Just a simple question from someone who isn't as into politics as much as many of you are. Huckabee saying Obama was leading Isreal to the oven door. Trump trumping. Is it because of the tea party? Too much fragmentalization?
Its coalition is dying. The alliance between libertarian-leaning business people and religious conservatives was destined to collapse at some point, especially as the latter demographic gets older and passes away, and the country becomes more ethnically diverse. Now that the country largely doesn't care about the desires of the "Moral Majority," the party's "base" has had to get louder and more irrational for attention, forcing candidates to placate them with crazier rhetoric. What a candidate now has to say to win the Iowa caucus dooms them in the general. When one side of your coalition largely cares about unencumbered personal wealth and the other, poorer side cares about legislating morality among an increasingly diverse country, candidates get caught pandering between the two.
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NrzXLYA_e6E" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> i havent really seen these different videos since the election. hard to watch for me.
Not at all, but the current landscape makes winning a national election much harder when somebody has to run away from their own record (a la John McCain and Mitt Romney) in order to appeal to a base that is much more conservative than the population at large. This is a byproduct of both the Republican electorate and a dumbed-down two-party system that we keep telling ourselves is capable of representing over 300 million people.
I think it is the inevitable result of the relinquishing of decorum in political rhetoric when the GOP handed the reins over to Karl Rove. Integrity was basically thrown out the window. All the underlings who learned at his feet now have individual candidates withing the party and attacking your opponent to mask your weaknesses is SOP. The tactic only works where you have gerrymandered districts though, where speaking against your opponent is more effective that speaking to your own policies.
Im watch Delusional republican in New Hampshire say Trump is a leader....LOL. Trump talk like someone who has no clue how the real world works.
You might want to check the 2014 mid term election results. They blow your theory out of the water. It was a rout.
While it may have been a rout, you are correct in that it was a route to delusion and Trump-frontrunner-dom on your part.
Thanks for the spelling correction. I have fixed the post. It's clear that's all you could offer, because the 2014 mid term election results tell the story. Your side got obliterated.
For close to 20 years, Dems owned the House and Senate but couldn't even find where Pensylvania Ave is on a map. Legislative elections mean crap for the Presidency. One of the benifits of a parliamentary system is that the extremists can go form their own little party and rant and rave in their own little corner without disurbing the serious business of governing. Republican party right now is fighting over several different visions of exactly what it is. It'd be more productive to actually make separate parties for each one, but the system doesn't work that way.
PAC money can buy endless pressure: lobbyist, lawyers, PR campaigns campaign contributions and promises of private sector second careers. That pressure leads us down the path of gerrymandered districts and gained majorities. Inflaming hot button social issues with innuendo and outright lies, and a national news propaganda arm makes low information voters vote against their own economic interests. Their is no advocacy for the middle class. Yeah for bigotry and plutocracy! It's great!
Also, the "libertarian" free lunch of tax breaks and deregulation of the banks with the 2008 debacle has led to an economic collapse and more folks are getting tired waiting for the promised "trickle down".
I think Huckabee's comments were an attempt to gain Trump's type of popularity because he knows he is irrelevant.
