Can a GOPer even be too right wing these days?

David Duke made an appeal to the far far right, and got nowhere. I’ve never seen a neo Nazi make a run for office that got farther than a backyard cookout. So I suppose THAT far right is not in the picture. Rand Paul and other Libertarians are regarded as far out on the spectrum (I can argue they really aren’t, but not here), and while they get a hearing, they never seem to get a lot of traction. So I guess THAT far right is not in the picture either.
Nobody is going to take a Neo -Con seriously for a while since nobody, right or left, is very comfortable about how they inflluenced George W Bush’s administration.
So the right will probably never get farther right than attempting to reform entitlement programs, making it simpler for illegals to be, well, actually legal, and fighting abuse of the interstate commerce clause. What else is there?
Anyway, anybody can say what they want. There isn’t enough money for the government to do anything but talk, reduce the public workforce, raise taxes and pay bills for a long while. Nearly all candidates, right and left, are hoping their constituents haven’t figured that out yet.

They seem to be able to get as far right as possible without wearing the costume. No hoods and sheets, no black uniforms with lightning bolts. The only reason they put up with Israel is because the Evangelicals need the Temple to be rebuilt so the end of the world will come.

Grover Norquist is still pulling the strings for the repes. They’re now focused on invading Iran, since they’re finished with Iraq.

I’m no Ron Paul fan, but I’m not comfortable lumping him in with the far right crowd. Just sayin’.

Also: check out the “Talk” page on that Wikipedia link. :D

@saint Excellent answer. You’re correct. It still is possible to veer so far to the right that most Republican’s see the position as wrong. I;m not so sure about the end of Neo Conservatism, though. Seems like there is a growing chorus on the right to invade Iran, Syria and Pakistan, to name a few. THe only Middle East military action I’ve seen Republicans oppose was Libya. And that was just bad because Barack Obama did it. As to cut playing or start paying, I think the public is pretty well wise to that now.

@zenvelo That’s a colorful and fairly accurate way of putting it.

@dappled_leaves I will grant you that. The thing is nobody in the Republican establishment takes Ron Paul seriously right now, I;m not sure what he plans to do to get his “movement” off the ground. Perhaps a third party bid. I don;t think he;ll amass enough delegates to be get much of his agenda into the party platform at the convention.

@saint I just realized that you referenced Rand Paul, not Ron – my bad (though presumably, they have the same goals).

@ETpro There is no reason for the Republican establishment to take Paul seriously – he’s not a Republican, not really anyway. I’m sure they see him as a huge threat to the status quo in Washington, which is why they refuse to allow him any kind of attention.

Actually this talk about who is the real conservative has become so prevalent in American politics that even most Democrats try to avoid being classified as a liberal. Then there is the further debate among Republicans about what classifies one as a ‘real conservative’. Obviously Republicans such as Ron Paul and Gary Johnson have very much different ideas about what classifies one as a conservative when compared to people like Rick Santorum and Michele Bachman. I guess we can blame Democrats for allowing the demonization of the term liberal to occur in the first place.

@saint Neoconservatism actually started with anti-counterculture ‘liberal’ Democrats, not Republicans. However many Republicans today have adopted neoconservative foreign policy into their agenda. David Duke srtikes me as being more of a libertarian than a hardcore conservative despite the negative stigma attached to himself.

@dappled_leaves The Republican Party of the past generally consisted of two different types of political positions, the first brand would have been labeled as libertarians today and the second brand were more centrist and progressive. The Republican Party of today has very much veered into another completely different direction so pubs like Ron Paul and Gary Johnson probably do not stand much of a chance in their own party today. Unfortunately you’re probably right.

@Paradox25 I’m not sure what Ron Paul hopes to accomplish. He has gotten his agenda out in the wild, being discussed. He’s built a political prganization with a fair amount of reach and an incredibly loyal base. He may plan a third-party run just to build a viable Libertarian Party, with no expectation of actually winning, but rahter to hand the batton to his son, Rand Paul .

Frankly I don’t give Americans much credit for knowing better. Gingrich had a big following and he is about a evil and devious and a candidate can get. Romney represents everything that is wrong with American corporate power and 80% of North Carolina Republicans voted for him. How stupid can Southerners be? Well the voted for Rand Paul.

No, I suspect Fascism will come to America with a flag in one hand and bible in the other. Remember big corporations did very well in Nazi Germany and they made use of the readily available slave labor. Unions were too democratic to be allowed, just like the current laws in Wisconsin, Indiana, with Ohio and Pennsylvania to fall soon.

The cure for problems with democracy is more democracy and the right just doesn’t understand that and probably never will.

@Ron_C Fascism was a strange brand of right-wing socialism in which the power of the state and the power of large corporations was merged to yield an absolute military and political power for the axis leaders. Once you realize that corporatism and Fascism are closely related, you can see that America is already largely a Fascist state.

@ETpro It continues to amaze me how many ‘conservatives’ today still believe that liberalism and left wing politics are the same things when they’re not. There have been quite a few instances of leftist opposition to liberalism such as Marxist Socialism and Christian Communitarianism, just to name a few. Neither left nor right wing politics are synonymous with freedom (liberalism), at least in my opinion.

When it comes to Ron Paul I think he actually would have a shot in the general election (if he made it there) since he is more likely to get a varied voterbase to support him, unlike other more ‘conservative’ Republicans. The way the Republican Party has shifted over the years I think that even Ron Paul realizes that he has very little of a chance to win his own party’s nomination. I’m not sure what he hopes to accomplish either and I’ve always felt that Ron should leave the Republican Party since it is nothing but trash anymore.

Personally I like Gary Johnson even better than Ron but Johnson doesn’t have quite the pull that RP has.

@Paradox25 Thanks for the thoughts. You might find this Robert Reich essay informative. I think it answers a lot of questions about why people calling themselves Conservatives act so out of sync with the dictionary definition of the word, and why they so vidiously demonized liberalism over the past 30 plus years.