Could the Republican Party really change? And, would they want to change?

[guillaumeb]

I think a great case can be made that, since 1968, the GOP has been the Party that embraces racism, and relies on the votes of racists to win in the American South, and among racist voters everywhere.

The racism of the GOP was informally codified with Nixon's "Southern strategy", which rather openly spoke to the resentment of white people who felt that the Civil Rights Act was unnecessary, and saw it as an attack on their privilege.

Reagan, of course, spoke to the racists first, by opening his Presidential campaign in Philadelphia Mississippi, an area noted for open KKK activity. Plus, in his many attacks on welfare queens, Reagan abandoned the dog whistle for a bull horn.

Bush Sr., of course, had his Willie Horton ads.

Of Trump, no more needs to be said, other than he abandoned the bull horn for Twitter.

At this point, after over 50 years of the GOP being the party for racists, how could the GOP abandon the deplorable base of their deplorable Party and become a legitimate conservative Party?

[at140]

1. Do you want my honest opinion?

If tRump is re-elected, the answer is no.
If tRump is defeated in November, there is a good chance the repuglicans must change.

[guillaumeb]

2. But do they abandon their base, their core, of racists?

I am not saying that every GOP voter is a racist, but their Party certainly attracts them.

[at140]

4. From the republicans I have come across, they are

more selfish than racist. I belonged to a private golf club for a dozen years and most members were republicans, but I did not feel racist behavior towards me even though I was born in India with brown complexion.

[guillaumeb]

6. But they tolerate and encourage the racists.

And they must own that fact.

[at140]

10. Their selfishness comes across as racist behavior

Republicans have no problem cutting aid to poor, which could be food stamps, rent subsidies or anything else.
That hurts those who have less money the most. Blacks for example have a lot lower net worth than whites.
So it looks like racism, but it is more selfishness and the desire to not share your good fortune with the less fortunate. Just my observations based on 59 years spent in US starting as a young immigrant of age 20.

[guillaumeb]

13. And while they are wiling to cut some types of aid,

especially to the poor and working class, aid for businesses is acceptable to them.

Coming here 53 years ago, at 16, I was immediately struck by the segregation, and the racist attitudes.

[at140]

23. Correct...the corporations received whopping 40% taxcut, pushed by Trump

while the vast hard working middle class was lucky to get 5% taxcut.
Corporate marginal rate was cut from 35% all the way down to 21%.
Trump and republicans are only for the 10% richest.
It is the height of selfishness.

[Dan]

29. Please do not discount the racism that

is part of the Republican core. White Privilege is the life blood of the GOP.

[at140]

34. Of course there are racists among republicans

My main point was that there are more selfish republicans than there are racist republicans.
On the other hand I see very few racists in the democratic party of today.

[lagomorph777]

24. We can change them: Make them small enough to drown in a bathtub.

The ones who remain will be evil racists to the core.

[Politicub]

3. The Republican Party has trended towards degeneracy for my whole life

It would be naive to think there will be some kind of turnaround. I don’t even know what that would look like.

[guillaumeb]

5. Nor do I. And that is a very sad thing.

Is this country really going to have a permanent Party of racists?

[TwilightZone]

7. If the voting public harshly punished them for several elections in a row...

they would be forced to change or die as a party.

The problem, of course, is that the voting public is notoriously fickle and has a very short memory. Furthering the problem, a not-insignificant chunk of said voting public likes the GOP exactly the way they are and is unlikely to change that opinion anytime soon.

So, the answer to your question is a technical yes, but a realistic no, at least for the foreseeable future.

[guillaumeb]

8. A great answer.

If the Party relies on the racist vote to win, one reason is that GOP policies are not attractive to most voters.

That is also the main reason that the GOP is so insistent on suppressing the votes, especially of non-whites.

[WyattKansas]

9. The Democratic Party needs to stop covering for them, because their mask is already off now.

Stop treating them like they deserve honor and respect, because they chose to label themselves with their Criminal Traitor Party known as the Republican Party.

[guillaumeb]

11. I think it is starting.

While there are rules governing behavior in the House and Senate, the GOP by its actions reveals that they are only concerned with power.

[WyattKansas]

16. Republicans have made it very clear that they obey NO rules.

They have continued pushing the boundary in previous years and openly refuse to obey any rules now. Republicans are only covering for criminal behavior, if not involve directly in the criminal behavior.

The Republican Party and their voters are the reason tRUMP is now acting like a tyrant. Every damn one of them is responsible for it. Even the idiot who flipped a coin when voting. Make them all OWN their failures.

[Nature Man]

12. It will change when the last white racist finally dies

[guillaumeb]

14. So, never.

But if the GOP were to abandon racism, the racists would have nowhere to go.

[jr1118x]

15. media and messaging

Until we can improve our messaging and not have an effective media outlet I think the answer is no. I believe most Republicans (citizen's not leadership or politicians) are everyday decent people but they have been indoctrinated and conditioned by Right wing media. Even the so called liberal media, like CNN, MSNBC etc are not really liberal but more center, the go where the advertising dollars go so most of the time they don't call out the Rs even when they are lying. It pushes the narrative that both sides do it, which is bullshit. Sure not every D is a angel or walks on water but there is nowhere the blatant corruption that makes up the R.

Roger Ailes built Fox as a propaganda machine and its running according to plans. Look at just how organized when new evidence would come out against Trump Fox would spread the "truth" then CNN and other mainstream news would have the Right talking heads on spreading the same lie and their viewers believe it.

They dominate the talk radio, my dad always listens to talk radio "news" and watches the news and its amazing how skewed everything he believes and how little he knows about any negative to the RW position.

We need something like that, back in the day we had Radio America but it failed, we need a true liberal media organization to spread the message, until then people are not even going to understand the truth and we will slide further off the cliff.

[guillaumeb]

18. The US media, contrary to right wing lies, is owned by the right.

And that ownership influences what is seen as the acceptable limits of dialogue. That is s simplified version of what Noam Chomsky says.

And the right wing messaging has always included memes such as, the silent majority, or the moral majority, or the values voters.

These memes are designed to promote the idea that these right wing voters constitute a majority, and that they alone have morals and values.

What we need, in my view, is a media that is not owned by the corporations. And a print media that is not owned by hedge fund managers.

[Xolodno]

17. It can, but don't expect it from within.

And expect it from California.

The GOP is basically no longer viable here, areas have turned blue leaving only hard red areas that goose step to Trump's orders. Sooner or later, they won't bother voting, because California nationally is reliable blue and Sacramento will give them token acknowledgement. And then the Republican voters won't bother showing up.

Which then makes them ripe for a takeover. Sooner or later, people are going to get frustrated with Sacramento, but they won't vote for the GOP when its run by extremist. So moderate Dem's may infiltrate and then take control of the GOP in the bluest of areas as there essentially won't be any real GOP party. They will get party funds and moderate donors. Move the Party's platform left in that state, then boom.

After that, other blue states will follow. And eventually, they get enough power to rewrite the GOP Platform....to the dismay of states like Alabama.

[guillaumeb]

19. Making, in essence, a fringe Party.

The problem will remain that the GOP, with a rural white base, will still control far more electoral votes than their numbers would suggest.

[gratuitous]

20. There's an old joke about a mule and a two-by-four

When what they're doing no longer wins for them, Republicans will change. But first they have to lose (as in, first you have to get the mule's attention).

[guillaumeb]

21. At this point, their strategy involves cheating.

With the assistance of Russia.

[gratuitous]

30. I think that's true

I also think that the opposition to the Republicans and their emperor is sufficiently aware of the cheating to counteract it. We'll see come November how well we did about that. If Republicans get the beating they deserve, it will be (at last) up to them to address the rot in their party.

[guillaumeb]

32. I think that 2018 was the first act.

And that 2020 will be the main act.

[Skittles]

22. could they change to just sucking instead of being fascist assholes?

maybe, but they'd still SUCK

[guillaumeb]

25. Many of them are authoritarians.

Fascism is the logical next step.

[liberaltrucker]

26. No and no.

nt

[guillaumeb]

27. A funny bumper sticker.

Assuming that you are joking.

[liberaltrucker]

28. Of course I am.

[pwb]

31. No. I wouldn't want to solve their problem for them.

Basically, they all suck canal water.

[guillaumeb]

33. The Love canal? eom

[moondust]

35. The party of greed and racism?

Not likely to change much as long as so many Americans remain greedy and/or racist. Those voters will always gravitate toward the party that serves their greed and/or racism. Neither has the moral fabric to object to a partnership with the other. After all, slavery was just institutionalized greed unrestrained by morals.

The Republican Party is sort of developmentally the flip side of the Nazi Party in that the Nazis started out with racism and later adapted to attract the greedy in business.

The Nazi Party emerged from the German nationalist, racist and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist uprisings in post-World War I Germany.[7] The party was created to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism.[8] Initially, Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric, although this was later downplayed to gain the support of business leaders, and in the 1930s the party's main focus shifted to anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes.[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party

The Republican Party, on the other hand, was first the party of greedy Rockefellers, Carnegies, Prescott Bush, etc. But who on Earth would ever vote for a bunch of greedy, self-serving oligarchs that couldn't care less about them? The party had to thus find large voting blocks of fools to support them. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 the Republican Party of Lincoln that banned slavery found a large voting block of racists looking for a home. And when that worked so well they targeted Southern Baptists who had been okay with slavery as well as other narrow-minded, often racist religionists such as evangelicals also based largely in the South.

After 1912, the Party underwent an ideological shift to the right.[16] Following the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the party's core base shifted, with Southern states becoming more reliably Republican in presidential politics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_(United_States)

Trump is basically the quintessential modern Republican standing at the intersection of aggressive greed and aggressive racism and unrestrained by morals or civility.

The Nazi Party was formally abolished on 10 October 1945 and denazification began.

[guillaumeb]

36. A very good summary.

And the racists in this country, like the Germans after WW I, felt that they had been mistreated by the respective occupying powers. In the US, after the civil war, many in the American South felt as if their country was occupied. The KKK was formed as a part of this reaction to occupation.

In Germany, the Treaty of Versailles imposed what many Germans felt were unreasonable restrictions on their sovereignty. And, of course, there was the next chapter in German anti-Semitism so that the Jews could again be blamed for everything that was happening.

What is interesting, perhaps inevitable, is that many of the same phrases used by the Nazis have been appropriated by the GOP. There is, of course, the racist element, and the anti-Semitic element, and the class warfare element, all designed to divide workers.

As to de-Nazification, AFD, like the NPD before it, is merely the newest iteration of far right nationalism in Germany.