Would a party split benefit the Republicans?

[The Minsky Moment]

I was talking to my Dad earlier in the evening, and while he has no real problem with Clintonian Democrats like Obama, he was bemoaning the loss of the "old" GOP;  no more Doles, Fords, Rockefellers or Nixons to be found anymore

I vote in an affluent suburb that is full of doctors, bankers, lawyers, mid-level execs, small business owners.  It should be prime territory for the GOP.  Back in the Rockefeller days and even for years after it was.  But yesterday when I went to the polls, the choice for state assemblyman and state senator was very easy - there was only one candidate.  No one was willing to waste the time to run under the GOP banner. 

That's a big problem.  If a party is going to basically write off the Black and Latino vote wholesale, which is what the GOP has done the last 10 years, it doesn't leave much room for error with what remains.  As the self-proclaimed party of business, an organization that pitches itself as the party of achievers, of educating strivers, of pillar-of-the-community Rotary Club types, of upwardly mobile professionals - how can they systematically shut themselves out of this demographic and expect to succeed?

It is the flip-side of the Democrats' "Kansas problem" but the last two election cycles have demonstrated that it is a bigger problem.  Because Kansas is small population and electorally speaking.  But lots of people live in periphery of big metro areas and they have big impact in large value potential swing states like Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania.  And by eschewing the Doles, Lugars, and Snowes for the bomb throwers, Norquist fanatics, "macaca"-baiters, vaginal probers and rape apologists, the GOP has surrendered its natural advantages with those vote rich constituencies in exchange for running up even bigger majorities in the deep South, Texas, Utah, Idaho, etc.   

Bad trade, guys.

[Valmy]

Blame social conservatives if you must, but (A) you are lying to yourself and (B) if this is a fight you want to have, I’m happy to see you in the primaries in 2014. I like my chances.

LOL

Well right that is whole point.

[Valmy]

GOP has surrendered its natural advantages with those vote rich constituencies in exchange for running up even bigger majorities in the deep South, Texas, Utah, Idaho, etc.   

Bad trade, guys.

Well...Clinton won 43% of the vote in Texas in 1996 and Obama got 41% in 2012.  Their majority didn't get that much bigger.

[The Minsky Moment]

Well...Clinton won 43% of the vote in Texas in 1996 and Obama got 41% in 2012.  Their majority didn't get that much bigger.

The trend I am talking about dates back to the 1994 midterms, and hence Clinton's performance in 96 is part of the illustration.  Clinton actually did no better in Texas in 96 than Duakakis in 88.
It's also true that this is a diminishing returns kind of strategy, which only reinforces its foolishness.

[Barrister]

To go back to the original question - no a party split would not benefit the Republicans.  In a first past the post system like the US has there is no benefit to coming in second in any given election.  You have to win.  If you split the Republicans into the religious conservative party and the fiscal conservative party then all you will do is ensure Democratic majorities for a generation.

Building a national political party is all about building a "big tent".  You don't make your tent bigger by kicking people out of it.

Now that being said... do Republicans need to give less emphasis to certain elements of their party?  Well sure.  They need to get sensible about immigration to stop alienating the growing not-white population.  Unfortunately, they need to realize that the gay marriage issue is over and that they lost.  They do need to move more to the centre on certain issues - but all while maintaining the base that they have.

[Valmy]

No the Republicans have already suffered enough by booting people out of their party.  I am amused by their attempts to marginalize the Ron Paulites and the Gay Republicans.  These groups are often told to go join the Democrats.

[merithyn]

A lot of my Republican friends think that Romney lost because of issues like gay marriage and abortion, and that if we shed the religious positions on those issues we'll sail to electoral victory. I don't believe that is actually the case at all. I think long term gay marriage is a losing issue but all the exit polling in the important swing states I'm reading shows it was not an impact at all in the Presidential race in those states. It was not even in the top 5 things voters said they cared about (ranking below the 4% of voters who said their most important issue was foreign policy.)

Abortion is a bit mixed, the trend has been more moderation on the issue but the actual polls show support goes up and down. For example 2009 was the first year that pro-life respondents outnumbered pro-choice in a Gallup poll. I do think on the very long term, abortion is a loser issue too as I think things like abortion pill etc will mostly make abortion as we currently know it a non-issue. But I don't think abortion really decided the election.

In Virginia, Ohio, and Florida Romney actually won the white woman and white male votes. The reason he lost the Presidency, is he had one "large" issue (meaning lots of voters cared about it") where he won: the economy, he won about 53% of the voters who said the economy was their number one issue. But he lost basically all the other large "issue" voter blocks aside from the religious fundamentalist ones. How does that map to the minority vote? I don't really know, but I know the only way Romney ever had a chance to overcome a 95-97%  black vote in States like Virginia with 20% black voters, or 65-70% Hispanic vote, would have been if he won that economic issues voter group by like 60-40.

You can get rid of all the religious stuff and the doesn't get the GOP the Hispanics and the blacks, and that's the only way Romney won this election without basically winning a landslide among the voters who were solely voting based on economic matters.

The reason the Republicans are losing is because, while the social agenda may not be the top five things people vote on, when trying to decide between the two, the social agenda will tip the scales. In addition, their conservative bent makes them appear out of touch with the average American, which means that while Romney may have had the better economic plan (which is up for debate), those not white and upper-middle class didn't trust him to actually take them into account with his economic plans.

[Razgovory]

Well, the South is rapidly becoming more Latino, especially in places like Texas.  They may be picking up more angry white males in the South and are only running in place as far as majorities are concerned.  I disagree that the Republicans have been writing off the Latinos for the last ten years.  Bush made a real effort to get Latinos and made some good headway.  Unfortunately it made the angry while male portion of the party furious and there has been a backlash against Latinos in the GOP for the last four or five years. 

I imagine that in 20 years Texas will be a toss up state along with some other southern states.  If they want to be competitive in the long term they are going to have to get the Latino vote.  Perhaps a Rubio nomination will help that.

[merithyn]

I admit that I love Norm Ornstein, mostly because he often says what I feel, only he backs it with solid evidence and analysis that I can't match. Last April, he wrote an article called "Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem" that I thought was incredibly well-written. For those who don't know him, Mr. Ornstein is reknowned for being a non-partisan political analyzer who works for the American Enterprise Institute.

The article is too long to post, but here's the first bit of it:

Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are "78 to 81" Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it's not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West's comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.

It's not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country's challenges.

"Both sides do it" or "There is plenty of blame to go around" are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.

It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once-legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.

The post-McGovern Democratic Party, by contrast, while losing the bulk of its conservative Dixiecrat contingent in the decades after the civil rights revolution, has retained a more diverse base. Since the Clinton presidency, it has hewed to the center-left on issues from welfare reform to fiscal policy. While the Democrats may have moved from their 40-yard line to their 25, the Republicans have gone from their 40 to somewhere behind their goal post.

What happened? Of course, there were larger forces at work beyond the realignment of the South. They included the mobilization of social conservatives after the 1973Roe v. Wade decision, the anti-tax movement launched in 1978 by California's Proposition 13, the rise of conservative talk radio after a congressional pay raise in 1989, and the emergence of Fox News and right-wing blogs. But the real move to the bedrock right starts with two names: Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist.

[garbon]

I'm not sure why the GOP if held up as a fig leaf over the real issue which is that a great many Americans want those who are spouting backwards ideas to rule over them.  After all the GOP's legitimacy stems from people who vote from them not simply though their own force of will.  Of course, it probably isn't easy for that to roll off the tongue as you'd be saying that "47%" of Americans are the problem.

And before the inevitable finger pointing at myself, I've only voted for moderate Republicans and in races below presidency - only because I'd like some balance in these overly powerful Dem enclaves in which I live.

[MadImmortalMan]

It's incredibly similar to gun control with the Democrats.  For most of the 80s and throughout the 90s, they banged their heads against the wall on an unpopular subject, and it took them years of losses to finally figure out it was an election loser and to jettison it as a high-profile platform plank.  The GOP needs to learn the same lesson.

That's really a great comparison.

[Valmy]

Texas may someday flip blue but I don't think it will be because of Demographics.  We have been a minority majority state for awhile but our Republicans know how to kiss up to the Tejanos.

[Ed Anger]

Texas may someday flip blue but I don't think it will be because of Demographics.  We have been a minority majority state for awhile but our Republicans know how to kiss up to the Tejanos.

They want their houses and pools cleaned.

[merithyn]

I'm not sure why the GOP if held up as a fig leaf over the real issue which is that a great many Americans want those who are spouting backwards ideas to rule over them.  After all the GOP's legitimacy stems from people who vote from them not simply though their own force of will.  Of course, it probably isn't easy for that to roll off the tongue as you'd be saying that "47%" of Americans are the problem.

And before the inevitable finger pointing at myself, I've only voted for moderate Republicans and in races below presidency - only because I'd like some balance in these overly powerful Dem enclaves in which I live.

I think that we need Republican fiscal conservatism to temper the Democrats liberal spending of money. The balance is essential. The problem with an awful lot of Republicans today, though, is that they have made it their primary goal to stop Democrats from doing anything at all. They don't want to work to balance things. They don't want to find a way to make good policy that is fiscally intelligent and still socially compassionate.

I think that's what Norm Ornstein is trying to say in that article. It isn't that Republicans are bad. It's that too many Republicans refuse to be adults.

[garbon]

I think that we need Republican fiscal conservatism to temper the Democrats liberal spending of money. The balance is essential. The problem with an awful lot of Republicans today, though, is that they have made it their primary goal to stop Democrats from doing anything at all. They don't want to work to balance things. They don't want to find a way to make good policy that is fiscally intelligent and still socially compassionate.

I think that's what Norm Ornstein is trying to say in that article. It isn't that Republicans are bad. It's that too many Republicans refuse to be adults.

But it isn't just Republicans as in the elected officials but rather anyone who is voting for said officials.  The wider base aren't the ones who would do any of the things that you outline but are the reason that we have officials who are so uncompromising.