4 ms·

Honestly I am hoping Donald Trump is more centrist than many people expect. While he touts protectionism to the point of blocking access to the country his othe

Honestly I am hoping Donald Trump is more centrist than many people expect. While he touts protectionism to the point of blocking access to the country his other ideas are pretty much down the middle of the road with regards to rebuilding the country itself. A lot of his ideas are not hard right Republican. He openly embraces gays and will make many of them in the Republican party feel more welcome. He has allies of all races and even pulled in record Hispanic votes. So the first signs will be, who composes his cabinet? Who will be his advisors be? How much of a role will Pence play? Will he give equal time to leadership from both parties? With both parties approach with hostility or be willing to give it a try? Still when I view the race, I really want to know if Democrats think it was worth it to become a party whose candidates are selected on what they are first compared to what they believe. Why was the "party of the people" the side with the least number of candidates? I would ask the Republican party, why do you continuously try to for far right cultural view points and such candidates when conservatives want you out of our personal and financial lives both? Sadly no candidate championed privacy and freedom of self but there is a chance that change might have actually finally reached the White House

pyre 10y ago
> when conservatives want you out of our personal and financial lives Do they really? There are a lot of people that view the Republican Party as their ticket back to an idealized Leave It to Beaver world, which is definitely NOT the government getting out of your personal life (make homosexuality illegal, bring back "separate but equal", make sure that minorities "know their place", etc). Still others see it as a the path forward to a fundamentalist Christian theocracy. The same people that eat up Bill O'Reilly's "The War on Christmas" segments and get outraged that Christmas is "under attack" by the evil Liberals that want to destroy Christian values.
- yourapostasy 10y ago
  These sentiments come from an extremely-well-organized, but minority faction of the party. If these were majority sentiments, then legislation pushing those sentiments would have progressed far faster than they have. Back in the 60's, the evangelicals started to learn the ropes of party machinery, primarily crystallizing around the abortion single-issue. During the 70's, they started to take up positions throughout the party and attempt to dominate it, but the Rockefeller Republicans trounced them. To their credit, they licked their wounds, learned their lessons, and kept coming back spoiling for another fight. In the 80's they consolidated their power. Today in the largest state Republican party, they absolutely control all the chokepoints of power, they vote virtually in lock-step, but they don't have the numbers to completely dictate policy and seed their own hand-picked and -groomed candidates at the national level. The parliamentarian is an evangelical, most times the convention chairman is either evangelical or strongly allied to them, and key committee chairmen who have a lot of control over which party members participate in the committees and advance to the next convention level are evangelicals. Your level of participation in the party is contingent upon passing one or more litmus test(s): for certain key levels, you are interviewed to state your positions on their hot button topics (abortion is a favorite). While small in numbers, they carry a huge stick, and they're utterly ruthless political knife fighters, as many Ron Paul supporters found out. They're very tightly coordinated and highly prepared: as an example, they come to district and state conventions prepared with earbud FRS radios so they can confer upon split-second decisions on the floor. While they don't quite have the numbers to be the party unto itself, they dominate the voting plans of the congregations that send them to the party, so they make a formidable voting bloc. The end result is they can exert enough pressure to force the Republican party to adopt objectively terrible policy planks (no-abortion-no-exception even in medically-dire situations where both mother and fetus can die, really?), that then don't make it into national legislation. But just like before, they keep trying, learning, and adapting.

pyre 10y ago

> when conservatives want you out of our personal and financial lives Do they really? There are a lot of people that view the Republican Party as their ticket back to an idealized Leave It to Beaver world, which is definitely NOT the government getting out of your personal life (make homosexuality illegal, bring back "separate but equal", make sure that minorities "know their place", etc). Still others see it as a the path forward to a fundamentalist Christian theocracy. The same people that eat up Bill O'Reilly's "The War on Christmas" segments and get outraged that Christmas is "under attack" by the evil Liberals that want to destroy Christian values.

yourapostasy 10y ago
These sentiments come from an extremely-well-organized, but minority faction of the party. If these were majority sentiments, then legislation pushing those sentiments would have progressed far faster than they have. Back in the 60's, the evangelicals started to learn the ropes of party machinery, primarily crystallizing around the abortion single-issue. During the 70's, they started to take up positions throughout the party and attempt to dominate it, but the Rockefeller Republicans trounced them. To their credit, they licked their wounds, learned their lessons, and kept coming back spoiling for another fight. In the 80's they consolidated their power. Today in the largest state Republican party, they absolutely control all the chokepoints of power, they vote virtually in lock-step, but they don't have the numbers to completely dictate policy and seed their own hand-picked and -groomed candidates at the national level. The parliamentarian is an evangelical, most times the convention chairman is either evangelical or strongly allied to them, and key committee chairmen who have a lot of control over which party members participate in the committees and advance to the next convention level are evangelicals. Your level of participation in the party is contingent upon passing one or more litmus test(s): for certain key levels, you are interviewed to state your positions on their hot button topics (abortion is a favorite). While small in numbers, they carry a huge stick, and they're utterly ruthless political knife fighters, as many Ron Paul supporters found out. They're very tightly coordinated and highly prepared: as an example, they come to district and state conventions prepared with earbud FRS radios so they can confer upon split-second decisions on the floor. While they don't quite have the numbers to be the party unto itself, they dominate the voting plans of the congregations that send them to the party, so they make a formidable voting bloc. The end result is they can exert enough pressure to force the Republican party to adopt objectively terrible policy planks (no-abortion-no-exception even in medically-dire situations where both mother and fetus can die, really?), that then don't make it into national legislation. But just like before, they keep trying, learning, and adapting.