Who Owns The Republican Party?

Discussion in 'Politics' started by joepistole, Apr 17, 2016.

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Who should own the Republican Party?

  1. An elite few

    3 vote(s)
    100.0%
  2. All registered Republicans

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  3. Others

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  1. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    I listened to a bit of the Rush Limbaugh radio show today, and frankly I was astounded. I found a bit of honesty in a very unlikely place, the Rush Limbaugh show. During his show he explained to his audience that the Republican Party is and always has been controlled by a few elite folks. It's their party and they won't give it up, and that's why they are pushing the anybody but Trump movement.

    So I thought it interesting, who owns the Republican Party? Limbaugh believes a few elites own the Republican Party. So they have the right to make the rules and to change the rules as they see fit to preserve and protect their power. I believe Limbaugh is correct. Do you agree also?

    Who should own the Republican Party? It is a private party. It makes its own rules. It isn't a democracy. It isn't egalitarian. So who should own the Republican Party, the elite few as Limbaugh contends is the case or the rank and file? The Republican rank and file has long been laboring under the false impression the Republican Party was their party...that they owned the party.
     
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  3. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    It's a difficult "ownership" principle, but insofar as we might consider its context the hard part here is a question of civic service versus civic leadership. To the one, it is easy enough to suggest that, say, stopping Trump is a matter of civic leadership that the GOP elites owe the community. To the other, they've undermined a good deal of their civic leadership credibility by giving over to these bigoted buffoons for decades. In the one, it isn't really a question of ownership; in the other, it is. Republicans have made a lot of bad promises, and perhaps the question of who owns the Party comes down to a consideration of just how much room the politicians have left to maneuver before they have to stop and admit those bad promises were and are never going to come true.

    If we apply a shareholder notion, we might remind it is not a good thing to get caught lying to investors.
     
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  5. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Well, that's their problem in a nutshell. They have been lying to their shareholders and now they have a Trump to challenge their ownership and control. The peasants have taken up their pitchforks. I don't see how this ends well for Republicans.

    What we are seeing is a brief and limited moment of honesty in the Republican Party, the party isn't democratic. It is ruled and, in the minds of many, owned by the party elites. Control of the Republican Party is vested in a few individuals and they will fight to retain that control even if it means losing the election and electing a Democrat.
     
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  7. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    As I summarize of Freud: If you let them talk long enough, they eventually tell you the truth.
     
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  8. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    8,466
    curious poll
    Who should own the Republican Party?
    and
    The 2 respondents(100%) checked "an elite few"

    curiouser and curiouser
     
  9. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    11,888
    Here are the 'elite few' who own (actually run) the Republican party. Their job is to get republicans elected to office, so they do what they see fit to get a republican elected. Of course if they piss off enough republican base and lose elections they will have kind of shot themselves in the foot.

    I believe most of the RNC leadership are really concerned about how to handle the Trump situation and the convention. They probably hope Trump gets enough delegates so there won't be a contested convention and then after they lose in November they can just go on with lamenting how horrible life is with a democrate in the Whitehouse and try to regroup for the following election.
     
  10. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    8,828
    Maybe this is a movement to make a claim to the party. Strange days ahead.
     
  11. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    22,910
    I don't think those in the "elite few" list are party owners. I think they are more like party managers. The real power in the Republican Party lies with those who pay its bills and fund its enterprises. I'm sure Republican officials are very concerned about the Trump problem. But I don't think they want Trump to get enough delegates to avoid a contested convention. In fact, I think they are praying for a contested convention. It's the only way they can rid themselves of Trump and their "Trump problem". If Trump wins the nomination, Trump isn't beholding to the party's financiers and existing power structures and that's a direct threat to those who control the party. Trump's a rogue. If Trump wins the nomination, Trump could make serious changes to the party which could last for generations. That's a serious existential threat to the party leadership. That's kind of the whole point of the "Anybody But Trump" movement. That's why party leaders are pushing a deeply flawed Canadian Ted. Republican Party leaders are pinning all their hopes on a contested convention.

    But if Republican leaders (i.e. financiers) are able to successfully deny Trump the party nomination, there will be severe and adverse consequences for the Republican Party. The party could very well be split into two. Trump may form a new party to rival and supplant the Republican Party. But that's is a price Republican Party leaders (e.g.Koch brothers) are willing to pay in order to maintain control of the party. For them the possibility of some control over a deeply wounded party is better than no control.
     
    Last edited: Apr 21, 2016
  12. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    11,888
    Excellent point! I should have followed the simple axiom "follow the money".
     
  13. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Nixon brought the bigots and fundies into the Party in the first place to win elections. They used to be mostly Democrats, and the Republicans were looking at going 0 for eternity in national elections as soon as blacks and browns got the vote (late 1960s) - that would be the entire lower 2/3 of the economy voting Democratic, with disastrous consequences to the prospects of rolling back the New Deal.

    That hasn't changed. If the Party of Ebenezer Scrooge, Mitt Romney, and Thurston Howell III, ever wants to win a national election, they will have to keep the bigots and fundies on board. Look- it's not like they ever respected those people anyway. They know what banana republic politics is like, and a banana republic is what they want.

    Besides: Trump is a perfectly good Republican - other than the vulgarity of his expression there's nothing particularly wrong with anything he says, from a modern Republican point of view. He's a guy who can work with both sides, has the common touch, but knows how to listen to money. They just need him to tone down the rhetoric a bit.
     
  14. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,884
    Notes on a Notion

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    BYOC: Click to distract.

    It's not the strongest poll.

    But we might consider a couple aspects―

    (1) Republic and Democracy ― I have some affection for Bill Maher's explanation, reflecting on how raw democracy rendered California ungovernable under a ballot initiative scheme that broke the state's finances. The Republic was set up as a republic, and not a democracy, specifically because the Founding Fathers knew better; Maher's punch line suggests that left to direct democracy, Americans would vote for "free beer, no taxes, and vagina trees". More realistic examples are the use of the ballot box as a weapon, such as we've seen in the Gay Fray. Consider that the Trump Year pretty much coincides with a generation of voters coming of age having spent their whole lives hearing complaints about judicial activism and subversion of democracy. I'm using a particular marker, Romer v. Evans, which conservatives are still not over; Colorado voters passed a law to ostracize homosexuals, and the Court said the Constitution forbids using the ballot box like that. Yes, it's been twenty-three years since the first preliminary injunction against Colorado Amendment 2. Conservatives have focused a lot of effort on these sorts of things, pushing provocative policies that will not withstand constitutional scrutiny and complaining about the denigration of democracy because the Constitution says they can't have what they want. Indeed, this is part of the frustration driving the Trump movement. Women, homosexuals, the transgender, Hispanics, Muslims―we're not having a pogrom, and these voters are pissed about that.

    (2) Party and Organization ― In the U.S., we elect certain public officials. Okay, that's a duh statement, of course, but the thing is that elections are competitions. They are not, ultimately, individual competitions between specific candidates, because the candidates need teams to help in the fight. And somewhere between the duh of the abstract proposition that we might somehow actually be able to legislate that our elections are individual competitions with no teams to help the candidates, and the duh of wondering about the psychological and societal health of the "permanent campaign" is an inchoate answer. Something goes here about the question of whether or not the Party committees are organizing with heavy hands, and perhaps we might get away with calling that question more realistic. In order to organize, there must necessarily be some manner of functional hierarchy. Whether warfare or sports or commerce, what happens if everyone in the "organization" is making decisions independently? Try business, and imagine not simply the departments themselves, but every individual in Advertising, Marketing, and Public Relations, is doing and saying whatever according to their inclination in the moment. Would it be an understatement to suggest that Legal would ask them to please stop? Imagine a Super Bowl in which every player called his own play.​

    ―and recognize that "an elite few" is probably closer to the practical necessity. That is, it's not a great answer, but the alternatives are either demonstratively ("all registered Republicans") or discouragingly ("others") impractical. ("Discouraging"? Okay, what others? How does that work? It is essentially an invititation and necessary demand to outline a replacement structure, at which point I can't tell you whether the question of what constitutes a "few" is an obvious or occulted question; it seems important, though, if one intends to split the difference.

    A third point about the difference 'twixt public service and civic leadership also applies, and should we suggest that the two need not be so different, well, 'tis at once a simple point and a complex, difficult explanation. Nonetheless, provocative ballot measures and legislation, as well as naked rhetorical appeals to supremacism, have driven conservative politics for a long, long time. Party leaders have increasingly relied on bigotry to rally passions and call support. Disguised as public service, the humble submission of a politician to the voters' will, the Republican course has too often lacked any reasonable or functional context of civic leadership.

    If everybody jumped off a bridge? How about if your voters want vigilantism in the streets? Morality police? Supremacism as equality? Republcians have chosen to exploit those regressive passions instead of cultivate conservative progress; the Trump phenomenon and concomitant leadership ("ownership") crisis in the Party is pretty much inevitable.

    There is a time when the leaders must look at the people and say, "No". Republicans not only failed to do this, but also demonized this aspect of civic leadership. If what we're witnessing in the Republican Party was simply their own much-deserved mess, that would be one thing. But this also has serious potential implications for everyone else.

    Which in turn, I suppose, says a thing or three about the terminology in the discourse. It is reflective of both need and outcome, but words like "elite" and "establishment" are loaded with distrust. On the Democratic side we have this weird issue going on in which the dispute over the Establishment includes in that disdain millions of voters over the years who have calculated the political bargains they make when they vote. Voter responsibility is a complex issue, the current Democratic questions regarding the Establishment serve it none. But there has long been a need that someone, somewhere in the Republican organization, with enough influence should stand up and tell their rabid bigot wing, "No"°. Such an action, however, is inherently subject to complaints of elitism; if it is successful, it becomes part of the Establishment.

    But, yes, these notions do occur to me. Depending on how we define a few, perhaps we might replace "elite" with "sane", and hope for the best.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    ° Interestingly, this might actually be starting, with Republican governors in South Dakota and Georgia saying no to bathroom bills. Unlike Gov. McRory (R-NC), Govs. Dugaard (R-SD) and Deal (R-GA) didn't need an actual demonstration of what happens when one says yes to stupidity and bigotry. We might also recall former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R), who vetoed SB 1062, an anti-gay bill. She faced a term limit, so we don't know how the veto would have affected her standing among Arizona conservatives in the 2014 election, but we might also note that between Republicans and the business community, there is now an open and apparently effective question of when to say no to stupidity and bigotry. Oh, yeah, there was also the time the Republican-led Louisiana legislature watched what happened in Indiana and decided a religious freedom bill empowering anti-gay discrimination just wasn't a good idea for the Pelican State. Then again, former Gov. Bobby Jindal's attempt to implement the bill as an executive order probably isn't the reason voters elected a Democrat to replace him.
     
  15. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Best be careful about who has been disdained, and who has been making the better calculations.

    Remember the part about everybody jumping off a bridge? Notice the prevalence of "both sides" rhetoric, and who is employing it. Consider the prospects of an approach in which agreeing to jump half way off a bridge is considered an adult, mature, realistic compromise.

    Because this is delusional:
    Reality check: the Republican Party is a "rabid bigot wing". That is the Party. It doesn't have a "bigot wing", it has a voting base. The way one obtains influence in the Republican Party is by getting elected or supporting those who do, which means telling the voting base "Yes". Telling them "No" would then be not elitist but betrayal, going back on one's promises.

    It doesn't matter what the Republican Party needs. The American political establishment needs someone who will stand up and tell its rabid bigot wing - the Republican Party - "No". And yes, they will be immediately labeled "elitist". We should live so long as to see them become "establishment".
     
    Last edited: Apr 22, 2016
  16. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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