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You're ascribing things to the whole GOP that are just examples of its outlier (and loser) candidates. While they each have followings, both Akin and Santorum a

by gojomo 14y ago

You're ascribing things to the whole GOP that are just examples of its outlier (and loser) candidates. While they each have followings, both Akin and Santorum are far from the average or median GOP candidate/officeholder. And using Akin's ignorance as an example of anything that "Republicans spew" is especially unfair: not only did his party widely condemn him afterward, but even beforehand I doubt you'd find any prominent GOPers believing that 'rape pregnancy immunity' theory – it was an Akin peculiarity, not a representative belief. However, the current GOP may be doomed by such fuzzy perceptions and slurs. Most media is overwhelmingly sympathetic to the Dem party, and so even when consciously trying to be fair, they're prone to oversimplifying the GOP based on caricatures and headline-grabbing outliers. Actual strongly-partisan Dem campaigners are happy to assist this process. Among other things, this is an example of "Out-group homogeneity bias" – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity – the idea that among 'us' there's variety but 'they' tend to be all alike. Highlighting outliers in key negative dimensions (like Akin and Santorum) as if they were representative, central examples of the whole category is part of that biased process.

_delirium 14y ago
Sure, some of those are outliers, but they're merely the most outrageous outliers from already quite right-wing "mainstream conservative" positions. I've been observing Republicans fairly closely for a while, because I first started voting in a rather GOP-heavy district of Texas (southeast Houston), so in some cases voting in the GOP primary was the only way to have any impact at all, by voting for the more-moderate candidate. And the people I've seen are, by and large, shockingly unacceptable. When I was in high school (late 1990s), they opposed repealing Texas's anti-sodomy laws, which made it a criminal offense to engage in "immoral" sex. We're not talking about same-sex marriage here, but about actually being arrested for having sex in one's own house. When that law was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2003, the state GOP was outraged, and put into its platform a condemnation of "activist judges" and the "homosexual agenda", and a demand that homosexuality be somehow re-criminalized. Not just a few fringe representatives: that was the consensus position of the statewide party. That specific demand was finally voted out of the platform just this year, in 2012, though my own local congressman (TX-36) still speaks darkly of "homosexuals" more often than you might think necessary, along with "anchor babies" for good measure. I don't see how I could possibly find that kind of rhetoric appealing. As far as rape goes, what was sort of surprising is that Akin wasn't even the only outlier among Senate candidates in this election alone in having a "rape-comment scandal": Mourdock in IN also somehow found it necessary to mention that pregnancy from rape is a "gift from God".
- gojomo 14y ago
  Well, that's Texas. (I grew up in northeast Houston.) These 'unappealing' candidates are reliably winning there, so it's hard to say they're not locally appropriate, on (small-d) democratic principles. And even the (big-D) Democrats are more conservative in such places, steering clear of gay/abortion rights. For example, you mention Mourdock in IN. He lost to a pro-life, anti-gay-marriage Democrat who'd co-sponsored a bill that included the same extra 'forcible' qualifier about rapes that GOPers are attacked about. Also, all "rape-comment scandals" are not alike. (Fuzzing them together is again deploying 'out-group homogeneity bias' for partisan electoral advantage.) Mourdock's gaffe was clumsy, but a genuine attempt at expressing a philosophically consistent position, common among religiously-motivated abortion opponents, that follows naturally from the idea that all life is a supernatural gift, and all abortion an unjust taking of a life. (I've heard strongly pro-choice people say they respect this position, for its consistency, more than the 'convenient, popular exceptions' pro-life position.) If Mourdock had said it more artfully -- for example keeping the words 'rape' and 'something god intended' much further apart -- many voters may still have disagreed with his 'no exceptions' approach but it would have been a lot harder to tarnish him with Akin-like ignorance and insensitivity. (Harder, but not impossible: more than ever before partisans and 'outrage farmers' selectively quote and rearrange statements to make them maximally-inflammatory before reporting, to score quick points before the full original context is known.) Even your word choice that Mourdock "found it necessary to mention" this makes it seem like he was going out of his way to inflame. If you watch the clip yourself -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgDgub8X6DQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgDgub8X6DQ -- I think it's pretty clear he was struggling with a dicey issue (especially for those who believe in a 'good' and omnipotent diety who allows evil to happen), and trying to be responsive to a direct question during a debate. And his reward for being honest and engaging (but unpracticed on the exact word choice)? Being lumped together with ignorant Akin, forever.
dlitwak 14y ago
You don't get to say they are "Outliers" when Santorum wins 11 (I think that was the number?) Republican presidential primaries. When audiences at those primaries boo gay soldiers. When their candidate wants to get rid of planned parenthood. A major party's senate candidate is an "outlier" ???/ You'd be hard pressed to find anyone this nuts on the left. Half of the Repubs members of the congressional committee on science don't believe in evolution. The moderates who you refer to have left: Richard Lugar, Arlen Spector etc., haven't you noticed they've been cast out of the party/defeated in primaries. Frankly, the media is too "fair." Not all opinions deserve to be treated equally. If media is sympathetic to the Democratic party it's because ours is a party based on reason, evidence and logic, not 2,000 year old myths.
- deleted 14y ago
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- gojomo 14y ago
  Winning only 11 primaries, compared to 42 won by the nominee, is evidence of a regional/minority-factional 'outlier' candidacy. (And even for those wins, Santorum needed the 'anybody but Romney' dynamic: it was far from broad GOP love for Santorum. Though if you're suffering from the out-group bias I mentioned, it might look that way.) And yes, a major party's Senate candidate can be an 'outlier'. In the US, the parties don't pick the candidates, voters do through primaries. Only 36% of Missouri Republican primary voters gave Akin a slim plurality in a no-runoff 3-way primary. Two other candidates in that primary, each with a broader base of national Republican support, got a combined 59% of the GOP vote. So Akin is even somewhat of an outlier in his home, conservative Missouri GOP. An bigger outlier was the 'major party' Democratic Senate candidate in Tennessee, Mark Clayton: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/2012s-worst-candidate-with-mark-clayton-tennessee-democrats-hit-bottom/2012/10/22/77da926e-1b8a-11e2-a146-ccabc9c85c53_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/2012s-wo... Still, Clayton won the primary and got to run as the Democrat, over the protests of the state party, because that's how the system works. A plurality of voters who show up in low-turnout, often unrepresentative primaries pick the candidates, not the parties. Yes, the GOP has lost a bunch of its moderate candidates, and that's a problem for the GOP and the country. The causes are both internal GOP malfunctions, and the portrayal-biases I've been mentioning from the media and casual poltical observers. (The moderates rarely get their due respect/coverage as equal Republicans, the Republicans don't get due recognition of their internal diversity. So the breadth of the party has decayed compared to the past, before year-round cable-news/internet politi-tainment narrowed and hardened the party identities.)

by gojomo 14y ago

_delirium 14y ago

Sure, some of those are outliers, but they're merely the most outrageous outliers from already quite right-wing "mainstream conservative" positions. I've been observing Republicans fairly closely for a while, because I first started voting in a rather GOP-heavy district of Texas (southeast Houston), so in some cases voting in the GOP primary was the only way to have any impact at all, by voting for the more-moderate candidate. And the people I've seen are, by and large, shockingly unacceptable. When I was in high school (late 1990s), they opposed repealing Texas's anti-sodomy laws, which made it a criminal offense to engage in "immoral" sex. We're not talking about same-sex marriage here, but about actually being arrested for having sex in one's own house. When that law was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2003, the state GOP was outraged, and put into its platform a condemnation of "activist judges" and the "homosexual agenda", and a demand that homosexuality be somehow re-criminalized. Not just a few fringe representatives: that was the consensus position of the statewide party. That specific demand was finally voted out of the platform just this year, in 2012, though my own local congressman (TX-36) still speaks darkly of "homosexuals" more often than you might think necessary, along with "anchor babies" for good measure. I don't see how I could possibly find that kind of rhetoric appealing. As far as rape goes, what was sort of surprising is that Akin wasn't even the only outlier among Senate candidates in this election alone in having a "rape-comment scandal": Mourdock in IN also somehow found it necessary to mention that pregnancy from rape is a "gift from God".

gojomo 14y ago
Well, that's Texas. (I grew up in northeast Houston.) These 'unappealing' candidates are reliably winning there, so it's hard to say they're not locally appropriate, on (small-d) democratic principles. And even the (big-D) Democrats are more conservative in such places, steering clear of gay/abortion rights. For example, you mention Mourdock in IN. He lost to a pro-life, anti-gay-marriage Democrat who'd co-sponsored a bill that included the same extra 'forcible' qualifier about rapes that GOPers are attacked about. Also, all "rape-comment scandals" are not alike. (Fuzzing them together is again deploying 'out-group homogeneity bias' for partisan electoral advantage.) Mourdock's gaffe was clumsy, but a genuine attempt at expressing a philosophically consistent position, common among religiously-motivated abortion opponents, that follows naturally from the idea that all life is a supernatural gift, and all abortion an unjust taking of a life. (I've heard strongly pro-choice people say they respect this position, for its consistency, more than the 'convenient, popular exceptions' pro-life position.) If Mourdock had said it more artfully -- for example keeping the words 'rape' and 'something god intended' much further apart -- many voters may still have disagreed with his 'no exceptions' approach but it would have been a lot harder to tarnish him with Akin-like ignorance and insensitivity. (Harder, but not impossible: more than ever before partisans and 'outrage farmers' selectively quote and rearrange statements to make them maximally-inflammatory before reporting, to score quick points before the full original context is known.) Even your word choice that Mourdock "found it necessary to mention" this makes it seem like he was going out of his way to inflame. If you watch the clip yourself -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgDgub8X6DQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgDgub8X6DQ -- I think it's pretty clear he was struggling with a dicey issue (especially for those who believe in a 'good' and omnipotent diety who allows evil to happen), and trying to be responsive to a direct question during a debate. And his reward for being honest and engaging (but unpracticed on the exact word choice)? Being lumped together with ignorant Akin, forever.

dlitwak 14y ago

You don't get to say they are "Outliers" when Santorum wins 11 (I think that was the number?) Republican presidential primaries. When audiences at those primaries boo gay soldiers. When their candidate wants to get rid of planned parenthood. A major party's senate candidate is an "outlier" ???/ You'd be hard pressed to find anyone this nuts on the left. Half of the Repubs members of the congressional committee on science don't believe in evolution. The moderates who you refer to have left: Richard Lugar, Arlen Spector etc., haven't you noticed they've been cast out of the party/defeated in primaries. Frankly, the media is too "fair." Not all opinions deserve to be treated equally. If media is sympathetic to the Democratic party it's because ours is a party based on reason, evidence and logic, not 2,000 year old myths.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
gojomo 14y ago
Winning only 11 primaries, compared to 42 won by the nominee, is evidence of a regional/minority-factional 'outlier' candidacy. (And even for those wins, Santorum needed the 'anybody but Romney' dynamic: it was far from broad GOP love for Santorum. Though if you're suffering from the out-group bias I mentioned, it might look that way.) And yes, a major party's Senate candidate can be an 'outlier'. In the US, the parties don't pick the candidates, voters do through primaries. Only 36% of Missouri Republican primary voters gave Akin a slim plurality in a no-runoff 3-way primary. Two other candidates in that primary, each with a broader base of national Republican support, got a combined 59% of the GOP vote. So Akin is even somewhat of an outlier in his home, conservative Missouri GOP. An bigger outlier was the 'major party' Democratic Senate candidate in Tennessee, Mark Clayton: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/2012s-worst-candidate-with-mark-clayton-tennessee-democrats-hit-bottom/2012/10/22/77da926e-1b8a-11e2-a146-ccabc9c85c53_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/2012s-wo... Still, Clayton won the primary and got to run as the Democrat, over the protests of the state party, because that's how the system works. A plurality of voters who show up in low-turnout, often unrepresentative primaries pick the candidates, not the parties. Yes, the GOP has lost a bunch of its moderate candidates, and that's a problem for the GOP and the country. The causes are both internal GOP malfunctions, and the portrayal-biases I've been mentioning from the media and casual poltical observers. (The moderates rarely get their due respect/coverage as equal Republicans, the Republicans don't get due recognition of their internal diversity. So the breadth of the party has decayed compared to the past, before year-round cable-news/internet politi-tainment narrowed and hardened the party identities.)