What can the Republican Party do to increase their support with urban voters?

[Ferguson97]

A lot of discussion is focused on how Democrats can increase their rural support, but what can Republicans do to increase their support with city-dwellers?

[Vice President Christian Man]

Focus on implementing populist economics is a start

[dead0man]

1.end the war on drugs
2.stop nominating people like Trump
3.let the Democrats continue to shoot themselves in foot
4.profit


edit-urban places will still have to suffer with Dem mayors and councils, but they certainly can make the races more competitive.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Not viscerally hate the concept of cities.

[Schiff for Senate]

End the War on Drugs (just adopt the Democrats' view on the issue) and become pro-gun-control.

[7,052,770]

I don't think they need to, and in fact any concessions to reach out to them would be counter-productive.

[Del Tachi]

Be louder in calling out how Democrat governance has made most cities less safe, more inequal, and reduced opportunity for those who live there.

[dead0man]

End the War on Drugs (just adopt the Democrats' view on the issue)

these words are contradictory as Democrats clearly are 100% behind the war on drugs as they've done nothing to stop it while controlling the top of the govt.  They certainly could have, they had the numbers, they had the people behind them, but alas.....they'd rather spend future money by the trillions than do something Americans actually want them to do.

and become pro-gun-control.

we are trying to increase their votes, not pander to left wing people who wouldn't ever vote for them anyway.

[RINO Tom]

Be louder in calling out how Democrat governance has made most cities less safe, more inequal, and reduced opportunity for those who live there.

Pretty much this, but it must go hand in hand with a more sophisticated cultural message.  "Them elites" isn't going to play well with urban voters who are getting the short end of both sticks - not being "elite" in any true sense of the word, facing a crazy-high cost of living and getting by just like anyone else, and still getting labeled as such in a pejorative manner.

Assuming they can do the latter, the former actually could work.  The Atlas perception (that I have seen before) that a very sizable chunk of urban residents (at least here in Chicago) were not deeply disturbed by the Democrats' lukewarm-to-completely-silent responses to the riots and looting is completely divorced from reality.

[Ferguson97]

Be louder in calling out how Democrat governance has made most cities less safe, more inequal, and reduced opportunity for those who live there.

Pretty much this, but it must go hand in hand with a more sophisticated cultural message.  "Them elites" isn't going to play well with urban voters who are getting the short end of both sticks - not being "elite" in any true sense of the word, facing a crazy-high cost of living and getting by just like anyone else, and still getting labeled as such in a pejorative manner.

Assuming they can do the latter, the former actually could work.  The Atlas perception (that I have seen before) that a very sizable chunk of urban residents (at least here in Chicago) were not deeply disturbed by the Democrats' lukewarm-to-completely-silent responses to the riots and looting is completely divorced from reality.

I think this largely depends on whether or not the rioting was something that you saw through the evening news or your bedroom window. I know some people who live in these cities, and it was 50/50 on whether they said that the media coverage was exaggerated or accurate.

[RINO Tom]

Be louder in calling out how Democrat governance has made most cities less safe, more inequal, and reduced opportunity for those who live there.

Pretty much this, but it must go hand in hand with a more sophisticated cultural message.  "Them elites" isn't going to play well with urban voters who are getting the short end of both sticks - not being "elite" in any true sense of the word, facing a crazy-high cost of living and getting by just like anyone else, and still getting labeled as such in a pejorative manner.

Assuming they can do the latter, the former actually could work.  The Atlas perception (that I have seen before) that a very sizable chunk of urban residents (at least here in Chicago) were not deeply disturbed by the Democrats' lukewarm-to-completely-silent responses to the riots and looting is completely divorced from reality.

I think this largely depends on whether or not the rioting was something that you saw through the evening news or your bedroom window. I know some people who live in these cities, and it was 50/50 on whether they said that the media coverage was exaggerated or accurate.

I am not qualified to speak about any city but my own, but it was bad in Chicago.  My fiancé is a nurse at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and was working nights at the time.  She’s QUITE liberal and we (politely) argue about politics a lot, but the series of riots really brought her down.  She would walk home in the morning at 7:00 am, and she said it was so depressing.  There was a night when rioters threw bricks through the lobby window of the literal children’s hospital at her work, terrifying everyone in the waiting room.  Just sad, and it was infuriating to see people far away in safe neighborhoods that weren’t seeing any of this excuse it for ideological reasons, especially when a disproportionate amount of our vandalism and theft came from people driving in from Indiana to take advantage of the situation.

I definitely respect that it might have been different in other cities, but amazingly I still have to say this as if it’s some type of political opinion instead of something we all learned as kids … two wrongs don’t make a right.  Rioting is rarely, if ever, excusable.

[Bootes Void]

Probably follow how Giuliani did in the 90s and talk about they would turn the cities around

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

emphasize cost of living issues with policy and rhetoric.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Reach out to blacks and Latinos who feel taken for granted by the Democratic Party and try to improve support with those groups.

[Crumpets]

Cynical take: Tailor the conspiracy rhetoric to appeal to uneducated and otherwise impressionable people living in cities as much as in the countryside. I know quite a few city dwellers who have bought pretty much every conspiracy thrown at them from both the left and the right from "Bush did 9/11" to "COVID is just a ploy from big pharma to drive up profits" to "Kamala Harris isn't really black" to chemtrails. They are mostly still pro-LGBT, pro-immigrant, pro-worker, and all the other "pros" associated with Democrats, and hence vote Democrat. But if the Global Realignment has taught us anything, it's that education (or maybe more specifically, the faith in institutions that's usually associated with education level) is becoming an increasingly strong indicator of voting preference. I have a feeling with the right window dressing, it wouldn't be hard to get those sorts of voters to throw all of their more mainstream, left-leaning beliefs under the bus if they think it will help them stand up to the cabal, or whatever other boogeyman they want to come up with.

This might also be called the "Gabbard Track."

[Aurelius]

Stop lumping all cities together as citadels of the elites. Focus on non-black working class voters in cities, many of whom are demographically similar to rural working class folks who vote R by big margins. Focus on cost of living and promote development (either/or of infill, densification, and sprawl, depending on what makes sense and/or plays well in a given locality) as opposed to the progressive NIMBYism that runs rampant in so many big cities. Focus on good education - in cities with awful schools, school choice and charter schools are a good policy and point out how unlike Dems who put teacher unions over student success, Rs put student success over selfish unions. Those are the things that immediately come to mind.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Republicans here are in a similar bind to the "Democrats for small towns" strategies: they are outsiders looking in, and their motives are seen as underhand and definitely contemptuous, reliant on local proxies with a very distorted view of their place in the local fabric. You can really see this in the autumn of the infamous year of Defund the Police: a lot of people were angry at their municipal leaders for many, many reasons, but as this was noticed by the GOP and conservative leadership who tried to stir the pot, people started to go back to their leaders as they became inundated with a national message that seemed contemptuous of their way of life. Much like your Obama-Trump voter resented being told he was some kind of deranged gap-toothed bumpkin, the residents of Portland or Minneapolis or Chicago also resent the reductive stereotypes that are thrown their way.

There are lots of patterns to successful urban conservativism. My personal hobby horse has been that conservatives take a leaf from Rob Ford (a conservative with a secret power: he didn't need to lie when he said he had black friends). You could try the ethnic sectarian route (which would be repulsive, but potentially lucrative way to uproot the carefully nested multicultural nature of most Dem machines). You could try and coopt a machine in cities where anti machine reformist are threatening to win, or co-opt the reformists.  You can be positively LibDemish in how you can opportunisticly represent just about any cause. Point is you do need local people on the ground and you need to ignore the drive to nationalise every single issue.

[RINO Tom]

Take this advice from liberals and do the exact opposite:

Cynical take: Tailor the conspiracy rhetoric to appeal to uneducated and otherwise impressionable people living in cities as much as in the countryside.

Let Democrats be the party for the basket-cases and fruitcakes...

Somewhat OT, but this should really be the GOP playbook on cultural issues EVERYWHERE.  The VA governor's race showed that you can stand up for culturally traditional attitudes and not given into any type of socially liberal consensus without appearing reactionary or anti-intellectual.  People in the center know how frickin' crazy certain elements of the far left have become RE: SJW stuff, and they've seen more than enough evidence that center-left people are more than willing to not only enable them but go along with their ideas as soon as it's feasible.  The Biden Administration calling mothers "birthing persons" to not offend trans people is literal insanity, but you will find multiple "ideologically normal" red avatars here who would try to talk you into a corner for why it isn't so bad.  They'll disown the far left as long as they can, and then they'll have their back and gaslight you for opposing it, lol.

The problem is the GOP hasn't been smart enough to just shut the  up and let Democrats do the talking.  People don't support reparations for slavery, taking funding from police departments, sanctuary cities, indefinite mask mandates, etc.  The polls are super clear on that.  Instead of the GOP standing as the "measured alternative" to the Democrats, they appear as the other side of the same shltty coin.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

I know 'stop nominating Trump' is a low-effort answer, but that is the case. I know someone in SF who will rant about the looting and how they think taxes are too high and that SJWs are terrible- yet if you mention Trump they will go into a full rant about how terrible he was.

IDEAS:
1. Focus less on 'owning the libs' since it allows the Democrats to say/do completely insane things and get away with it by pointing to stupid GOP BS like 'Joe Biden says name is longer than Donald Trump- there's three more letters!', and then it being pointed out that Biden signs his name as Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., which is longer.
2. As for gun control/law enforcement I think messaging needs to be that we need more police but fewer guns among gang members, etc. So hiring more armed police to confiscate weapons from gangs would sell pretty well.
3. STOP TRYING TO TAKE POOR PEOPLE'S HEALTHCARE AWAY! You don't have to embrace UHC, just stop trying to gut Medicaid (which many urban voters rely on).
4. Don't paint cities as 'bastions of the elite'. Literally the worst thing you could say to a poor urban voter if you are trying to acknowledge their existence, let alone get their vote.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Republicans here are in a similar bind to the "Democrats for small towns" strategies: they are outsiders looking in, and their motives are seen as underhand and definitely contemptuous, reliant on local proxies with a very distorted view of their place in the local fabric. You can really see this in the autumn of the infamous year of Defund the Police: a lot of people were angry at their municipal leaders for many, many reasons, but as this was noticed by the GOP and conservative leadership who tried to stir the pot, people started to go back to their leaders as they became inundated with a national message that seemed contemptuous of their way of life. Much like your Obama-Trump voter resented being told he was some kind of deranged gap-toothed bumpkin, the residents of Portland or Minneapolis or Chicago also resent the reductive stereotypes that are thrown their way.

There are lots of patterns to successful urban conservativism. My personal hobby horse has been that conservatives take a leaf from Rob Ford (a conservative with a secret power: he didn't need to lie when he said he had black friends). You could try the ethnic sectarian route (which would be repulsive, but potentially lucrative way to uproot the carefully nested multicultural nature of most Dem machines). You could try and coopt a machine in cities where anti machine reformist are threatening to win, or co-opt the reformists.  You can be positively LibDemish in how you can opportunisticly represent just about any cause. Point is you do need local people on the ground and you need to ignore the drive to nationalise every single issue.

The issue is that urban conservatism is very much contained in the US democratic party, Urban conservatism is very much alive but almost all of those who pursue such policies identify as democrats and align with the party nationally. Part of this is that the party structure has no way of excluding members based on ideology due to americas weird party system, and another part is that primaries mean that often the easists way for any movement to win is not to change the party in power, but rather change the actual party candidates. Eric Adams I think is a good example of urban conservatism and is a good comparison to Rob Ford, his victory was very much a result of backlash to the defund the police message and powered by outreach towards places that felt alienated from the mainstream of the democratic party.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

The Republican problem in urban areas, of course, long predates Trump.

[darklordoftech]

Republicans here are in a similar bind to the "Democrats for small towns" strategies: they are outsiders looking in, and their motives are seen as underhand and definitely contemptuous, reliant on local proxies with a very distorted view of their place in the local fabric. You can really see this in the autumn of the infamous year of Defund the Police: a lot of people were angry at their municipal leaders for many, many reasons, but as this was noticed by the GOP and conservative leadership who tried to stir the pot, people started to go back to their leaders as they became inundated with a national message that seemed contemptuous of their way of life. Much like your Obama-Trump voter resented being told he was some kind of deranged gap-toothed bumpkin, the residents of Portland or Minneapolis or Chicago also resent the reductive stereotypes that are thrown their way.

There are lots of patterns to successful urban conservativism. My personal hobby horse has been that conservatives take a leaf from Rob Ford (a conservative with a secret power: he didn't need to lie when he said he had black friends). You could try the ethnic sectarian route (which would be repulsive, but potentially lucrative way to uproot the carefully nested multicultural nature of most Dem machines). You could try and coopt a machine in cities where anti machine reformist are threatening to win, or co-opt the reformists.  You can be positively LibDemish in how you can opportunisticly represent just about any cause. Point is you do need local people on the ground and you need to ignore the drive to nationalise every single issue.

The issue is that urban conservatism is very much contained in the US democratic party, Urban conservatism is very much alive but almost all of those who pursue such policies identify as democrats and align with the party nationally. Part of this is that the party structure has no way of excluding members based on ideology due to americas weird party system, and another part is that primaries mean that often the easists way for any movement to win is not to change the party in power, but rather change the actual party candidates. Eric Adams I think is a good example of urban conservatism and is a good comparison to Rob Ford, his victory was very much a result of backlash to the defund the police message and powered by outreach towards places that felt alienated from the mainstream of the democratic party.

Would you say that Michael Bloomberg and 1990s Rudy Giuliani are/were examples of urban conservatism? Would you say that the 1996 Presidential election was urban conservative vs. rural conservative?