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 sebster wrote:
I think the answer there is simple - it doesn't have to do much. It's a vote winner.

It's a vote winner among certain elements of the party. It remains to be seen whether that's a valid long-term strategy, or whether it costs them more votes than it gains. My guess is that it's a net loss, but the question is whether the republican party can rebuild without the Liars for Jesus element fast enough to avoid becoming a permanent minority and losing any relevance in US politics at the national level.

It only becomes a costly issue when nutters on the fringes start saying stuff the DNC can use to motivate their base. But fortunately you can keep a strong line on no abortions ever and not give them DNC much to use just by sticking to a clear, simple message - we believe life begins at conception and while it is regrettable that a woman may be forced to carry a child to conception we do not believe in murdering the child to avoid that.

Except that's a losing argument. Most people do not agree with it and at least support allowing abortion in the case of rape, and by taking a no-exceptions policy (which is even farther to the right than the republican platform) the republican party is almost guaranteed to lose a lot of votes over it. The moment they make that argument the democrats are going to run ad after ad after ad attacking them with horrible stories of "she was raped and now you want to force her to have the rapist's child" and the republican party ceases to be a relevant part of US politics outside of a few ultra-conservative regions.

Peregrine wrote: but the question is whether the republican party can rebuild without the Liars for Jesus element fast enough to avoid becoming a permanent minority and losing any relevance in US politics at the national level.

I think it'd be very easy to pick up a lot of moderate votes if you stayed fiscally conservative, and socially shut-the-Hell-up.

 azazel the cat wrote:

Peregrine wrote: but the question is whether the republican party can rebuild without the Liars for Jesus element fast enough to avoid becoming a permanent minority and losing any relevance in US politics at the national level.

I think it'd be very easy to pick up a lot of moderate votes if you stayed fiscally conservative, and socially shut-the-Hell-up.

I agree with you 100% brother! 'specially that last part.

 azazel the cat wrote:
I think it'd be very easy to pick up a lot of moderate votes if you stayed fiscally conservative, and socially shut-the-Hell-up.

Well, that depends on how you define "fiscally conservative". If it means "tax cuts for the rich, cut social services for anyone who isn't rich, more tax cuts for the rich, remove all banking laws that might get in the way of making the rich even richer, and did I mention tax cuts for the rich" with candidates like Romney who have no credible claim to understanding the life of the average person, then no, they're not going to pick up many votes. If it means "responsible spending and balanced budgets" without just being empty promises they probably will, but that attitude seems to be a minority in the republican party compared to the Ayn Rand worshipers.

And of course even if they pick up new voters it's very important to ask how fast can they pick them up. It's not very helpful to pick up new voters after 15 years of slowly changing attitudes towards your party, because by then you'll be a permanent minority party fighting desperately against the incumbent advantage (unless the democrats completely screw things up and trash their own popularity for you). If the republican party cuts out the Liars for Jesus then it needs to make up those votes immediately. The fact that it hasn't done so yet suggests that the party leadership is not confident that they can do it.

 whembly wrote:

 azazel the cat wrote:

Peregrine wrote: but the question is whether the republican party can rebuild without the Liars for Jesus element fast enough to avoid becoming a permanent minority and losing any relevance in US politics at the national level.

I think it'd be very easy to pick up a lot of moderate votes if you stayed fiscally conservative, and socially shut-the-Hell-up.

I agree with your 100% brother! 'specially that last part.

This man speak the truth brothers and sisters... praise the lawd, praise jeeaeassus.

Oh right we were trying to get rid of this

 youbedead wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 azazel the cat wrote:

Peregrine wrote: but the question is whether the republican party can rebuild without the Liars for Jesus element fast enough to avoid becoming a permanent minority and losing any relevance in US politics at the national level.

I think it'd be very easy to pick up a lot of moderate votes if you stayed fiscally conservative, and socially shut-the-Hell-up.

I agree with your 100% brother! 'specially that last part.

This man speak the truth brothers and sisters... praise the lawd, praise jeeaeassus.

Oh right we were trying to get rid of this

Heh

ON that note, does anyone know hoe to properly spell the 5 syllable Jesus that televangelists use

Jaysues Cherist I believe, depends on what part of the bible belt they're from.

That would be a good litmus test though, if your jesus has more then two syllables then your not allowed at the convention

 Peregrine wrote:
See previous post with the analogy to murder. It doesn't matter if you can't draw a non-arbitrary line as long as you can be absolutely certain that, wherever the line is eventually drawn, it falls outside the period where the vast majority of abortion occurs. And that's exactly the situation we're in: we can't be sure exactly when a "person" begins to exist, but we know with absolute certainty that the point (or period of time) can not happen before the brain develops and begins to operate.

No, you're still missing the key issue. It isn't that we can't be sure when life begins - this isn't about uncertainty.

It is that there isn't a point where human life begins. At the point of conception there is clearly more of a human there than there was before. A month later there is more of a human there than before. Two years after that and you see a personality developing, and you can have little conversations with them (albeit simple and generally more than a little strange conversations...). Twenty years after that and you can have arguments about abortion with them over the internet.

The point is that life develops over a period of time. Any point we pick, any point, is arbitrary, because there is simply no measure for what human life, and exactly what it is that makes it something worth protecting.

As such, it is very simplistic to say 'conception is when life begins and at that point it is equal to any other life'... but it isn't wrong.

 azazel the cat wrote:
I think it'd be very easy to pick up a lot of moderate votes if you stayed fiscally conservative, and socially shut-the-Hell-up.

I used to think that as well. I'm becoming less certain.

It wasn't just theocratic Republicans who went down faster than a blonde on prom night this cycle. Moderate Republicans like Scott Brown also got their cans kicked. I don't know that becoming stingy Democrats is really going to do anything for Republicans.

Because it's not just several million national votes that disappear when hardcore pro-lifers abandon the party - which they will. It's gakloads of money, organizational support, GOTV drives...the list goes on. Getting rid of the pro-life stance means Republicans aren't winning a national election for decades.

The way forward, as I see it, is to get the theocratic side of the base to realize that they can't have it all. You can be anti-abortion, but you cannot be anti-abortion AND anti-sex education AND ludicrously anti-contraception AND anti-gay adoption. To defend everything is to defend nothing, as Frederick the Great once said.

 Peregrine wrote:
It's a vote winner among certain elements of the party. It remains to be seen whether that's a valid long-term strategy, or whether it costs them more votes than it gains.

Of course it's a net vote winner. Look at the Republican Party in 1980. They hadn't controlled either the house or senate since 1948.

But after a brief and failed coalition with Billy Graham, the Republicans played hard for the votes of social conservatives. Steady gains resulted in winning the senate in 1980 and holding it for 6 six years, and eventually claiming the house in 1994.

By 2000 they controlled both houses and the presidency. From the wilderness to dominance, and on the back of social conservatives, because those folk get out and vote in every single election.

And look at the party now. On the back of economic policies that are both broadly unpopular (reduce taxes on the rich) and utterly failed in practice (Reaganomics, Laffer Curve) they still hold the House, and are not that far from the Presidency. They can have such ridiculous policies and still get almost half the vote, because they have a block of voters that goes out votes for them, election after election.

My guess is that it's a net loss

Your guess is just wrong. Seriously, this isn't debatable thing.

There's plenty of scope to talk about whether such a strategy is moral, or whether it can be tempered to maintain those voters while bringing other groups into the fold, but pretending that as many people get out and vote against Republican social policies as vote for them is just not a thing that can be debated.

Except that's a losing argument. Most people do not agree with it and at least support allowing abortion in the case of rape, and by taking a no-exceptions policy (which is even farther to the right than the republican platform) the republican party is almost guaranteed to lose a lot of votes over it.

You're confusing support with what actually determines a voter's decision. About 75% of Americans agree with abortion in some circumstances, but how many of them vote, and how many of them vote based on who opposes abortion in cases of rape is a whole other issue. Whereas about 25% of Americans believe in no abortion, ever, even in cases of rape. And you better believe a large number of them vote every election, and will vote based largely on abortion.

And then there's the issue of how you package that 'even in cases of rape'. Ultimately, if one opposes abortion then they're doing it because they believe life begins at conception, and it doesn't matter how that happened. Paul Ryan said during the campaign that he didn't believe in abortion even in cases of rape. It's fundamentally the same position that Akins and Mourdoch gave, but Ryan's quote emphasised 'I believe it is a life' and got a hell of a lot less coverage, even though he was a far more important figure in the election. Message control can actually reduce a lot of that negative impact, without changing the message or hurting the evangelical turn out.

 sebster wrote:
The point is that life develops over a period of time. Any point we pick, any point, is arbitrary, because there is simply no measure for what human life, and exactly what it is that makes it something worth protecting.

And, again, it doesn't matter here.

Look, in some cases it simply doesn't matter what standard you pick. Whether you pick a point, or a process, or a range of time, or whatever, in some cases it just doesn't matter. Unless you're including the philosophical equivalent of the crazy homeless guy standing on the corner yelling about mind control rays all of the possibilities come to the same conclusion, so no matter which one turns out to be right it has no effect on the question you're asking. For example:

Everyone agrees that a healthy 30 year old is a "person" and has all the ethical value/rights/etc of one. No matter which definition of "personhood" you pick you still get the same answer.

Everyone also agrees that before conception the cells that will eventually become a person are not yet a "person". Even the "life begins at conception" people agree on this.

Abortion is just another case like that. No matter what secular definition of how and when you get "personhood" you pick, you still come to the same conclusion that a fetus that has not yet developed a brain is not a person. It's just so far outside any possible gray area that your choice of answer can not possibly have any effect on it, just like the hypothetical murder example is so far outside any gray area that your choice between competing ethical theories about killing can not possibly have any effect on it.

The ONLY way to bring the brainless fetus far enough into the gray area to question the rightness of abortion is to invoke a religious element and give it a "soul" that exists even before the brain does.

 azazel the cat wrote:
I think it'd be very easy to pick up a lot of moderate votes if you stayed fiscally conservative, and socially shut-the-Hell-up.

Don't you think, if it was that simple, the Republicans would have just done that? Whenever you have a theory that assumes paid professionals who do something for a living are missing some really simple strategy... odds are your simple strategy doesn't actually work.

The plain and simple reality is they need to make noise on social issues because they are dependant on a large, motivated bloc called the social conservatives, and a failure to say the right things for those people means the Republican candidate is not going to win.

At the same time, it's a massive mistake to assume the Republicans are fiscally conservative. There's a big difference between saying 'balanced budget' and actually doing it.

 Peregrine wrote:
The ONLY way to bring the brainless fetus far enough into the gray area to question the rightness of abortion is to invoke a religious element and give it a "soul" that exists even before the brain does.

I disagree.

It's not a person yet, and I don't believe in souls. It is, nevertheless, human life.

 sebster wrote:
And look at the party now.

Yes, look at the party now, where idiotic social conservatives cost them multiple seats in congress that would have been effortless republican victories if the idiots hadn't won the primaries. Look at the failure to win this election, and the changing society that is making social conservatives weaker, not stronger. The world of 1980 is not the same as the world of 2012, and it looks very much like the power of the religious right has reached its peak and continuing to rely on them is not a winning strategy in the long run.

There's plenty of scope to talk about whether such a strategy is moral, or whether it can be tempered to maintain those voters while bringing other groups into the fold, but pretending that as many people get out and vote against Republican social policies as vote for them is just not a thing that can be debated.

They don't have to get out and vote against republicans, they just have to stay home on election day. And before election day, when they don't donate money, don't campaign for republican candidates, etc. The religious right is only valuable because it has high and universally republican turnout, if you turn them into yet another group of apathetic "I guess he's not as bad as the other guy" they're worthless.

You're confusing support with what actually determines a voter's decision. About 75% of Americans agree with abortion in some circumstances, but how many of them vote, and how many of them vote based on who opposes abortion in cases of rape is a whole other issue. Whereas about 25% of Americans believe in no abortion, ever, even in cases of rape. And you better believe a large number of them vote every election, and will vote based largely on abortion.

Except that we just saw perfectly clearly that "no abortion, ever" is a suicide strategy. The candidates who were most vulnerable to that attack all lost in safe republican districts, and the national leadership would have to be insane to make themselves vulnerable to attacks on that point.

And then there's the issue of how you package that 'even in cases of rape'. Ultimately, if one opposes abortion then they're doing it because they believe life begins at conception, and it doesn't matter how that happened. Paul Ryan said during the campaign that he didn't believe in abortion even in cases of rape. It's fundamentally the same position that Akins and Mourdoch gave, but Ryan's quote emphasised 'I believe it is a life' and got a hell of a lot less coverage, even though he was a far more important figure in the election. Message control can actually reduce a lot of that negative impact, without changing the message or hurting the evangelical turn out.

And last time I checked Romney did pretty badly with women. Can you imagine why?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Seaward wrote:
It's not a person yet, and I don't believe in souls. It is, nevertheless, human life.

On what grounds do you call a blob of meat that doesn't have a brain yet "human life", but (I assume) allow the squishing of cockroaches (with far greater brain development and capacity for suffering) or removal of cancer cells (which are also blobs of human meat with no brain)?

And, to be clear, do you give it "human life" status to the point that you support laws to protect it, or just to the point that you personally would not want an abortion?

 Peregrine wrote:
Abortion is just another case like that. No matter what secular definition of how and when you get "personhood" you pick, you still come to the same conclusion that a fetus that has not yet developed a brain is not a person.

Except that isn't true. Because it isn't 'don't got brain' and 'got brain'. 'Brain' is a developing thing, and isn't fully there twenty fething years after birth. And yet... a fifteen year old isn't any less protected by the laws than a forty year old.

So, like every other standard people invent, we have to realise that 'got brain' is simplistic, and not the whole story of what makes us human.

At which point, we have to let go of our arrogance that we can entirely answer this question. We have to understand that what is human is complex, and varies from person to person. You have to accept that 'genetic uniqueness' is for many people a human. That for some people the idea that, absent interuption, there is a process in place that will produce a person is an answer to what a human is.

You don't have to agree with them. But it is a nonsense to call them wrong.

We're well off the OT now.