How could any American ever vote republican again?

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i have absofrigginlutely no earthly reason to vote for a party that would rather i suffered and died, than have access to affordable [non-bankrupting] quality health care.

Can see it being decades before the GQP get back in again. That's what happens when you try to steal democracy from the people.

Never have and never will.

Sounds good, but any time we DO get someone that cares about the middle class, and supports unions and labor and welfare, Faux and Fiends erupt in a flurry of rage, because "SOCIALIST!! !"

The reaction is fairly consistent.

"We're going to raise the minimum wage."



"We're going to make it easer to vote."



"Critical Race Theory."



"Welfare programs."



"Tax the wealthy."

Last edited by uncommondenominator on 12 Jul 2021, 2:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

No reason at all...unless you are willing to submit to delusional beliefs like...the 2020 election being stolen, and believing that the Jan 6 rioters were all leftwingers pretending to be rightwingers.

they are in the process of stealing it from us permanently.

To own the libs, coastal elites, blacks, Jews.

The belief that "they" have the system rigged so while "we" can't win "we" can make "their" inevitable winning as difficult as possible. Kind of like a defeated army burning as much down as they can before they surrender or are killed.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 12 Jul 2021, 3:46 pm, edited 2 times in total.

in the same manner as the maga-bumperstickered slowpokin' SUV driving 20 mph below the speed limit "owns" the long line of cars stuck behind him.

In the same manner as the unbathed, bean-loving, MAGA-hat wearing yokel "owns" the crowd of people stuck on the elevator with him.

I was too busy practising critical thinking skills to think critically!

The truth is that it is complicated, but only the politically ignorant would call the Democrats centre-right. It would be easy to point to Democratic stances on gun control and say that they are unelectable far right (except in Switzerland), or you could point to their stance on immigration and say that they are unelectable far left (except in Norway, Sweden, and perhaps Germany). Broadly, the sort of policies that recent Democratic Presidential nominees have called for are in line with the European centre left, while the policies that the left wing of the Democrats calls for would be equally far left in “Europe”. Europe, of course, is an extremely culturally diverse place, far more so than the US and Canada. Hungary is very different to Sweden, and both are very different to Denmark.

So why does anyone vote Republican? Well, yes, there’s a portion who are either drinking the Kool-Aid or are just voting the way they always have. But that’s a long way from the entirety of the Republican base.

First I think it’s important to point out that CPAC, while often aligned with the Republican Party, is not the Republican Party.

Secondly, let’s talk about New England Republicans. Currently, three of the six states in New England have Republican governors - Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. Maine also doesn’t have a Democratic Senator - its Senators are Susan Collins, a moderate Republican, and Angus King, a moderate independent who formally canvasses with the Democrats. These states all reliably vote Democrat in Presidential elections (last time one went red was 2000, although Maine split its votes in 2016). In neighbouring New York, George Pataki and Michael Bloomberg have had success running as moderate Republicans despite New York being very safely Democratic.

So what gives? My answer is that for a lot of people in New England and other Deep Blue areas, elements of the Republican platform appeal. They like a low-tax, low-spend, low-regulation government that doesn’t limit opportunities for growth. They are, however, repulsed by other elements of the national Republican platform: they have no desire to align with Confederates or Evangelicals or America First. Ask many of these people whether they think cutting taxes hurts the poor, and some of them might say “yes, but I don’t care”, but most will say some variation upon “no, because pro-business policies mean that we don’t need as much tax revenue to take care of everyone”.

There are also a lot of failings in the Democratic Party that push people towards the Republican Party.

Look at the Green New Deal, for example. It’s not the “kill all animals” proposal that Trump tried to paint it as, but it’s also not the scientifically driven necessary step to fixing the climate that most of its proponents paint it as. Truthfully it’s somewhere in between: an extremely ideological attempt to solve a real problem which explicitly rejects most of the solutions on nakedly ideological grounds and also pins on a load of unrelated guff.

Or take Medicare For All. Again, nice sounding policy, until you realise that 1) it would cover far more care than any system in the world and with no out-of-pocket expenses at all, and 2) it banned private healthcare outright.

The Democratic machine - particularly Biden - ultimately rejected the worst parts of those proposals. But they stuck with people. Those are legitimately scary proposals which would do enormous damage to the world - including making climate change worse - and people were right to fear them. The simple truth is that the threat of hare-brained leftism scares a lot of Americans, particularly those with personal experience or family experience of similar governments.

None of this to distract from the far-right, which is a huge problem. There are also a lot of structural factors which favour the Republicans, and again those are major issues. But I don’t think writing off all Republican voters as evil or stupid is helpful. All Trump voters, perhaps, but if you are interested in understanding Republicans rather than simply bashing them then, well, you’ve got to actually give it a go.

In summary:

- a lot of people will vote Republican in some circumstances to curb Democratic excess and support policies to grow the economy and/or their own take home pay.

- while the far left is much less dangerous than the far right, it is still a real and present threat. Someone could very easily view the Democrats as in the grip of the far left, while viewing the Republicans as in control of the far right - I don’t think either of those things are true but I can see why someone would believe them.

Or at least not that woman. Clinton had been so demonized, even before her husband had been elected, that too many people came to believe the bs against her.

The one bit of "BS" that I still believe is, "If her own husband will not remain faithful to her, then how can she expect the government to remain faithful to her?"

I voted for myself that year.

As did I.
The question should be - - if Trump couldn't be loyal to any of his wives, how could he be loyal to America?

the magas are only loyal to their part of america, the rest of it can go to hell as far as it is concerned.

Absolutely true.

Maryland’s governor, Larry Hogan, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska are also moderates.

Also, while I don’t know if he’s a moderate or just a run-of-the-mill conservative, Mike DeWine (Ohio’s governor) has been willing to consider issues like gun control.