieve conservative/populist pressure and find ways to lose with dignity.

Also, their role is to be gatekeepers of what is acceptable discourse. Nobody is allowed to speak frankly and honestly about what is happening to the country.

Republicans = cul-de-sac

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Perd Hapley

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #3 on: February 21, 2021, 09:37:41 AM »
Comment:

Quote
Somehow I think "don't kill all the white and Asian kids in pogroms because our boosters want to sodomize some of them" isn't going to be a winning message in 2022 or 2024.


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grampster

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #4 on: February 21, 2021, 10:49:07 AM »
Republican Party politicians always seem to have a good deal of outrage and plans about government doings or not doings...when they are out of power.  Then when We The People give them the power, they quietly do nothing.

Obamacare is a glaring example.

Perhaps the title to this thread should be "What's right about the Republican party?"
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zxcvbob

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #5 on: February 21, 2021, 10:52:32 AM »
Republican Party politicians always seem to have a good deal of outrage and plans about government doings or not doings...when they are out of power.  Then when We The People give them the power, they quietly do nothing.

Obamacare is a glaring example.

Perhaps the title to this thread should be "What's right about the Republican party?"

Yes, and I think it's something more sinister than just laziness.
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kgbsquirrel

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #6 on: February 21, 2021, 11:29:01 AM »
Yes, and I think it's something more sinister than just laziness.

That stench assaulting your senses is from corruption and controlled opposition.

Hawkmoon

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #7 on: February 21, 2021, 01:25:29 PM »
Republican Party politicians always seem to have a good deal of outrage and plans about government doings or not doings...when they are out of power.  Then when We The People give them the power, they quietly do nothing.

Obamacare is a glaring example.

Perhaps the title to this thread should be "What's right about the Republican party?"

And yet, any (and every) time I suggest that it's time to start a real third party in the U.S., the response I get is, "But that will take votes away from the Republicans!"
« Last Edit: February 21, 2021, 01:54:41 PM by Hawkmoon »
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HankB

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #8 on: February 21, 2021, 01:27:25 PM »
Republican Party politicians always seem to have a good deal of outrage and plans about government doings or not doings...when they are out of power.  Then when We The People give them the power, they quietly do nothing.

Obamacare is a glaring example.

Wasn't it the the late John McCain who stopped Obamacare repeal with his infamous "thumbs down" gesture?  :mad:
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Perd Hapley

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #9 on: February 21, 2021, 01:44:04 PM »
And yet, any (and every) time I suggest that it's time to start a real third party in the U.S., the repose I get is, "But that will take votes away from the Republicans!"

That's because America's constitution and electoral system make that very true. It's hard for a 3rd party to break through in our system, and that's not the fault of the parties. In other countries, smaller parties can have influence as part of a coalition government - not really something we do here.

Remember, the last time a "third party" became a major party, it was in the midst of tensions that led to literal, civil war.
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kgbsquirrel

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #10 on: February 21, 2021, 01:52:12 PM »
That's because America's constitution and electoral system make that very true. It's hard for a 3rd party to break through in our system, and that's not the fault of the parties. In other countries, smaller parties can have influence as part of a coalition government - not really something we do here.

Remember, the last time a "third party" became a major party, it was in the midst of tensions that led to literal, civil war.

BuT iT wIlL tAkE vOtEs FrOm ThE cOrRuPt AnD uSeLlEsS!!  Kind of the damn point.  Break your social conditioning.

lee n. field

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #11 on: February 21, 2021, 01:52:19 PM »
Republican Party politicians always seem to have a good deal of outrage and plans about government doings or not doings...when they are out of power.  Then when We The People give them the power, they quietly do nothing.

Obamacare is a glaring example.

Perhaps the title to this thread should be "What's right about the Republican party?"

R.s are, at best, unreliable friends.
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kgbsquirrel

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #12 on: February 21, 2021, 01:54:37 PM »
R.s are, at best, unreliable friends lying thieves.

Though more often than not they're just quislings and traitors.

makattak

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I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.

So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you also were meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought

T.O.M.

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #14 on: February 21, 2021, 04:08:54 PM »
In my experience, while the Republicans appear to want growth, the party insiders only want growth in terms of voters and contributions, not in terms of candidates and leaders.  It is a serious old boy club, and the only way to rise in the party is to have the right family, come from the right neighborhood/city/schools, and have the right people in your corner.  When I tried to run for judge in Central Ohio, I was told by some senior party members I went to the wrong law school, and didn't have the right legacy to be a candidate for the party.  It's attitudes like that which will drive away young people, and the party will die of attrition.
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Perd Hapley

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #15 on: February 21, 2021, 04:50:31 PM »
BuT iT wIlL tAkE vOtEs FrOm ThE cOrRuPt AnD uSeLlEsS!!  Kind of the damn point.  Break your social conditioning.

The fact that America does not have a Parliamentary system is not an artifact of my "social conditioning," if that's what you're arguing. There would have to be a major change to our constitution to move away from a 2-party system.
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Hawkmoon

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #16 on: February 21, 2021, 05:16:44 PM »
The fact that America does not have a Parliamentary system is not an artifact of my "social conditioning," if that's what you're arguing. There would have to be a major change to our constitution to move away from a 2-party system.

Why? Where in the Constitution is the number of political parties mandated?
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MechAg94

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #17 on: February 21, 2021, 05:44:58 PM »
One thing wrong is they lost.  I seem to remember some people asking similar questions about the Democrat party after the 2016 election.  Same after 2000. 

IMO, one of the biggest thing wrong is too many people who generally vote Republican sit back and let others decide who the candidates are.  They don't vote in primaries.  They don't get involved at all at the local level or pay attention to local elections where many of these bad candidates get their start (me).  Too many are afraid to vote for the challenger in the primary because they fear the opposition more than the bad incumbent.   
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zahc

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #18 on: February 21, 2021, 06:29:29 PM »
Why? Where in the Constitution is the number of political parties mandated?

The 2-party system is an emergent property of our electoral system. To deny it is to deny human nature which never goes well. Therefore to fix it, would require revising our electoral system. We cannot even fix our current system to prevent blatant, in-your-face fraud, despite the fact that minor changes to eliminate the fraud would be easy to implement.

Fixing our current system, or revising it to something more effectively facilitating democracy, would shift power FROM incumbent powers, and there is no mechanism to make that happen. It's like a CPU caught in a loop. The means to fix it are made absent by the same cause as the loop
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kgbsquirrel

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #19 on: February 21, 2021, 07:45:52 PM »
The fact that America does not have a Parliamentary system is not an artifact of my "social conditioning," if that's what you're arguing. There would have to be a major change to our constitution to move away from a 2-party system.

Where is the 2 party system codified in the Constitution?

Perd Hapley

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #20 on: February 21, 2021, 08:18:34 PM »
Why? Where in the Constitution is the number of political parties mandated?

I didn't say it was mandated. It's incentivized by the constitution. A short explanation:

In most countries that have some kind of representative system, the people elect representatives to a parliament, and those parliamentarians vote among themselves to form a government. I don't quite understand why, but smaller parties do relatively well under such systems. They form coalitions with other parties, to elect government ministers beholden to the parliamentarians in that coalition. Many of those countries have something called proportional representation in electing members of parliament, as opposed to the simple majority we use here.

In our system, second place is first loser. The smart money is always going to be on the two largest parties, because one of them is going to win. The 3rd/4th/5th parties will go nowhere.

That being said, one of those 2 big parties can eventually break up, making way for a new major party. It just doesn't happen very often.
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Ron

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #21 on: February 21, 2021, 08:22:37 PM »
We don't have two parties.

We have a bipartite uni-party.

A true "third" party, if it could keep from being infiltrated and converged would actually be a true second party.
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MechAg94

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #22 on: February 21, 2021, 11:06:56 PM »
Reading through the link in the OP, sounds like far too many big donors and establishment types were trusting these McCain/Romney campaign people.  IMO, everyone involved with those campaigns who was in a position to make decisions should have been ostracized and never hired again.  That they were not says volumes about the intelligence of the establishment wing of the R party. 
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Perd Hapley

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #23 on: February 22, 2021, 11:05:06 AM »
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Ron

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Re: What's wrong with the Republican party?
« Reply #24 on: February 22, 2021, 11:19:54 AM »
A different viewpoint:

https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/20/there-is-no-gop-civil-war/

Fun read.

In practical terms, siding with establishment Republicans gets you crumbs and losing with dignity.

Siding with MAGA Republicanism gets you crumbs and losing without dignity.

MAGA Republicanism offered interesting plot twists but it's still just a remake of an old show we've all seen already, how it all ends never changes.

I'd be more prone to be a believer in MAGA going forward if it went third party. At this point I'm not sure a losing third party would be any more impotent than the Republican establishment.

The Republican Party is a bigger problem than the insane leftists and Democrat Party.
For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity, that they may be without excuse. Because knowing God, they didn’t glorify him as God, and didn’t give thanks, but became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.