Elections GOP Road to 2016 Primary Thread

[Cold Front]

Look at the Kennedy's. If JFK and his brother were shot, I think we would've had a family dynasty there....

And before the Roosevelts, there were the Harrisons, and before the Harrisons there were the Adamses.

So while it's true that Americans clearly don't have a revulsion to the idea of voting for president the family member of a previous president, the Bushes are taking it to a whole other level, one which I believe won't ultimately work out for Jeb's campaign.

Between the 1980 election and the 2012 election, a Bush was running on the GOP presidential ticket in six out of nine elections. For anyone under the age forty, I doubt they can ever remember a time when the Bushes weren't either running or being prominently mentioned for president.

That is new.

What makes it even worse is that the Bushes have been failures in the presidency.

George H. W. Bush was so unpopular by the end of his presidency that he earned only 37.5 percent of the vote in the 1992 election, the worst performance by an incumbent since 1912, when Taft ran against Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

George W. Bush was at least able to win re-election, but his second term was so plagued by his own policy failures that he failed to even show up at the 2008 presidential convention. He was so toxic that even his own party had had enough of him.

In both Bush presidencies, popular Democrats followed who would earn two terms each.

Given this, why should anyone in the GOP be stoked about a Jeb Bush presidency?

 

[Cold Front]

I just saw a town hall Bush had in NH and this guy is a stone cold lock for POTUS. I'm not saying he'll get my vote (he won't) but there is no way the general pop doesn't fall for this guy (barring major major controversy)

The guy is an awful candidate with awful policies. If he wins the presidency, it's America's loss.

 

[Cold Front]

Another thing, there are family dynasties and then there are family dynasties.

John Adams was the father of John Quincy Adams, so that clearly qualifies as a political family dynasty. But their two isolated terms were spread out more than twenty years part.

William Henry Harrison was also the grandfather of Benjamin Harrison, so that also applies. But their two isolated terms were spread out forty-eight years apart, and William Henry Harrison died in office after only one month as president, so it's not as if there were many American still around in 1888, who could remember clearly the politics of the grandfather.

Theodore Roosevelt was only distantly related to FDR. In fact, TR was Eleanor's uncle, so he was much more closely related to FDR's wife than he was to FDR. TR also left the presidency in 1909, twenty-four years before FDR would win it again.

 

[Lead]

[YT]-pjQjkcm1Ys[/YT]

 

[Gandhi]

I think you answered your own question. Rand has some distinct differences with his father's stances.

That appeal to blacks? What are they?

 

[second sight]

I really think Obama will be remembered as a foreign policy president and I guess that goes to his background. In 2012, I almost wished there was a domestic and foreign office cause I really favored Obama's track record over what I know we would've seen with Romney.

I guess thats one way of saying it, so far the only person to even come close to being wrong on as many foreign policies decisions as obama is biden.

 

[Lead]

That appeal to blacks? What are they?

Criminal justice reform to start. Rand acknowledges that the black community often gets prosecuted for crimes at a higher rate because police tend to enforce and patrol poorer areas more. When you get prosecuted far more, your future is less bright all because of a systematic problem in justice.

Now Rand's approach to this may be easing off drug laws or having similar sentences for possession of different drugs that are more prevalent to white and black people.

Beyond that, he is a guy who supports the voting rights for minorities including non-violent offenders who lose the right to vote altogether

So many times, Republicans are seen as this party of, ‘We don’t want black people to vote because they’re voting Democrat, we don’t want Hispanic people to vote because they’re voting Democrat,’” he said. “We wonder why the Republican Party is so small. Why don’t we be the party that’s for people voting, for voting rights

Rand has been fairly harsh to his own party on overemphasizing voter ID and cutting early voting laws as he can be seen as offensive to many.

 

[Lead]

I guess thats one way of saying it, so far the only person to even come close to being wrong on as many foreign policies decisions as obama is biden.

He has been hesitant on having a larger presence in the middle east and right now it's on fire. Just the way it was before we came. The difference is we are wasting less money and blood on it. Part of the reason is because our energy is becoming less dependent upon the region. Either way, I'm much happier to see Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, ISIS, and Iran all fight with their own resources right now rather than the US.

If we had a GOP president in 08 to now, I seriously think we may have began campaigns in Syria and Iran.

 

[Gandhi]

Criminal justice reform to start. Rand acknowledges that the black community often gets prosecuted for crimes at a higher rate because police tend to enforce and patrol poorer areas more. When you get prosecuted far more, your future is less bright all because of a systematic problem in justice.

Now Rand's approach to this may be easing off drug laws or having similar sentences for possession of different drugs that are more prevalent to white and black people.

Beyond that, he is a guy who supports the voting rights for minorities including non-violent offenders who lose the right to vote altogether



Rand has been fairly harsh to his own party on overemphasizing voter ID and cutting early voting laws as he can be seen as offensive to many.

Ok good points, fair enough but I am not sure some common sense wrg to teh war on drugs and voter id will be enough to compensate for the freedom of the south to discriminate - he is pretty solid on his record there.

 

[Lead]

Ok good points, fair enough but I am not sure some common sense wrg to teh war on drugs and voter id will be enough to compensate for the freedom of the south to discriminate - he is pretty solid on his record there.

I don't think the GOP can win the black vote. Rand at least preaches a message that everyone is entitled to their opinion and should be allowed to vote, even if it isn't for him. That is the first step to repair a very damaged voting block the GOP has created. When you talk about GOP having a victory in the black vote, it would be getting 20% at max.

I think the Hispanic vote is far more up for grabs than people believe. The GOP seems to be in place to appeal better to Hispanics. They have more rising stars that are Hispanic (Bush, Cruz, Rubio, Martinez). Hispanics lean on the side of pro-life as well but if you look at issues, it's kinda a toss up which side they would choose and which region we are talking about.

 

[Anung Un Rama]

The guy is an awful candidate with awful policies. .

Such as?

 

[Gandhi]

I don't think the GOP can win the black vote. Rand at least preaches a message that everyone is entitled to their opinion and should be allowed to vote, even if it isn't for him. That is the first step to repair a very damaged voting block the GOP has created. When you talk about GOP having a victory in the black vote, it would be getting 20% at max.

I think the Hispanic vote is far more up for grabs than people believe. The GOP seems to be in place to appeal better to Hispanics. They have more rising stars that are Hispanic (Bush, Cruz, Rubio, Martinez). Hispanics lean on the side of pro-life as well but if you look at issues, it's kinda a toss up which side they would choose and which region we are talking about.

GOP won't win the black vote, but my point is that Paul's policies you mentioned are minute in comparison to stances he has taken on supporting the state's right to decide questions of discrimination. It is the oldest code in the book and puts him in a worse position than others in the GOP wrgs to the black vote.

Latinos, maybe one day, social conservatism is strong there, but the anti immigrant streak is obv still a barrier.

 

[Lead]

Good news for Marco Rubio in GOP poll

It’s not clear if momentum is building behind Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for a run at the White House in 2016, but he has not turned off Republican voters. The junior senator from the Sunshine State led all other 2016 contenders among GOP primary voters, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released March 11.
Fifty-six percent of GOP voters said they could see themselves supporting Rubio while just 26 percent said they could not. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee trailed close behind Rubio, with 53 and 52 percent of Republican voters, respectively, saying they could see themselves supporting each candidate.

 

[Lead]

Marco Rubio’s house of horrors

The brick-fronted tract house with a satellite dish and a yellow fire hydrant in front looks like many middle-class homes in Florida’s capital, except for the two names on the deed.
Marco Rubio: U.S. senator and would-be presidential candidate.
Story Continued Below
David Rivera: Scandal-plagued former congressman under investigation in a federal campaign-finance probe.
In many ways, it has been a house of horrors for Rubio, a financial and political liability heading into the 2016 election. While he and Rivera were state legislators, they paid way too much for it in 2005, only to see foreclosure proceedings embarrassingly initiated against them during Rubio’s 2010 Senate race. At another point, a tropical storm flooded the entire neighborhood so badly that neighbors used canoes to get around.

 

[sickc0d3r]

I don't think the GOP can win the black vote. Rand at least preaches a message that everyone is entitled to their opinion and should be allowed to vote, even if it isn't for him. That is the first step to repair a very damaged voting block the GOP has created. When you talk about GOP having a victory in the black vote, it would be getting 20% at max.

Speaking of repairing their image with black voters, here's Ryan of all people coming across as a compassionate leader willing to forgo a run at POTUS in order to pursue a personal project. Done well, might such a documentary help tear down the GOP's image as a party with nothing but disdain for the poor?
http://news.yahoo.com/the-real-reas...on-t-run-for-president-in-2016-224731391.html

“I wanted to make sure this got away from presidential politics. I wanted to make sure that this got some distance from being seen as some personal ambitious project for a politician,” said Ryan, who is now chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, which plays a central role in making the tax policies through which so much of the government’s anti-poverty efforts flow.

And is Ryan, the chairman of Ways and Means, actually advocating taxes to help the poor here? Sounds very un-Ryan-like to me.

But regardless of how those who are struggling ended up there, Ryan’s conclusion would likely be the same. In essence, he believes that the federal government needs to fund projects but then let people and groups at the local level have wide latitude about how to help people who need it. Ryan said that the government’s approach to fighting poverty since President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 launched the “War on Poverty” has been “a top-down, command and control, central planning approach” that “has failed.”
“We need to disaggregate it, we need to decentralize it, and we need to acknowledge that government has a very important role to play but it is circumspect and limited and it needs to be in concert with, not in contention with, these good works that are happening out there in America,” Ryan said. “The best thing the government does is bring resources to the table, but sometimes the worst thing it does is it displaces and it takes over and it displaces good works.”

 

[Lead]

Speaking of repairing their image with black voters, here's Ryan of all people coming across as a compassionate leader willing to forgo a run at POTUS in order to pursue a personal project. Done well, might such a documentary help tear down the GOP's image as a party with nothing but disdain for the poor?
http://news.yahoo.com/the-real-reas...on-t-run-for-president-in-2016-224731391.html



And is Ryan, the chairman of Ways and Means, actually advocating taxes to help the poor here? Sounds very un-Ryan-like to me.

Ryan and Rubio's tax plans address poverty. It's becoming the new theme the newer GOP politicians along with Governors like Kasich.

 

[RafailNadull]

I just saw a town hall Bush had in NH and this guy is a stone cold lock for POTUS. I'm not saying he'll get my vote (he won't) but there is no way the general pop doesn't fall for this guy (barring major major controversy)

What? Having watched a few interviews I don't see how he's so appealing. Not exactly off the charts charismatic.

 

[Jacket time]

That appeal to blacks? What are they?

excellent piece, well worth the watch.
I don't think we will see Walker or Bush @ Bowie speaking truth to power like Paul

 

[Lead]

What? Having watched a few interests I don't see how he's so appealing. Not exactly off the charts charismatic.

It's kinda weird but he reminds me a lot of Will Ferrell's character in "The Other Guys". Same exact demeanor and voice. If he did win the presidency, Ferrell would be spot of doing impressions of that guy.

 

[Cold Front]

Some of you seem to be under the impression that the GOP can substantially increase its percentage of black or Hispanic votes.

It cannot.

The party is not built, nor can it be easily rebuilt, to appeal to those voting demographics. This has nothing to do with racism, as some might like to claim. Republicans simply cannot appeal meaningfully to those groups, because they cut too sharply across the grain of their own interest groups.

The GOP is the party of what I'll call the national core - business interests, nationalists, militarists, social conservatives. The Democrats are the party of the periphery - outside groups that feel marginal to the national core (recent immigrant groups, blacks, the poor, Jews, labor unions, etc.).

These groups' alignment with the two mainstream U.S parties doesn't change much. Immigrant groups, for example, have been a reliable Democratic voting group since the mid-19th century.

It took over a hundred years for white Catholics and white southerners to become comfortable identifying with the Republican Party - and when they finally did, it had more to do with the Democratic Party abandoning them than it had to do with the Republicans making a successful appeal to them.

White southerners began leaving the Democratic Party over civil rights and the party's decision to go soft in the Cold War. Their realignment began in the 1960s, but wasn't completed until the early 1990s.

A smaller number of white Catholics began leaving the Democratic party over the Sexual Revolution, and this small exodus slowly increased over the years as the Democrats began to be identified as the party of minorities.

Catholics as a whole are still a swing vote, but only because there are more non-white Catholics than ever before. White Catholics, however, are now reliably Republican.

*****

It is very difficult to break these voting habits. They are strongly ingrained in both the political parties' infrastructure and in the politics of the voters.

What's more, I'm pretty sure that most of you misunderstand the meaning of the numbers.

Just because a higher percentage of Hispanics than blacks vote for the GOP doesn't make that group more gettable. Those two groups of voters are about the same size, so everything else being equal, there's no difference in the number of votes for the GOP if it raises its share of the black vote from 5 to 20 percent than it does if it raises its share of the Hispanic vote from 27 to 42 percent. You're not better off going after one than you are after the other.

That's not some special insight; that's just arithmetic.

The problem for the GOP is that in appealing to either of these two groups it risks alienating its own base. There's no free lunch in politics.