Rant: Ron Paul/Rand Paul- 2016 and this previous election.

[Orruar]

Originally Posted by Barkingturtle [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Que?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAOjpWVJ3y8

On the left our stable is overflowing with charismatic folks of all hues.

I think the point he was making is that minorities got out and voted in huge numbers for Obama. If it's back to 2 white guys in 2016, will that continue? I haven't seen numbers on the voter participation rate for minorities in the last few elections, but that would be interesting to see.

[Daldolma]

Originally Posted by Orruar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Disagree. There are a huge number of people on the right that believe in economic liberty, and as a candidate moves more and more towards the center, it becomes harder to believe that candidate when they say they'll govern under economic liberty. Romney lost a lot of votes because people realized he'd govern 80% as a democrat and only throw a few bones to those who believe in liberty. As a Republican moves farther to the left, the contradictions become more and more obvious, and fewer and fewer from the right will vote for them. The general election this year was basically like another democratic primary. Romney may have talked about cutting spending and balancing the budget, but the only program he ever specifically mentioned in regards to cutting was PBS. Hell, his running mate was seen as this extreme conservative, while his budget plan only cut the rate of growth of programs, without cutting any actual spending. With this kind of team, they really only picked up the anti-Obama vote, which is not enough to win.

The core of our disagreement is apparently over how many hardcore fiscal conservatives in swing states have grown so disencouraged that they will not vote. That is an extreme minority in my opinion. Implicit in your argument is the belief that, by getting those conservatives to the polls, and despite any subsequent loss in moderates, a Republican candidate would be able to overcome blowouts amongst Latinos, blacks, and gays. That simply doesn't work anymore. The numbers bear it out.

Unless you expect a Republican candidate to carry 65-70% of the white vote by moving even further right, you're fighting a losing battle. And winning that kind of majority with white people just doesn't happen.

I also disagree that Romney was merely attracting anti-Obama voters. He did extremely well with whites and independents. If you're beginning with a premise of getting thrashed amongst Latinos and blacks, you can't do much better than Romney did.

[MrSparkle001]

Originally Posted by Orruar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I think the point he was making is that minorities got out and voted in huge numbers for Obama. If it's back to 2 white guys in 2016, will that continue? I haven't seen numbers on the voter participation rate for minorities in the last few elections, but that would be interesting to see.

It's fewer than 2008, but Republican turnout and youth were less too. There just wasn't as much enthusiasm this time.

In 2016 the Democrats have to recapture what they had in 2008. How will they? Maybe Hillary? She comes with baggage now though. Who knows.

Originally Posted by Lazortag [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I like how in your world, minorities all have no agency and feel compelled to vote for people who they "identify" with, but white people vote for people whom they share an ideology with (ignoring the fact that less white people voted for Obama than the average democrat, meaning that whether the democrats pick a minority or not is irrelevant). There's a ton of evidence that minorities vote democrat because they agree with their policies (or at least they're revolted by republican policies), including statistics that were already mentioned in this thread, while there's no evidence that they voted for Obama just because they look like him or because they identify with him as a minority. That's seriously very farfetched, and saying it over and over again won't make it true.

Yes they vote Democratic most of the time, but in Obama's case they have reason to go out and vote.

Do you think they would have voted in such numbers if it were two old white guys running? You think they voted en masse for John Kerry, or Al Gore? Nope. They didn't.

Watch this for a fun sample of what it was like in 2008 and I'm sure 2012

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It's just an example and doesn't represent everyone, but I daresay it does represent a good portion.

[Orruar]

Originally Posted by Daldolma [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The core of our disagreement is apparently over how many hardcore fiscal conservatives in swing states have grown so disencouraged that they will not vote. That is an extreme minority in my opinion. Implicit in your argument is the belief that, by getting those conservatives to the polls, and despite any subsequent loss in moderates, a Republican candidate would be able to overcome blowouts amongst Latinos, blacks, and gays. That simply doesn't work anymore. The numbers bear it out.

Unless you expect a Republican candidate to carry 65-70% of the white vote by moving even further right, you're fighting a losing battle. And winning that kind of majority with white people just doesn't happen.

I also disagree that Romney was merely attracting anti-Obama voters. He did extremely well with whites and independents. If you're beginning with a premise of getting thrashed amongst Latinos and blacks, you can't do much better than Romney did.

We've both been making a mistake here which has lead to some confusion and fallacious ideas. We have been using a single axis (left-right) for political thought. This is a common practice, though it is an overly simplified model which does not come close to being useful for political discussion. People don't just place themselves at some point on a line and then look for the candidate who is closest to them. The truth is that people have multiple issues they vote on, and each of these issues can be pictured as its own axis, or dimension. Everyone's multi-dimensional space is different as not only do they have a different set of issues they care about, but they place varying amounts of importance on each one. Thus you could get someone who considers them self as a democrat voting for a Republican and vice versa. For most of my youth, I considered myself as a democrat because I cared most about social liberty. You could say I moved to the right as I became more interested in economic liberty, but the truth is that I really moved out of the left-right axis and now have equal distance to both the dem and repub ideologies.

The dimension I've been mainly focused on here is the "economic liberty" dimension. This is the dimension which I think the republicans need to move to the right on to have any chance. There are many on the left who would be considered on the right side on this dimension. Blue dog democrats, west Texas democrats, there are many examples of this. And on this dimension, the Republicans are being soundly destroyed. It's not because their position is far from the majority of Americans on this, but because their actions do not match their words in this area. Once they let Bush enact the largest expansions to Medicare and the Department of Education (which they had talked about eliminating entirely only 20 years prior), the Republicans lost all credibility on this issue. Their words are on one end of the spectrum and their actions on the other. And remember that Romney was very much the same in this respect. He talked about economic liberty, while his tenure in Massachusetts was wildly different. People tend to remember the things that piss them off about politicians, and so people on the liberty end of this spectrum will remember the statist actions of Bush and Romney and people on the statist end will remember the liberty rhetoric. This disconnect loses a lot of votes. Not only does it lose the votes of those who care greatly about this dimension, but it's also a glaring contradiction that makes the person look like a liar. This hurts the candidate even with those who place little value on this particular dimension.

So I suppose the key is that the Republicans would need to move their actions to match their rhetoric, or vice versa. Currently they are trying to plat both sides, and I think most people see right through it. I wouldn't bet on that changing anytime soon though.

[Autotune]

Originally Posted by purist 4.0 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

no one is gonna read that

[Orruar]

Originally Posted by 5 year old children with no attention span

no one is gonna read that

Did I do that right?

[Black Jesus]

Originally Posted by purist 4.0 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

no one is gonna read that

[Lazortag]

Originally Posted by MrSparkle001 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It's fewer than 2008, but Republican turnout and youth were less too. There just wasn't as much enthusiasm this time.

In 2016 the Democrats have to recapture what they had in 2008. How will they? Maybe Hillary? She comes with baggage now though. Who knows.



Yes they vote Democratic most of the time, but in Obama's case they have reason to go out and vote.

Do you think they would have voted in such numbers if it were two old white guys running? You think they voted en masse for John Kerry, or Al Gore? Nope. They didn't.

I know it's been a week since someone posted in this thread, but I couldn't let this ridiculous post go unanswered.

You keep making these assertions about black voter preferences and voter turnout, but you never back them up with statistics, leaving others to do all the work. Black voter turnout was highest in 2008, but the increase was consistent with increases in previous years (see here: http://www.ssdan.net/sites/default/f...fs/vtbrief.pdf). Different sources give different numbers, but usually the turnout rate of blacks in 2008 is estimated around 65%, while the rate in 2004 is around 60%, with 56% in 2000, and even lower in 1996. The 1992 rate is as high as that of 2000 but the point is that it fluctuates over long periods of time, and in the short-term (the past 16 years) we can see that it's been increasing. Back to your original point: a 5% increase in voter turnout among a group that represents 1/8 of the US population could not possibly swing an election. With what we already know about how people voted in the swing states, what you're saying is mathematically impossible. Moreover, saying that voter turnout went up significantly among blacks because one of the candidates was black, just shows ignorance of basic math. It's also kind of offensive to assume that black people are somehow unique in (sometimes) preferring candidates who share their background, since (a) more white people voted for Romney and McCain than previous GOP candidates (how many times do I have to repeat this?), and (b) only marginally more black people voted for Obama than previous democratic candidates, something which has already been proven in this thread. For further proof that black voters just prefer the democrats and that Obama's skin colour is completely irrelevant, just look at the election where Keith Ellison handily obliterated Chris Fields with over 75% of the vote, even though both candidates were black, and Fields frequently played the race card to try and secure the black vote. Just keep pushing this idea that the democrats will only win if their candidate is a minority, who cares if it doesn't have an ounce of truth to it.