How can the Republicans make up ground in the suburbs...

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The Republican loss in the suburbs is not driven by what a lot of you people think it is.

1. The softening and flipping of a lot of suburbs is driven by diversification and/or generational change, meaning the same agenda that won them overwhelmingly in 1985 is minority view now in those areas.

2. The loss of actual support among traditional GOP support in these areas (dwindling in political power though it may be) is driven by incompetence and stupidity more so then a tangible shift in GOP ideological mix.

Here is the three easiest things you can do to begin with.

1. Run a Presidential Nominee that passes the red phone/Commander in Chief test, doesn't blow off intelligence briefings, play fast and loose with protocol, etc etc.

2. Abandon this mindset that civic nationalism/populism/whatever you want to call it, can only happen by nuking UMC types. This is horrendously misguided notion based on largely the same broad brushing, generalizations that people do with Hispanics as a group. Any Republican or Conservative is going to have a strong pitch to UMC, even with a nationalist orientation simply because you are not a socialist and less inclined to redistribute their money.

3. Actually have an education plan that is more than just education back to the states and school choice. Not saying you should abandon them, but most of these suburban areas are conscious about the public school system and want a policy to reform it and since 2010 all Republicans seem to want to do, backed by billions of Koch money is dismantle the public education system.

This will stabilize with white suburban, rich and older types. These people adored Mitt Self Deportation Romney", which gets to another point. A lot of people keep conflating Mitt Romney with Paul Ryan and Jeb Bush and forget that Romney ran as the toughest candidate on the border in two straight election cylce, and he was adored in high end white UMC areas either because of it, or in spite of it (varies based on area).

The idea that you have to be doing horrendously in the suburbs or be a Neocon/Neoliberal is blatant misrepresentation of the facts on the ground and any political consultant/adviser pushing this silly notion should be fired and dumped along with the Steve Schmidt's of the world.



Part II. Beyond the traditional right leaners, it depends on what your goal is and what the state is. A state like Illinois requires a far higher suburban baseline then say Indiana or Ohio.

The younger generations are concerned about climate change, college debt, health care and similar issues so either acknowledging them and trying to solve them or letting the Democrats solve them too much is the long term answer to cracking into these voters.

As for minorities, you need to break them down by communities and then micro target the hell out of those groups. Frankly speaking, the Republicans are under par with many of these groups compared to where they should be and most of that is because of self inflicted problems, Trump or lack of effort.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

This will stabilize with white suburban, rich and older types. These people adored Mitt Self Deportation Romney", which gets to another point. A lot of people keep conflating Mitt Romney with Paul Ryan and Jeb Bush and forget that Romney ran as the toughest candidate on the border in two straight election cylce, and he was adored in high end white UMC areas either because of it, or in spite of it (varies based on area).

The idea that you have to be doing horrendously in the suburbs or be a Neocon/Neoliberal is blatant misrepresentation of the facts on the ground and any political consultant adviser pushing this sill notion should be fired and dumped along with the Steve Schmidt's of the world.

Also saw these articles about Romney:


https://reason.com/2012/10/30/romney-has-the-edge-in-the-bipartisan-pr/

The title of that Article is that Romney is the most protectionist GOP candidate in living memory

https://www.cato.org/blog/mitt-romneys-contrived-trade-war

Yes, this trumpist characterization of Romney as a neoliberal clone of Paul Ryan is historical revisionism. Romney was a proto-Trump on the issues and only picked Ryan to suck up to the donors he desperately needed money from.

If we had a system where donors were irrelevant and both sides had the same amount of money, Romney would have gone more economically populist. Hell he even endorsed hiking the minimum wage in 2013.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Run as a moderate.  Trump in 2016 ran on $1 Trillion infrastructure deals, middle eastern dovishness, apathy on SSM and preserving entitlements while keeping conservatives happy with things like originalist judges, anti gun control, cutting regulations and limiting legal and illegal immigration.  Trump in 2020 ran a campaign much more like a traditional Republican, decrying socialism against the neoliberal Joe Biden.  I believe if Trump governed closer to his 2016 campaign (and the GOP congress didn't oppose it) then he would have been in a better position for re-election.

This implies that Trump's base noticed (or cared) that he didn't follow through on his policy promises. I don't think there's much evidence for that.

Take two concentric circles. Divide them by any number, lets say four for this argument.

The people inside the inner ring of any quadrant is the base. The people in the outer ring is the potential swing voters or other side's voters you can peel off in that specific quadrant. Its like the crust on the pizza, Trump didn't get passed the cheese to the crust, the crust is what gets you over the top. 

The people who don't care are the people in that inner ring, the people in the outer ring are the ones Trump could have obtained but didn't in some alternative scenario. 

Throwing numbers out again, above what Trump got:
69% with NCW, 55% with CEWs, 40% with Hispanics, 20% with Blacks, 40% with Asians.

Its important in these discussions to not lose sight of just who exactly we are talking about at any given point.