Obama's Rhetoric is the Real Catastrophe

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by KSigkid

I disagreed with too many of Obama's policies to consider voting for him, but the Palin choice was extremely disappointing to me. I'm hoping that in the next 2 years (before mid-term elections) and next 4 years (before the Presidential election), the party is able to re-group.

And although you might disagree, I think it's a shame that the McCain campaign was Palin's debut on the national stage.

I think her policies are a lot less socially conservative than they were framed. I think she actually has kind of a western libertarian streak when it comes to most social issues and the government's role, but maybe because of how the campaign needed to use her, that wasn't the message that got out.

Being resolutely anti-abortion holds a lot of people to the party too even though the current perspective is that it hurts more than it helps. While it hurts the party to seem neanderthal, if the party backs off social issues and presents no contrast on those points, there's a big group of people who will be up for grabs every election who are presently really reliable GOP voters. It's a gamble I'm not sure will pay off and since it reverses a position the party has held for a long time, building a real sense that the GOP in its core principles doesn't want to be the morality police will take time.

Maybe Jindal sells intellectually attractive socially conservative positions next time around.

ETA: okay, maybe it's not a big block of voters, but I think a significant number of people who have pulled the level for the GOP nationally in the last 10 years have done it because of social issues. If the party wants to drop them because they have come to realize that they really aren't the government's job and that's a principle to build a party around, that's one thing, but if it's just a cost vs. benefits analysis with voters, you've got to figure out what you are selling instead of the social programs the Dems have got. "We'll leave you alone" may not be enough in a hostile economic climate.

[KSigkid]

Originally Posted by preciousjeni

I don't think the social programs worked to right the economy; however, they did drastically improve our quality of life.

I don't know that that's the case - I still think it was more the war and the increase in production that improved the country's quality of life. It's probably all academic anyway, because of the closeness in time between FDR's social programs and the start of US involvement, but I'm very hesitant to give any great weight to FDR's social policies and their ultimate effect on the country.

Originally Posted by DrPhil

It isn't accurate. This is not a pure capitalist system.

Ok, glad I'm at least on the right track with that one. That's about the extent of my knowlege of economics.

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

And although you might disagree, I think it's a shame that the McCain campaign was Palin's debut on the national stage.

I think her policies are a lot less socially conservative than they were framed. I think she actually has kind of a western libertarian streak when it comes to most social issues and the government's role, but maybe because of how the campaign needed to use her, that wasn't the message that got out.

Being resolutely anti-abortion holds a lot of people to the party too even though the current perspective is that it hurts more than it helps. While it hurts the party to seem neanderthal, if the party backs off social issues and presents no contrast on those points, there's a big group of people who will be up for grabs every election who are presently really reliable GOP voters. It's a gamble I'm not sure will pay off and since it reverses a position the party has held for a long time, building a real sense that the GOP in its core principles doesn't want to be the morality police will take time.

Maybe Jindal sells intellectually attractive socially conservative positions next time around.

ETA: okay, maybe it's not a big block of voters, but I think a significant number of people who have pulled the level for the GOP nationally in the last 10 years have done it because of social issues. If the party wants to drop them because they have come to realize that they really aren't the government's job and that's a principle to build a party around, that's one thing, but if it's just a cost vs. benefits analysis with voters, you've got to figure out what you are selling instead of the social programs the Dems have got. "We'll leave you alone" may not be enough in a hostile economic climate.

I agree that Palin wasn't brought into the best situation; if you're bringing a relative unknown onto the national stage, you'd better know EVERYTHING about their record, their tendencies, etc., because the press is going to jump all over them. The last thing the press wants is a lack of knowledge on a candidate, and they'll do all the digging they can to get a complete picture of the person.

I agree that backing off the abortion issue risks losing a portion of the party; but honestly, where would that portion have gone? Would it have voted Obama? Would they have gone third party (like to that nutty guy Baldwin)? I'm not sure. I'm probably not the best person to ask, though, because I have my own biases on the social issues: I think abortion is a complete non-issue (I can't see a scenario where Roe would be overturned or where there would be a national ban on abortion), and I think the Government should stay out of social issues as much as possible.

Something that I've been saying for a while is that the party has to do something to keep the "intellectual base," so to speak...people in highly intellectual professions (professors, doctors, lawyers, etc.), as the party seemed to want to get away from that, especially during the Convention. I think the Dems did a better job of balancing their message to blue collar and white collar, while the Republicans seemed to almost give up on the intellectual crowd in an effort to appeal to other parts of the party. Maybe that was a response to the fact that the Democrats were running an intellectual for President, I'm not sure.

[UGAalum94]

I think a lot of them would be happy to vote for Democrats on other issues. Once the contrast on social issues is gone, there's no reason not to. (I don't think they will seek out obscure third parties who they know won't affect policy, but maybe I'm wrong.)

The only national ban I can imagine is something after fetal viability, and it seems like that would be close to automatic but it hasn't been. But even prohibiting taxpayer funding is something to support if you're morally opposed, and it's something that Democrats don't try to ensure. It's something that could also fit under kind of a get the government out of people's private moral lives umbrella. You choose; you pay. I also think there's a position to be staked out for rights of conscience for health care professionals and institutions which might have white collar appeal.

But in some ways, it seems to me that we're kind of talking about issues dealing with branding more than substance. Image and identification are important, but the real GOP crisis seems to occur in office when there's no real sense of direction about policy or how to actually carry things out.

This may be even more obvious at the state level in Georgia where the geniuses in the general assembly were trying to do away with taxes that pretty much generated revenue at the county level, without any consideration at all for how counties would provide the services dependent on those funds and which the voters were counting on.

There's a fundamental crisis of competency before we even get to how to make the image more appealing.

Fortunately, although that's a ridiculous choice or words, from strictly a party loyalty angle, the Democrats seem to have problems equally as bad or worse right now.