Why the path to victory for Republicans is aLOT more complicated than "appeal to Latinos"

Well, the Reep were encouraged by 2010 and banking on the worst economy since the 1930s to keep helping them. And, really, they should have been right seeing how little Americans generally know about economics. Of course, it didn't help the GOP that people eventually got over their hissy fit and remembered that the Reeps did a lot to cause the current mess in the first place...

How little things change. From Ronald Reagan's man Lee Atwater, in 1981. The asterisked out word, by the way, rhymes with "bigger."

I don't think anybody forgot that at any point. I remember seeing plenty of poll results over the past four years confirming that people overwhelmingly blamed Bush for the poor economy, rather than Obama. I'm not sure the midterms were a reflection of anything other than that the GOP base turned out and the Dem base didn't.

Is this what you were looking for?

Warning NSFW

This has been discussed in other threads, but I think that the main idea in this blog from Rachel Maddow shows that the first step that the GOP needs to take is to reconnect with reality and accept it:

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2...eality-as-the-enemy-youre-doing-it-wrong?lite

Well they think they already do.



It seems that is the only "reality" they care about.

Krugman talks about this today in his column...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/23/opinion/krugman-grand-old-planet.html?hp

And you say this based on....?

Latinos are NOT a monolithic group. Nor are they single issue voters. The latter point has been studied and confirmed. Latinos vote on a variety of issues, and on too many of those issues, the GOP is simply lacking.

So just bc Rubio is Latino doesn't mean all that much amongst the Latino electorate. The experience of Mexicans and Central Americans are radically different from the experience of (non-immigrant, citizens) Puerto Ricans. And both are radically different from the experience of Cubans.

Here's the deal on old school (aka Rubio) Cubans in the eyes of the Rest of Us Latinos: they crazy, bro. And Rubio is part of the Ancien Regime of Cubans, definitely not part of the Post-Elian Gonzalez Cubans who realized just how c-razy they looked collectively by trying to deny a father custody of his own son.

All it will take is just promotion of his Tea Party bona fides and boom, he's toast b/c he simply represents the typical bs of the GOP.

And it's not just that the GOP used/uses Latinos as piñatas, although it's a fricking STUPID thing to do, it's that its policies SUCK for Latinos. The whole punching bag thing merely confirms our suspicions that the GOP doesn't give a rat's ass about us b/c we're not "really" 'Merikan enuff.

97% of Puerto Ricans in PR live in urban areas, and when they come to the US they go to urban centers.

Mexican immigration is actually part of Mexico's transition from an agrarian, rural society. So the big cities of Mexico City, Guadalajara, Tijuana, Cancun (tourism), Monterey, etc. have a LOT in common w/ LA, Houston, San Jose, Dallas, Denver, Chicago, etc. Throw in Tegulcigalpa, Managua, Guatemala City, Santo Domingo, etc.

A hefty portion of Latino voters live in cities over 50,000 ppl.

Obama carried large cities by absurd, surreal margins. He carried cities btw 50k-500K by 19 points or so.

Again: Latinos are NOT single issue voters. That Phat Hat posted an article in this thread to prove that point.

The immigration issue with regards to Latinos is more about branding issues, and the truth is that the GOP has some massive problems w/ its brand.

Taking a rational, fact-based (jajajajajajajajaja) position on immigration would help the GOP attract moderates. From there, they could build into more moderate positions w/ an eventual goal of convincing Latinos that the GOP isn't about bat shit craziness.

Jajajajaja. I crack myself up.

I think uclacarlos is right about Rubio. Running Rubio could actually backfire with the Latino vote unless Marco really runs a perfect campaign. The old guard Cuban conservatives in South Florida have almost nothing in common with the greater Latino community.

Now if you were to have an identical clone of Rubio who was Mexican, you may be able to take a significant chunk out of the electorate. Remember Bush won with 40% of the Latino vote. Romney lost with 27%. The GOP doesn't have to get all of them, just enough to get up in the high 30's and maybe they have a chance.

Arbusto Jr. won what, 35% of Latino votes? I never said that running Rubio would magically turn all Latinos Republican, merely that he'd be more palatable to them than Romney, since clearly there was barely anyone less palatable to them than "I'm a Mexican too" Mitt. Being more palatable may be all that Republicans need, which was the point.

So that's what Atwater looked like before the disease that freed America of his presence? I'd never seen him before then- looks a lot better with the bloated, distorted mug he carried to his grave, lol.

Someplace in storage I have a copy of his CD, "Red, White, and Blues"

Don't cross me.

I might rent a loudspeaker truck and park next to your domicile some week.

That's also the name of the BBQ chain that Atwater co-invested in. I've only been to the one in Chapel Hill, but it's pretty decent. And it's having monthly specials for its 25th anniversary.

Red White and Blue is racist?

Oh well it was mediocre last time I had it like 10 years ago.

Umm--what? No idea where that came from?

Oh wait-- you thought I was threatening Auria with racism?

If that's it, no, I was mock-threatening him with music which would not meet his standards.

Don't do that. I can hit a can of V8 at 25 yards with anything more powerful than a slingshot It ain't marksmanship, but it's fun.

Knew nothing about this album and Googled. Man, I've lost all the respect I ever had for Isaac "Black Moses" Hayes and whatever respect I had B.B. King. I can't help but think that Miles Davis would have told him to go eat a bag of dicks, but this isn't a jazz album anyhow. I have a friend who thinks the world of B.B. and rags on Gil Scott-Heron, but now I can tell him that the worst thing GS-H ever did was become an irresponsible crackhead.

In the early '70s, almost a full decade after LBJ pretty much conceded the South to the GOP by signing the Civil Rights Act, Blacks voted Dem only 72%.

A full generation of "Git tuff on crime", mass incarceration, demonization of "welfare queens" and pretty much all things Black w/ a pathetic, thinly-veiled out in the open racism, and now the GOP gets 4% of the Black vote.

The whole, "Wull, the majority of welfare recipients are white, so we're not race baiting. Honest Injun. Cross our hearts and hope to die!!!111!!!" doesn't exactly go over well in the Black community.

The GOP's policies SUCK for Blacks, and the electoral results show it.

Same shit is happening w/ Latinos.

Carting out a Rubio and a Cruz here and there ain't gonna change that fact, just like carting out a Clarence Thomas, Allen West, Michael Steele, etc., hasn't changed the GOP's stance amongst Blacks.

Like superdave has said, good policy makes good politics, and the GOP has been too willing to win individual elections across large swaths of the sparsely populated country and eschewing reality and facts.

In doing so, they take swipes at Latinos. And Blacks. And women. And city folk. And just about anybody that isn't white male.

So while Rubio might tease out a few Latino votes, trust me... His policies won't make too much of a dent in the Latino demographic. Mostly b/c the GOP has been all too public about their antipathy for Latinos.

I think Obama carried Miami Cubans! The first time a Dem has ever done that.

There is no path to victory for the Republicans. They are a dying breed. Here's why:

They are virtually the same as Democrats when it comes to big government, out of control spending, etc.

The only thing they differ on is that they are racists, homophobes, sexists, etc. - aka they try to push for things like making abortion illegal, making gay marriage illegal, "closing the borders", etc.

When you make an election about things like that, of course you are going to get destroyed because the vast majority of the population are FOR those things that you are against.

The Republicans are never going to win another election by keeping that platform. Obama is easily the WORST sitting president in history and he won in basically a landslide - that should tell you how out of touch the Republican platform is.

Instead, the only real party/platform that can challenge the Democrats is the Libertarian one. The Libertarians offer the same things that the Democrats offer which everyone wants: legalize all that stuff (gay marriage, abortion, pot, immigration, etc.) BUT they differ because they also want to drastically reduce the size of government and eliminate all this shit like TSA, Corporate Bailouts, etc. - which are also things the vast majority of the population supports doing (but the Democrats don't).

So if the Republicans want to win elections any time in the future, they need to allow the Libertarians to take it over. Or, the Republicans just need to die like the Whig Party did (which is the party the Republicans replaced) and let the Libertarian Party emerge as the other main party. IMO this would be better because the Libertarian Party doesn't have the stigma that the Republican Party does (about being racists, homophobes, sexist, religious nuts) - it's basically a clean start.

I mean if the Republicans had nominated Gary Johnson or Ron Paul, either would have beaten Obama in a landslide. Instead, Republicans keep nominating idiots like McCain and Romney, and continue to let the Democrats win.

I mean, just look at the debates. Romney couldn't attack Obama on some of the worst things Obama has done in office because ROMNEY SUPPORTS THOSE THINGS TOO. Gary Johnson or Ron Paul would have eaten Obama alive in those debates, because they actually offer a change from that kind of stuff.

Right now the Republican platform is basically: we'll keep doing all the stuff you hate about the Democrats, but then we'll also oppose all the things you like about Democrats. Who is going to vote for that? lol

Meanwhile the Libertarian platform is: we'll keep doing all the things you like about the Democrats, but we'll stop doing all the things they are doing that you hate. There you go! That's the platform that's going to carry elections.

You left out the part about how the country would be a series of nonstop financial panics after the Libertarians abolished the Fed, reinstated the gold standard, and took us back to 1874 economics.

But otherwise, spot on.

On Republicans ... current projections are for the country to be 43% white in 2060, 31% Hispanic. The GOP won't survive without winning a lot of the Hispanic vote. But how?

First answer of course is to purge the party of the Jan Brewers and move to the middle on immigration. That must be done.

That alone is not enough. The Republicans need not only to neutralize their big weakness, but to have a calling card. So what will that card be? I'm guessing it will be an update of the Southern Strategy. Treat the brown folk like honorary white people, bring them into the fold as fellow hard-working real Americans, and then sell like hell against the shiftless blacks that the Democrats coddle.

Let me get you a bigger brush

The bold quote is key - if that were true, why do rural whites routinely vote against useful policies? Go back just two election cycles and Latinos voted far more for Republicans. With a less than massive move the Republicans can get a few more votes, and that may be enough depending on the circumstances.
Again, the point isn't that Rubio=Republican dominance. It's that Republicans can sway more Latino voters, and Rubio, while not being the Latino pied piper, would certainly do better than Romney.

Yeah, Ron Paul and Rand Paul have no racist baggage. None at all. *chortle*

While you phrase this as a joke, there's nothing stopping the Republicans from making Latinos the new Irish.