No Phos. I meant Repugs don't always listen to their own constituents.

To be fair, some of those constituents are hard to listen to. Rs are almost a victim of their own success. By gerrymandering districts in 2010 so they were safely R wins, some of the more moderate Rs were voted out in favor of tea partiers.

The leadership in Washington (Ryan and McConnell) are doing their best to herd the cats and make things work between the moderate and extreme wings of their party in order to pass the legislation that's most wanted. For some of the tea partiers that have been elected, their constituents won't accept anything other than the extreme.

But how do you explain how they keep winning; Presidency, House, Senate, Governors and Supreme Court?

Anyone can 'win' if they go about it the right way.

These days, you just need to engineer the most nefarious skullduggery and victory is yours. You don't even need to be terribly intelligent or covert about it.

I see no signs they've learned anything at all. All in all, its a proper thing, as you wouldn't really want half-sighted people in charge of anything more important, such as real problems in the real world.

What Sandgrounder said, plus a little luck.

Step 1 - If you're the party in power when the census rolls around, you get to draw the lines. You'd be dumb to draw them in favor of the other side. The Rs happen to have been in power more places in 2000 and 2010, thus allowing them more chances to draw the districts they like.

Step 2 - Control the language. Rs have successfully made "liberal" into a naughty word, and then tacked on "tax and spend" to that moniker and it's stuck. At the same time, Rs have branded themselves as family-values, low tax, and pro-business/jobs. Ds haven't managed to change the overall perception of their party or the overall perception of the Rs.

Step 3 - Talk about the right topics to get people interested. Most folks want to know if they'll still have a job and a house, and if they can afford to put the kids through college and still enjoy a modest retirement. If that's all true AND you can save the planet, great. If not, shucks I guess the planet can wait.

Also I think the average American is more center-right than center-left. If you look at this year's election map, the blue spots are very much concentrated around population centers. This is why Rs seem to have more broad appeal in more places.

As for luck, lately the Rs have been lucky enough to be holding the presidency more as Supreme Court vacancies came up, compared to Ds. Between them, Reagan and the Bushes appointed 8 justices. Compare that to Clinton and Obama, who totaled 4. Three of the current justices are over 75 (including both Clinton appointees), so pundits speculate they will be replaced by Trump nominees. The trend is to appoint younger nominees that can serve longer, so it's not unrealistic to assume if Trump replaces 3 or 4 justices that the court will stay conservative for a generation or more.

I have a really hard time casting Ryan and McConnell as cat herders, or reasonable.


For the rest, yes. George Lakoff is a good resource to understand how the Repug model of language has been successful, and why Democrats still flail about with their messaging.

I think you may be overlooking the possibility that the Democratic party is simply ideologically bankrupt and has failed to offer voters something they can get confident about. I see this as much their failure than the Repug's success.

Personally, I'm was looking for a game change anyway beyond the usual Repug vs. Libtard dichotomy. I also wanted a limiting of presidential power. Even though I couldn't muster up the enthusiasm to vote for him, it actually looks like I got what I was hoping for in Trump.

Do you realize he is not really a hardcore Republican? He identified as a Democrat previously. Republicans didn't even consider him one, until he won.

As far as I am concerned, I would just be happy if he appointed judges that swore to uphold the constitution and the law, and then leave. That was my main concern about Hillary. She would have appointed judges that supported her grand cultural engineering project.

I think one really has to have an open mind about all this. I actually understand the hateful, although it really is truly petty and childish, and counter productive at this point.

Funny enough, Trump isn't really a hardcore right wing extremist ideologue, he's actually centrist. So he may even flip back and forth on some issues.

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exceptio probat regulam

I think when libs quit aggressive rhetorics that resembles censorship way too closely, people will start again consider them left again. As it is, they seem far right in their comm methods, propaganda, sanitizing and purism, more than anything. Character assasination is a cop-out.



Shapiro's 'thug' ways make me laugh.

Not only in areas free speech, what you see the left doing right now is trying to protect the very establishment (from Trump) they purport to be challenging. Even its warmongering footing? Come on.

They're lost and confused, I tell you.

Yeah, actually I get all that. Dems screwed up in a big way - not enough people voted for them for whatever reason.


Trump has no well defined ideology beyond what makes him money and attention. I just have no respect for Republican leadership based on their stagnation over the last 7-8 years so excuse my hatefulness, and my absolute lack of optimism.

Because Trump has very little ideology or even ethics, the R leadership will have a ball. And it will hurt people. I think income inequality will increase, the quality of health care will diminish and well, just f*** education. But hey, business will make money. Woo hoo.

And the supreme court... so Roe v Wade is counter to the constitution as is marriage equality? And corporations are people?

That's enough from me for a while.

Quite true, but then they got elected despite that. We just have to learn to live with it.

Oh now, I didn't say they are reasonable. I just said that trying to get the different factions of their own party to cooperate is like herding cats. They might have the majority, but it's just barely and they need all Rs to vote the same if they want to pass whatever legislation it is that's going to make American great again.

Glad folk haven't stopped dreaming...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_Gf0mGJfP8

Hold on to your tits and bits, the 20th is coming..

Donald Trump will lock Baldwin up, for sure

Great laugh but why does Trump have a no entry sign on his plinth?

And Trumps twitter response
Not sure if this is funny or tragic, so thin skinned.

There is a report here in the Guardian today about Trump interviews with the Time and Bild.

The thing he doesn't realise is as long as he keeps losing his sh*t at the slightest thing, the more people will keep doing it.

He's basically writing the comedy for them.

Millions of Republicans who voted for Hillary Clinton because much of what I heard Donald J. Trump say on the campaign trail was nonsensical as well as hurtful to many Americans. But I take some comfort in thinking, while he will have to overcome many hurdles to be a good president, he can avoid being a bad president for two reasons.

First, he would not have gotten this far — he is the first non-politician to be elected president since Dwight Eisenhower — if he were lacking in intelligence.

Second, he very likely knows what the rest of us know: Most of the things he promised to do in order to get elected make no sense. And for that reason alone he may not do them.