The Republican National Chairman, Reince Preibus, said yesterday that the Republicans are “cooked”, if they do not win the White House in 2016, and for once, he is absolutely right!
The Presidency is the prize for a political party, and even with control of one or both houses of Congress, the party is stymied if it has an “unfriendly” Chief Executive.
The Republican Party is self destructing by allowing its extremist right wing Tea Party element to dictate its actions and principles, and they are proving how incompetent and useless they are with the worst record in American history of production during the 112th Congress (2011-2012), the 113th Congress (2013-2014), and now the 114th Congress (2015-2016).
And its Presidential candidates are pitiful, and the party is allowing three people with ZERO government experience to be the front runners for the Presidency, all of whom would be absolutely horrible Chief Executives, and with Donald Trump and Dr. Benjamin Carson, in particular, a very scary scenario, as both seem to be mentally unbalanced with their behavior and utterances.
But the remaining office holder Republicans running for President, in most cases, are no better, stating ridiculous and outrageous ideas and beliefs, including such candidates as Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Ted Cruz, and Bobby Jindal.
The clear cut reality is that the Republicans will NEVER win the White House again if they persist in their misogyny, racism, nativism, Islamophobia, and homophobia, along with consistent attacks on labor and the environment. And if they lose the White House, they lose the ability to affect the Supreme Court and lower federal courts, and this means progressive appointments to the courts for the long term, transforming American history, and weakening conservatism for the long haul.
So Preibus is correct, the GOP is “cooked” if they lose the 2016 Presidential election, and most assuredly, they are on the road to such disaster!
Governor McAuliffe has signed an executive order on gun safety. Maybe President Obama needs to do that instead of trying to deal with those Do Nothing/Flip Flop/Cuckoo Republicans in Congress.
http://www.bluevirginia.us/2015/10/governor-mcauliffe-signs-executive.html
Ronald writes, “The clear cut reality is that the Republicans will NEVER win the White House again if they persist in their misogyny, racism, nativism, Islamophobia, and homophobia, along with consistent attacks on labor and the environment.”
The October 15, 2015 episode of ABC’s “Scandal” referred to this, although not directly with real life figures, as “dog-whistle politics.”
It’s been the Republicans’ tactic for decades…but certainly throughout the Obama presidency.
This was being encouraged by the disgusting Phyllis Schlafy after the 2012 presidential election.
It’s designed to fire up what is figured to be the base of the Republican Party on a national scale. Well, that base is white people. But, after having mentioned that Republican candidates now count on about 90 percent of their U.S. Popular Vote’s percentage coming from whites, nationwide, it’s limiting. What I mean is that Republican presidential base states show that whites overperform the Republicans’ numbers relative national results. It’s that way in states like South Carolina and Louisiana, where the whites’ share of the presidential vote multiplied by their Republican support were enough to deliver carriage of those states, in 2008, to John McCain regardless of additional outcomes from non-whites. (Quick math with 2008 South Carolina and Louisiana: In S.C., whites were 71 percent share of the state’s presidential vote. They carried for McCain at 73 percent. So, 71 x 0.73 = 51.83 percent. La. whites were 65 percent share of the presidential vote. They carried for McCain at 84 percent. So, 65 x 0.84 = 54.60 percent. The whites, alone, were enough for Republican carriage of those two Republican presidential base states. Please keep in mind: The 2012 presidential election did not exit-poll all 50 states…even though that election, which resulted in re-election for Democratic president Barack Obama, saw a national Republican shift of 3.40 of the 7.26 percentage points by which Obama won the U.S. Popular Vote in 2008. All 50 states, plus District of Columbia, were exit-polled in 2008. I did not support the 2012 decision.)
The very election which marks a Republican pickup of the presidency will see just about or, in fact, all racial groups shift enough percentage points to deliver pickups of the U.S. Popular Vote and, with it, the Electoral College to that party-pickup winner.
That really has to do with…how the country is feeling in a more general respect. That’s also what I’m looking for with 2016. I think it’s still early to poll. But, I sense this well in advance: If the Democrats hold the presidency, with 2016, the midterm election[s] see Republican gains. If the Democrats win majority-control pickups with one of the two houses of Congress, with 2016, it will be the Senate. (Since ratification of the 17th Amendment back in 1913, it worked out that way for a 1932 Franklin Roosevelt; a 1948 Harry Truman, who flipped both houses of Congress; a 1952 Dwight Eisenhower, who also flipped both houses of Congress; and a 1980 Ronald Reagan, who like FDR, also saw his party flip the Senate. Rule of thumb: a president’s party carries majority with the Senate before the House.) If the Republicans win a presidential pickup, in 2016, the House and Senate remain in their column, but the Democrats win the gains with the midterm election of 2018. (If that pickup winning Republican, with 2016, gets re-elected to a second term, in 2020, it will be either 2018 and/or 2022 that we see one or both houses of Congress flip Democratic. In that case, the House goes first.)
I feel it’s still early with regard to the 2016 presidential election. Perhaps some people may agree.
Quoting myself, “Quick math with 2008 South Carolina and Louisiana: In S.C., whites were 71 percent share of the state’s presidential vote. They carried for McCain at 73 percent. So, 71 x 0.73 = 51.83 percent. La. whites were 65 percent share of the presidential vote.”
Compare to the national results (just from those two states):
• South Carolina: 51.83 percent from whites carried Republican.
• Louisiana: 54.60 percent from whites carried Republican.
• 2008 John McCain (U.S. Popular Vote): 74 percent of whites’ share of the U.S. Popular Vote gave him 55 percent. So, 74 x 0.55 = 40.70 percent. (McCain received 45.66 percent overall. That 40.70 divided by 45.60 means that 89.13 percent of his national support came from whites.)
• South Carolina vs. National: 51.83 divided by 40.70 = 127.34 percent. (That was 38.21 percent more Republican support than nationwide.)
• Louisiana vs. National: 54.60 divided by 40.70 = 134.15 percent. (That was 45.02 percent more Republican support than nationwide. That’s almost a 50-percent overperformance from La.’s whites relative that year’s national result.)
These are examples where whites, in Republican presidential base states, really overperformed for a losing Republican presidential candidate [John McCain]. It’s my way of saying that, if Republicans think they can win with just one racial demographic—especially in light of the fact that whites’ share of the presidential vote is conspicuously and nationally in decline (in the 1990s, they were over 80 percent; in 2016 they’re poised to become approximately 70 percent)—we cannot be surprised if the Republicans find out that their “dog-whistle” tactics don’t work with the voters…nationwide.
The presidency is extremely important, of course. But there are also thousands of critically important offices all the way down the ballot. The vast majority — 70 percent of state legislatures, more than 60 percent of governors, 55 percent of attorneys general and secretaries of state — are in Republicans hands. And, of course, Republicans control both chambers of Congress. Indeed, even the House infighting reflects, in some ways, the health of the GOP coalition. Republicans are confident they won’t lose power in the House and are hungry for a vigorous argument about how best to use the power they have. In what Democrats should take as a bleak sign, 4 of the 11 states where they control both houses of the state legislature — Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois — have a Republican governor. This leaves just 7 states under unified Democratic Party control.
Republicans on the other hand have unified control of 25 states.
Elections for state legislature rarely make the national news, but they are the fundamental building blocks of American politics. Since they run the redistricting process for the US House of Representatives and for themselves, they are where the greatest level of electoral entrenchment is possible. Even if you believe that Democrats have obtained a structural advantage in presidential elections, it’s clearly not an enormous one. The 51 percent of the vote obtained by Barack Obama in 2012 was hardly a landslide, early head-to-head polling of 2016 indicates a close race, and there’s always a chance that unexpected bad news will hit the US economy or impair our national security.
Winning a presidential election would give Republicans the overwhelming preponderance of political power in the United States — a level of dominance not achieved since the Democrats during the Great Depression, but with a much more ideologically coherent coalition.
D brought up in an earlier post about which is more important for us to win – Congress or the President? My answer to that is both.
Even if a Dem wins the White House next year, if we can’t take back both the House and the Senate, with exception of a Dem president replacing one or more Supreme Court justices (which is hugely important), the GOP will continue to obstruct and wait for the next economic downturn. That’s their ace in the hole, in my view. In 2012 the Dems received one million more votes than did the Kochheads and still couldn’t take back the House, thanks to gerrymandering made possible by the 2010 Dem voter midterm sit-out.
They will then likely hold the country hostage and demand that their budget agenda (which is designed to exacerbate the situation and cause more long term damage to our country) is implemented for them to make some mild concessions for addressing the immediate economic crisis if/when it occurs. Actually, the dysfunction could eventually result in everything collapsing at anytime in the near future. This is the danger in which the 2010 and 2014 voter sit-out has put us. I’m not getting caught up in the “GOP implosion†talk. I’m looking at the big picture and it ain’t a pretty one.
Actually more than Gerrymandering the fact that Democrats win in some districts with over 90% of the electorate is counterproductive because those are “wasted votes”. Dems might get overall more votes but they are concentrated in heavy Democrat districts.
Quite right Rational Lefty. It’s a combo of Teapublicans cheating and some voter apathy on the part of Democrats.
What many Democrats don’t realize, thankfully, is that if a Democrat wins the White House in 2016 they still don’t control the entire country, but for a few states and a branch of the federal government. But if a Republican wins the White House, they’ll practically control the entire country, all the branches of the Federal government and the overwhelming majority of the States. In other words, if a Democrat wins the White House, nothing changes since they will never win the House again and the Senate is not a sure thing, but if a Republican wins the White House, and he/she is a conservative, then the game is up for the progressive leftist agenda. They will be reduced to the coastal urban centers.
Ha! I wouldn’t get too overly confident about that if I were you!
Ariel is a “blow hard”, a Donald Trump type who likes attention, and should be ignored.
If, however, what he predicts were to occur, this nation would go down the tubes completely, as the Know Nothings would take over the national government and destroy our nation completely!
I am not predicting anything. I am just presenting the alternatives. Should a Democrat win, nothing changes. Democrats won’t have control of both houses of Congress like they did during Obama’s first 2 yrs for a long while if ever. The American people learned their lesson and they will not let that happen again, specially in the House. Now should a Republican win the White House, and if Republicans hold on to both Houses of Congress, and you add that to all the state governments Republicans control, then everything does change, and the game is up for a 100 yrs of progressive onslaught on America and its Constitution.
Exactly as the Professor said! If Ariel’s prediction comes true, the nation is doomed!
The left is doomed, but the nation is saved…it’s just a matter of perspective.
Nope. The nation is NOT saved.
And that’s not a matter of perspective. It’s a matter of truth.
LOL! Only Loony Toon Teapublicans think that going backwards is a good thing.
It’s progressive leftist Democrats who are stuck in the New Deal. It’s progressive leftist Democrats who want to take us back to the depression era programs. It’s progressive leftist Democrats who are stuck with the ancient idea of government power over individual freedom. After just over 239 yrs, individual freedom is still a revolutionary idea in this world, specially for progressive leftist Democrats. Progressive leftist Democrats got their revolutions confused, they are in love with the ideals of the radical French Revolution, not the American Revolution.
Right on Southern Liberal!