It’s time, once again, for an anarchist to explain politics. This time around I find myself having to explain the fact that the Republican Party is solely responsible for its own failures. For being a party that claims to advocate personal responsibility, the Republican Party and its supporters spend a lot of time blaming others for their failures. Articles like this have been circulating the web since last night. Through various methods of twisting logic the Republicans are trying to blame the libertarians for the Democrats’ victory in Virgina. The linked article points out that the Libertarian Political Action Committee admitted that it probably wouldn’t have gotten the Libertarian Party candidate on the ballot if it wasn’t for a donation from a large Democratic Party supporter. This excuse misses an important point: the Republican candidate failed to gain enough support from libertarians to convince them to vote for him.
Since the concept seems alien to some let me explain how ballots work. A ballot has a list of names. You make a mark next to the name of the candidate you want to win or the candidate who has the best chance against the one you want to lose. Pretty simple, isn’t it? This brings us to the next point. If you want to win an election you have to convince people to put a mark next to your name. There are many ways to do this. Most candidates promise voters free shit or promise to take previously given free shit away from people. Those aren’t the only methods though. People can be convinced to vote for a charismatic candidate or, in rare cases, a candidate who practices what he preaches.
The point is, Republicans have failed to provide a candidate that can successfully do any of these. It’s as simple as that. For some reason the Republican Party has decided to run candidates that say really stupid shit, attempt to appeal to the middle by holding no principled positions, and attempt to appeal to the religious zealots by beating the social issues drum. I think the continuous defeats of Republican Party candidates speaks for the stupidity of these tactics.
If the Republican Party wants to win elections is needs to do one thing: stop sucking. That’s it. If it fields candidates that people actually like then it won’t matter who the Libertarian Party puts forward. Most people who vote for Libertarian Party candidates know that that candidate isn’t going to win. But those voters hate both the Republican and Democratic candidate so much that they’re willing to cast a vote for a person who they know won’t win. And it’s not a case that a person who votes Libertarian would have otherwise voted Republican. Since the Libertarian Party is, effectively, a party that is fiscally conservative and socially liberal it appeals to people on both sides of the aisle. That means many people who vote for the Libertarian candidate may have voted for the Democratic candidate if the Libertarian Party didn’t get on the ballot.
For those of you blaming the Libertarian Party for the failures of the Republican Party I have this to say: pull your heads out of your asses and stop trying to lay the blame on somebody else. If the Republican Party didn’t fuck up so much people may actually support it.
I only take exception with the religious zealot thing. The problem is the GOP’s message is often delivered by the Democrats.
If I were to constantly repeat that you enjoy molesting small, woodland creatures every time I’m on TV, talking to people, speaking, etc, eventually a good chunk of the country is going to buy into the ‘fact’ you diddle chipmunks.
The Democrats make it sound like the GOP is all about forcin’ Jesus into your house and preventing the gays from having fun. They’re the ones who bring it up over and over and over.
So now, the Republican has to waste time fighting false charges or ignore it, which then people claim “Well, he’s not DENYING it so he must support it!”.
A good example is Palin. She was vocal about her religion, but I saw nothing in her tenure as governor that ever indicated that she needed to push religion in as law (she even signed a law allowing benefits to SSM). But she was railroaded as a Jesus freak who’d have lesbians’ uterii welded shut.
Still, your line about the GOP being all about personal responsibility is quote-worthy to the nth degree as is the rest of the article.
When I discuss religious zealotry I’m primarily focusing on candidates like Todd Akins. He has taking his deep religious belief, which I have nothing against, to make rather absurd arguments. The most famous one was his claim that women seldom become pregnant from “legitimate” rape. As far as I can tell he made that argument solely to dodge his pro-life stance. Instead of abiding by the common teachings of Christianity to justify his pro-life stance (a stance I have nothing against) he decided to go with the “This is right because I believe it is” argument. While such antics may appeal to the most zealous of believers it reflects poorly on everybody else, including a vast majority of Christians.
There are several candidates who achieved Republican Party endorsements who hold this beliefs and the party seems willing to support or at least not move against them with any tenacity. While it’s free to do so such inaction reflects poorly in the public’s eyes.
That strategy works very well because, from what I’ve seen, the Republican Party’s counterarguments are never very good.
I have seen many instances, especially at a local level in rural Minnesota, of Republican candidates giving the Democratic Party plenty of ammunition for this very strategy. Part of the problem, I think, is that the Republican candidates are poor representations of their religious beliefs and come off sounds unintelligent when explaining them to justify a political stance. A little time reading the works of great theologians would give them the knowledge necessary to justify their positions while sounding very intelligent at the same time, which would make the Democratic Party’s strategy far less effective.
I do agree that the Republican Party ends up wasting a lot of time countering false charges but those charges have to be countered regardless. Countering them with intelligent responses would help put the issue to bed and potentially make the Democratic Party rely on a different strategy.
Part of the image problem I see with Republican candidates is that they come off sounding, to put it nicely, unintelligent. In many cases they are extremely intelligent individuals but are poor at orating their knowledge. One thing the Democratic Party does well is train its candidates in public relations. Even Democratic Party candidates that are pure Marxists are usually smart enough, or trained well enough, to come off as a reasonable human being willing to work with people. Republican candidates have had less success in this endeavor and may want to consider putting more effort into improving.
Understood. Thanks for the clarification.
As it is, the people the GOP needs to deliver their message (i.e. the people who are the ones who truly believe in smaller government, self reliance, etc) are too busy working real jobs to do so. Instead, they send in people who are politicians.
This is why the Dem’s message isn’t a problem…