GOP...where to go to expand?

[paul718]

I agree, the neocon way of thinking has failed.
 
Reagan NEVER  ran a angry campaign like McCain did and Palin would run.  The republicans are too quick to jump on the other side and name calling.   If someone is pro- choice don't call them a baby killer and other nonsense.  Simply disagree and state the reasons why, and don't inject the right wing bible stuff.   Calling inner city people UnAmerica will lose you elections everytime. 

Remember New York city was attacked on 9/11 not middletown PA.

John McCain never said any of those things. 

Bingo.  Work hard not to lose any ground in the Plains States and then target Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan. 

I also think the GOP can resurrect itself in Florida.  I'm not sold on that state being blue just yet.

To do this, a candidate who is fiscally and socially conservative will be necessary.  But the key will be choosing someone who is friendly about it, the way Ronald Reagan was.  You never got the impression that Reagan hated Democrats, liberals or anyone.  He just disagreed with them and could smilingly explain why.  That's been missing for a long time in the Republican Party, actually.  Though I think if Bob Dole had displayed his post-election sense of humor on the campaign trail, he might have made things more interesting.

I agree with you for the most part.  I'd like to see them target the Great Lakes region...PA, OH, MN?, WI, IN, etc.  Also, try to figure out why Bush-41 was able to win CA.  I'm not suggesting they could turn the state, but I think there could be a lesson that could help with the overall map. 

But I disagree with the idea that a social conservative is necessary.  A fiscal conservative who takes a more federalist approach to social issues could attract more independents while keeping the social conservatives sated, i.e., striking Roe v. Wade, but opposing a Right to Life amendment or any kind of federal marriage legislation.  I think the reason Rudy was losing social conservatives wasn't his federalist approach, but the fact that they viewed him as a NYC Rockefeller-Republican type.  I think someone who's against actively prohibiting certain social behavior could be successful if (1) he doesn't have that big-city stigma attached to him (like Rudy) and (2) he is so hawkish on economic issues that it overshadows any perceived social policy shortcomings. 

[angus]

GOP...where to go to expand?

New England.  Start in the urban centers of Boston, Cambridge, Providence, Worcester, and Hartford, then work west and north throughout the region.  Although a small area, it's a good chunk of the population, with something like 18 house seats, and--because the states are so small--there are some built-in freebies, such as 12 senators and 30 electoral votes (owing to the weirdness of our system). 

After all, it's the region that first gave the GOP popularity.  The Republican Party's first national convention in Pittsburgh in 1856 was heavy with Yankees.  And the nationalism of the GOP should play well in the region.  Anyone not from New England who has ever been there on July 4th can attest to the fact that there's a built-in nationalism that hasn't been successfully exploited in a very long time by the GOP, oddly.

The current problem is that nationalism doesn't merge with progressivism.  No doubt, the defining characteristic of the GOP is and always has been abject nationalism.  Wrapping oneself up in God in the Flag is something that our first (Lincoln) and last (Bush) Republican presidents both did very well.  "Mine eyes have seen the Glory of the coming of the Lord.  He is trampling through the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.  He will loose his fateful lightening with his terrible swift sword.  His truth is marching on."  And that really has been the Republican Party's credo for its 150-year existence. 

And it used to play well in New England.  Particularly in Massachusetts.  Massachusetts is a prim and proper puritan place, where public education is compulsory and excellent, and it is the first US state to outlaw slavery, doing so as early as 1781.  It is a place where you couldn't even get a tattoo as late as 1999.  I remember that the kids had to drive to New Hampshire or Connecticut to get them, because the puritanical yankees didn't allow it.  But at some point, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC, which in most states is just called the Supreme Court) ruled that the statute was at odds with the commonwealth's constitution.  Just as it later ruled that disallowing same-sex marriages violated the commonwealth's constitution.  That's the funny thing about Massachusetts:  it is content not to decide its own fate, but rather let its court decide things for it.  It's the antithesis of California, where everything goes on a binding state-wide voter referendum.  Even with gay marriage, a hot-buton issue where polls showed that about 59 percent of MA residents would disallow it if asked, and where the Globe and other local papers complained that Finnerman "dropped the ball" that the SJC lodged into his court--they are fond of sports metaphors in Yankeeland--the state's residents were apparently content to let the court make its decision.  For the good of the Commonwealth, as it were.  Progressivist and Nationalist, at the same time.  I don't know whether that is the case in all of New England, as I lived in Boston for over five years, but not in any of the other states in the region.  I understand that Sagebrush Country (NH and ME, along with Wyoming and other parts of the High Plains) are very different in terms of their general political culture than the Urban Corridor (which includes Boston, Providence, Hartford, and points southward all the way to Washington), and that those two regions are different even from inner New England, which is politically more similar to the Mountianous region of upper New York state, so you can't treat New England as homogenous, but compared to much of the country it is somewhat identifiable in voting proclivities.

My friend from Houston, who was a post-doc at Haav'd for three years, once commented that the area was a "weird mixture of conservatism and liberalism," a mix that he'd never encountered in the US.  I thought it was an interesting thing to say.  I wouldn't use those terms, because those terms are used so frequently in our language to describe all sorts of things that they have lost all their meaning, but I took his point.  The commonwealth, and to a lesser extent all of New England, is a place of extreme moralism (to use Daniel Elazar's term), meaning that it is generally very progressive:  witness the early importance of compulsory schooling for children, the early objection to slavery, the widespread support for the prohibition of alcohol leading to the passage of the 18th amendment to the US Constitution.  This progressivism was for a long time part of nationalism.  I don't know whether it was intentional.  After all, the GOP was primarily nationalistic; if that also meant progressivist, then so be it.  For example, Teddy Roosevelt was into establishing national parks and was something of a reformed-nerd-turned-body-builder in order to overcome the stigma of getting sand kicked in his face during most of his youth, but mostly he was into speaking softly and carrying a big stick (probably also an overcompensation for something, but the press in those days wasn't quite so intrusive, so we don't really know.)

This moralism served the GOP well in its glory days from about 1860 to about 1928.  But a combination of a poorly-received Herbert Hoover (I still say that guy got bad press, and probably was no worse, given the situation, than anyone else would have been), and a very clever Democrat party agenda coupled with a master coalition-builder (FDR), gradually stole it away from the GOP.  Massachusetts hasn't given its electoral votes to a Republican since 1984.  And most of New England has followed suit.  And, as of January 20, 2009, it will no longer have even a single house seat in the congress, now that Dazzleman's Connecticut seat held up to now by Christopher Shays (R-CT) has gone the way of Obama's coattails.  But the GOP (a nationalistic faction), and New England (a progressive region), are not incompatible.  At one time, progressivism and nationalism went hand-in-hand.  The early Yankees took great pride in the fact that it successfully rebelled against what it considered a harsh, arbitrary system to form a New World Order.  "Don't tread on me" was the motto of New Hampshire long before it was "live free or die."  And, as soon as the planes started flying again, about a month after September 11, 2001, one of the first places I visited on an airplane trip was Boston.  In the SF bay area, where I living at the time, I noted that the US-flag flying craze was really evident, but that was nothing compared to Boston.  The first thing I noticed on that trip was the overwhelming number of flags, draped from nearly every downtown window.  (Admittedly, the immediate post-9/11 period was a time when US flag sales skyrocketed in all regions, but I visited several regions during that period, and nobody could hold a candle to Eastern Massachusetts for flag-waving, to be sure.)

New England is obviously the region with which the GOP should begin, if it wants to broaden its base successfully, for two obvious reasons:  (1) it is the region which gives the GOP the most boost, because even the slightest gain will be played up by the newsmedia since anything divided by zero equals infinity, and (2) it is intrinsically a nationalistic, moralistic region, just as the GOP has traditionally been a nationalistic, moralistic party.  But more than that, New England is a progressive region, so the GOP needs only to figure out how to meld progressivism with nationalism as it did in its glory days to win New England.  And in the past that wasn't such a hard thing to do.  I suspect it isn't that hard these days either.  After all, we have no shortage of national crises and national desires and national shortcomings, as the very proud, very american, very progressive New Englanders are always pointing out, so it's just a matter of the party pulling its head out of its collective ass and realizing what needs to be done. 

The GOP is, and always has been, the party of Nationalism.  And it has effectively exploited nationalism in the past in order to win, and it will do so again.  But can't start out West.  Californians and Cowboys don't like to be told what to do.  Not by courts and not by political parties.  For example, Out West party membership is down to about sixty to sixty-five percent, meaning that unaffiliated voters now make up a plurality of most voters in states out west.  Even in Iowa, which is just barely west of the River, the unaffiliated represent about 40% of the electorate.  And it can't start in the South, which is traditionalistic and very reluctant to changes in general.  If it is to maintain its identity as a nationalistic party, and still be successful, it must start by figuring out what it forgot:  putting a progressive spin on national priorities by uniting the majority of the population behind grand ideals.  And it must start with New England.  If it can do that, the rest will follow.  The Democrats have figured this out, and, as is well known, the Republicans figured this out long ago.  New England is where we look to figure out how to do education reforms, healthcare reforms, and banking reforms, it has long been the insurance capital of the nation, and it has given us the progenitors of most of our technological advances, and it is where successful political parties have always looked to begin the expansion.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Suburbia is the obvious answer. A return to what gave the Republicans their now past semi-kind-sorta-though-actually-illusory-dominance, in other words. The Republicans were always at their most successful when they were the Selfish Party and obviously so.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Selfish... self-ish... self... ish... what a wonderful language English is at times.

[ChrisFromNJ]

GOP...where to go to expand?

New England.  Start in the urban centers of Boston, Cambridge, Providence, Worcester, and Hartford, then work west and north throughout the region.  Although a small area, it's a good chunk of the population, with something like 18 house seats, and--because the states are so small--there are some built-in freebies, such as 12 senators and 30 electoral votes (owing to the weirdness of our system). 

After all, it's the region that first gave the GOP popularity.  The Republican Party's first national convention in Pittsburgh in 1856 was heavy with Yankees.  And the nationalism of the GOP should play well in the region.  Anyone not from New England who has ever been there on July 4th can attest to the fact that there's a built-in nationalism that hasn't been successfully exploited in a very long time by the GOP, oddly.

The current problem is that nationalism doesn't merge with progressivism.  No doubt, the defining characteristic of the GOP is and always has been abject nationalism.  Wrapping oneself up in God in the Flag is something that our first (Lincoln) and last (Bush) Republican presidents both did very well.  "Mine eyes have seen the Glory of the coming of the Lord.  He is trampling through the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.  He will loose his fateful lightening with his terrible swift sword.  His truth is marching on."  And that really has been the Republican Party's credo for its 150-year existence. 

And it used to play well in New England.  Particularly in Massachusetts.  Massachusetts is a prim and proper puritan place, where public education is compulsory and excellent, and it is the first US state to outlaw slavery, doing so as early as 1781.  It is a place where you couldn't even get a tattoo as late as 1999.  I remember that the kids had to drive to New Hampshire or Connecticut to get them, because the puritanical yankees didn't allow it.  But at some point, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC, which in most states is just called the Supreme Court) ruled that the statute was at odds with the commonwealth's constitution.  Just as it later ruled that disallowing same-sex marriages violated the commonwealth's constitution.  That's the funny thing about Massachusetts:  it is content not to decide its own fate, but rather let its court decide things for it.  It's the antithesis of California, where everything goes on a binding state-wide voter referendum.  Even with gay marriage, where polls showed that about 59 percent of MA residents would disallow it if asked, and where the Globe and other local papers complained that Finnerman "dropped the ball" that the SJC lodged into his court--they are fond of sports metaphors in Yankeeland--but one hundred percent of the state's residents were apparently content to let the court make all its decisions.  I don't know whether that is the case in all of New England, as I lived in Boston for over five years, but not in any of the other states in the region.  I understand that Sagebrush Country (NH and ME, along with Wyoming and other parts of the High Plains) are very different in terms of their general political culture than the Urban Corridor (which includes Boston, Providence, Hartford, and points southward to Boston), and that those two regions are different that inner New England, which is politically more similar to the Adirondack region of New York state, so you can't treat the region as homogenous, but compared to much of the country it is somewhat homogenous.

My friend from Houston, who was a post-doc at Haav'd, once commented that the area was a weird mixture of conservatism and liberalism, one which he'd never encountered in the US.  I thought it was an interesting thing to say.  I wouldn't use those terms, because those terms are used so frequently in our language to describe all sorts of things that they have lost all their meaning, but I took his point.  The commonwealth, and to a lesser extent all of New England, is a place of extreme moralism (to use Daniel Elazar's term), meaning that it is generally very progressive:  witness the early importance of compulsory schooling for children, the early objection to slavery, the widespread support for the prohibition of alcohol leading to the passage of the 18th amendment to the US Constitution.  This progressivism was for a long time part of nationalism.  I don't know whether it was intentional.  After all, the GOP was merely nationalistic, if that also meant progressivist, then so be it.  E.g., Teddy Roosevelt was into establishing national parks and was something of a reformed nerd turned body builder in order to overcome the stigma of getting sand kicked in his face during most of his teenage years, but mostly he was into speaking softly and carrying a big stick (probably also an overcompensation for something, but the press in those days wasn't quite so intrusive, so we don't really know.)

This moralism served the GOP well in its glory days from about 1860 to about 1928.  But a combination of a poorly-received Herbert Hoover (I still say that guy got bad press, and probably was no worse, given the situation, than anyone else would have been), and a very clever Democrat party agenda coupled with a master coalition-builder (FDR), gradually stole it away from the GOP.  Massachusetts hasn't given its electoral votes to a Republican since 1984.  And most of New England has followed suit.  And, as of January 20, 2009, it will no longer have even a single house seat in the congress, now that Dazzleman's Connecticut seat held up to now by Christopher Shays (R-CT) has gone the way of Obama's coattails.  But the GOP (a nationalistic faction), and New England (a progressive region), are not incompatible.  At one time, progressivism and nationalism went hand-in-hand.  The early Yankees took great pride in the fact that it successfully rebelled against what it considered a harsh, arbitrary system to form a New World Order.  And "Don't tread on me" was the motto of New Hampshire long before it was "life free or die." 

New England is obviously the region with which the GOP should begin, if it wants to broaden its base successfully, for two obvious reasons:  (1) it is the region which gives the GOP the most boost, because even the slightest gain will be played up by the newsmedia since anything divided by zero equals infinity, and (2) it is intrinsically a nationalistic, moralistic region, just as the GOP has traditionally been a nationalistic, moralistic party.  But more than that, New England is a progressive region, so the GOP needs only to figure out how to meld progressivism with nationalism as it did in its glory days to win New England.  And in the past that wasn't such a hard thing to do.  I suspect it isn't that hard these days either.  After all, we have no shortage of national crises and national desires and national shortcomings, as the very proud, very american, very progressive New Englanders are always pointing out, so it's just a matter of the party pulling its head out of its collective ass and realizing what needs to be done. 

You can't start out West.  Californians and Cowboys don't like to be told what to do.  Not by courts and not by political parties.  For example, Out West party membership is down to about sixty to sixty-five percent, meaning that unaffiliated voters now make up a plurality of most voters in states out west.  Even in Iowa, which is just barely west of the River, the unaffiliated represent about 40% of the electorate.  And you can't start in the South, which is traditionalistic and very reluctant to changes in general.  You must start with New England.  And the rest will follow.  The Democrats have figured this out, and, as is well known, the Republicans figured this out long ago.  New England is where you begin the expansion.

I would just like to say - good post.

[War on Want]

Suburbia is the obvious answer. A return to what gave the Republicans their now past semi-kind-sorta-though-actually-illusory-dominance, in other words. The Republicans were always at their most successful when they were the Selfish Party and obviously so.

Yep, if they want to stay the Republican Party and not fundamentally change they must win back suburbia along with some upper class inner city.

[Matt Damon™]

They need to get more specialized candidates for each region instead of generic republicans. For example in Washington and Oregon a fiscally conservative Republican that was also pro-environment and a bit more on the socially liberal side could do quite well.

this

the republicans need to reregionalize and do a 50 state strategy on the model of what dean proposed and obama pulled off

[MK]

They need to get more specialized candidates for each region instead of generic republicans. For example in Washington and Oregon a fiscally conservative Republican that was also pro-environment and a bit more on the socially liberal side could do quite well.

this

the republicans need to reregionalize and do a 50 state strategy on the model of what dean proposed and obama pulled off

How are they going to do that when everytime you turn around some Rhino is on Tv bashing union workers for making too much money?

[paul718]

They need to get more specialized candidates for each region instead of generic republicans. For example in Washington and Oregon a fiscally conservative Republican that was also pro-environment and a bit more on the socially liberal side could do quite well.

this

the republicans need to reregionalize and do a 50 state strategy on the model of what dean proposed and obama pulled off

How are they going to do that when everytime you turn around some Rhino is on Tv bashing union workers for making too much money?

Most Americans don't like government bailouts or the UAW.

[Torie]

Toss the nonsensical pretense of 'economic conservatism' right out the window, go populist, and Ohio, North Carolina and Indiana will come home, and places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin will be in reach.   Consolidate around poor whites - most whites are getting poorer, and they still hate a black and a hispanic.

Ya, but I could not be a member of such a retooled GOP iteration. It is far more complex than that. In the end, it is about competence in dealing with complex problems. I don't think the US is that ideological, and as social issues fade, even less so.

[Sam Spade]

Toss the nonsensical pretense of 'economic conservatism' right out the window, go populist, and Ohio, North Carolina and Indiana will come home, and places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin will be in reach.   Consolidate around poor whites - most whites are getting poorer, and they still hate a black and a hispanic.

Ya, but I could not be a member of such a retooled GOP iteration. It is far more complex than that. In the end, it is about competence in dealing with complex problems. I don't think the US is that ideological, and as social issues fade, even less so.

Social issues aren't fading.  They're just going into the background for a little while.  And maybe not even that, as bad times tend to release a certain amount of pent-up anger.  Heck, you should be witnessing some of that right now. 

About economics (cross-thread reference) - you should not be concerned.  everything that is going on makes sense, in a way.

[MK]

They need to get more specialized candidates for each region instead of generic republicans. For example in Washington and Oregon a fiscally conservative Republican that was also pro-environment and a bit more on the socially liberal side could do quite well.

this

the republicans need to reregionalize and do a 50 state strategy on the model of what dean proposed and obama pulled off

How are they going to do that when everytime you turn around some Rhino is on Tv bashing union workers for making too much money?

Most Americans don't like government bailouts or the UAW.

Great I hope the next Gop candidate in 2012 runs on a anti union platform.

That should be the way to get the Gop back on track.

[opebo]

Toss the nonsensical pretense of 'economic conservatism' right out the window, go populist, and Ohio, North Carolina and Indiana will come home, and places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin will be in reach.   Consolidate around poor whites - most whites are getting poorer, and they still hate a black and a hispanic.

Ya, but I could not be a member of such a retooled GOP iteration. It is far more complex than that. In the end, it is about competence in dealing with complex problems. I don't think the US is that ideological, and as social issues fade, even less so.

Social issues aren't fading.  They're just going into the background for a little while.  And maybe not even that, as bad times tend to release a certain amount of pent-up anger.  Heck, you should be witnessing some of that right now. 

About economics (cross-thread reference) - you should not be concerned.  everything that is going on makes sense, in a way.

Two points.  Torie, a winning electoral coalition is most likely one which does not include you.  And SS, you are quite correct that neither party will ever threaten the economic interests of Torie's class.

[paul718]

They need to get more specialized candidates for each region instead of generic republicans. For example in Washington and Oregon a fiscally conservative Republican that was also pro-environment and a bit more on the socially liberal side could do quite well.

this

the republicans need to reregionalize and do a 50 state strategy on the model of what dean proposed and obama pulled off

How are they going to do that when everytime you turn around some Rhino is on Tv bashing union workers for making too much money?

Most Americans don't like government bailouts or the UAW.

Great I hope the next Gop candidate in 2012 runs on a anti union platform.

That should be the way to get the Gop back on track.

It's never been a secret that the GOP is anti-union.  Are you just finding this out now?