What does the GOP have to do to become a winning party?

Panopticon said:

The gop is like the church in europe. Only the oldest generation goes there anymore, it belongs to a different era. it needs to wake up and get with the times and ditch all the bigotry against minorities. If it goes center, instead of even further to the edge of sanity, it begins to steal votes from hilary

Click to expand...

I doubt your message is the only who are eager for old people to die off.

If you were to sit down and really dig into Obama and Romney with the idea of looking at differences they were substantial. I saw the Johnson libertarians (formerly Paulites if I may with respect) try to impose the similiarity between the two with great generalities. I never heard Romney suggest he wanted war with Iran, NK or Venezuela? I think he'd have been more forceful on the issue of Iranian nuclear weapons than Obama but otherwise to suggest he wanted to spend more abroad seemed odd to me. Romney routinely touted growth as the measure needed to balance our budget where Obama touted more taxes from those who would create growth. That was a clear difference. I know Romney supported the NDAA but if you were to sit down with both and ask one to change it back which do you think would be far more likely to listen? I know of only one.

Geoist said:

I honestly don't see a real clear difference between Romney and Obama. While one emphasizes more spending at home at any cost, the other emphasizes more spending abroad at any cost. Both sides have taken away civil liberties little-by-little. Its damned if you do and damned if you don't. Not to say I have to agree with a candidate 100%, but I would like to agree with him/her on at least 55% of the issues before giving my vote.

Click to expand...

If the GOP ever hopes to be competitive again, they are going to have to give more than just lip-service to the ideas of small government and quit sticking their foots so far into their mouths on social issues.

If they, the GOP, wish to revitalize and continue their party, they need to:

-Stop the atrocious foreign policy of bombing other countries and cultures simply because we disagree with them and we want to control the flow of oil. It's easy to gloss over hundreds of drone strikes, trillions of dollars, and thousands of lives spent in foreign lands as "protecting us from terror". In reality, our invasion, occupation, and destruction of third-world countries (that our leaders have deemed as a "threat") is as offensive to those people as a foreign army would be to us if they were in America. Our presence perpetuates terrorism and hatred against us rather than ending it. Our ountry needs a change in how we view our role in the world, and we should strive to spread our ideas and democracy through mutual peace and prosperity, not guns and bombs.

Furthermore, you cannot claim to be a government of small government, lower taxes, more freedom, and also support the ideas of perpetual and pre-emptive wars. We cannot maintain troops in over 130 countries around the world, fight several wars, and also balance a budget and lower taxes. Any attempt to do so or argument to the contrary is just ignoring logic.

Secondly, as we have seen over the past decade and as history has taught us, you cannot have a small government, or shrink a large one, during war time. Since the Civil War, all the way through WWI, WWII, Korean, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan etc. we have seen that each time our government has grown larger and the people have grown less free during war time than in peace time. Martial laws, curfews, rations, the patriot act, the NDAA, all stand against the fundamental principles of our country and all have come out of warfare. This is a fact that conservatives often seem to overlook. If you are against bigger government, you have to also be against perpetual warfare like we've seen the past decade, because that ALWAYS opens the door for a larger, stronger, centralized government. And really, what's "conservative" about spending billions of dollars on wars?

Finally, they need to focus on restoring civil liberties and freedom to ALL citizens. Gay marriage and abortion shouldn't be decided at the federal level. The power to do so is not in the constitution and it is not the role of a government in a free society to try and legislate a desired set of morals into a country. Return the powers to the states where it belongs. Also, end the war on drugs, because not only is it not working, it's fueling the growing black market/drug cartel we are seeing and is inconsistent with the ideas of liberty and personal responsibility. The idea that the government should, and has the authority to, regulate what you as a consenting adult put into your body is ridiculous. Sure it may be a bad decision, but that's irrelevant. With the freedom to make right choices must also come the freedom to make bad ones, else you were never really free in the first place.

If the GOP were to start espousing and actually working towards the above goals, we would see them being much more effective in coming elections and they would actually start growing their base, rather than see their base shrink as they are now.

In short, they have to actually start fighting for civil liberties, smaller government, and lower taxes, rather than advocating for more warfare.

Lutherf said:

Yep.

Between the religious zealots and the isolationist Libertarian zealots the Tea Party shredded. It's kind of like politics in a microcosm. You start out with a really good idea but without strong central leadership the special interests chip away at the framework until the whole damned thing collapses.

Welcome to America, 2013.

Click to expand...

Libertarians are not isolationists. They are non-interventionalists.

CalGun said:

I never heard Romney suggest he wanted war with Iran, NK or Venezuela?

Click to expand...

And I never suggested he wanted war with Iran, North Korea, or Venezuela.

I think he'd have been more forceful on the issue of Iranian nuclear weapons than Obama but otherwise to suggest he wanted to spend more abroad seemed odd to me.

Click to expand...

He wanted to add another 30 billion (at least) to the defense budget when we are already spending many times more than the other top countries of the world combined. This from the party that claims more spending is not the solution. For most Republicans there is no limit to how much they would be willing to spend when it comes to the military. The more the better. With nearly every other kind of spending, though, the national debt becomes the concerning issue for them.

Romney routinely touted growth as the measure needed to balance our budget where Obama touted more taxes from those who would create growth. That was a clear difference.

Click to expand...

Yes, that is clear difference. But for me it is less HOW MUCH is tax (though that is important) than WHAT is taxed.

I know Romney supported the NDAA but if you were to sit down with both and ask one to change it back which do you think would be far more likely to listen? I know of only one.

Click to expand...

Actually, Obama threatened to veto that bill but went back on his word in the end. I strongly doubt Romney would have given a second thought to signing it.

Very Simple: Embrace the Libertarians and don't pander to the Social Right Hard Liners.

repubs need to get straight with the american people, stop spinning and lying about everyone, develop programs that help most americans instead of inordinately helping the rich and hoping some of it trickles down to the middle class (we tried it since 2001 and it has not worked, the rich off-shored our jobs). They need to stop trying to punish gay people by denying them marriage rights because they think what they do is "wrong". Romney wanted to add 100K soldiers to the army, WHY? He never explained what the strategic threat was that warranted such expansion. Buying intel and using laser strikes by drones is doing a great job of combating Al Qaeda, killing off the leadership at low cost to the tax payers. Obama has a smarter plan.

Healthcare. Big problem, been a big problem for years, repubs NEVER made ANY effort to reign in the health insurance company death panels, let the ins. companies screw the public. If they repealed Obamacare, just what was their other plan? No plan stated, utter failures.

Bush was a huge failure, they have not demonstrated they "know business" and know how to responsibly run the economy. Obama economy is growing slowly, but that's better than too fast and reckless, followed by crash.

Repubs are vile obstructionists, like Mitch McConnell, job one is defeat Obama in 4 years. W R O N G !!! What an asshat! Attitudes like that should not be rewarded with office.

Despite repub efforts to lie about all this, say its good, most of the american people saw through the sham that the repub party has become, elitist and racist.

They need to stop lying and spinning, tell the truth, and produce programs that help the vast majority of americans instead of inordinately helping the very wealthy. Cutting taxes is not the solution to every problem, its harder than that. Get to work and develop a program that actually delivers value to people, instead of a public opinion platform that is simply an advertising campaign to get yourself elected. Big difference.