Reports have just sprung up that the Repulican Party is doing an about face on many of their major issues. What does anyone actually know about their future plans to turn into socially liberal fiscal conservatives?

No doubt they have done some soul searching and realize they will need to adjust some of their positions.

So let’s see. They are trying to figure out what positions will get them more votes. It almost wants to make me laugh. When gay marriage passed in NY I saw a qute from a Reoublican who vted for it to pass basically saying he can no longer vote against what he believes is right just to saitify the party. That isn’t an exact quote, but along those lines. Now that is something. Changing his stand because it is what he really believes in. This article talks about strategy, so where do they stand? Wherever they think will get them votes? Nice. Not that the dems don’t do some of this too, I am sure they do.

Honestly, I don’t believe the party will make a big shift. The biggest shift needed is to change their stand on social issues and that article doesn’t seem to imply they will. That is the biggest thing in my opinion that stops independents or even democrats from voting for a republican. If the republicans stopped their fight against gay marriage and let the law be the law regarding legal abortion without constantly trying to chip away at it, they would have a better shot in my opinion. But, they hang on to that playing to their base. Maybe people who identify republican or tea party are not focused on abortion and gay marriage and more on fiscal events, but a lot of independents and democrats are very focused on those two social issues, and they can be deal breakers.

The core mission of the GOP has long been to protect the interests of the wealthy, but you can’t get elected on the votes of the wealthy alone. So the party has used social issues as bait to garner the support of enough of the non-wealthy to get into office. The strategists identify a demographic—e.g. religious fundamentalists—who might be susceptible to persuasion, then craft a platform to lure them in.

What we’re seeing now is the evidence that very little of this social stuff actually matters to the party leadership. Suddenly, there’s all kinds of flexibility except—as one would expect—in matters affecting the wealthy. I imagine this must be pretty dismaying to all of those folks who’ve signed onto the GOP because they thought the “values” stuff was what it represented.

A lot of talk about “marketing” and “rebranding” but not much about substantive reevaluation of their platforms. It will be interesting to see just how solid their core beliefs turn out to be.

And, I might add, IF they were truly socially liberal and fiscally conservative they would have a good shot at my vote.

But, as an OWG I am not the demographic they will be targeting.

This is one story that goes around. Others indicate that they’re doubling down on the crazy. Consider the way Karl Rove is being treated for pushing towards finding a way to get electable candidates past the primary process.

You’re not likely to see any major rebranding. It’s always amusing to see liberals telling conservatives what they should do or believe. There are plenty of lessons to be learned from the last election but changing core beliefs isn’t one of them.

Constant campaigning is one. Obama has been campaigning since 2007 and hasn’t stopped yet. That has worked for him but I really hope this is not the future of politics. Obama had a great ground game. That is a lesson Republicans need to learn. Same with the social media. Obama took great advantage of the social media while Romney did not. Another lesson to learn.

Much of the problem with social issues comes from the poor messaging. Democrats have been successful in defining Republicans. Republicans need to better define themselves. This whole idea that Republicans are the party of the rich is a construct of the Democrats. They’ve been pretty successful at it but in the process their war against business and the wealthy, has crippled us. Republicans need to better explain how this works. Unfortunately it is much easier to point at someone and say they are responsible for all your troubles than it is to explain what is really wrong. Republicans have a good message, they just don’t explain it very well.

@glacial

That is a good point. There is a split on whether Karl Rove’s plan is a good one. The problem here is that it isn’t clear what his plan will really do. No one wants a candidate that is unelectable. But whether you agree with the Tea Parties or not, thier push is to get fresh new blood into congress. The fear is that Karl will push the old establishment candidates to the detriment of adding fresh blood to congress. Some of the Tea Party candidates have been poorly vetted and crumbled under scrutiny. Others however have turned out quite well. If Karl is simply trying to provide better vetting, it will be good. If however it turns out that he simply wants to go with old establishment candidates, there’ll be a problem. We’ll have to wait and see. Personally, I’m willing to wait and see who he backs.

@Jaxk, we’ve been trying that trickle down thing for 30 years and the rich got richer and the poor got poorer and the middle class shrunk. It didn’t work.

@Jaxk The Republicans are bad at economics. The trickle-down approach does not work; we know this from experience. Republicans do not have a problem with messaging, and we can see this in the way that they build their campaigns: they put a lot of effort into hiding their real intent from the voters that they try to reach out to. They need to stop working on keeping their platforms a secret, and start working on changing their platforms so that they actually address the needs of voters, instead of their own needs.

The Democrats are an inclusion party, which is why they have difficulty in defining their message.
The Republicans are an exclusion party, so they can easily say they are against homos, gays, taxes, illegal aliens, and such. They now are beginning to realize that their message is causing their numbers to shrink, and they are losing elections. The hard line Tea Party side is also making it difficult to rebrand.
Any attempt for them to change that stamp will appear to be half hearted at this point, without getting new candidates to change the face of the party. More Log Cabin, more hispanics. Less nut jobs.

@glacial & @Judi

You have an interesting way of revising history. During the 80s and 90s we grew the economy by more than 4%/yr. We also expanded the workforce as show in the workforce participation rate while growing middle class income. The DotCom bust of 2000 set us back but once again we were recovering. The housing bust of 2008 hit us and we have not recovered. In fact the losses we’ve suffered in bot middle class income and workforce participation have been in the last 4 years. If there is a lesson to learn, it is that the policies of the past 4 years don’t work.

@Jaxk The policies of the last 4 years have brought the Dow Jones from 7,063 to a new record 14075, reversing the drastic slide of the prior administration.
If there is a lesson to be learned, I’d say it is that Obama is doing all right.

@Jaxk, I don’t know how old you are, but as someone who is old enough to have watched the switch from a WE society to a ME society I can tell you that the quality of life has reduced drastically for 90% of Americans and produced the first generation of Americans that will not do better than their parents.

@filmfann

I’m not sure the Dow is a good indicator. Bush also took the Dow from 7200 to over 14,000. If that’s the measure I guess we’d agree that Bush policies were also the right thing.

@Judi

Old enough to rmember the Eisenhower years forward. I was a little young to remember much further back than that. If you recall the 80s and 90s as a period of decline, you certainly weren’t in the mainsdtream.

@Jaxk then he brought it right back

@filmfann

I don’t agree that the Dow is a good measure on the economy but if you want to insist it is, we could compare. During the 80s the Dow grew from about 759 to 3000. That’s better than 4 times. During the 90s it grew from 3000 to 11000. that’s almost 4 times. It sounds like the 80s and 90 were boom times. Which they were. But not because of the Dow. However you want to measure it, the growth from the Reagan policies was golden.

There’s already a political party that fits this criteria, the Libertarian Party. We all know that libertarian leaning Republicans tend to not do very well in state and national elections, with some rare exceptions like a Gary Johnson, who was the governor of New Mexico. The demographics and mindsets of Americans would have to change on a large enough level before a libertarian platform would foster votes from the majority of registered Republicans.

I don’t think that many on fluther truly realize how much libertarians (both of the big and little ‘L’ variety) are despised by hardcore conservatives, whom still make up the majority of the Republican voterbase. Maybe in about a few generations this libertarian platform will work, but I don’t see this happening anytime soon.

Ill have to follow any accounts of this and wait to see what really happens.

Ah @Jaxk, I’d be more amenable to your views if you didn’t come across as so Feudal.

To my thinking, the Republican Party has always put out a message of oppression and wealth-building-at-the-expense-of-others. I’ve never understood why anyone has bought into that way of thinking. I don’t understand anyone who supports a message of oppression.

@DaphneT

I think what you’re referring to is the basic difference between liberals and conservatives. Liberals look at the economy as a fixed pie. If some get more, it diminishes the amount everyone else gets. Conservatives don’t believe that. They believe the pie expands. As productivity grows and new businesses are created the pie gets bigger and everyone gets a bigger piece. There are a few things that will shrink the pie, taxes and regulation being prime sources. Conservatives believe that these will shrink the pie giving everyone a smaller piece. Liberals seem to believe the taxes and regulation are the only way to give some a bigger piece. Take from those that have a bigger piece and give to those that don’t.

There is a very fundamental difference in how conservatives and liberal look at these things. But neither is trying to oppress anyone. Another fundamental difference. Liberals believe conservatives are evil while conservatives believe that liberals are just wrong.

@Jaxk “Liberals believe conservatives are evil while conservatives believe that liberals are just wrong.”

I do believe that you have that exactly backwards. Liberals are less likely to even believe in the concept of evil than conservatives are.

@glacial

Your confusing evil, with heaven and hell. When you make statements like “I don’t understand anyone who supports a message of oppression.”, you portraying Conservatives as the evil empire.

@Jaxk Ummm… no. When I say “I don’t understand [something conservatives say]”, I’m more likely to be portraying conservatives as wrong than evil (to use your descriptors).

When conservatives use phrases like “evil empire” or “axis of evil”, it tells me that they’re the group that is more likely to brand those with opposing views as evil. QED.

@glacial

If you actually say you don’t understand something conservatives say, the yea it’s fine even if you think it is wrong-headed. But if you translate what you think they say into something bad such as oppression, Then you’re assigning an evil intent to thier message. They want to oppress people. I have never heard that message.

The whole issue of intent is a way to shift the argument from the issue to the person or group. If you can defame the person, you can discredit thier argument without even addressing it. For instance when you say you don’t understand thier message of oppression, I have no idea what issue you have in mind. It paints conservatives as bad whatever they might say.

BTW, I have no idea what QED stands for.

@Jaxk It was @DaphneT who said they put out a “message of oppression”. I don’t know why you are repeatedly attributing her remark to me.

@glacial

Whoops, my apologies. Once I made the original mistake, I continued on with it. You two don’t even look alike.