White suburbs

[Mint]

I'd say it's a general cultural disconnect coupled with plain old incompetence. The GOP keeps pushing the same tired 'values' issues. Their pandering to the religious right increasingly comes at the expense of professionals, women, and various other minorities. Meanwhile they've done nothing to assure voters that their economic 'philosophy' (if you can call it that) works, or even that they're even remotely sincere about much of it (see: spending).

Then there's the reality that welfare reform, crime control, etc. haven't been seriously debated on the national level since the mid-90s.

[Mint]

I don't think it so much incompetence as perversity. The "values" issues that the GOP promotes are so narrow that they offend the majority. The alliance with the Christian fundamentalists to push pseudo-science (including creationism) as education threatens the education necessary for creating the scientists and engineers that many suburbanites want (including as their sons and daughters).

I mostly agree, although I think it's hard to over-estimate the degree to which Bush, the 109th congress, etc. are still hurting the party with their pathetic job performance ratings. The general public is ambivalent about many of those subjects increasingly going by the polls, if not accepting of them.

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Slow down there, Karl.

Actually I agree to an extent, the opposition to things like equal pay, birth control, etc. makes them seem not only hostile to people's personal choice but their economic livelihood. Even without abortion, they still come off as very anti-woman.

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I think there was and still is some truth to that. Though obviously, I would probably question many of your underlying economic assumptions. However, I think more so than that a lot of the party has been, and still does, advancing it self by putting other people down. They've promoted the attitude that no matter how pathetic your own life is, least you're whatever group they happen to be rallying against at the moment ('secularists,' gays, illegal immigrants, etc.). It's victim/identity politics for white christian males.

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If you look at polls, tax cuts are still popular. There is a reason Obama is still promoting his tax credits left and right even while promising to raise them on the 'wealthy.' I think the real problem is, Republicans have lost all credibility on the issue of domestic spending. Even while paying lip service to supply side economics, limited government, etc. the Bush administration and others like them have spent hundreds of billions not just on expanding entitlements and departments but on the 'earmarks' and other pet projects... All while railing against them. Not only that, but in addition to obvious hypocrisy they have nothing to offer the general public in place of their (often poorly explained) 'small government' model.

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I think you're misunderstanding me. What I was implying is, those issues traditionally have drawn white middle class voters to the GOP. That is not to say that I whole heartedly endorse all aspects associated with those policies. I find the war on drugs and cuts in mental health services in particular to be disastrous. However, regardless of their validity, most of those policies were adopted to a limited extent by the Democrats in the 1990s. Consequently, serious expansion of welfare reform and a return to a more rehabilitative/positivist 'liberal' position on crime has largely been outside of national public discourse. That may be changing given some provisions of the stimulus (food stamps, unemployment) plus some states considering abolishing the death penalty once more. But those are not anywhere near the hot button issues they once were, and that's demonstrably hurt the Republicans.

[Mint]

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Well yes, again I would agree with that. Keep in mind I am firmly socially liberal. The problem at this point is that the Republicans are so indebted to the Religious Right that they can't deviate meaningfully from their current positions and win elections. On the other hand, they can't continue to win them by pandering either. At least not with their current coalition, which is heavily reliant on evangelical turn out. I could see them becoming economically centrist or even liberal if they continue to focus so much on social conservatism.

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The problem is, when it comes to both Americans are basically suffering from 'having your cake' syndrome. They want low, or at least present, rates of taxation. They want to contain waste. They by and large want a lot of flexibility in their healthcare, retirement, ec. (especially healthcare). But they also want to have universal coverage against sickness and old age, broad loans, subsidies for local business, a robust military, etc. The average american has no idea what sort of sacrifices an entitlement system actually require of them, and when confronted with them tend to balk at the idea of paying more, restricting access, etc. We're a nation of infants.

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I think in the short term, that may happen simply because the costs of the high way system as it is now are astronomical. The federal high way system is spending $40 billion upwards just to maintain the current system, but the amount of money estimated for repairs pushes that well into the hundreds. When nearly every state is suffering from a steep decline in tax receipts and a growing population reliant on government services, selling off the roads is going to become more attractive to law makers if not the general public. I'm ambivalent about the desirability of road privatization, other than that I honestly think the high way system was a mistake and we should focus more on encouraging public transportation and sprawl control.

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I think modern anxiety plays a role within that, but we have other factors at work too.   Alcohol advertising is a lot more pervasive now (see: hard liquor ads on TV) and we live in a society which glorifies binge drinking in a lot of settings. People are basically indoctrinated to think if they don't drink alcohol regularly there's something wrong with them.

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I was more referring to the popularity of said policies. For the past 40 years Welfare has been viewed as largely redundant and prone to abuse. Obviously, a lot of that is racialized but the image persists. That seems to be changing a bit now as the food stamp and unemployment insurance programs are expanded, without much public outcry. Personally, having looked into the subject I'd prefer our welfare system operated more along the line of New York's, where their WeCare system actually does evaluate people to see if they can work and if so where. Either that or work training. We need more public-private type programs to ensure people are doing something with their time. Hunger can be alleviated if we start getting rid of barriers like high tariffs, crop destruction, etc. that artificially drive up price plus start buying food in bulk (probably cheaper and more nutritious than food stamps).

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One of the primary problems with rehab is in fact that it's not so much geared towards treating individual problems so much as busy work basically. A lot of these 'work programs,' meetings, etc. in prisons aren't conducted by professionals, and in the case of some of the drug programs out there, don't even keep track of the recidivism rate outside of self-reports. Some states like California are working to change that but it remains a persistent problem.

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To be fair, it actually started under Carter although he was 'moderate' by the standards of the time. Reagan and the courts ("least restrictive environment...") just accelerated the trend. But as I said before, I actually agree with you. Right now our prison system is being devastated by being forced to essentially warehouse a large portion of the mentally ill. We need to change the way our mental health services function, a big component of that needs to be mandating coverage of mental illness in health insurance (public or otherwise) along with funding for mental treatment centers and half way houses. We should probably be spending on that instead of building new prisons (or again, the 'war on drugs').

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I'd disagree that they had much to do with the current economic predicament, though they didn't improve our credit situation. What really drove the current crisis were our low interest rates (1-4.25% from roughly 1993-2007) and over leveraging (brought on by unregulated 'credit default swaps' and other ridiculous accounting processes). Both of those things could have been avoided if we had a more cautious monetary policy and took time to improve the transparency of our banking system during the late 1990s. And we could do that now, but instead we're attempting to stimulate growth once more by keeping interest artificially low yet again (0.25% roughly) and token regulatory measures.

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Absolutely. My guess is more towards the former than the latter at this point, given their current course. Although I could see the emergence of a competing party/independents in some areas like the Northeast right now.