What does the GOP need to change in order to win presidential elections?

[hopper]

As we all know, the GOP has a hard time winning presidential elections. We can't appeal to minorities and young people. The Democrats have a huge advantage in presidential elections. This is not good if your a member of the GOP. What does the GOP need to change about itself in order to survive?

Many people believe that the GOP has to become 'fiscally conservative, but socially liberal' in order to survive. Even though I'm 'fiscally conservative, but socially liberal', this is simply not true.

There are far more people in this country who are 'fiscally liberal, but socially conservative' than 'fiscally conservative, but socially liberal.'

In order to survive, I think the GOP needs to moderate itself on both economic and social issues.

On economic issues, the GOP has to support increasing minimum wage. A large majority of Democrats, Independents, and even Republicans support an increase. The GOP has to also promise voters that they won't even touch Social Security or Medicare. The GOP shouldn't support privatizing SS or raising the retirement age. The GOP should also support expanding Medicare. The GOP should also start campaigning on tax cuts heavily. Tax cuts are incredibly popular amongst voters. Basically, we need to maintain most of our current fiscal policies (with the exception of the minimum wage and SS/Medicare). We should also campaign heavily on tax cuts.

On social issues, the GOP should accept gay marriage as the law of the land. We should stop talking about SSM and focus on other things. On immigration, we can't side with the Democrats on this issue in order to survive. Reagan, Bush Sr, and Bush Jr were all pretty liberal on immigration, but this issue didn't matter to the GOP base back then. The GOP base didn't care about immigration 10-40 years ago. The base was okay with someone who was liberal on immigration. Now a days, immigration matters to the GOP base a lot. It's the only issue 1/3 of GOP voters even care about. If a candidate who was liberal on immigration won the GOP nomination, a significant portion of the GOP would stay home. Instead, we need to hold a centrist position on immigration. We shouldn't support a wall or mass deportations. Instead, we need to support a pathway to citizenship. We should support increased border patrol and e-verify. We should hold Jeb-like stance on immigration. We should try to get at least 35%-40% of the Hispanic vote. McCain and Bush both held pretty moderate positions on immigration and got 31% and 44% of the Hispanic vote respectively. Romney did better than Bush with white voters, but Bush won (unlike Romney) because he did so much better with Hispanic voters). We should not become pro-choice. The GOP would never win an election again if we became pro-choice. Instead, we should oppose abortion except in the cases of rape, incest, of health of the mother. We can't win if we hold an Akin-style stance on abortion. In order to survive, we should moderate our stances on gay marriage and immigration and maintain our current positions on other social issues.

Here's how a winning GOP candidate looks like IMO:

Is in touch with middle-class people.
Is a very good speaker and is very charismatic.

A centrist of immigration.
Accepts gay marriage as the law of the land.
Pro-life with the exception of rape, incest, or health of the mother.
Is a typical Republican on other social issues.

Supports increasing the minimum wage.
Supports Medicare expansion.
Will not change anything about Social Security (doesn't support making cuts, privatizing it).
Doesn't support raising the retirement age.
Campaigns heavily on tax cuts (especially for the middle class).
Is a typical Republican on other economic issues.


What do you think the GOP needs to change in order to start winning presidential elections.

Social Security-Yeah I agree with you on not privatizing it but it has to be reformed in order not to go broke. Yes raising retirement age will have to be an option.

Tax Cuts-Well they would have to be growth based not just cutting taxes 1980's style because that isn't gonna work now.

Immigration-Well a big immigration wave is supposed to happen from East Asia as Asians are supposed to make up 17% of the US Population by 2065.

[hopper]

Adopt a more Trump/Buchanan platform without completely alienating hispanics.

Well yeah maybe some of Trump's platform is good like getting tough on China and promoting better trade deals but offending Mexican Men(calling them rapists) is a big no no because its hurts you big time in the GE in states like CO, NV, and NM.

[hopper]

So with a few exceptions, I take it that the preferred strategy is to just try harder to ram Jeb Bush or his clone down people's throats. If only we offer more tax cuts, people wouldn't care about their jobs going overseas and flooded labor markets.

Do you guys never learn? I will give the OP credit, he at least acknowledges somewhat of who the GOP needs to appeal to.


I am going to offer you a reality check. The party as you have known it or would like to have known it is dead. It died in 2006 and 2008, everything since has been pure life support.

The first thing that has to happen, is the people who destroyed the Party have to leave. That includes all the Bushes, all those who would immitate them, the Roves, Kristols, the Neocons, they need to go and not come back. Marco Rubio needs to write books and get a TV show and spend the rest of his life out of politics. If you think people will vote for more wars to nowhere, worthless budget busting tax cuts, and trade/immigration policies that serve only those who read the WSJ and not those who live in rio linda, then by all means go for it.

The base doesn't care what your academic strategies are to win a general election. Nobody wins an election without their base.

You have to do what Trump is doing, but differently. You have to moderate while not only still getting base support, but enthusiastic base support. In case you hadn't noticed Trump is far more moderate on foreign policy, trade, taxes, infrastructure, social issues and entitlements. Its the right model, but it is the wrong packaging. The future of the GOP will be successfully bundling most of the same positions together behind a far less ah colorful candidate.

Yeah it sort of like Goldwater trying to win on conservatism in 1964 but he wasn't the right packaging like Reagan was in 1980 in order to win on conservatism.

[hopper]

Their candidates that could of beaten Clinton, Jeb, Rubio & Kasich just got beat. The one reason is the Tea Party, and Sarah Palin who endorsed Trump.  And the Tea Party is no question playing spoiler to GOP on behalf of Garland, that Kirk, Heller, Moran & Johnson bucked the GOP on.

If 2020, if they go ahead and nominate Ryan, they will lose again, who wants to privatize social security and medicare. The GOP havent taken any steps on the Bowles-Simpson plan.

The Tea Party? Even Republicans laugh at them in 2016. The Tea Party isn't popular like it was from 2009-2012.

Tea Party is playing spoiler? No McConnell is playing spoiler by not bringing up Garland's nomination to the floor.

[hopper]

The GOP does not have to change!  It should be true to the conservative ideals of low taxes, economic growth, strong military, personal freedom, law and order, pro-business, and free markets.
The GOP won landslide victories in 1972, 1980 and 1984.  We are in a liberal cycle, but it won't last forever.  The GOP is not losing as badly as the Dems did in the pre-Clinton era.

I don't think that really matters.  Republicans won mostly landslides between 1968 - 1988, but  they still never controlled Congress and didn't even begin to make progress towards that until 1980 (but only the Senate, and only for 6 years). With that in mind, Nixon, Reagan and Bush could have all won with 271 EVs only and it would still have had the same impact at the time.

But you're right, the cycles don't last forever, and the longer a party holds the presidency, the more likely it is to be in power when a recession hits, which could damage the party's image. However, something I think that is a bit different with this cycle is the growing power of non-white voters and the Republican party's absolute terrible showing with them. If they let Hispanics become a solid Democratic voting bloc like African Americans, then it could take them a long time to win back those voters, and until then it will be very difficult to win presidential elections.

Losing the Hispanic Vote is mostly the parties fault. Not getting behind immigration reform is a huge mistake by the party because the talk radio crowd doesn't want it being the reason why that the GOP doesn't get behind the issue.

[hopper]

Dump the Tea Party and quit pandering to religious conservatives on social issues.  They don't need to move to the left that much, just enough so that people don't think they're wingnuts.  And religious conservatives are pretty solidly in the GOP column at this point, so it's not like we're going to lose their votes by focusing less on their preferred issues.

I don't think the full impact of the socially fundamentalist, anti-science BS your party has been full of the past 20 years has been felt yet.

For the past few cycles, the GOP has comforted itself with its poor performance among Millennials by saying something to the effect of, "Well, they're just young and confused. Once they get a job and have kids and pay taxes, they'll vote for us in droves just like their parents did."

Except it's not happening. I'm seeing people my age and a few years older shifting into the homeowner/married/grown-up category and they are still as abhorred and appalled by the Republican Party as they were when they were 22.

I know people who have said they don't feel welcome in the GOP and simply will not vote for them. These are not stereotypical angry sociology majors working part-time at the feminist bookstore. These are accountants, financial analysts, lawyers, medical residents - people with "real" jobs and high enough incomes that the GOP should ostensibly be able to get their attention based on economic/tax policy. These are people who live in places like Houston and Dallas and Austin. 50 years ago, these people would be Republican without a second thought. Now, the Republican Party is losing them, and if they are losing them now, they very likely will never get them back.

The Republican Party is signing away the people who will make up the middle- and upper-middle class of this country for the next 50 years. They aren't going to realize how screwed they are until they look at exit polls in 2024 and see that now the only cohort of Americans they are winning are the ones above age 45.

That's is mostly a bad example. A better example of the GOP losing voters would be in the Northeast or West Coast. As far as Austin, Texas is concerned its liberal because its a university town. Dallas-you actually have a point maybe. Houston-I think that's divided between people who live in the city(more D) and who live in the Houston burbs(more R.)