Implosion of the Republican Party?

I didn't actually say that it could- I was simply pointing out that it isn't necessarily race driving the prohibition . I don't think the GOP can be reformed at all without moving to the left of Dems on everything, including weed.

 

Youshou is right and Knave is wrong.

That is all.

 

I'd also note that some in the GOP donor class are vehemently opposed to recreational marijuana.

Witness Nevada: https://votenoon2nevada.com/

You know who is pretty much single-handedly funding that opposition effort? Sheldon Adelson.

As I asked, how exactly is legal weed is supposed to become a vehicle to reform the GOP?

 

Sheldon Adelson is not a wonderful human.

I don't think that the GOP is suddenly going to see the light on weed or anything like that. But I do think they'll want to win, and after 12 years of a Democratic President, and the disaster that this election is going to be for them, might be willing to be ok with a candidate who believes that marijuana should be legal.

I'm not saying it should be the be all end all argument, but I do think it won't be a deal breaker if a candidate who is otherwise seen as someone that can beat Hillary Clinton supports it as say abortion likely would.

I think the same about a less interventionist foreign policy.

 

I could see the GOP being less interventionalist. But they ain't never gonna give up spending $$$$ on the military.

 

They're going to have a positive year in 2018 -- and learn all sorts of bad lessons from it.

Then they're going to run Ted Cruz for president in 2020.

I'm still trying to figure out how any of your hopes and dreams for a reformed GOP happen.

 

That could certainly happen too, and is probably the more likely scenario. All depends on the lessons they learn from this debacle.

 

They'll learn nothing from the debacle of this election. The time for learning new things was actually post-2008. Now they're just more and more constricted by the electoral reality of their narrower and narrower voting base.

If they learn anything from any "debacle," it won't be this current one. It'll be the one that begins in earnest on November 9 because that's when the inter-party civil war truly begins. But that'll take years on infighting to resolve, and truthfully, I don't believe it'll be resolved before the 2020 primary race -- if even then.

 

I would suggest they stop being anti-science and woo the professional class. Get on board with fighting climate change, for example.

 

Climate change would have been a nice topic for the debates. Alas, there was only what, six hours? No time.

The Obama Administration classifies marijuana as Schedule 1, which means it has no medicinal value, despite all science to the contrary.

So here's to all parties embracing science!

 

Same question here: how do they achieve this change given their voting base and financial backers?

They couldn't even achieve immigration reform -- and there their financial backers were for it!

I just think a lot of you guys are wishing away the voting and financial constraints that got the GOP to this point, and that are likely to keep the GOP at this point for a good deal longer.

 

Would be the biggest switcheroo since Bruce became Caitlyn.

And of course they'd have to beg the Koch Bros. to allow it and I don't see that happenin

 

You're just bitter that President Obama can get weed and you can't. It's because of his personality.
Be like President Obama.

 

This was kind of funny the first 50 times. It's long past being funny.

 

One other point -- @MasterShake29 among others has expressed frustration when Clinton and other Democratic Party leaders trail their voting constituency on issues like -- say -- marijuana legalization. If she (and the others) were real leaders they'd "lead" on legalization or -- to name another one -- gay marriage instead of being rather obvious, late to the party followers.

But think about that: the fact that their voting base was ahead of them on all these issues meant (in the long term) that the leaders could follow, and that (again in the long term) real progress could be made on important issues. In other words, the fact that the leaders could follow their constituents to more progressive positions made movement and real change on those progressive issues possible.

I'm trying to find some issue -- any issue -- where the GOP voting base (and to a lesser extent the GOP financial base) are way out ahead of the party leadership. But I can't come up with anything. Until that changes, I think the GOP is stuck exactly where it is.

 

There's no data to support this assertion.

At least with Latinos, the drug war never appears on the top 5 issues for them.

With Blacks, it would have to be couched in different terms.

And for both groups, there must be a massive, party-wide atonement and authentic, coordinated outreach. That shit ain't gonna happen over 3 or 4 years.

The party is incapable of doing it.

FFS, they let a racist, sexist, islamophobe run their party into the ground.

They gladly danced w/ the "doubts" of Obama's Kenyan/Hawaiian birth "controversy".

Their 3rd in command in the House called himself David Duke w/o the baggage.

No damn way do they have the self awareness to make inroads amongst Blacks, Latinos, and Asians.

 

Gnomes, as they wait to figure out their underwear business plan???

Either that or ... magic...

 

It's not. It won't be. It's wishful thinking.

 

It's a pretty equal opportunity kinda drug in my experience.

And if we're going to use anecdotal evidence, it's a big stretch to say blacks don't like to smoke weed. They do. Working in different restaurants back in my college days I'd estimate about half the young whites smoked. A vast majority of black workers did. Now that % was skewed by the Jamaican kitchen workers I'll admit.

 

I agree the GOP is being pulled further and further into a Trumpian path. But political death lies down that path. They can't keep getting pulled in that direction if they hope to survive. So, yeah, truth is the GOP does need to become more mainstream, and that means they do need to moderate.

I'd say this too: part of what I meant by "ahead" is electoral. Where the Dems are being pulled is electorally viable, and maybe even more electorally viable than where they were before. But where the GOP is being pulled is not electorally viable beyond specific regions and districts, and they already weren't that viable at the presidential level.

So when I said "ahead" I also meant to imply an element of political viability. Ahead has to include a way forward for the party to become a politically viable and functional body.

 

All the reports I see say that blacks and whites smoke weed on a roughly equal percentage basis.

 

The GOP is in an electoral cul-de-sac, and there are only two houses there.

The first is Trumpian ethno-nationalism -- which in an odd way might actually help move the GOP away from old ideas about anti-unionism and anti-governmentalism. But it would do so at the cost of making the party into a -- well -- ethno-nationalist (read white) party.

The second is basically a house at war with itself that tries to contain all the old factions together under the same roof.

Right now, I don't see how the GOP exits the cul-de-sac, I don't see how the second option is viable, and I fear the first option is the one they're heading toward with great gusto.