Can the GOP win back surbubia?

[All Along The Watchtower]

In California, at least,  as long as the GOP is perceived as being dominated by rural and exurban interests...then no.

[All Along The Watchtower]

One should note that the fast-growing newer suburbs and exurbs are much more Republican than the older, more established ones, generally speaking.

Suburbanites like low taxes, fast growth, and "pro-family" policies when they first move in to the young, developing exurbs and suburbs. Once they get more established, they care more about education, infrastructure, etc.  and tend to moderate or even become liberal on cultural issues.

[All Along The Watchtower]

What the hell is with the patronizing tone, Freep, as if I don't know who composes the Democratic party. Nothing I said disagrees with what you said. So I have the ask why you felt the need to bring this up as if I did?

All I said was, the Democrats made the decision to jettison any conservatives they had and embrace the new left in the 1960's. That is why conservatives rallied to the lesser of two evils, the Republicans, creating the ideologically divided situation you have now. None of that is inconsistent with what you said. You just focus more on justifying that choice, which was irrelevant to the topic I was discussing, which concerned the GOP.

The Democrats didn't embrace the new left considering that Hubert Humphrey won the party nomination in 1968 and only George McGovern has been the lone new left candidate that became the Barry Goldwater of the Democratic party/left. The Republicans hadn't been keen to the new right that help Goldwater elected. Both new wings of "left" and "right" were shunned by both parties. The difference is that Goldwater is embraced by the party today where Democrats run away when Georgy is brought up.

The difference is that Reagan, Bush Sr, and Bush Jr all ran on conservative platforms, and won a combined total of 5 terms (20 years) as Presidents.

Carter was a one-term President, Mondale lost in a landslide, so the Democrats have been running to the right of  Carter and Mondale on economic issues with limited success (Clinton, Obama) and some failures (Dukakis, Gore, Kerry).

[All Along The Watchtower]

On a really good day, maybe Mitt Romney could do that. But, republicans can win without them.

Oh?

Yes, republicans can win without suburbs.

They really can't. Not without some suburbs, anyway.

[All Along The Watchtower]

On a really good day, maybe Mitt Romney could do that. But, republicans can win without them.

Oh?

Yes, republicans can win without suburbs.

They really can't. Not without some suburbs, anyway.

Republicans can’t completely ignore the suburban vote. There just aren’t enough people left living in rural areas anymore to build a coalition like that. Suburbs are strange political entities because they vary a lot from city to city in their voting tendencies. They tend to include more voters who are willing to pull the level for a member of either party depending on who they think would be a more qualified leader. The GOP needs to realize that by holding positions that are becoming less and less popular, we have to hold our party to a higher academic standard when it comes to the things our leaders say. The era of swaths of rural land where people are disconnected from news and information is over. We need to find people who hold conservative positions who, if some landed from Mars having no knowledge of US politics, would appear smarter and more qualified than their opponents.

Almost every swing state in the nation is decided by suburbanites. Heck, with how often liberals complain that suburbs are terrible places it should in theory be rather easy!

We can win with around a minimum of a fifth of the suburban vote.

Do you have any kind of reasoning behind that "one fifth" or did you just pull it out of your ass?

Yeah, seems kind of crazy really.

The GOP NEEDS suburbs.

And trying to reach into urban areas might not be a bad idea.  Hell, the most ancestrally Republican area in my state is Tulsa County.

Well, you'd probably alienate a lot of rural voters if you reached out to the 'city-slickers."