Wednesday, April 17, 2013

TELL ME AGAIN ABOUT HOW THE GOP IS DYING

Remember that Reince Priebus Republican "autopsy"? Remember being told that the Republican Party desperately needs to change or it'll die?

I said it was nonsense at the time and today we were reminded yet again of how nonsensical it is. Republicans in the Senate were able to keep the Manchin-Toomey background check proposal below the 60-vote threshold needed for passage; even if a handful of Democrats who voted with the GOP had voted yes, the bill still would have fallen short. And, of course, it doesn't matter, because Manchin-Toomey would have been blocked in the House.

And no one in the Republican Party has the slightest fear that these were risky votes going into 2014 or 2016.

Why should they worry? We may outnumber the opponents of expanded background checks 9-1, but they vastly outnumber us in the category of "People who'd crawl naked through ground glass to cast a one-issue vote based on gun policy."

The GOP may be in disfavor -- I still say that's mostly because it's chic among hardcore wingnuts to say that the party isn't conservative enough -- but the right, broadly speaking, still hasn't lost the loyalty of white heartlanders. White heartlanders still regard us as a cabal made up of nonwhites and snooty coastal elitists, and regard conservatism as Norman Rockwell's worldview come to life.

Find a way to change that and you'll really beat these guys. Expect that things will change by themselves because people answer poll questions a certain way and the status quo will never change.

7 comments:

Victor said...

The GOP doesn't care what 90% of the people think about anything, as long as they get support from 100% of the money people, and 27& of the lunatics in their base - leaving getting another 23+% of the electorate a matter of financial backing, propaganda, and MSM cowardice, compliance, and complicity!

Otherwise known as a "Potential Win-WIN!!!"

Ten Bears said...

We're pretty ripe for our Tin Pot Dictator to dismiss congress as obstructionis, declare Martial Law and "postpone" the next elections. Thank you Dick Cheney, your butt-fucker George Bush and all of you ignorant christian white nationalist niggers for setting it all up for him.

Dog-fucking sons of whores.

No fear.

aimai said...

I don't think people think the GOP is dying in the sense of nearly moribund. I think they think the GOP is dying in the sense of a trapped tiger in a well--able to do enormous damage if you come in reach of its claws but ultimately doomed because it can't get out and it can't get new food. Unfortunately for us, in this scenario, the entire country is trapped down the well and there is no Lassie and no grown up to rescue us. The GOP and its corporate masters will do immense damage to this country: to our children, to our seniors, to our national health, to our air/water/climate before they consume themselves in a last burst of selfish self destruction. Just hope we can outlast them and start rebuilding once they are dead.

Steve M. said...

People keep tossing food down the well: the mainstream press, which won't talk about the full extent of GOP extremism; the Supreme Court, which is about to make elections even easier for the GOP to steal when it guts the Voting Rights Act; heartland Americans, who feel they're voting their tribe. We're down there with the tiger, but the tiger gets all the food.

Victor said...

Enough with the TIGERS!

Where's the door with the nice lady?

BH said...

National opinion polls dated 18 months before any Senator or Rep is up for an election mean absolutely nothing to a pol. They're elected locally, not nationally, for one thing; for another, as Nate Silver inter alia always reminds us, it's polls of "likely voters" that matter to a pol; and third, this far ahead of any elections, even local (state/Cong. district) poll results are nearly meaningless. Absent some miracle I for one sure don't expect, not 1 Senator of the 45 will pay a price for this vote next fall, Bloomberg bucks notwithstanding. And, hey - the 2nd Amendment protects the only form of population control the lumnpenright deems morally acceptable.

Left Handed said...

The GOP is dead when Bob Dole comes out and speaks the truth and what does Rush and the tea party say; "He wasn't conservative enough!" Yeah right Dole and Reagan were not conservatives. I'm sorry the GOP just can't seem to ever get the facts straight. If there own history doesn't serve their immediate political goals, they just flat out deny history or change it.No questions asked.