2016 Postmortem

babylonsister

(171,090 posts) Fri Jun 21, 2013, 07:42 AM Jun 2013

Robert Reich: Why the GOP Can’t Learn

Why the GOP Can’t Learn
Posted on Jun 20, 2013
By Robert Reich

This post originally ran on Robert Reich’s Web page.

It’s as if they didn’t learn a thing from the 2012 elections. Republicans are on the same suicide mission as before—trying to block immigration reform (if they can’t scuttle it in the Senate, they’re ready to in the House), roll back the clock on abortion rights (they’re pushing federal and state legislation to ban abortions in the first 22 weeks), and stop gay marriage wherever possible.

As almost everyone knows by now, this puts them the wrong side of history. America is becoming more ethnically diverse, women are gaining economic and political power, and young people are more socially libertarian than ever before.

Why can’t Republicans learn?

It’s no answer to say their “base” — ever older, whiter, more rural and male — won’t budge. The Democratic Party of the 1990s simply ignored its old base and became New Democrats, spearheading a North American Free Trade Act (to the chagrin of organized labor), performance standards in classrooms (resisted by teachers’ unions) and welfare reform and crime control (upsetting traditional liberals).

The real answer is the Republican base is far more entrenched, institutionally, than was the old Democratic base. And its power is concentrated in certain states — most of the old Confederacy plus Arizona, Alaska, Indiana, and Wisconsin — which together exert more of a choke-hold on the Republican national party machinery than the old Democrats, spread widely but thinly over many states, exerted on the Democratic Party.

more...

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_the_gop_cant_learn_20130620/

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Robert Reich: Why the GOP Can’t Learn (Original Post) babylonsister Jun 2013 OP

Congressional elections also mean they don't have to change muriel_volestrangler Jun 2013 #1

They are boxed in. bemildred Jun 2013 #2

muriel_volestrangler

(101,361 posts)

1. Congressional elections also mean they don't have to change

Reply to babylonsister (Original post)

Fri Jun 21, 2013, 08:46 AM

Jun 2013

The House seats that were gerrymandered by Republican state politicians in 2010 mean they still have an apparent lock on the House; they can get enough seats in the Senate to block legislation when they want, and Republican incumbents are pretty safe - only 2 Rep. senators lost their seats in 2012 - Brown who was kicked out by Warren (but who was an anomaly in the first place), and Lugar, who the Repubs kicked out in the primary with Mourdock the Tea Party nutter, who then lost. They may just be able to learn a lesson from that last one - there is a limit to how far right you can go - but that's about it.

So the Repubs are still comfortable in Congress, and that means a large part of the powerful in the party are very happy with not learning anything. If, in 2020, Democrats take back some state legislatures, and undo the gerrymandering (or, as I'm sure will be tempting, gerrymander districts the other way), then Republicans may decide they have to change.

bemildred

(90,061 posts)

2. They are boxed in.

Reply to babylonsister (Original post)

Fri Jun 21, 2013, 11:31 AM

Jun 2013

They can't go more to the right without becoming more sectional. And they can't move to the left unless they move way to the left. And that would probably take as long as getting boxed in did: 40 years.

That's why.

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