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[Romosome]

So apparently the new head of the Republican National Committee tried to win an election by hiring people to hand out pamphlets to the poor and homeless that said he was a Democrat.

[Brentai]

There comes a point where you no longer feel like you're exaggerating when you call it the Lies and Bullshit Party.

[Norondor]

hi, welcome to 15 years ago.

[Thad]

Yeah, he ran, unsuccessfully, for Governor of Maryland a couple years back (think it was '06 but it might have been '04), and his campaign largely consisted of pretending to be a Democrat.

He also got Mike Tyson and Don King to campaign for him -- I remember Oliver Willis commenting something to the effect of, "Oh good, you got a convicted rapist AND a convicted murderer to endorse you!"  Basically he insulted black voters' intelligence and banked on getting their votes by virtue of being black and knowing other famous black people.

...I expect we'll be seeing a lot more of Tim Meadows on The Colbert Report in the coming weeks.

[Transportation]

I felt this was the Republican Topic so.
Republicans think GOP should be MORE conservative

This confirms obvious things but OH HEY NUMBERS.
I forget how accurate Rasmussen is so feel free to yell at me.

Put them all together, and 42% of voters say the GOP has been too conservative in the last eight years, 29% say too moderate, 16% about right, and 13% are not sure. Thirty-six percent (36%) say the party should become more like Palin, 32% like McCain, seven percent (7%) like Bush, and 25% are undecided.
...
Fifty-one percent (51%) of Republicans have a Very Favorable regard for Palin, while an identical number of Democrats (51%) hold a Very Unfavorable view.

Palin fares better with unaffiliated voters, too. For McCain, unaffiliateds break 10% Very Favorable and eight percent (8%) Very Unfavorable. But 35% of unaffiliated voters have a Very Favorable opinion of Palin, compared to 15% who have a Very Unfavorable view.
...
Just 15% of Evangelical Christian voters feel that the Republican Party has been too conservative for the past eight years, while 50% think it has been too moderate. By contrast, pluralities of other Protestant voters (40%) and Catholics (38%) feel the party has gone too far to the right.

That last one must sting. But still-

Younger voters are more likely than their elders to think the GOP has been too conservative during the Bush years, but voters in nearly all age groups are more closely divided on the future direction of the party between McCain and Palin.

There is hope! Perhaps someday the Republicans will be a respectable conservative party, like the Tories*!

*Any country.

[Thad]

...in fairness, Steele is the single most middle-of-the-road candidate the RNC had.

I still think he was picked for his race rather than his politics, but I could be wrong.

[Mongrel]

Not that I agree that all out classical conservativism is the way to go to fix our problems right now, but "more conservative" is actually a legitimate call to make, seeing as how the Republicans have been anything but in recent times.

[Kashan]

Not that I agree that all out classical conservativism is the way to go to fix our problems right now, but "more conservative" is actually a legitimate call to make, seeing as how the Republicans have been anything but in recent times.

They don't mean real conservative. They mean more like Palin.

[Mongrel]

Y'know where I said "Republicans have been anything but in recent times"?

[Kashan]

You also put quotes around "more conservative" suggesting you were talking about the actual call made by those in the article, which has nothing to do with classical conservativism.

Really I'm kind of surprised we let the article fall off the top of the page. We could be making daily updates on this stuff.

[Mongrel]

We could be making daily updates on this stuff.

Or we could let the GOP eat itself.

[Transportation]

Not that I agree that all out classical conservativism is the way to go to fix our problems right now, but "more conservative" is actually a legitimate call to make, seeing as how the Republicans have been anything but in recent times.

What do you mean by "conservative" in this case?

Bush seemed to follow socially conservative domestic policy and a military-focused (instead of a social program focused) budget policy. Please note that fiscal conservatism meaning reduce debt has been dead since Nixon and has been redefined as tax cuts.

This is the platform that Republicans seem to run on. This was Reagan's platform, in fact. It's just that Bush has no charisma and Reagan had the political sense to use proxy wars for his aggressive foreign policy.

[Mongrel]

Basically? A tempered form of Libertarianism.

Yes, many of it's tenets have been dead since the 50's-70's. But I think there's plenty of votes that could be grabbed by a shift in that direction. It's been so long since classical 20th century Conservatism had a a legitimate voice that it could actually seem new again.

Anyway, I don't think that's a good idea for the COUNTRY to go in, just that it could be a strong and viable idea for the Republicans to rebuild on. I think it would require an Obama-level of forthrightness though. You would have to communicate that tax cuts come with a price elsewhere. So that might kill it outright. Regan-esque vote purchasing is far easier to sell.

But then, that's a large part of what got us into this mess.

[Thad]

Frank Rich op-ed points out that the Republicans fell all over themselves fighting the stimulus, failed to stop it, and are now patting themselves on the back for their victory, and that the chattering class declared Obama's presidency a failure just days before he steamrolled his political opponents AGAIN.

It seems like people aren't getting their opinions from the TV news so much anymore.

[Bongo Bill]

I think it could count as giving the Republicans an advantage, because: given how strongly some polls have reported the stimulus as being very unpopular, and how few Republicans voted for it, they will have an easy time blaming the bill on Democrats come November 2010.

[Thad]

1. What polls are those?

This barrage did shave a few points off the stimulus’s popularity in polls, but its approval rating still remained above 50 percent in all (Gallup, CNN, Pew, CBS) but one of them (Rasmussen, the sole poll the G.O.P. cites).

2. Any advantage the Republicans get out of this is going to be short-lived if the economy improves.  Clinton's 1993 budget passed the House without any Republican votes, and the GOP did pretty well for itself in '94 -- but I think it's pretty safe to say Clinton was vindicated in the long term.  And has been DOUBLY vindicated now that everyone's been reminded what happens to the economy when Republicans are in charge.

[Bongo Bill]

Huh. Nevermind, then. I was acting on false information.

Of course, I still express extreme skepticism that eight hundred billion dollars of pork will help anything, but that is neither here nor there.

[Kashan]

Huh. Nevermind, then. I was acting on false information.

Of course, I still express extreme skepticism that eight hundred billion dollars of pork will help anything, but that is neither here nor there.

It's not really pork in the classic sense. Last I heard there were 0 earmarks on the thing, which is frankly astonishing. Of course the GoP has been lying like crazy about that.

Incedently, congressional GOPs are at a net -50 approval rating right now, which is kind of mind boggling. It means that about 2/3rd of the remaining hard line republicans approve of theme, the other third is neutral, and EVERYBODY ELSE disaproves of their job performance. Bush never made it that low.

[Bongo Bill]

The "O" in "GOP" should be capitalized; it stands for "Old," not "of." As in "Grand Old Party," despite being the younger of the two.

Hasn't Congress' overall performance rating been in the shitter lately? I seem to remember seeing that statistic somewhere, but, understandably, I am now beginning to question my memory of such statistics.

[Kashan]

The "O" in "GOP" should be capitalized; it stands for "Old," not "of." As in "Grand Old Party," despite being the younger of the two.

Hasn't Congress' overall performance rating been in the shitter lately? I seem to remember seeing that statistic somewhere, but, understandably, I am now beginning to question my memory of such statistics.

Yeah "GoP" was a typo. I capitalized it right later in the post and in my previous posts.

Congress approval ratings are always in the shitter, people are never really sure what congress is doing other than not what they want, so it's where all dissatisfaction with the government goes.

Nancy Pelosi has a positive net approval rating (by two points!) right now, which might actually be more surprising than the GOP being at net -50.  I honestly don't know the last time that's happened, I'm not even sure her predecessor ever had positive approval ratings. And while the democratic congress does have a net negative approval rating, it's only about -14, which is decent for congressional approval ratings. The Democratic Party is at +20 approval rating while the GOP is at -30, and there really aren't any signs that the GOP's unpopularity has bottomed out yet.

The Republicans are really going to have to work hard to grow their brand again or they're going to be fucked for the next two elections. Right now it looks like the Dems may very well pick up another 4-6 seats in 2010, and while 2012 is forever away, unless something drastic happens they're going to have the Obama bump working for them again. Hell 2014 could be bad for the GOP too, considering that should be the first election after time at which a lot of economists are predicting our economy will recover, and whether or not they're actually responsible, Obama and the Dems are probably going to get the credit for that.

I'm not sure what happens if they GOP falls under 30 seats in the senate. We've already got the most lopsided congress since 1977 which was voted in following Nixon's resignation. If it gets more lopsided, which seems entirely likely, you have to go back to the 1965 congress that was elected following Kennedy's death. We could very well pass that even, which means you're looking at 1935-1941 congress under FDR, when the GOP almost collapsed.

Even in 77 it was a totally different era, much less in 35. I'm just not sure how you build a national presence when you fall that far behind in the modern era.

If a right or center third party ever wanted a shot at supplanting the republicans then the next few elections are probably as good as they'll get in the foreseeable future.