Could the Japanese LDP platform work for a Republican candidate in 2024 (or beyond)?

[JoeSchmoe]

Who wins? Please post maps.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

In many respects, a Japanese LDP platform would involve becoming much more like a Keynesianism-oriented Democrat on economic issues.
In this case, the GOP would have to distinguish itself on social issues.

[PSOL]

The LDP’s platform is to keep being in power and being defined as not their opponents. The latter works best but convincing people that they’re hold onto power is good isn’t doable.

[morgieb]

Do the LDP even have a real platform? Their style of party plain wouldn’t work outside of a dominant party system.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Do the LDP even have a real platform? Their style of party plain wouldn’t work outside of a dominant party system.

The LDP is basically if the more establishment-y elements of both parties got together and had to sit in one party. Of course you'd have a broadly moderate party with a ton of factional disagreement, which is what the LDP is.
Problem is, America just isn't a place that generally produces dominant-party systems quite as strong as Japan's. America's a land with a very long history of vigorous two-party competition, while Japan, being stability-minded and concerned with continuity, has a stable governing dominant-party that takes the best talent away and keeps in a place a self-perpetuating cycle of power preservation on both national as well as prefectural level.
So if you really want an LDP-style party in America, you need to first think about how it came to be in the first place. It certainly could have come to exist in some alternate scenario, sure, but as they say, the devil is in the details.

[Agonized-Statism]

So if you really want an LDP-style party in America, you need to first think about how it came to be in the first place. It certainly could have come to exist in some alternate scenario, sure, but as they say, the devil is in the details.

Like most scenarios where the two-party system is broken, it would require the abolition of the electoral college. But I could definitely see a near future big-tent party in the US having similar goals to the LDP: market-oriented privatization and administrative reform, bigger military and more involvement in the Asia-Pacific, and businesses' interest in free enterprise tempered by some protectionism. The LDP's degree of government control has always been somewhat stronger than their Western counterparts', though, and I would expect that to be true in comparison to a US LDP.