Posts tagged Republican

Revealing a Pattern

32
1 month ago
by dcpetterson in

Ever won­der whether there is a dif­fer­ence between extreme left-​​wing groups and extreme right-​​wing groups?

Back in early 2009, the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity released two reports which had been in the works for some time. The first one, released in late Jan­u­ary of that year, dealt with the threat posed to the nation by left­ist groups. It was titled, “Left­wing Extrem­ists Likely to Increase Use of Cyber Attacks over the Com­ing Decade.” You can down­load it here. It was released to lit­tle fan­fare, and almost no notice was taken by the press, by politi­cians, or by, well, much of anyone.

In fact, there were two ear­lier DHS reports released on left-​​wing groups the pre­vi­ous year: “Plans to Tar­get Trans­porta­tion Infra­struc­ture Sur­round­ing Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion” was released in March of 2008, and “Ecoter­ror­ism: Envi­ron­men­tal and Animal-​​Rights Mil­i­tants in the United States” from May of that year. These, too, went pretty much unnoticed.

The sec­ond report released in early 2009 described the threats posed by right­ist groups in the United States. It was released in early April of 2009, under the title, “Rightwing Extrem­ism: Cur­rent Eco­nomic and Polit­i­cal Cli­mate Fuel­ing Resur­gence in Rad­i­cal­iza­tion and Recruit­ment.” You can obtain it here. It resulted in a firestorm of com­plaint and objec­tion from con­ser­v­a­tive pun­dits, blog­gers, media chan­nels, and politi­cians.

Why the dif­fer­ence in recep­tion? (more…)

Square Roots

22
1 month ago
by Monotreme in
Back off or I'll be forced to defend myself.

Back off or I’ll be forced to defend myself.

We’ve pre­sented evi­dence before that the Repub­li­can Party is in deep trou­ble. Even the chair of the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee (RNC), Reince Priebus, says so. Recap­ping the Growth and Oppor­tu­nity Project find­ings that I reported on ear­lier, Priebus said:

There’s no one rea­son we lost. Our mes­sage was weak; our ground game was insuf­fi­cient; we weren’t inclu­sive; we were behind in both data and dig­i­tal; and our pri­mary and debate process needed improve­ment. So, there’s no one solu­tion. There’s a long list of them.

Or, as my father is fond of say­ing, “Other than that, Mrs. Lin­coln, how did you like the play?” (more…)

This Grand Old Project

35
1 month ago
by Monotreme in
Shooting the messenger.

Shoot­ing the messenger.

In Decem­ber, Repub­li­can Party Chair Reince “and repeat” Priebus embarked on a reëx­am­i­na­tion of the party’s future. He com­mis­sioned an “autopsy” of the party’s elec­toral failings.

The report is for­mally called the Growth and Oppor­tu­nity Project.

(Get it…GOP! Pretty spiffy mar­ket­ing twist there, don’t you think? We hired the same guy who named New Coke and Orca.)

Accord­ing to Politico’s Jonathan Mar­tin and Mag­gie Haber­man, the report has trig­gered the oft-​​avoided civil war the Repub­li­can Party has been fear­ing. (more…)

The Republican War on Ignorance

34
2 months ago
by Monotreme in

business 300x260It’s a well-​​worn maxim that in busi­ness or war, hav­ing the best infor­ma­tion is an essen­tial part of the intel­li­gence cycle.

As Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, “If you know the enemy and know your­self you need not fear the results of a hun­dred battles.”

In the shel­lack­ing they took in the 1970s and 1980s, the Demo­c­ra­tic Party and its elec­toral machin­ery were forced to go through a long, painful reassess­ment. Can­di­dates McGov­ern, Carter, Mon­dale and Dukakis were com­plete disasters.

Carter won only because Nixon’s dis­grace poi­soned his party for a short time. Pres­i­dent Carter was the most unpop­u­lar and inef­fec­tive Pres­i­dent in a gen­er­a­tion. Wal­ter Mon­dale came across as the mid-​​level appa­ratchik he was, and Can­di­date Dukakis was carpet-​​bombed into sub­mis­sion by Lee Atwa­ter. When Dukakis donned a hel­met and attempted to take refuge in a tank, his fate was sealed.

With a stroke of luck named Perot and the tim­ing of an eco­nomic cri­sis blamed on a Bush, the Party was re-​​invented as a loose col­lec­tion of center-​​left soft lib­er­als (DW-​​NOMINATE near –0.4). This is evi­dent in the graph from the vote​view​.com blog, which I inserted after the jump. (more…)

Trajectory to Tragedy?

400
2 months ago
by Michael Weiss in

Ham­mer­ing the point home.

Some recent dis­cus­sions here at Log­a­rchism led me to look at the over­all his­tory of the Repub­li­can Party in the United States. In par­tic­u­lar, I’ve won­dered whether we’re see­ing a renais­sance of the Grand Old Party, or a long slow decline. As is so often the case with these analy­ses, I didn’t enter with any pre­con­ceived notions beyond a gut feel.

There are, of course, many dif­fer­ent mech­a­nisms by which one can exam­ine the rel­a­tive strength of a polit­i­cal party. How many votes do their can­di­dates receive in aggre­gate? How many votes do their Pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates receive in the gen­eral elec­tions? How many elec­toral votes do their Pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates receive? How many years do they hold the House, Sen­ate, and/​or White House?

The Cook Par­ti­san Vot­ing Index seeks to apply one such met­ric, by tak­ing the pre­vi­ous two con­sec­u­tive Pres­i­den­tial elec­tions and aver­ag­ing the vote mar­gin across the two.

In this par­tic­u­lar case, I opted to start with the num­ber of seats held in the House in any given year. There are two rea­sons I chose this route. First, the House is gen­er­ally more sen­si­tive to the shifts of polit­i­cal winds, by virtue of two-​​year terms. It is also more gran­u­larly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the nation as a whole, since there are 435 of them. Com­pare this to the mere 100 Sen­a­tors (each with six-​​year terms), or the lone President.

And what did this view look like? Let’s exam­ine the data together, and place them along­side his­tory.  (more…)

The Hatter Resolution

17
2 months ago
by dcpetterson in

“If I had a world of my own,” said Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hat­ter, “every­thing would be non­sense.” It would seem House Repub­li­cans are tak­ing this thought to heart, and using it as advice for the future of Amer­ica. We may be on the verge of see­ing an evo­lu­tion of the Tea Party, from tri­corn hats to Alice in Won­der­land. It may be an inten­tional change.

Start­ing today, House Repub­li­cans will unveil the CR or “Con­tin­u­ing Res­o­lu­tion,” their threat­ened spend­ing plans for the remain­der of the fis­cal year. After the eco­nomic debates of the 2012 cam­paign, one might think the pri­or­i­ties of the win­ning party would receive some con­sid­er­a­tion. Yet it doesn’t appear so. As details of Repub­li­cans plans leak out, we’re see­ing a move even far­ther toward aus­ter­ity and puni­tive spend­ing cuts than any­thing envi­sioned in the Ryan bud­gets of past years.

The impend­ing bud­get plan is so far afield, so divorced from real­ity, that it actu­ally includes a ban on fed­eral fund­ing for the anti-​​poverty group Alliance of Com­mu­nity Orga­ni­za­tions for Reform Now or ACORN — even though ACORN was dis­banded three years ago, and hasn’t existed since 2010. (You can read the cur­rent pro­posal for the Con­tin­u­ing Res­o­lu­tion here. Check out page 221.)

That’s not the only bit of non­sense in this Repub­li­can plan. The bill includes fewer real dis­cre­tionary dol­lars than were avail­able to George W. Bush in FY 2008. This is more an ide­o­log­i­cal man­i­festo than a seri­ous pro­posal.
(more…)

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