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Are any current Republican politicians socially apathetic? I can't think of a single example. It doesn't seem like that's a viable way to mobilize the conservat

Are any current Republican politicians socially apathetic? I can't think of a single example. It doesn't seem like that's a viable way to mobilize the conservative base in any part of the country right now. Jon Huntsman tried to run a campaign that wasn't so extreme on social policy and look how that turned out.

gojomo 14y ago
'Socially tolerant' or 'socially laissez-faire' are probably better terms than 'socially apathetic'. Schwarzenegger was. Rudy Guiliani, for the most part. Ron Paul has been, in most policy dimensions. When Romney was running for MA Senate and then elected as Governor, he was pretty socially tolerant, as well. And before him, another Massachusetts GOP governor, William Weld. Chris Christie isn't a socially-conservative crusader, and a number of the other GOP governors/senators are more pragmatic than anything else. It's always been there; it just needs a stronger hand versus the deeply socially conservative elements. However, as more issues have "nationalized" the parties have homogenized somewhat, with Dems successfully tarnishing even socially-tolerant Republicans as if they were the same as faraway hardcore religious conservatives, and liberal Republicans peeling away (as with Lincoln Chafee in RI and Charlie Crist in FL). I suspect the national parties (or perhaps mainly the GOP) will have to devolve into more than 2 brands for healthy regional competitiveness. While our system has a bias at every level towards 2-big-coalitions, having only two harmonized national brands doesn't offer sufficient competitive diversity. "Coke vs. Pepsi" is not enough for a nation this big, and especially damages the Republicans, as the more-stingy party.
- AnthonyMouse 14y ago
  >I suspect the national parties (or perhaps especially the GOP) will have to devolve into more than 2 brands for healthy regional competitiveness. I think you're underestimating said bias toward two parties. Unless we switch to approval voting or the like, you'll never see a stable third party in this country. The simple math makes it so that given any three parties, the two most similar parties have the incentive to both back the same candidate, because the alternative of running opposing candidates invariably leads to those candidates splitting the vote and giving the election to the least similar party. And by the time they're both backing all the same candidates they might as well merge into one party. The thing that can happen, and could achieve a significant improvement, is for a new party to come about that replaces one of the existing parties. That allows you to throw out the old leadership and start over with a clean slate. The biggest difficulty is in building a stable coalition. If you want to eject the religious zealots and the climate change "skeptics" and the imbeciles who want to keep government out of Medicare then you need to replace them with something that supplies an equivalent number of votes and/or campaign funding. Tech is a good start, but it might not be enough on its own. But the nice thing is that once you've decided who you're not going to invite into the tent, you know exactly whose ox to gore. I have to imagine a fiscally conservative-leaning party would have a lot easier time capturing the votes of centrist Democrats if they were pro-choice, pro-science, pro-education, pro-alternative energy, etc.
  - ubernostrum 14y ago
    Amusingly, in most large "multi-party" parliamentary democracies, there are... two large, stable parties which actually govern (in the sense that no other party or coalition of other parties will ever be able to form a government) and occasionally a third which gets just large enough to play kingmaker before the system re-stabilizes.
    - smsm42 14y ago
      More amusingly, the standard complaint in this setup is the disproportionate power which the small parties wield - since it is often necessary for the larger parties to form coalitions with the smaller ones, and the smaller ones, catering to specific niches, are not accountable to larger electorate and thus are not afraid to offend it by openly extorting the larger parties. The second complaint is an inherent instability of such system - as soon as smaller ones are paid, or as soon as larger ones are unable to keep paying (paying doesn't have to be money, of course - can be policies, appointments, etc.) the coalition breaks down and the shopping season starts again. I'm not sure which one is the better - having only two choices which are roughly equally bad or having multiple choices two of which are equally bad and then also must buy the votes of the choices which are even worse.
      - yxhuvud 14y ago
        Another option is that the winning party (or parties if need be), can be able to rule without having a majority - negotiate temporary alliances for questions as they come up. This has been the case here in Sweden several times. A country doesn't become Italy just because they use parliamentarism.
        smsm42 14y ago
        If you have to vote for a budget, you have to have a majority, and everybody knows that. And small parties know you'd have to pay them if you want the budget passed. Between those, you have also some agenda you probably want to advance, and this requires majority too. So unless the principle of the ruling party is to make as litte laws and humanly possible - and don't get me wrong, I'd love such party, but it is very rare - they'd have to form a majority, even if temporary. And the temporary one is more dangerous because you'd have to pay each time you need it. Italy is in no way unique at this, of course, there are many more countries with same problems.
- warfangle 14y ago
  > Ron Paul has been, in most policy dimensions Except, of course, when it comes to reproductive rights. In that instance, he almost immediately repudiates most voters who possess two X chromosomes.
  - tetomb 14y ago
    It is frustrating how the American government is trillions of dollars in debt, waging pointless/dangerous wars and quickly turning America into a police/welfare state but instead of worrying about foreign and monetary policy, the most important issues seem to be abortion and gay marriage (things the government shouldn't even involved in).
    - illuminate 14y ago
      It's much easier to win "points" and requires no serious budget and planning concerns. It certainly doesn't require any new ideas.
- illuminate 14y ago
  "Ron Paul has been, in most policy dimensions" This is absolutely untrue. He is fully social conservative, and unafraid to put forth Federal legislation to enforce his moral code.
zephjc 14y ago
To quote The Simpsons: "You don't win friends with salad". That is to say, Republicans don't win voters with well-thought-out tax restructuring plans, they win them with "God, Guns and Gays" policies that appeal the the lowest common denominator. It's like a vicious cycle: they chase the LCD voters, who are typically less educated, and as a side-effect in the policies of the GOP, they vote down more educational spending, creating more less-educated voters who respond to these vacuous non-issues, and so on.
- smsm42 14y ago
  If you look at the voting statistics, majority of uneducated and lightly educated (high school only) votes Democrat. College graduates lean Republican, while higher degrees (academia) leans Democrat. So it would be counterproductive for Republicans to have more less-educated voters, since those prefer Democrats. Education spending is another red herring - public schools spend no less and sometimes more than private schools, costs of K12 education per pupil tripled since 70s with little to no improvement in any measurable metrics, teacher employment has grown faster than enrollment for 40 years now. http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/president-we-need-more-teachers-reality-yoohoo-im-right-over-here-hellooo/ http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/president-we-need-more-teache... Sorry for ruining your nice theory with facts.
DennisP 14y ago
There are some libertarian types scattered around the party but I don't see them connecting with the base anytime soon. Gary Johnson was a socially-liberal Republican before he switched to Libertarian after a poor showing in the primaries. Ron Paul was socially conservative on some issues but "apathetic" was a pretty good description, he spoke a lot about foreign and monetary policy and very little about issues like abortion...and on some issues, like drug policy, he was very liberal.

gojomo 14y ago

'Socially tolerant' or 'socially laissez-faire' are probably better terms than 'socially apathetic'. Schwarzenegger was. Rudy Guiliani, for the most part. Ron Paul has been, in most policy dimensions. When Romney was running for MA Senate and then elected as Governor, he was pretty socially tolerant, as well. And before him, another Massachusetts GOP governor, William Weld. Chris Christie isn't a socially-conservative crusader, and a number of the other GOP governors/senators are more pragmatic than anything else. It's always been there; it just needs a stronger hand versus the deeply socially conservative elements. However, as more issues have "nationalized" the parties have homogenized somewhat, with Dems successfully tarnishing even socially-tolerant Republicans as if they were the same as faraway hardcore religious conservatives, and liberal Republicans peeling away (as with Lincoln Chafee in RI and Charlie Crist in FL). I suspect the national parties (or perhaps mainly the GOP) will have to devolve into more than 2 brands for healthy regional competitiveness. While our system has a bias at every level towards 2-big-coalitions, having only two harmonized national brands doesn't offer sufficient competitive diversity. "Coke vs. Pepsi" is not enough for a nation this big, and especially damages the Republicans, as the more-stingy party.

AnthonyMouse 14y ago
>I suspect the national parties (or perhaps especially the GOP) will have to devolve into more than 2 brands for healthy regional competitiveness. I think you're underestimating said bias toward two parties. Unless we switch to approval voting or the like, you'll never see a stable third party in this country. The simple math makes it so that given any three parties, the two most similar parties have the incentive to both back the same candidate, because the alternative of running opposing candidates invariably leads to those candidates splitting the vote and giving the election to the least similar party. And by the time they're both backing all the same candidates they might as well merge into one party. The thing that can happen, and could achieve a significant improvement, is for a new party to come about that replaces one of the existing parties. That allows you to throw out the old leadership and start over with a clean slate. The biggest difficulty is in building a stable coalition. If you want to eject the religious zealots and the climate change "skeptics" and the imbeciles who want to keep government out of Medicare then you need to replace them with something that supplies an equivalent number of votes and/or campaign funding. Tech is a good start, but it might not be enough on its own. But the nice thing is that once you've decided who you're not going to invite into the tent, you know exactly whose ox to gore. I have to imagine a fiscally conservative-leaning party would have a lot easier time capturing the votes of centrist Democrats if they were pro-choice, pro-science, pro-education, pro-alternative energy, etc.
- ubernostrum 14y ago
  Amusingly, in most large "multi-party" parliamentary democracies, there are... two large, stable parties which actually govern (in the sense that no other party or coalition of other parties will ever be able to form a government) and occasionally a third which gets just large enough to play kingmaker before the system re-stabilizes.
  - smsm42 14y ago
    More amusingly, the standard complaint in this setup is the disproportionate power which the small parties wield - since it is often necessary for the larger parties to form coalitions with the smaller ones, and the smaller ones, catering to specific niches, are not accountable to larger electorate and thus are not afraid to offend it by openly extorting the larger parties. The second complaint is an inherent instability of such system - as soon as smaller ones are paid, or as soon as larger ones are unable to keep paying (paying doesn't have to be money, of course - can be policies, appointments, etc.) the coalition breaks down and the shopping season starts again. I'm not sure which one is the better - having only two choices which are roughly equally bad or having multiple choices two of which are equally bad and then also must buy the votes of the choices which are even worse.
    - yxhuvud 14y ago
      Another option is that the winning party (or parties if need be), can be able to rule without having a majority - negotiate temporary alliances for questions as they come up. This has been the case here in Sweden several times. A country doesn't become Italy just because they use parliamentarism.
      - smsm42 14y ago
        If you have to vote for a budget, you have to have a majority, and everybody knows that. And small parties know you'd have to pay them if you want the budget passed. Between those, you have also some agenda you probably want to advance, and this requires majority too. So unless the principle of the ruling party is to make as litte laws and humanly possible - and don't get me wrong, I'd love such party, but it is very rare - they'd have to form a majority, even if temporary. And the temporary one is more dangerous because you'd have to pay each time you need it. Italy is in no way unique at this, of course, there are many more countries with same problems.
warfangle 14y ago
> Ron Paul has been, in most policy dimensions Except, of course, when it comes to reproductive rights. In that instance, he almost immediately repudiates most voters who possess two X chromosomes.
- tetomb 14y ago
  It is frustrating how the American government is trillions of dollars in debt, waging pointless/dangerous wars and quickly turning America into a police/welfare state but instead of worrying about foreign and monetary policy, the most important issues seem to be abortion and gay marriage (things the government shouldn't even involved in).
  - illuminate 14y ago
    It's much easier to win "points" and requires no serious budget and planning concerns. It certainly doesn't require any new ideas.
illuminate 14y ago
"Ron Paul has been, in most policy dimensions" This is absolutely untrue. He is fully social conservative, and unafraid to put forth Federal legislation to enforce his moral code.

zephjc 14y ago

To quote The Simpsons: "You don't win friends with salad". That is to say, Republicans don't win voters with well-thought-out tax restructuring plans, they win them with "God, Guns and Gays" policies that appeal the the lowest common denominator. It's like a vicious cycle: they chase the LCD voters, who are typically less educated, and as a side-effect in the policies of the GOP, they vote down more educational spending, creating more less-educated voters who respond to these vacuous non-issues, and so on.

smsm42 14y ago
If you look at the voting statistics, majority of uneducated and lightly educated (high school only) votes Democrat. College graduates lean Republican, while higher degrees (academia) leans Democrat. So it would be counterproductive for Republicans to have more less-educated voters, since those prefer Democrats. Education spending is another red herring - public schools spend no less and sometimes more than private schools, costs of K12 education per pupil tripled since 70s with little to no improvement in any measurable metrics, teacher employment has grown faster than enrollment for 40 years now. http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/president-we-need-more-teachers-reality-yoohoo-im-right-over-here-hellooo/ http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/president-we-need-more-teache... Sorry for ruining your nice theory with facts.

DennisP 14y ago

There are some libertarian types scattered around the party but I don't see them connecting with the base anytime soon. Gary Johnson was a socially-liberal Republican before he switched to Libertarian after a poor showing in the primaries. Ron Paul was socially conservative on some issues but "apathetic" was a pretty good description, he spoke a lot about foreign and monetary policy and very little about issues like abortion...and on some issues, like drug policy, he was very liberal.