Quo Vadis GOP?

[Eddie Teach]

You have a curious definition of "very close".

[Razgovory]

I don't even know what they want anymore.  Their methods aren't unsound, there is no method at all.

[mongers]

I think a core issue is there's nothing for us sane people to fight against. People with crazy, irrational beliefs are all but impossible to persuade at scale. We can attempt to out organize them and out fundraise them. Going after corporate donors hard in the paint is probably one of the most time effective ways of directly undermining their funding, but it's only going to have so much impact, and as noted corporate donors often retreat to their old behaviors the moment the spotlight is off of them.

For those opposed to the GOP's current turn frankly our best option is to get our house in order, make sure we don't have shittily run campaigns--take a look at how Bill Nelson ran his reelection campaign or how the Biden campaign in Florida ceded almost the entire playing field in Miami to right wing Spanish language talk radio. These are bad examples of how to run campaigns. Biden's operations in Pennsylvania on the other hand are something we need to see more of, Democratic efforts in the Detroit suburbs, the WOW counties near Milwaukee etc. We basically need to not be own goaling, we need good candidates, and we need to hold on. That's the only real strategy. The hope is we hold onto enough power long enough that enough of this current crop of Republicans has died that this moment passes.

There's actually at least some positives among young Republicans, they often are less likely to hold some of the stupider views out there right now. There's even some positive to the uptick in minority support for the GOP, as that is likely to dampen some of the party's internal white nationalism.

This seems like a practical strategy to counter a Republican party now led by its crazy wing.   

[grumbler]

They don't care about increasing their vote count. They came very close on January 6th without the votes.

  No, they didn't come anywhere close to anything political on January 6th, no matter how emo some people on either side get about it.  There were a lot of B&Es and a casual murder, but QAnon Shaman was unable to pass a single law.

[Valmy]

Let's check in on the Texas constution of 1836 and see what they considered constitutionally important:

SEC. 9. All persons of color who were slaves for life previous to their emigration to Texas, and who are now held in bondage, shall remain in the like state of servitude, provide the said slave shall be the bona fide property of the person so holding said slave as aforesaid. Congress shall pass no laws to prohibit emigrants from the United States of America from bringing their slaves into the Republic with them, and holding them by the same tenure by which such slaves were held in the United States; nor shall Congress have power to emancipate slaves; nor shall any slave-holder be allowed to emancipate his or her slave or slaves, without the consent of Congress, unless he or she shall send his or her slave or slaves without the limits of the Republic. No free person of African descent, either in whole or in part, shall be permitted to reside permanently in the Republic, without the consent of Congress, and the importation or admission of Africans or negroes into this Republic, excepting from the United States of America, is forever prohibited, and declared to be piracy.

http://wheretexasbecametexas.org/texas-history/constitution-of-the-republic-of-texas-1836/

...and this is of course independent Texas, so that's straight up the Texas Congress they are forbidding ever freeing the slaves, not some DC body.  And of course, even a will freeing slaves is illegal under this constitution.

...and hilariously I see that at 11:15 of your video the slavery issue does get addressed and they talk about multiple rebellions against a post commander in Galveston for upholding abolition before noting (paraphrased) "and yeah, after this point, Texas was gonna rebel, it was only a matter of time and an excuse."

I directly mentioned that part in my response so I am not sure why that is "hilarious" to you. But it had nothing to do with what happened at Gonzales, those were other separate issues. It was not even one of the main reasons for revolt as stated in the video. I am not trying to distort or hide anything it is you who refuse to look at the whole picture in order to keep your little narrative going.

As for bringing up the Constitution, why go to stuff after the revolt to get your evidence? If it was so clear cut that should not be necessary. Obviously I never made the point that the Texians were somehow pro-abolition or not pro-slavery. And it was a main goal of the Republic to attract more immigrants as they were very few in number and attracting southerners to bring their slaves was a key objective: hence the part in the Constitution. It only had limited success until after Texas joined the US though, human trafficking of slaves only really got going once annexation occurred to the point that by the 1850 census there were 150,000 free people and 50,000 enslaved people in the state. That is crazy out of balance to what it was back in 1835 or even 1846.

[Valmy]

Also bringing stuff in from after any war as evidence for what started it is problematic but especially in the case of Texas. Things after both the Revolution and the Civil War were dramatically different from what led up to it. The defeated white Texans after the Civil War were quick to swear up and down once they had lost that slavery was not what caused secession but that holds little water once you see what they were saying in 1860-1861. But their panicked claims that emancipating enslaved people would immediately lead to mass slaughter of white women and children seem kind of silly once that did happen and yet no slaughters occurred. Likewise the reasons that finally brought on the Texas Revolution are not the same as the priorities and focuses of the Republic once the war was won...kind of won anyway. The sudden need to get lots of American Southerners to quickly move into the state to help the Republic achieve its land goals and secure its independence was not something anybody in 1835 was thinking about.

[Zoupa]

They don't care about increasing their vote count. They came very close on January 6th without the votes.

  No, they didn't come anywhere close to anything political on January 6th, no matter how emo some people on either side get about it.  There were a lot of B&Es and a casual murder, but QAnon Shaman was unable to pass a single law.

Your confidence in the rule of law is cute. Nobody gives a shit about your order of succession etc if congressmen start dying. At that point your country is pretty much done for.

[grumbler]

  No, they didn't come anywhere close to anything political on January 6th, no matter how emo some people on either side get about it.  There were a lot of B&Es and a casual murder, but QAnon Shaman was unable to pass a single law.

Your confidence in the rule of law is cute. Nobody gives a shit about your order of succession etc if congressmen start dying. At that point your country is pretty much done for.

Your determination to reach the most emo possible conclusions about US politics is tiresome and overdone.  US Congressmen have died.  Presidents have been assassinated.  And yet, the country was not "pretty much done for" for the previous times that happened, but now you want to emo-argue that this time the US would have been "pretty much done for." 

January 6th was significant because it was organized and directed by the sitting US president, not because those wackos invaded Congress.  It is the violent rejection of the election outcome by the Republican Party that is significant, not that a bunch of violent cosplayers carried out the will of the Republican leaders.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I directly mentioned that part in my response so I am not sure why that is "hilarious" to you. But it had nothing to do with what happened at Gonzales, those were other separate issues. It was not even one of the main reasons for revolt as stated in the video. I am not trying to distort or hide anything it is you who refuse to look at the whole picture in order to keep your little narrative going.

As for bringing up the Constitution, why go to stuff after the revolt to get your evidence? If it was so clear cut that should not be necessary. Obviously I never made the point that the Texians were somehow pro-abolition or not pro-slavery. And it was a main goal of the Republic to attract more immigrants as they were very few in number and attracting southerners to bring their slaves was a key objective: hence the part in the Constitution. It only had limited success until after Texas joined the US though, human trafficking of slaves only really got going once annexation occurred to the point that by the 1850 census there were 150,000 free people and 50,000 enslaved people in the state. That is crazy out of balance to what it was back in 1835 or even 1846.

Not to turn it into the Texas thread, but I think the simplest way to put it is slavery was not widely practiced in Mexican Texas because it was illegal to import slaves, and eventually it was illegal to even own slaves. Most Anglos who moved into the territory were not bringing slaves with them, and the Tejanos already living there did not have slaves. The rebellion against Santa Anna's government that ultimately culminated in independence was mostly based on a broad dissatisfaction with the quality of governance of the central Mexican government, and was an alliance of both Anglos and Tejanos.

Like much of politics in the 19th century, the actual politics of independent Texas came to be dominated by the wealthiest landowners. Those people happened to have slaves at a much higher rate than the state as a whole. It is thus not super surprising that the post-Independence constitution reflected their interests. That does not necessarily mean it reflected the interests of the people who were passionate enough about resisting the Mexican government to take up arms. In fact when it came to the Tejanos, many of them were basically dispossessed and driven out of Texas by Anglos after the fact, so they got fucked over in any number of ways.

Calling the Texas war of independence a "slaverowner's revolt" fits a certain narrative but just isn't particularly strong history.

As another aside to your earlier question about why people move to Texas, I actually have always thought the "small government / pro-business policies" screed is fairly non-factual. I think stuff like that can put a bit of a finger on the scale, but it rarely explains broader migration patterns. For most of the 20th century for example California was seen as a land of opportunity, people were moving to the state in droves and massively juiced up its population. California wasn't running some sort of 21st century Texas Republican version of business policies at the time. But California had lots of land, lots of jobs, it was fairly affordable to establish yourself in the suburbs, the weather is damn near perfect, it had a lot of advantages over some of the more established cities in the East.

I think the sunbelt's growth has been driven largely by similar factors, and also we shouldn't underestimate the importance of central air conditioning. All these housing developments that have fueled the population growth in the sunbelt would not be possible without central AC, something that wasn't widely available until the late 1960s/early 1970s. I think the major factors driving Texas's growth, and a lot of this also applies to Florida, are actually things Republicans would be hesitant to mention because it would undermine their absolute belief that government is bad:

1. Relatively good university systems. This produces a lot of graduates to fuel 21st century jobs.
2. Local control of education. The overall school systems K-12 in Texas and Florida aren't very impressive, but because of how local control is structured, the places where people are moving to frequently have near absolute control over their school district, and can insure they are higher quality.
3. Good transportation infrastructure. Not the road systems, which are below average in both Texas and Florida. But more specifically both states have a number of major international airports that are pretty well invested in and maintained, and significant seaport access as well, both of which offer major appeals to businesses.
4. Cheap land. This is actually possibly more important than the other three things combined. Part of the success of these two states is simply that places like California and the New York Metro area are so heavily developed with so much of the best land already occupied, due to generations of build out, that Texas and Florida can offer much cheaper land. This is basically because by more or less every metric Texas and Florida are both poorer and less developed than California or New York, so there is simply more opportunity for easy growth. I should note that in California's case they could actually still have a lot of cheap housing because of how big California is, but they have specific policies in place that massively benefit current single family land owners to the detriment of the entire state. New York (particularly NYC) doesn't have that problem, but the NYC region has been basically the center of economic activity since the 18th century in the United States and is hyper-developed, there's only a finite amount of space in the greater NYC metro and virtually all of it is heavily developed to some degree. Houston and Dallas were are built on mostly void flat plains with easy growth vectors in every direction, and despite having grown rapidly for 30+ years, still have tons of room to grow.

[The Minsky Moment]

The most dangerous thing that Trump did was not send an angry violent mob to sack the Capitol, as bad as it was.  Trump himself was too much of a feckless idiot to exploit that situation, although a more clever version of Trump out there might have been taking notes.

The most dangerous thing he did was try and strongarm state election officials into overthrowing election results and backing his coup. It was fortunate that enough of the GOP partisans that occupied those positions still had enough sense of propriety to resist that step.  That can't be counted on to work a second time, as the insurrectionists have spent the last months replacing anyone in those positions who still stands by the Constitution with traitorous lemmings who take orders from the Dear Leader of Mar-a-Lago.

[alfred russel]

Berkut started a thread complaining about Republicans labeling Democrats as socialists, as socialism involves the control of the means of production by the state/community. While I don't think that is the only valid way to use the word socialism, and is not the most common, if you use that definition then medicare and medicaid are very much not socialist and there is nothing odd about that tweet.

Yeah - of course if you use that definition then the NHS isn't socialist because the NHS basically only runs hospitals (with consultants who have their own private practices) as all GPs are little small businesses paid for and operating in the NHS system.

No one really uses that definition at all in politics, that's like gibberish academic quibbling. And Elise Stefanik is a well known complete idiot, AR has no real point here.

I don't really know anything about Elise Stefanik and readily accept she is a complete idiot (or plays one on TV/twitter). But - as far as I can tell the GOP working definition of "socialism" is a "government program they don't like". I don't think I've seen too many republicans complain that public schools, the military, or the fire department is socialism, though they seem more socialist than a $15 dollar minimum wage (which is just a labor regulation).

One of the changes of our post Trump era is the GOP seems to have dropped its hostility to medicare and social security.

[The Minsky Moment]

If Medicare is not socialism then Medicare for All is not socialism either.   And Obamacare sure as hell isn't.

[Berkut]

If Medicare is not socialism then Medicare for All is not socialism either.   And Obamacare sure as hell isn't.

Exactly.

That is why the tweet was so stupid, not matter how you torture yourself to interpret it.

[alfred russel]

If Medicare is not socialism then Medicare for All is not socialism either.   And Obamacare sure as hell isn't.

Fine with me. As I said in my first post, Berkut started a thread complaining about Republicans labeling Democrats as socialists, as socialism involves the control of the means of production by the state/community. While I don't think that is the only valid way to use the word socialism, and is not the most common, if you use that definition then medicare and medicaid are very much not socialist and there is nothing odd about that tweet.

[Berkut]

If Medicare is not socialism then Medicare for All is not socialism either.   And Obamacare sure as hell isn't.

Fine with me. As I said in my first post, Berkut started a thread complaining about Republicans labeling Democrats as socialists, as socialism involves the control of the means of production by the state/community. While I don't think that is the only valid way to use the word socialism, and is not the most common, if you use that definition then medicare and medicaid are very much not socialist and there is nothing odd about that tweet.

Nope, you are conceding the one side of the coin, while insisting the other is fine.

If medicare and medicaid are not socialist, then neither is medicare for all, and hence the tweet talking about "socialist medical care" make no sense, and is moronic.

Either they are all socialist, or none of them are - either way, the tweet is idiotic.