Future of the GOP

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The future for the GOP is clearly a multiracial working class coalition, so I voted #2 and #4. This is easier said than done, though, and will eventually entail them dropping both their hard right economic positions and racial dog-whistling, which will be hard for many in the party to do.

The electoral results of the past few years have been glorious for this. It's so exciting to see all the fiscal conservatives who told the other parts of the right to shut up for the sake of electability getting told that they are the ones who need to tone it down.

DC, you're one of the smartest, most well-grounded posters on this site, and you know perfectly well that there is a big difference between simply being a social conservative and preaching the type of anti-intellectual, intolerant message that the worst elements of Trumpism have espoused.  One does not have to choose between a heartless, Ayne-Rand-inspired right wing and a classless, intellectually dishonest and ideologically confused brand of Trumpism.  I get that SoCons feel vindicated right now (for some reason), but Dwight Eisenhower was a social conservative.  Ronald Reagan was.  Our ideas as a center-right party need to be presented with dignity, and to rile up the masses with emotional appeal is a direct affront to our political heritage and betrayal of the good conservatives who have served America in the past.  When American Republicans claim to cherish things like the Constitution, they should appreciate the intellectualism behind the document and the rejection of rash populism that it endorses.

Populism is amorphous to the extent that it really just reflects back like a mirror the opposite of what the perceived establishment is.

Republicans managed very well to be both anti-populist and anti-lassiez faire, reversalist and the party of respectable, posh urban enclaves (The forerunners to modern UMC Suburbs), pro-business and yet economically nationalist. This maintained itself well until the Great Depression discredited it and polarized everything based on one pro-gov't party, versus one anti-gov't party.

The development of events, demographics and such now really doesn't well support the existence of an anti-gov't party anymore and that is why you see voices in both parties now clamoring for gov't action, while those against it are seemingly being squeezed out. The ultimate irony is that the sustainability of a small gov't party was entirely dependent on the expansive new suburbs created by economic nationalism led industrialization and then New Deal/GI Bill redistribution. As these suburbs diversify and age, they develop urban needs, shrinking the base for small gov't out of its homeland and dumping it on rural people who don't really much want it and reject it for populist candidates like Huckabee, Trump etc. Going back to 2008 you see C4G trying to push candidates in places like KY-02 and MO-09 only to lose out to more Huckabee esque candidates. The end result is you have urban, suburbs and rural areas, all craving gov't action of some short.

Whether packaged as Christian Democracy or some Americanized version of One Nation Toryism (minus the centralist approach to gov't maybe substituting more decentralized and pro-competition models), I think that is what we are heading back to precisely as a result of the income disparities.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The future for the GOP is clearly a multiracial working class coalition, so I voted #2 and #4. This is easier said than done, though, and will eventually entail them dropping both their hard right economic positions and racial dog-whistling, which will be hard for many in the party to do.

The electoral results of the past few years have been glorious for this. It's so exciting to see all the fiscal conservatives who told the other parts of the right to shut up for the sake of electability getting told that they are the ones who need to tone it down.

DC, you're one of the smartest, most well-grounded posters on this site, and you know perfectly well that there is a big difference between simply being a social conservative and preaching the type of anti-intellectual, intolerant message that the worst elements of Trumpism have espoused.  One does not have to choose between a heartless, Ayne-Rand-inspired right wing and a classless, intellectually dishonest and ideologically confused brand of Trumpism.  I get that SoCons feel vindicated right now (for some reason), but Dwight Eisenhower was a social conservative.  Ronald Reagan was.  Our ideas as a center-right party need to be presented with dignity, and to rile up the masses with emotional appeal is a direct affront to our political heritage and betrayal of the good conservatives who have served America in the past.  When American Republicans claim to cherish things like the Constitution, they should appreciate the intellectualism behind the document and the rejection of rash populism that it endorses.

Populism is amorphous to the extent that it really just reflects back like a mirror the opposite of what the perceived establishment is.

Republicans managed very well to be both anti-populist and anti-lassiez faire, reversalist and the party of respectable, posh urban enclaves (The forerunners to modern UMC Suburbs), pro-business and yet economically nationalist. This maintained itself well until the Great Depression discredited it and polarized everything based on one pro-gov't party, versus one anti-gov't party.

The development of events, demographics and such now really doesn't well support the existence of an anti-gov't party anymore and that is why you see voices in both parties now clamoring for gov't action, while those against it are seemingly being squeezed out. The ultimate irony is that the sustainability of a small gov't party was entirely dependent on the expansive new suburbs created by economic nationalism led industrialization and then New Deal/GI Bill redistribution. As these suburbs diversify and age, they develop urban needs, shrinking the base for small gov't out of its homeland and dumping it on rural people who don't really much want it and reject it for populist candidates like Huckabee, Trump etc. Going back to 2008 you see C4G trying to push candidates in places like KY-02 and MO-09 only to lose out to more Huckabee esque candidates. The end result is you have urban, suburbs and rural areas, all craving gov't action of some short.

Whether packaged as Christian Democracy or some Americanized version of One Nation Toryism (minus the centralist approach to gov't maybe substituting more decentralized and pro-competition models), I think that is what we are heading back to precisely as a result of the income disparities.

And all of this is fine, but it does not have to carry with it the brash, unrefined nature of "Trumpism," to the extent that word means anything.  The GOP could "move left" on economic issues and even "move right" on social issues and still present itself like Charlie Baker rather than Rick Santorum.

For that to happen, "responsible establishment politicians" need to actually seek to package it that why and not manipulate everything to keep passing the same Koch brothers agenda, only engendering more hatred for the establishment and opening the path for more Donald Trump's.