Some how, and in some way, we have to fix the Republican party.

[Yavin4]

Let's talk about the elephant in the room, and in this case, the elephant keeps taking giant dumps in the corner that Dems have to clean up.

The last two Republican presidents have given us the following events: 9/11, the Afghanistan war (still going), Iraq, torture, Katrina, the financial collapse, the Great Recession, Russian interference in our elections, bribing another foreign government to interfere with our elections, a sham impeachment trial, and now a global pandemic that threatens life on the planet.

Given its recent past and the current state of the Republican party, we cannot allow them to have access to power until we can somehow fix them. A party that does not believe in governing or government should not be allowed to run it. There's more to governing than passing gigantic tax cuts for rich people and de-regulating businesses. Like President Obama said, the presidency is a job. A real, hard job. It's not something to take lightly.

Given that our political system consists of binary choices between the two parties, the Republicans will always have a 50% chance or so of "winning" the presidency. Not to mention that the electoral college increases their chances as witnessed by the last two Republican presidents losing the popular vote.

So, odds are that we are going to get another Republican president at some point in the near future, and we will need to do something to ensure that whoever it is can actually run the government. The old bromides of: "hey, s/he will have competent people around him/her to guide them" or "the country pretty much runs itself, the presidency does not matter" have proven disastriously false. We cannot rely on them.

I am open to all ideas as to how to fix the Republicans. I think that a good place to start is to get the national mainstream media to stop being overly-sensitive to claims of bias and do their jobs by challenging candidates for the presidency. Ask the tough questions. Follow up with harder ones.

No more free air time for candidates unless it's in a forum where questions can be asked. IOW, no more airing of campaign rallies. There are other online platforms for that. If a candidate wants to be on CNN or MSNBC or CBS, there must be a reporter(s) there to ask questions with intense follow up.

Call Fox News what it is, a propaganda network, not real news. Stop hiring people from there. Send out a message that anyone who has worked for Fox News in the past is no longer qualified to work at a real news network. Isolate them journalistically.

I am open to any other ideas if you have them.

[Moostache]

1. Step 1 - STOP giving deference to "deeply held religious views"

There was a separation of church and state in the founder's original intent and it should NEVER have been fucked with for electoral gains

Step 2 - STOP treating abortion as a serious "debate" - there is not such thing as a "pro-Life" Republican when they willingly cage children, separate families and offer to sacrifice grandma to "save" the economy....they are utterly full of shit.

Take those two steps and then start talking about the issues because without #1 AND #2, there is no conversation at all...

[Me.]

2. I Don't Think It's Our Responsibility To Fix Their Party

They have to do it for themselves. It is our responsibility to make sure that until such a fix is in, if it ever is, that we make sure there is not another Republican president.

[Yavin4]

9. They have given us Bush II and Trump as presidents

This is a bad pattern. What's coming next?

[Me.]

11. They Are Denied Power

until they can prove themselves worthy

[lastlib]

29. Or Senator. Or Member of Congress. Or federal judge. Or Governor. Or.......

[Saboburns]

3. I figure we will fix it like we fixed the Nazi party.

At the end of the day, that's how I see it. Mainly because I can't see any other way to do it.

I wish I saw it differently. I REALLY wish I saw it differently.

[FiveGoodMen]

8. I agree. But I don't think we'll even try.

[dweller]

4. sorry

some things have no more replaceable parts, or maybe
that cure would be worse than the disease

not interested

✌🏼

[lastlib]

33. "We have to destroy the party in order to save it....."

Heard a statement similar to that many years ago, and I think in this case, it might be a pretty good operational plan, as long as we don't work too hard on the latter part...........If we do save it, we'll probly have to just do it all over again down the road, and for what? Why put ourselves thru that hell again?

[dweller]

36. works for me

defeat them so soundly in Nov (and let them defeat themselves until then)
they'll be shamed back under rocks...

i'd love to see this county whole again

✌🏼

[underpants]

5. Now... you know... we can't fix you. YOU have to want to fix yourself.

[volstork]

6. If you mean "fix"

as in “spay” or “neuter,” then I’m all in. That’s the only way it will work.

[stillcool]

7. the state government is where it's at...

if people in their respective states keep voting for the same people, the rest of us are held hostage by their selection. I hate that the only election that matters to many is the Presidential one. Maybe someday, we will all get educated on our civic duties.

[dweller]

37. what's that saying?

think global, act local ... it does bubble up

✌🏼

[smirkymonkey]

10. It's not our job to fix them.

They don't want to be "fixed".

They are like a sick, psychotic, narcissistic, borderline-disordered patient. There is nothing you can do with them because they will never see anything wrong with themselves and will never be motivated to change.

Either you render them harmless (lock them up) or they die, which removes the threat entirely. There is no such thing as change. There is only obliteration, one way or another. They are psychopathic by nature and they will always have the goal of destroying the American public.

[customerserviceguy]

40. Agreed

Put them out of OUR misery.

[scarytomcat]

12. the positions that today's republican party stands for today

are basically the positions that someone has taken since colonial days but it has always been a minority of people. They claim to be conservative but there are no conservatives today everyone is some degree of neo-liberal and republicans are total corporatist's. Democrats need to stand for progressive principles and point out all the great social safety net policies that help people. When we move into the corporate positions we are turning off our real base that is working people. Time to get back to our roots and save this country. These are the ideas that made our country great not corporations. Corporations need to pay taxes and get out of politics.

[no_hypocrisy]

13. In total agreement.

I could live with a Republican Party that promoted Bob Dole, Millicent Fenwick, Dwight Eisenhower . . . . even John McCain.

[Yavin4]

15. It's unrealistic to think that we can prevent them from the presidency forever.

Sooner or later, one of their candidates will take the office. We have to make sure that said candidate is not a complete, total incompetent.

[peggysue2]

14. Only Republicans can fix the Republican Party

To incentivize the 'fix,' Democrats need to beat the daylights out of them. Push them out of power, make it plain that they are a minority party and deserve their powerless state because a huge majority of Americans have said so.

They will howl. They will kick and throw a temper tantrum. Ignore all until the few reasonable members get the memo:

You are f*cking out of business until you clean up your act and behave like responsible members of the body politic.

As Dems, we cannot fix what ails Republicans. But we sure can give them a walloping and kick their sorry asses to the curb.

[UTUSN]

16. A nice, endless cruise.

[WyattKansas]

20. On one of the cruise ships infected with COVID-19.

Without disinfecting it first.

[lastlib]

34. ...on the "S.S. Minnow"!

"Now, this is the tale of our castaways,
They're here for a long, long time;
They'll have to make the best of things--
It's an uphill climb......"

[blitzen]

17. Don't forget gerrymandering and suppression of voter participation. n/t

[Caliman73]

18. The problem is deeper than the Republican Party.

Republicans do not represent 50% of the country. They are actually a minority in numbers. Their policies specifically benefit the wealthiest people. They are able to cobble together a coalition in maybe the mid to high 40% of the nation. They have cheated to solidify majority power into that minority of people.

You say that we need to get media to stop giving candidates a pass and ask hard questions. The problem is that the media, while claimed to be "liberal" by Republicans, is owned and operated by the wealthiest people. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. Murdoch owns the Wall St. Journal, the Ochs-Sulzberger families own the NY Time. All wealthy people. Bloomberg has his own news organization and while he ran as a Dem to oppose Trump, he wants some of the same things, except he knows Trump is an idiot. NBC is owned by Comcast, ABC by Viacom/Disney, etc...

All of the above may have differences with Trump or specific policies, but they all want the status quo to remain in place. They want to maintain their wealth and power and they will promote the policies that will keep that in place.

I am not sure what the answer is, but changing the Republican party is the tip of the iceberg.

[Yavin4]

21. When entire nations are locked down because of incompetent leaders, wealth is meaningless.

Wealth is meaningless when the planes are hitting office buildings. Wealth is meaningless when hurricanes wipe out New Orleans and Puerto Rico.

IOW, it does not matter how luxurious the plane is, nor that it has a gourmet chef. None of that matters if the pilot of the plane is a complete incompetent boob.

[Caliman73]

39. I would like to believe that...

Unfortunately, by the time wealth is meaningless, society has completely broken down and we are living by another principle, the ability to project force.

It is true that if you get sick with COVID-19, that it can kill you rich or poor, however the chance of it killing you is much much greater if you lack resources. I admire Tom Hanks for his acting and his advocacy. He seems a very decent person, but do you think that if he wasn't Tom Hanks, that he and his wife would be getting the care that they are? When athletes who are asymptomatic are getting tested but people like you and I that have all the likely symptoms can't get a test, do you think that doesn't have something to do with wealth? During the great Depression people's fortunes were diminished, and some lost it all, but you did not see any of the Vanderbilt's, Morgan's, or Carnegie's in bread lines or starving to death.

This country is being being mismanaged because of the incompetence of the Trump administration but at this time, wealth still makes a significant difference in how the consequences of that mismanagement are felt. The Republicans are siding with wealth, which is why they are parroting Trump's desires to "open the country back up for business". They are willing to expose workers to potentially fatal illness for the sake of the bottom lines of the wealthy corporations. It is about wealth and power. The distribution of power in this country is directly correlated with who has the wealth. There was a study that indicated that the top 10% in wealth in the US obtained about 90% of their stated policy goals through the political process. This article from the Harvard Gazette also shows ways in which wealth inequality has created the mess we are in.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/02/the-costs-of-inequality-increasingly-its-the-rich-and-the-rest/

There may be a time when wealth does not have any significance. I am not sure that I necessarily want to see that time, but is sure is not now.

[gibraltar72]

19. Weaken it to the point you can drown it in a bathtub.

[Progressive Jones]

23. K & R nt

[Progressive Jones]

22. Start running Centrist Americans for GOP seats. Until the GOP

makes a hard lunge toward the Center, rejects the evangelical blackmail that goes on, rejects the quaint and uninformed belief that "a businessman would make the best President.", and weeds out the other radical right crazies, the GOP will never be respectable anywhere except for a shrinking region.

[Hortensis]

24. I just did a quick search on Republicans and "anger" and

didn't really find anything, just old stories about loyal denial. It's coming, just as by far most of the deaths and misery still are.

[k2qb3]

25. Yeah, that was my thinking 10-30 years ago too.

I spent a fair amount of time and effort advocating for a more classically liberal Republican party that embraces enlightenment ideals.

It's never going to work.

That whole worldview is built on dogma, reason and evidence don't penetrate.

[Vogon_Glory]

35. I agree. I don't believe that the Republican Party can be fixed

The 2016 election was a nasty shock. I knew that the right-wing zanies had control of the Republican Party’s political machinery, but I still believed that there were still enough sane, civic-minded responsible people out there to keep Donald Trump and others like him out of office.

I no longer believe that and I no longer believe that the Republican Party is capable of governing sanely or responsibly. The Republican Party should go the way of the Whig Party into permanent political oblivion.

I do not say this lightly. Unlike some self-congratulating people on this site, I was not a life-long Democrat. My father and paternal grandfather were both Republicans of a school that believed in fiscal responsibility and governing based on reality, not fantasy. Well, we all saw what happened to those guys over the last forty years. They’ve either been silenced, side-lined, forced to be useful idiots for reactionary ideologues or sell out their values and principles.

Let the Republican Party die.

[Different Drummer]

26. I agree--i'm just not sure I mean "fix" in the same way you do.

[Yavin4]

30. There will be a Republican presidency after Trump

There's no way to prevent that. The electoral college gives them a huge advantage. So, we need to do all that we can to ensure that at the very least the next Republican president is somewhat competent.

[hatrack]

27. Not our job . . .

Let the remaining clowns figure out how to take down the tent and break down the bleachers.

The rest of America headed for the exits of this circus long ago, coughing as they went.

[Zoonart]

28. Old school....

[lagomorph777]

31. Buy Fux and flip its message around.

Fux followers won't even realize they've been had.

We can totally reprogram them any way we want, using those digitally encoded hypnotic waveforms that Fux puts out.

[Cerridwen]

32. "...drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

2001

I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.
Interview on NPR's Morning Edition, May 25, 2001

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist

[Tech]

38. Conversion therapy?