Will the GOP EVER reach a tipping point?

[cali]

I guess what I mean by that is will the ever growing amount of crazy, of hate, of stupidity ever push American voters away from considering the GOP as a viable political alternative? I get that there's a certain percentage of voters who are as crazy, stupid and hateful as the politicians and functionaries in the GOP, but that seems to cap off at about 30%-35%. I also understand that there are a fair number of one issue voters who tolerate the crazy hateful shit- which is pretty crazy in itself.

There are so many members of the GOP that say the most insane shit and propose the most crazy hateful laws, but still the party staggers on like some sort of grotesque zombie.

[Hotler]

1. My question is.....

will the citizens reach a tipping point and take to the streets by the hundreds of thousands?????

[Cali_Democrat]

2. No for two reasons

1) There are simply too many stupid Americans who vote against their interests and will continue to do so no matter what. See here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025548327

The GOP is excellent at convincing millions of white Americans to vote against their own interests, especially in areas like Kentucky.

2) There are a number of self-proclaimed liberals who would rather attack the Democratic Party than the Republican Party. Some are obviously ratfucking GOPers and their goal is to employ the divide and conquer strategy by posing as Dems.

[cali]

6. there are a number of self-proclaimed liberals who

think the democratic party shouldn't be criticized because the republican party is worse. that solves nothing and leads to the further corrosion of the party.

[hifiguy]

15. And allows the Democratic Party to be dragged even further to the right.

The institutional Democratic Party is now about where moderate/liberal "Rockefeller" Repubs were forty years ago. And the corporatists who bought a large chunk of the party seek to drag it even further to the right. What happened to the party of FDR, JFK, and LBJ?

[sendero]

3. I doubt it.

.... if 6 years of economic hell with no end in sight isn't enough to wake up the American voter, nothing is.

[drray23]

4. it will in the next generation

The demographics are changing rapidly. The main gop voting block is shrinking. In a generation from now the white anglo saxon people will be in the minority. Latinos will be the biggest voting group and they are overwhelmingly voting democrat.

The gop has held on by controlling state legislatures, therefore enabling them to gerrymander. They already in the minority in terms of votes. If we can mobilize and start winning local elections, we will reverse this trend.

[IDemo]

5. When Bryan Fischer must try each week to outdo Repub pols, no

The hatefulness and idiocy have been institutionalized by GOP politicians and their media sycophants. They seem to have discovered that tapping into the reptilian cortex of the brain can yield quicker results than appealing to the forebrain. And they show no sign of slowing down; why would they, when the culture seems to be degrading nicely to accommodate the dialogue?

[BlueJazz]

7. The problem is perception. As a person with a physics degree, I think of it as a scenario...

...in which the populace knows absolutely nothing about math. We have a large group of unscrupulous teachers
(the Media/The right wing Media) who, for their own profit making wants, are constantly trying to teach the populace
that 2+2=5, 3+6=10 ..etc...etc. On the other side we have the good teachers who do their best to deal with the facts
and are simply trying to make life a lot easier and more happy than the present reality that the populace now endures.
Naturally, the populace do not have a clue of what is the truth...and there is the problem.

When you have a tremendously large group of radio and TV "Teachers" constantly and consistently informing the populace with
erroneous facts, the good teachers are simply out-shouted. You really can't blame all the populace for accepting the wrong facts anymore than if 5000 people tell people one thing and 500 people say the opposite. The average member of the populace with go with the larger group of Teachers...and truly believe that they are trying to inform them of "The better way"
We REALLY screwed up. big time, when we let the bad teachers gain control of all the "Schooling"

I try to keep the above scenario in my thoughts to keep from banging my head against the wall 6 hours a day.

[IDemo]

8. Except that the proofs in math are pretty much irrefutable

You can demonstrate the validity of a simple addition problem by counting on your fingers, if nothing else. But when the subject at hand is a political or cultural topic, the definitions can be open to interpretation or simple lies. The incurious mind won't care to investigate for themselves before latching onto a talking point because it agrees with their world view.

[BlueJazz]

12. Sometimes I wonder. I've shown people charts and other proof of the "goodness" of..

...Democratic ways and means and the people just totally refuse to see it.

What you say Should be true though.

[Baitball Blogger]

9. I was just on a thread that was discussing school bullies.

They are pretty much the same thing. They won't stop until you face them down.

[pampango]

10. IMHO, probably YES. But another good question: what if they don't.

The GOP went through a long phase from the 1920's through the 1940's of extreme laissez faire economic policy and isolationism. They were uncompetitive nationally in the 1930's and 1940's. It took Eisenhauer and his more moderate tax, economic and labor policies for the GOP to comeback from the dead.

A lot of national politicians, republican and Democratic, want to be president one day. Those in the GOP have to know their chances are poor unless their party deals with the most hateful, crazy and stupid faction.

The other question is: If the GOP doesn't change and it drifts more and more under the control of the Koch-tea party wackos, does a new center-right party emerge somehow which should push our party to the left? Or does our party drift further to the right to become the "new" center-right party and something new emerge on the left - a Social Democratic Party like in many European countries, Liberal Democratic Party, Socialist Party, etc.?

Of course, since the republican party emerged 160 years ago it has been impossible for a third party to be a significant factor for more than an election cycle or two.

[Dawgs]

11. Not unless "new media" goes away - which it won't.

It's too easy for someone to follow their preferred media choices and that's why things have gotten so extreme.

If you love guns you gravitate to websites that are pro-gun. And guess what, those sites hate liberals and will lie to convince whoever visits. It's the same with every other issue (abortion, illegal immigration, racism, etc.) and now people have many choices in media (Internet, podcasts, talk radio, etc.).

Traditional media is terrible in many ways, but most of the time they at least try to stick to facts - well, not Fox News. But new media is almost all based on opinion. That's not good when many people already have racism and hatred that drives them.

My hope is that it's the older generations that still hold on to the hate and it's the younger generation that is better at filtering out the good new media from the bad.

We'll see.

[rock]

13. No. Over the last couple of decades

the GOP has steadily declined to participate in our Democracy. Apparently there is a large portion of the population that would prefer a Theocratic or maybe a Fascist government. My own assessment is that there will always be enough support to land a significant number of republicans in office to affect governing of this country. For example we will have to keep constant vigil for women's rights as an obvious target of theirs. If we straighten out the gerrymandering we may gain a fairly heavy say in how this county is run but will never be able to completely ignore them.

[frazzled]

14. Yes

Because if one thing is certain, it's that things change. It may not (indeed, probably won't) change because we convince people it needs to change, but things will eventually change, including the outlook of the Republican Party. I think it's inevitable.

As John F. Kennedy said:

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.

[CJCRANE]

16. They've gone past it. Like that GOPer who said his opponent was a robot

and people just laughed or saw it as standard RW political rhetoric.

In a sane world people would feel sorry for the guy and advise him to get help.