Why do Social Conservatives get blamed for GOP losses?

[Keystone Phil]

LOL

So just because abortion is still "acceptable" to the "civilized world," it's ok. And I'm the moron?

"Abortion is ok because...uh...a bunch of people just said so."

Yeah, a bunch of random people.
You know, like medical doctors, Supreme Court Justices, etc.

Yeah and a bunch of random people are on my side as well. You know, like medical doctors, Supreme Court Justicies, Norma McCorvey...

Sleep well tonight.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Yeah and a bunch of random people are on my side as well. You know, like medical doctors, Supreme Court Justicies, Norma McCorvey...

Sleep well tonight.

Except the inconvenient fact that the other bunch of random people is bigger than yours.
And of course that most of your bunch oppose abortion on religious grounds, not medical or legal ones, as they should.

But thanks anyway for playing.

[Keystone Phil]

Yeah and a bunch of random people are on my side as well. You know, like medical doctors, Supreme Court Justicies, Norma McCorvey...

Sleep well tonight.

Except the inconvenient fact that the other bunch of random people is bigger than yours.
And of course that most of your bunch oppose abortion on religious grounds, not medical or legal ones, as they should.

Ah, ok, I forgot that someone is automatically right because more people agree with them. 

And those of us are opposed to abortion on human grounds. We're not against abortion because we're a member of a certain religion, dope.

But you're missing the point anyway. I apparently shouldn't sleep at night because a bunch of terrorists that plot to kill the innocent are tortured. I say that you shouldn't sleep at night because you support the slaughter of unborn children. If you want to spin, we can spin. This comes from someone who doesn't even support torture, by the way, jackass.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Ah, ok, I forgot that someone is automatically right because more people agree with them. 

It's called Democracy. Get used to it.

But you're missing the point anyway. I apparently shouldn't sleep at night because a bunch of terrorists that plot to kill the innocent are tortured.

Many of those tortured turned out to be innocent and were subsequently released.
Learn your facts before you start impersonating Dick Cheney.

I say that you shouldn't sleep at night because you support the slaughter of unborn children. If you want to spin, we can spin. This comes from someone who doesn't even support torture, by the way, jackass.

And I don't support abortion moron.
So we're even.

[Keystone Phil]

It's called Democracy. Get used to it.

LOL

That doesn't make a viewpoint "right," idiot. Being more popular doesn't mean it's right.

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All of those aborted were defenseless and innocent.

I said if you wanted spin, you'll get it.

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Er...uh...then why did you list a bunch of people defending abortion as proof that that view is more credible than "mine?"

[Landslide Lyndon]

It's called Democracy. Get used to it.

LOL

That doesn't make a viewpoint "right," idiot. Being more popular doesn't mean it's right.

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All of those aborted were defenseless and innocent.

I said if you wanted spin, you'll get it.

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Er...uh...then why did you list a bunch of people defending abortion as proof that that view is more credible than "mine?"

1)Yes it does, no matter how much you whine.

2)Spare me the melodrama.
By the way, these people were defenseless too, in case you didn't notice.

3)If the experts say that abortion is an acceptable procedure medicaly and legaly, then my opinion becomes irrelevant.

I'm off to sleep.

[Keystone Phil]

1)Yes it does, no matter how much you whine.

Something is "right" just because public opinion says so? Do I really need to pull out the countless examples of stuff that you'd find "wrong" where the public disagreed?

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Yeah, this sounds like something a Pro Lifer would say.  If you defend the unborn, you're melodramatic!

Ok, they were defenseless but they weren't exterminated.

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Ah, "the experts."

Tell me why you still bother to hold an opinion if the experts disagree? I mean, if they clearly know better than you do, why would you ever bother to disagree? If you believe abortion is wrong just because your religion says so then you're just a fool. Those of us that are actually religious and disagree with abortion have more reason that "Well, our religion says it's wrong so that's the way it is."

Your arguments here have made no sense at all. Not shocking, of course, but just a waste of time on your part.

[Biden Stans Are Cringelords]

Yet another mentally handicapped social conservative. Your comparing fetus that are debatable as to whether they are considered life or not, who feel no pain and have no conscience to actual living beings being tortured?

[Keystone Phil]

And yet the idea of hitting a pregnant woman in the stomach is one of the biggest societal no-no's. Hmmm...

[??????????]

Yet another mentally handicapped social conservative. Your comparing fetus that are debatable as to whether they are considered life or not, who feel no pain and have no conscience to actual living beings being tortured?

Who are you to say if they have a conscience or feel pain?

[??????????]

And yet the idea of hitting a pregnant woman in the stomach is one of the biggest societal no-no's. Hmmm...

Shadow of the wave could have probably used a few swift kicks to the head.

[Keystone Phil]

Yet another mentally handicapped social conservative. Your comparing fetus that are debatable as to whether they are considered life or not, who feel no pain and have no conscience to actual living beings being tortured?

Who are you to say if they have a conscience or feel pain?

Go easy on him. He's a classic example of a fetus that suffered from some serious pain while in the womb. We see the results now.

[Vepres]

Yet another mentally handicapped social conservative. Your comparing fetus that are debatable as to whether they are considered life or not, who feel no pain and have no conscience to actual living beings being tortured?

Who are you to say if they have a conscience or feel pain?

Well early on they have no conscience nor do they feel pain because the brain and nervous system are still in the earlier stages of development. However, your point becomes valid at the third trimester, when the fetus is much more developed.

[Biden Stans Are Cringelords]

Well I think science can prove they have no conscience. I'm not 100% sure about the pain, but I don't think that that part is developed yet.

Hitting a pregant woman can terminate her pregnancy, it's not her choice. Just like it's still illegal to steal a car, even though the car is not living.

[Keystone Phil]

Hitting a pregant woman can terminate her pregnancy, it's not her choice. Just like it's still illegal to steal a car, even though the car is not living.

Uh, no. People don't express outrage at hitting someone because it wasn't the victim's choice to be hit; they're outraged because of the affects it has on the child.

Your second comparison simply makes no sense.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Hitting a pregant woman can terminate her pregnancy, it's not her choice. Just like it's still illegal to steal a car, even though the car is not living.

Uh, no. People don't express outrage at hitting someone because it wasn't the victim's choice to be hit; they're outraged because of the affects it has on the child.

Your second comparison simply makes no sense.

So that means that if someone hits a woman who isn't pregnant, then everything is OK. No need for outrage.
Nice.

[Keystone Phil]

Hitting a pregant woman can terminate her pregnancy, it's not her choice. Just like it's still illegal to steal a car, even though the car is not living.

Uh, no. People don't express outrage at hitting someone because it wasn't the victim's choice to be hit; they're outraged because of the affects it has on the child.

Your second comparison simply makes no sense.

So that means that if someone hits a woman who isn't pregnant, then everything is OK. No need for outrage.
Nice.

When the hell did I say that? How is that even implied?

The same logic applies to hitting anyone in general - people aren't outraged when someone is hit because it went against someone's will; they're outraged because they were attacked.

Your trolling has gone far enough now.

[Landslide Lyndon]

[Uh, no. People don't express outrage at hitting someone because it wasn't the victim's choice to be hit; they're outraged because of the affects it has on the child.

When the hell did I say that? How is that even implied?

The same logic applies to hitting anyone in general - people aren't outraged when someone is hit because it went against someone's will; they're outraged because they were attacked.

[Keystone Phil]

[Uh, no. People don't express outrage at hitting someone because it wasn't the victim's choice to be hit; they're outraged because of the affects it has on the child.

When the hell did I say that? How is that even implied?

The same logic applies to hitting anyone in general - people aren't outraged when someone is hit because it went against someone's will; they're outraged because they were attacked.

Uh...I was using the example of a pregnant woman in my first post because we were talking specifically about a pregnant woman, assclown. Sorry for not saying "they're outraged because of the affects it has on the child and THE WOMAN!" 

[Person Man]

Phil is still entertaining, huh? I wonder if any of the ND protesters cut their balls off in protests...

[TeePee4Prez]

And it also seemed like pro-death penalty, pro-Iraq War Catholic pols were getting a free pass from the Church because they were pro-life.  That to me says selectivity. 

Even I use that as a reason why the Church can't make Pro Choicers outcasts.

I'm glad you think that way.  Unfortunately, not all of the clergy do.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Phil is still entertaining, huh? I wonder if any of the ND protesters cut their balls off in protests...

Phil is always OK for a good laugh.
Especially when he becomes ANGRY PHIL!!!!

 

[Scam of God]

I think we're getting somewhat sidetracked from the original question. I'm not trying to start a debate on the merits of social issues or even the popularity of social issues in certain segments of the population. I'm wondering why the social issues are getting blamed so much for the Republican's current problems.

I can understand that some people could be alienated if they felt all the GOP had to offer was social issues, but abandoning them on a national level would just look like a desperate publicity stunt that would not affect public perceptional and needlessly alienate the evangelical bloc.

This ties in with the ridiculous 'elitist' theme that the Republicans have been pushing, with various degrees of success, against Democratic candidates.

No one thinks they're voting for someone who isn't an elite. When poor, undereducated, rural whites in the South and Appalachia vote for an Ivy League-educated conservative, they're not under some illusion that they're voting for someone just like them. It's about being part of an in-group and self-validation. Certain peoples are less psychologically capable than others, and their weaknesses naturally lead them to an incapability for self-reliance and individualism.

However, they don't want an ordinary "shlub" just like one of them as much as they want someone willing to pay homage to what they self-identify as. Obama and Clinton had middle class roots, the Bushes, McCain, and Reagan did not. But the Republicans in that line-up were certainly against the right people; they spoke to their 'values', nebulous and socialistically-defined as they are.

And this is why idiot populism has been so important to the conservative coalition. For starters, they're cheapest votes you can get, since it costs nothing to hate queers and, better yet, you never actually have to deliver on things like abortion. It's also why so many people vote for the so-called "ordinary" guy they can have a beer with, even when they know the faux-folk are the elite. There is perhaps no more pleasing emotion, especially to the simple-minded, as righteous indignation. Outrage makes you feel superior and deserving all at the same time. The feeling of being wronged is the best of both worlds- you're entitled, but because someone else screwed up, not because you did -- for all their talk of 'self-reliance' and individual responsibility, the poor Republican is perhaps the least responsible genera of humanity in existence. The Mexicans took your job, or the gays are destroying your family or the French are betraying you - either way, you're the victim and the hero, all at the same time.

I am reminded very much of a quote by Henry Louis Mencken, in his (in)famous obituary for former Democratic nominee and theocrat extraordinaire William Jennings Bryan:

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This lust for revenge, this ressentiment, eats away at the weakling's sense of worth; he castigates pride as sinful, and with it goes his ability to think and will as an individual. And so he turns dour and rotten, and begins to look with an evil eye upon those who he sees as behaving in a way he could not - as a fully-formed, cohesive, individual unit.

Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reily do the same thing Nancy Grace does - channel this righteous anger. It's a self rewarding emotion that the the Right calls being "down to Earth", but is really self-congratulatory. It might not be exactly malignant narcissism, but it's certainly not about voting for people who aren't too removed from your life story: the idiot populists wouldn't keep voting for wealthy, Ivy League grads if it was. Anything which is superior must be marginalized to maintain the moron's integrity.

This "validation" strategy worked really well for a while. It politicized an organized, highly energetic group, evangelicals. In 2004, there were between 3.5 and 4 million new evangelical voters. Kerry lost by 3 million. This let the Right push through an economic and foreign policy agenda through that the evangelicals were (until 9/11) relatively uninterested in, but willing to support.

The problem is, it ate into their true ideological base, which was always business focused, pragmatic, New England-ish economic conservatives. The Democrats tacked right, burned from their foolish tip-toeing into European leftism. They co-opted the pro-business message, and are now, in many ways, the more economically conservative party. The Democrats are now the party of professionals, which is a historic reversal. The Republicans are left mostly with the most hardened economic conservatives, the near pariah-status warmongers and the idiot populists who now have the muscle, but not the brains, to run the party. To be sure, Obama is leading what looks to be a relatively Big Government-oriented Party (though not nearly as big, for instance, as the New Deal or Great Society-era Democrats), but in the long term, it's highly likely that the GOP will be infested by the same outrage-induced Bryanite populism that the Democrats were a century ago. And if it wasn't a winning coalition then, it most certainly will not be one in the future.

This puts the Democrats in a solid straddle from center-right to just barely left of center- where most of the votes are. Meanwhile, the Republican party is all over the place - Mike Huckabee would have been a Blue Dog Democrat 25 years ago, Romney just has to flip-flop on abortion again to be a slightly conservative Dem, the Bushies are Reagan clones but less competent, Gingrich is attempting to inhabit a Platonic world of perfect fiscal conservatism, while the idiot populists, led by Palin, have no set principles, and mostly lunge from outrage to outrage. They only care about what no one else cares about- the social issues that are doomed by demographics to seem as quaint as the 90's passionate debate over school uniforms and the V-chip.

[Vepres]

Yes, as Einzige said, social conservatives took over the party and drove out the very large and original GOP base, North-Eastern and mountain west fiscal conservatives. These people were pro-business, well educated, and very reasonable on foreign policy. But when social conservatives became prominent in the party, they turned the party against their original base on social issues and foreign policy. Notice how support for Republicans immediately drops off in the 1996 elections, and then flat lines. The fact that Obama won every north eastern state by ~10% or more is no fluke.

The party has a dilemma, either buck social conservatives and risk losing the south, while becoming competitive everywhere else in the country and possibly solidifying the mountain west, or keep the social conservative base, but be geographically locked out of the northeast, pacific west, and, increasingly, the upper mid-west. I personally would buck social conservatives, but that's my opinion.

[Lunar]

And it also seemed like pro-death penalty, pro-Iraq War Catholic pols were getting a free pass from the Church because they were pro-life.  That to me says selectivity. 

Even I use that as a reason why the Church can't make Pro Choicers outcasts.

I'm glad you think that way.  Unfortunately, not all of the clergy do.

In their defense, I think they may view the murder of innocent babies as a tad more important than the murder of a convicted serial killer