Replies

Yep, we are going to get absolutely creamed. Strangely enough, your typical conservative doesn't give a hoot. Because we navigate political matters by steering for what we think is right, not what we think is popular. And easily half the reasons Republicans are unpopular right now, are because they are standing for correct policies that convey deeply unpleasant truths about the world, home to the American people. Another half, certainly, are self inflicted stupidities.

We will be lucky to hold most of the south and half of the west in the next election, and the liberals will consider their impending victory a generational mandate to undo the entire Reagan legacy and go back to building a semi-socialist great society on a 1970s model. With slightly more rational (Rubin-esque) macroeconomics, that is all.

The Republicans have lost 3 major components of the coalition that has made them successful in the past. In the northeast, pro business Republicans whose signature issue is low taxes and management of the economy, have been driven out by relentlessly pounding them as cultural traitors to the populist grass roots in the rest of the country. These people have decided that they agree with the left on the culture, and are leaving, taking the remaining Republican strength in the northeast (and California) with them. Their defection is also helpful to the left financially, and provides them and deprives us of excellent personnel.

Second and much more important in an electoral sense, the upper midwest has had it over the war, and is in full revolt against what they see as Republican warmongering and incompetence. While entirely patriotic, they have always been more isolationist than the rest of the country, in matters of trade as well as military action. Illinois and Michigan went a long time ago over this, and now Wisconsin, Iowa, and Missouri are following suit. The entire Mississipi valley is in play. All the left has to do there is promise to bring the boys home, and it will win in a walk.

Meanwhile in the west, the party elites have stiffed the base over immigration, and the populists will first try to drive the nominee to the right over it, but if that fails they will simply fail to show up, en masse. They already started in the last election (along with the previous), but it will be vastly worse if we run a pro amnesty candidate. And if we instead articulate a low brow nativism, then the first group above is goner than gone.

The left does not have a coherent policy to offer on national security. In the long run, that will out, and the people will recover some of their natural Jacksonian hawkishness. But right now only the deep south remotely feels that way, and even their patience in the matter is worn to rags.

If you stay at war forever, let your domestic opponents walk all over you and thereby lose, getting the blame for the war and defeat on top of it, and then deliberately alienate two huge portions of your base with deliberately unpopular policies or sustained rhetorical assaults, then yeah of course you are going to be creamed.

The Dems can just stand there and they will be elected. In fact they aren't standing still, but are running left to up their mandate and how far they can push when it comes.

All the left has to do there is promise to bring the boys home, and it will win in a walk.

I disagree. If such a promise would yield a "win in a walk", then Dennis Kucinich and Hillary Clinton would have switched places among the Democrat field that's running for President.

While I don't trust Hillary as far as I could throw her, she has made no such promise, the loons on the left hate her, and she's far out in front among the Dems.

You are very right. I am glad to see someone agrees with me. And it is also gratifying to see agreement from one of the people on this board that write a thoughtful and insightful analysis and also lasting for more than 1 paragraph.

remaining Republican strength in the northeast (and California) with them. Their defection is also helpful to the left financially, and provides them and deprives us of excellent personnel.
Second and much more important in an electoral sense, the upper midwest has had it over the war, and is in full revolt against what they see as Republican warmongering and incompetence. While entirely patriotic, they have always been more isolationist than the rest of the country, in matters of trade as well as military action. Illinois and Michigan went a long time ago over this, and now Wisconsin, Iowa, and Missouri are following suit. The entire Mississipi valley is in play. All the left has to do there is promise to bring the boys home, and it will win in a walk.

Meanwhile in the west, the party elites have stiffed the base over immigration, and the populists will first try to drive the nominee to the right over it, but if that fails they will simply fail to show up, en masse. They already started in the last election (along with the previous), but it will be vastly worse if we run a pro amnesty candidate. And if we instead articulate a low brow nativism, then the first group above is goner than gone.

Excellent summation. The only way back for the Republicans is to form a new coalition based on mutual disgust with Democratic economic ineptness (what built the Reagan Coalition in the first place). But for that to happen we are going to have to suffer through some new Carter-style Malaise years, first.