We've read or heard some ideas, but there's nothing definitive that I've come across, and of course, I'd never expect them to actually articulate it except among themselves.

I'm seriously asking because I really don't know what its true purpose is. How they see their goals is no small thing. I'm not sure it's really obvious to their followers, either.

Note the multi-prong attacks on voting, laws, economy. Each is designed to enhance GOPer power and diminish the power of the general electorate and general public.

Or, as Elizabeth Warren remarked on Colbert's show, corporations discovered in late '70s and early '80s that their biggest return on investment came from buying government, by buying politicians.

Check the 2nd link in my 'sig' for some history of GOP's power grabs.

Like Putin. Wait, he's a mafia oligarch. Or maybe he's not an oligarch. Just mafia for oligarchs.

Okay, thanks. I just don't think one word explains their true purpose. Not even "domination," which is sciency, jungle ethics sounding.

Oligarchy as a goal seems to miss so much.

Unless oligarchy somehow describes all the "how" of what oligarchy does, it seems to obscure their goals. Oligarchy does both good and bad. There are good oligarchs, aren't there? Don't oligarchs include people not like this party, like the Queen? Or the royalty of northern EU countries? Or Carlos Slim, Jeff Bezos, Waltons, Pritzkers, Gates, or even the Pope

If I were to describe the goal of "oligarchy" as "a one party, white supremacist, patriarchal, nazi and capitalist rule," party, which it is, then one word just doesn't seem to embrace all that, as far as I've understood it.

"Oligarchy" also doesn't seem to cover scofflaw-ism, fake conspiracy, real conspiracy acts, random mass shootings, mafia racketeering. When we think oligarchy do we think oligarchs use this "us" vs "them," "regicide" "erase your future," "enemies of the people," "shithole countries," "moved on her like a bitch," etc.

Anyway, what I think I'm getting to is this idea:

We -- DU, the Democratic Party, everyone who hates the 45's cult and henchmen -- really do need to rebrand the GOP, take its fake name away, redefine the whole party for what it really does and is.

Cuz there's nothing "grand" or "old" about its methods, and it's too globally mafia acting to even be a political party.

Any candidate that can negatively brand Trump wins. Something that could stick to them even after he's gone. I'd go for Mafia Don Party, Kleptocratic Party, the Party Of Made Men,the MP's or KP's.

Greed is at the base of it -- greed for power and money. There seems to be fewer and fewer constraints on what they will do to feed that greed. Nazis, white supremacists, fake christians, rich 'libertarians', mobsters -- all are welcome as either members or pawns so long as they assist in gaining or maintaining power.

If you can stomach it, try listening to Alex Jones on Infowars, Hannity, and Pat Robertson. None sound like either the Rockefeller Republicans nor the conservatives like George Will. Every attack on liberals, liberal democracy and Democrats is employed with the hope that it gathers up some more votes. These attacks do not have to be logical or even consistent. In fact, many are contradictory.

The modern Republican party is a coalition of evil, malcontents, and leftovers from when it was a party mainly for business interests. Everything is carried to extremes in order to leave no stone unturned, not the denizens under it, to maintain power. It doesn't matter if Jones' viewers really believe that Hillary and Obama are possessed with demons, so long as they vote. The Koch institutions are not interested in the destruction of the world; they are charged with promoting de-regulation and increasing profits.

I hear you. I do get the inconsistency of all the useless crap that the GOP is a cover for.

Over time I've seen and heard enough of the right, spending time in central FL, going to college on Florida's panhandle, hearing flyover radioland misery when driving through; in my older years, a minute or two of Limbaugh, Levin and Hannity when construction guys played their radios.

This rebrand of yours should last. Because.

We'll think we're done with Putin, but as long as he lives he'll never be done with us.

"We'll think we're done with Putin, but as long as he lives he'll never be done with us."

We have to oppose him or surrender to his view of the world as his to own and control. So long as we're an obstacle to his desires, he won't be done with us. So long as he can provide resources, there will be GOPers willing to accept.

There have to be serious consequences to foreign meddling and for those who seek it.

All new laws akin to the Magnitsky Act, Patriot Act, lobby and banking reforms, and tougher sanctions will have to get passed.

Warren knows who/how to get that done. Don't know about Biden.

And the primary tools for realizing their version of fascism are racism and sexism, as those have proven highly effective. I understand the temptation to refer to the likes of William Barr as mentally ill, as we've seen in DU threads today. Especially when so much of the rhetoric is unhinged, in addition to being cruel. But it's best to recognize that, while there are mentally ill people within the ranks of the powers that be (including narcissistic Trump) and certainly within the electorate, the likes of Barr and Bannon and Miller and Pompeo and McConnell are driven by a specific ideology. They aren't "crazy" in any clinical sense, and some of them are quite intellectual. They're self-interested fascists out to undermine all democratic institutions. Most are racists and sexists themselves, or - at the very least - have no problem fomenting and exploiting racism and sexism.

They've seen the writing on the wall (social progression, increased secularism, changing demographics, etc.), so their tactics have become increasingly extreme (intense voter suppression and gerrymandering, full-throated attacks on science and public education, persistent attacks on the "liberal media" in the interest of shifting the Overton Window, stealing a Supreme Court seat and packing the judiciary with right wing ideologues, aligning with dictators who share the goal of undermining democracy for personal enrichment, replacing the dog whistle with a bullhorn, and so on). They take comfort in a tyranny of the minority system which, paradoxically, makes major structural reform nearly impossible to bring about for the very reasons why such reform is so desperately needed.

We can't afford to simply dismiss these monsters as mentally ill. It's vital that we understand that with which we're dealing.

Except for his brief mention of Trump and immigration.

From the Southern Strategy of Nixon (fomenting and exploiting a white backlash to the Civil Rights Movement) to the dog whistling of every Republican since (e.g., Reagan kicking off his campaign by talking about states' rights less than 10 miles from where 3 civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi, Bush's Willie Horton ad, etc.) and Trump replacing the dog whistle with a bullhorn, fomenting and exploiting racism (as well as sexism) has been vital to Republican electoral success. Were we to magically wake up in a world free of racism and sexism, the Republican Party would cease to be viable. Without Birtherism (instrumental to the birth of the Tea Party) and his anti-immigrant rhetoric, Trump never would have become the Republican nominee, much less POTUS.

That said, I agree with Cain's basic point.