Discussion: GOP Establishment Has Uphill Battle To Keep Firebrand Roy Moore From Senate

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#42

My personal experience is that most whites here who are Republican/conservative simply do not know what Democrats stand for.

The great gift of Tea Party Trumpism to the Democratic Party is that it’s pushed the GOP so far rightward that even common sense things like clean water, breathable air, safe food and drugs, well-funded public schools, and roads and bridges that aren’t crumbling are now deemed by many Republicans to be unimportant and undeserving of proper funding. In other words, the policy arguments between Democrats and Republicans are no longer solely a question of how much regulation of water, food, drugs, air, etc. is appropriate; in 2017, it’s a question of whether to do anything at all. That should be an argument that Democrats can win anywhere. Not sure the national party has grasped it yet.

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#43

Yes, but I would say it started even before the Tea Party. Ronald Reagan held many of those views at least before he was President, and then the 1994 GOP wins helped set the stage, also. But you are absolutely right. The national party needs to find a way to get their message out there and fight for and elucidate these policy differences with the GOP.

Thanks for your reply, I’m saving it!

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#44

Here’s a precinct map from 2016 that some grad student put together. Feel free to share your partition plan with us.

Notice the part where Alabama has less deep red than the Rustbelt and the Frozen Plains states, or, indeed, rural New England.

Are Alabama and Mississippi still full of stone racists who drop N-Bombs whenever they’re around other white people because they assume all white people are racist like they are? Yeah, sure. Are the blue areas in those states blue largely because of minority voters? Yeah, sure. But that’s not actually all that different from the rest of the lower 48, aside from having fewer social inhibitions about the casual use of a particular racial epithet.

I also note, not without surprise, that Hawaii is, geographically, even redder than Alabama.

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#45

No big surprise here…GOP voters in AL had a choice between Strange, Mo Brooks and Moore. Whomever they wind up with will be a disaster, but by GOD THEY made the choice and not those silk stocking elites in DC. I swear, when you read the history of AL, it is hard to decide whether they or Mississippi or SC top the list of vile political and social swamps, each wrapped in fervent fundamentalism and a firm belief that God is telling them to do this.

#46

Moore is an abhorrent asshole – BUT – I don’t expect to like the words and actions of any Republican senator from Alabama. Strange is a “go along to get along” kind of politician who won’t cause trouble for Mitch McConnell. If Moore wins, it’ll be saddle Mitch with an unpredictable, troublesome problem. Electing Moore would be like handing a deranged chimpanzee a lit stick of dynamite and sending him into the GOP caucus meetings. I admit I like that idea, of only for the entertainment value. If Mitch wants something, I want him not to get it.

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#47

Nah—Mississippi will always have that particular designation. They work hard at it, too.

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#48

Moore is an abhorrent asshole

When I lived in AL, Moore, more so than Sessions, always got a chuckle from Republicans I listened to sitting around a poker table. He’s nutty as they come and will make life for McConnell’s Senate days even worse than his recent and embarrassing attempt at passing legislation. But of course, we will all suffer. But now it will be like the old days of stereo.

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#49

The thing is, there’s no reasoning with most Republicans on what they think they know about Democrats. They know what they know, they know more about what Democrats believe and are for than Democrats do, and even when you force them to acknowledge actual Democratic policy positions, they dismiss it as a pretext for their real hidden agenda of stealing money from hard working virtuous white people and using to to buy the votes of lazy, no-account minorities with worthless social programs.

And that’s the poison that damages us with the independents and “moderate” Republicans. Most of them have a halfway decent idea of what Democrats say they’re for. They just don’t believe us when we say it because the Just Know that Democrats are really for ruinous deficit spending and wasting money on worthless social programs that really only benefit people who aren’t them.

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#50

Do NOT leave Minnesota off the list. We elected Michelle Bachmann and she is high on the list of RWNJ’s*

*right wing nut jobs

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#51

Sure, but the “toxic meme” is racist, christo-fundy, right-wing garbage, and you can’t stop people from being offended by the determined backwards nature of the region, generally.

You CANNOT blame people for knowing damn well where that SMELL has been coming from our whole lives!

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#52

No, we DID just grasp it in 2016…and still LOST! NONE of that matters to the “Identity Politics” (White, Christian, “ABORTION!!!”) of the GOP. None of it!

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#53

Yeah, I seem to recall hearing folks say something very similar about a blowhard New York real estate huckster with no qualifications and fewer morals, a while ago.

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#54

Sessions is a close ally — Strange helped on his campaigns and followed him as state attorney general. But Sessions doesn’t plan to have any involvement in the race because of the ethical constraints of his current job.

How weird this world has become, when Jefferson Beauregard Sessions stands out among his peers in the administration for his (relatively) high regard for ethical constraints.

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#55

I’m really sick of these maps. Most of that red is empty space and doesn’t represent people, i.e.: voters. For example I can look at that tiny blue dot in the middle of Minnesota that represents the Twin Cities and tell you that’s about 3.5 million people - a million more than the rest of the state combined.

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#56

I understand being sick of maps like that, but it’s a reality that we have to deal with. That “empty” space may not represent a lot of voters, but it still adds up to votes – in Congress, in the Electoral College, in state houses where the next redistricting battles will be fought.

Is this how one would rationally design a representational democratic system from scratch, without any of the messy constraints of history, geography, past political tradeoffs? Hardly.

But if you want to fight and win, you’ve got to do it on the field that actually exists, not an ideal smooth plane. (Insert joke about “spherical frictionless chickens” here.)

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#57

There seems to be a pervasive layer of sociopathy across much of the conservative base. They are unable (unwilling?) to empathize with unfamiliar experiences and they appear to assume they face the starkest game theory scenarios.

It’s as if they think they are stuck in the prisoner’s dilemma and they are positive they have to betray the other side first because they “know” the other side is already planning to betray them. The idea that Democrats/liberals/progressives/whathaveyous could be willing to work together with the other side doesn’t even cross their radar as a possibility. They are absolutely certain that any shenanigans they would consider doing, the other side would be just as eager (if not more so) to use against them.

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#58

“What the fuck is wrong with you people?”
Alabama.

#59

Zero sum thinking does seem to be a common characteristic of the Republican mindset. As for "sociopathy, I think that goes too far. Mostly. There is a pronounced tendency to not be able to empathize with people who aren’t like them. Plenty of empathy for those whose experiences are culturally comprehensible, but not for those whose circumstances are unrelatable. I still recall starkly more or less decent Republicans being unable to fathom how all those people ended up sheltering in Katrina in the King Dome rather than just leaving town and fleeing inland. Literally couldn’t imagine that there were really that many people who lacked the resources to do that.

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#60

Ummm… did you read the heading on that map? It says “Change between 2012 and 2016”. It’s not a map of how right or left the counties are, merely how much movement there was…

Besides the desire to split off the South comes as much from their fervent need to maintain separateness from the rest of the nation as their specific voting record. The fact that a lot of them can’t seem to get over the fact that the Confederacy lost. There aren’t many Minnesotans chanting that the South will rise again. So sure, why not let the old Confederacy go their own way? The rest of the country will be better off without them economically… we can buy their products for less than what we send them in transfer payments.

#61

Because it’s fucking stupid and based on a stupidly false premise.

Because this:

And this:

image.png1484×833 1.37 MB

And this:

And this:

And this:

https://noczone-fvdefpncfaxtmfnyjx.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/NuclearWarHeader.jpg

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