US Politics: What Price Loyalty?

[Mlle. Zabzie]

1 hour ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Yeah, but we're barreling towards a party realignment in 2020. It's not going to be as openly dramatic as the fifties and sixties, but what's left of the current Republican establishment at that point is going to have much bigger issues than persecuting the minority of its members that had the (minimum) fortitude required to say something.

 

1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

From the looks of it, the Democratic party loses the white working class even further, while the Republicans lose educated suburban whites and pro-trade business types.  That shift was happening in 2016 and looks to be continuing. 

The question is whether that shift can lead to a sustainable party.  All political parties contain contradictions, but sometimes they are too stark to manage.  The Republicans are facing demographic problems staying relevant, although if they improve their standing with the white working class they could have a hammerlock on the Senate for decades.  The Democrats have more contradictions, since a party made up of liberals, minorities, and college educated suburban/urban whites will have trouble maintaining a cohesive platform.

 

1 hour ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

If you can't see intervention to stop mass slaughter of innocents as 'right' then I'm not the type of medical professional you need to be talking to.

Regarding Iraq, the entire reason for going there was corrupt from the start. I would posit instead that when you do a regime change, actually give a fuck about helping the people.

R's can no longer be the party of law and order, so that's now a Democrat issue as R's shift to focusing on merely preserving the right to murder minorities for cops .

R's can no longer be the party of fiscal responsibility.

R's can no longer be the party of moral values.

R's can no longer be the party of liberal trade.

R's can no longer be the party of limited government.

R's can no longer be the party of really anything except Trump and God.

And since God is starting to have approval ratings that match Trump's in this country (a little hyperbole, calm the fuck down) they're really just the party of Trump.

 

And Trump ain't gonna last long. So in 2020 we will see a splinter faction of R's that run on these more 'traditional R' values, but they'll be called cucks by the Trumps. Then Trump will lose because Dems (I know I'm being generous by assuming any level of skillful maneuvering by D's but let me have at least 5% optimism here) are going to sweep in moral values, fiscal responsibility, rule of law, and can actually take a stab at being the party of limited government too depending on where this border shit goes.

 

So whatever is left of the party after the rotten structure finally falls in on itself is going to need to find new tent pole issues for their platform.

 

1 hour ago, dmc515 said:

It's never a good idea to predict a party realignment.  There has never been a time in my adult life when there wasn't significant chatter of an eminent realignment.  Just the definition of the term is incredibly elusive both conceptually and operationally.  Coalition shifts are fluid and constant, it's most useful to just focus on identifying and describing that.

 

47 minutes ago, Shryke said:

I mean, I think we've been seeing a fairly steady party realignment for most of anyone here's lives, so the chatter doesn't seem strange at all. Trump and the Tea Party are the result of a long-term gradual shift that still seems to be happening.

 

5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Another complicating factor is that the bases genuinely hate one another. You’d know better than me, but I can’t recall reading about a time in which the hate was so toxic since the civil war. That makes a realignment in a two party system quite difficult.

1.  Because we have a two party system, our coalitions do regularly shift and the parties themselves evolve significantly.  Part of this is that the parties must in many aspects represent, or appear to represent opposite viewpoints.  It's inherent when you only have two (real) choices.  So I'm in the "don't call it a realignment" camp.

2.  This also leads to (both) parties having "big tents" and internally inconsistent positions.  You can argue which is more internally inconsistent, and I know which way the view of this board would trend, but you cannot expect and should not require logical consistency of platform in a two party system.  It simply cannot exist.

3.  I dunno, I think things weren't exactly warm and fuzzy in the late 60s early 70s.  And frankly there's a reason that "politics and religion" are the classic no-nos of polite conversation.  We just think it's the worst now because we are living it.

4.  PQJ - I think you underestimate the staying power of the rhetoric of the Republican party.  And I think you define terms like "law and order" and "limited government" differently than the average R would.  

[Guy Kilmore]

I am curious to see how demographics shift once baby boomers begin to pass on.  I think you have two large generations (Boomers and Millenials) who were raised in times when the world is very different in their respective childhood.  While not alien to each other, they were very different.  I really think some of this tension is between these two groups.

[Hereward]

8 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

You can argue which is more internally inconsistent, and I know which way the view of this board would trend, but you cannot expect and should not require logical consistency of platform in a two party system.  It simply cannot exist.

I don't think this is true. The UK is a functionally two-party system, and has generally had two logically consistent party platforms. This happens because of the vastly greater power of party leadership to control access to party membership, selection of candidates, patronage over party and government positions and control over party manifestoes. So, it is true that it cannot exist in the US two party system, not that it cannot exist in any two party system.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

35 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

In the short term that's true.  But in the long term I think that the trend will be the white working class moving more and more Republican and white college educated suburbanites becoming more Democratic.  The only way to arrest this trend (that I see) is if the Trump administration crashes so hard that the post-Trump Republican party looks totally different that it does now. 

Couldn’t you say the same thing after the disastrous Dubya presidency though? A rationale base would have learned some hard lessons, but instead they pretended it didn’t happen and veered further to the right.  

[DMC]

10 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

3.  I dunno, I think things weren't exactly warm and fuzzy in the late 60s early 70s.  And frankly there's a reason that "politics and religion" are the classic no-nos of polite conversation.  We just think it's the worst now because we are living it.

Obviously, from 1865 to 1936, there was no polling, so quantitative measures are limited there.  However, at the congressional level, we are very clearly at the highest levels of polarization (measured by DW-NOMINATE) since the Civil War.  Using the feeling thermometer measure from the ANES, negative feelings towards the opposing party are also at record levels since 1964.

[Fragile Bird]

2 hours ago, dmc515 said:

I was surprised he took the Speakership to begin with.  It was clear then that the GOP caucus lives off eating their own leadership, and he obviously wants to run for president one day.  Getting his tax cuts then extricating himself from that caucus is undoubtedly the best strategy if he wants to run in 6 years.  It should be noted that the only reason the GOP caucus turned its lonely eyes to Ryan after Boehner retired in the first place is because McCarthy was a weak heir apparent (shortest tenured incoming Majority Leader every), and he was still reeling from making the classic Washington gaffe of telling the truth about why the GOP was investigating Hillary.

This! This is why he’s leaving now.

[Maithanet]

11 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Couldn’t you say the same thing after the disastrous Dubya presidency though? A rationale base would have learned some hard lessons, but instead they pretended it didn’t happen and veered further to the right.  

Trump would need to be worse than Dubya by a fair margin in order to shake the Republican party out it's current madness. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

27 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

3.  I dunno, I think things weren't exactly warm and fuzzy in the late 60s early 70s.  And frankly there's a reason that "politics and religion" are the classic no-nos of polite conversation.  We just think it's the worst now because we are living it.

I would argue that the major difference between then and now is back then you still had liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. Those simply don’t exist anymore. Yes the far right and the far left were at each other’s throats, but they were much smaller coalitions than they are today.

[Shryke]

27 minutes ago, Hereward said:

I don't think this is true. The UK is a functionally two-party system, and has generally had two logically consistent party platforms. This happens because of the vastly greater power of party leadership to control access to party membership, selection of candidates, patronage over party and government positions and control over party manifestoes. So, it is true that it cannot exist in the US two party system, not that it cannot exist in any two party system.

Yup. A huge source of issues in US politics is the uncontrolled open primary system which basically allows anyone to become the party's representative which limits the party's ability to actually control their own platform and message. As Trump demonstrated and as others have before him, the base has a huge influence on what the politicians in the party are and that base listens to shit like Fox News and Breitbart and Alex Jones to make those decisions.

[Shryke]

15 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I would argue that the major difference between then and now is back then you still had liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. Those simply don’t exist anymore. Yes the far right and the far left were at each other’s throats, but they were much smaller coalitions than they are today.

The parties have done a lot of sorting over the last several decades. And specifically along racial lines.

[Jace, Extat]

3 minutes ago, Shryke said:

Yup. A huge source of issues in US politics is the uncontrolled open primary system which basically allows anyone to become the party's representative which limits the party's ability to actually control their own platform and message. As Trump demonstrated and as others have before him, the base has a huge influence on what the politicians in the party are and that base listens to shit like Fox News and Breitbart and Alex Jones to make those decisions.

Yeah, but like I said earlier this is actually kind of good for us. The further down the rabbit hole they go the more they alienate people with basic critical thinking skills. We got lucky that the Right is too stupid to consolidate their power, and the tighter they squeeze the base the more fringe R's they lose.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

18 minutes ago, Shryke said:

Yup. A huge source of issues in US politics is the uncontrolled open primary system which basically allows anyone to become the party's representative which limits the party's ability to actually control their own platform and message. As Trump demonstrated and as others have before him, the base has a huge influence on what the politicians in the party are and that base listens to shit like Fox News and Breitbart and Alex Jones to make those decisions.

Get ride of public primaries.  If the parties want to have elections to pay for candidates and restrict them to party members they are free to do so.  They just have to bear the cost of the election and not the State.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

38 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Trump would need to be worse than Dubya by a fair margin in order to shake the Republican party out it's current madness. 

I agree, but by just how much? My fear is the answer to that question is more frightening than just allowing them to be where they currently are. Also, this non-Russia tweet is pretty awful:

 

Trump’s Saturday Night Massacre is coming soon. What’s the over/under in your book?

[Jace, Extat]

6 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I agree, but by just how much? My fear is the answer to that question is more frightening than just allowing them to be where they currently are. Also, this non-Russia tweet is pretty awful:

 

Trump’s Saturday Night Massacre is coming soon. What’s the over/under in your book?

Today

[Maithanet]

28 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Trump’s Saturday Night Massacre is coming soon. What’s the over/under in your book?

I don't think Trump is about to fire Mueller.  I do think Trump is about to fire Rosenstein.  It could be today, could be a couple of weeks from now, but I don't expect he'll make it to May.

[Jace, Extat]

5 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I don't think Trump is about to fire Mueller.  I do think Trump is about to fire Rosenstein.  It could be today, could be a couple of weeks from now, but I don't expect he'll make it to May.

He has to go through Rosenstein to get to Mueller anyway

[James Arryn]

35 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I agree, but by just how much? My fear is the answer to that question is more frightening than just allowing them to be where they currently are. Also, this non-Russia tweet is pretty awful:

 

Trump’s Saturday Night Massacre is coming soon. What’s the over/under in your book?

I think it depends on the timing in Syria.

[Martell Spy]

Well, Paul Ryan is not a Randian Superman and Obamacare still stands. Now to claw back the tax cuts.

Fanatic, Fraud, Factotum: The Rise and Fall of Paul Ryan

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/fanatic-fraud-factotum-the-rise-and-fall-of-paul-ryan.html

Quote

 

House Speaker Paul Ryan is retiring before he can lose his majority, and potentially his own seat in Congress, but too late to save his reputation.

The key to Ryan’s rise was that very few people understand who he was or where he came from.

 

 

[Martell Spy]

43 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I agree, but by just how much? My fear is the answer to that question is more frightening than just allowing them to be where they currently are. Also, this non-Russia tweet is pretty awful:

 

Trump’s Saturday Night Massacre is coming soon. What’s the over/under in your book?

Sources in the White seem to be saying it is not happening yet. Kind of surprising it did not already happen though. Might be wag the dog time.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

19 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I don't think Trump is about to fire Mueller.  I do think Trump is about to fire Rosenstein.  It could be today, could be a couple of weeks from now, but I don't expect he'll make it to May.

Eh, my gut tells me it’s more likely that he cleans house and fires Sessions, Rosenstein and Mueller and makes up some excuses to justify it. And Congressional Republicans will ***** and moan about it and ultimately do nothing.

13 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

I think it depends on the timing in Syria.

Attacking Syria will happen immediately afterwards to muddy the headlines. It’s what he does. Trump grabs more headlines in a month than some Presidents would get in a term in office. It’s hard to keep up with everything even for political junkies. How do you think it goes for the average person?