[RD] The republican party

[Lohrenswald]

I Amerikas forente stater, selvfølgelig

So there are two things that I ponder a bit about:

Numero uno:
Why do the republican party have such an immortal image of being able to do economic policy well? And conversely, the democratic party not being able to
Like, where does this image come from? What sustains it?

Der zweite Ding:
What's the point of the republican party?
Like, what is it for? On what base was it founded?
I get impressions from american politics that especially the republican party needs to "rebrand itself" to get more votes
But that's rediculous. The point of a party isn't to have an arbitrary group to achieve power, it's to further a political agenda. Whatever "republicanism" is, the thing the party should aspire to isn't to change it to suit the voters, but to convince voters to follow it

Toughts, authorotative answers?

 

[Cutlass]

Republicans don't do economics. But they talk about it a lot.

 

[warpus]

The Republican party can trace its origins to the lost custom of the licking of other patrons at the pub. This used to be a widely accepted practice in the American south before it was discovered that such acts were against the teachings of the Bible.

Re-pub-lick - The re-establishment of the custom of lickings at the pub. It was basically the equivalent of the present day fist-bump. This re-establishment attempt ultimately failed, but the name stuck.

Republickan, it eventually got shortened to Republican, at around the same time colour lost its u in favour of the more logical spelling. They eventually flip-flooped, being the cunning politicians that they are, due to an understanding of party leadership that pub licking was on its way out. The party does now not at all support lickings at the pub, but this fact has been buried a bit by them, since they do not want many people to be aware of their perverted origins and history.

 

[Joecoolyo]

But that's rediculous. The point of a party isn't to have an arbitrary group to achieve power, it's to further a political agenda. Whatever "republicanism" is, the thing the party should aspire to isn't to change it to suit the voters, but to convince voters to follow it

Someone more well versed in party history could probably answer the first parts of your questions, but I can take a stab at this one.

American politics are a bit different, and you have to think about the two major parties (the Democratic party and the Republican party) less as parties and more as coalitions. Each is basically a big tent for their side of the political spectrum, and is made up of smaller sub-groups of politicians with differing views. Would we be in a system (not first past the post) that didn't favor two choices, I would think the sub-elements in each party would break from the larger coalitions and run on their own more specific platforms.

The goal of the coalition that is the Republican (or Democratic) party, therefore, isn't a specific agenda. But rather, it is a tool to help somewhat like-minded people band together and get into power, where they can then pursue their more specific goals. And of course, every now and then support a party wide initiative.

EDIT: The re-branding then comes from the internal tussle between the various groups in the coalition. The Republican Party has been sliding towards the more conservative wing, and more reactionary sub-element within the party. In doing so it has alienated a lot of the "moderate Republicans" or those belonging to groups farther to the left. Therefore, if it wants to stay relevant it needs to moderate its positions and act as a coalition, appealing a wider base of support as opposed to one sub-group over the other.

 

[Tahuti]

The re-branding then comes from the internal tussle between the various groups in the coalition. The Republican Party has been sliding towards the more conservative wing, and more reactionary sub-element within the party.

Are you trying to tell us there are actually 'Republicans' favouring the restoration of the British monarchy in America?

 

[Joecoolyo]

Are you trying to tell us there are actually 'Republicans' favouring the restoration of the British monarchy in America?

Ignoring jokes about executive power, reactionary is relative. The term applying to monarchists in America probably ended a century or so after the revolution. By then, those who supported the monarchists were either dead or Canadian, and republicanism was very much secure.

 

[jackelgull]

Are you trying to tell us there are actually 'Republicans' favouring the restoration of the British monarchy in America?

No, though some of the more extreme ones though want to have senators be selected by state legislators rather than be directly elected on.

 

[Tahuti]

Ignoring jokes about executive power, reactionary is relative. The term applying to monarchists in America probably ended a century or so after the revolution. By then, those who supported the monarchists were either dead or Canadian, and republicanism was very much secure.

Canada should annex the USA then.

No, though some of the more extreme ones though want to have senators be selected by state legislators rather than be directly elected on.

How is that extreme? The senate is supposed to be an elite institution to be sealed off from the hoi polloi who whenever given political power are always fooled in supporting nutcases. Even the supposedly liberal paradise of the Netherlands has an indirectly elected senate.

 

[Zkribbler]

Numero uno:
Why do the republican party have such an immortal image of being able to do economic policy well? And conversely, the democratic party not being able to
Like, where does this image come from? What sustains it?

I'd say two places:
1) Right-wing media. The most popular news outlet in the U.S. is Fox News. Also, in the U.S., there's a nationwide network of talk-media radio stations. Both a notoriously right-wing. Both unabashedly push the right-wing's talking points for the day. So, many many Americans are perpetually drenched in Republican propaganda.
2) Business news: Business news on TV, radio, the internet, etc. take the perspective of big business, i.e. the financial backers of Republicans. Their news stories are about corporate profits, corporate takeovers, IPOs, etc. No stories are about working conditions, stagnant wages, the plight of the ordinary working person.

Der zweite Ding:
What's the point of the republican party?
Like, what is it for? On what base was it founded?
I get impressions from american politics that especially the republican party needs to "rebrand itself" to get more votes
But that's rediculous. The point of a party isn't to have an arbitrary group to achieve power, it's to further a political agenda. Whatever "republicanism" is, the thing the party should aspire to isn't to change it to suit the voters, but to convince voters to follow it.

Any answer to your second question would be misleading. The Republicans were founded as an anti-slavery party, i.e. they were liberals. Over the years, both the Republicans and the Democrats developed conservative and liberal wings. For example, southern Democrats led the opposition to JFK and LBJ's civil rights legislation. Meanwhile, NY Governor Nelson Rockefella was a liberal Republican.

However, Kennedy and Johnson's civil rights laws left southern Democrats disenchanted with the party. This was capitalized first by Nixon in his southern strategy, by which he swept up much electoral support in the South. Later, Reagan began his campaign for the Presidency with a speech in Louisiana in which he championed "states rights," i.e. the rights of the states to have discriminatory laws against blacks. This resulted in a massive migration of conservative southern Democrats to the Republican party.

I think Joecoolyou did a good job describing the difference in political structions between the U.S. The citizens of countries have differing political needs. No faction is strong enough to govern by itself; to govern, one needs a coalition. In places like France and Italy, each faction has a party, and following an election, the various parties get together and form the necessary coalition. In the U.S., the two political parties are the coalitions; members from the varius factions then vote for the party which they believe will serve their faction best.

 

[Zkribbler]

How is that extreme? The senate is supposed to be an elite institution to be sealed off from the hoi polloi who whenever given political power are always fooled in supporting nutcases. Even the supposedly liberal paradise of the Netherlands has an indirectly elected senate.

I don't think having the state legislatures choose senators is an extreme idea. It's just that, when we had it, the selection process degenerated into a cesspit of corruption. Offices were bought.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

For a long time the US operated on "what is good for big business is good for America," neglecting that capitalism contains more than enough inherent forces pushing towards the accumulation of monopolistic power (which destroys the basic capitalism system from which it springs). That growth of big business is what Republican economic policy is all about, so most big media and most big corporate advertising buying money has always backed the Republicans.

In the past couple of decades people have started to recognize that having WalMart put every small retail business OUT of business and such is not necessarily a great leap forward but is representative of the Republican economic policy ideal, so the Republicans have fallen on harder times. Since they show no signs of trying to adapt their policy position they are reduced to getting corporations declared to be people, and no doubt will soon be demanding that they be given the vote.

 

[cybrxkhan]

Just to expand o nwhat the other posters said...

Der zweite Ding:
What's the point of the republican party?
Like, what is it for? On what base was it founded?

The Republican party was originally founded right before the Civil War. Back then, its main issue was that it was mainly an anti-slavery party (ranging from abolitionists to 'moderates' who wanted to stop the US from having more slave states).

I get impressions from american politics that especially the republican party needs to "rebrand itself" to get more votes
But that's rediculous. The point of a party isn't to have an arbitrary group to achieve power, it's to further a political agenda. Whatever "republicanism" is, the thing the party should aspire to isn't to change it to suit the voters, but to convince voters to follow it

Toughts, authorotative answers?

The party isn't about "republicanism" per se. It's just a generic nice sounding name (inspired, I believe, by the Democrat-Republican party of the pre-Civil War era). It is, as others have said, a coalition of different factions and interest groups in American politics. You can see many of these groups on display in the Republican primaries of 2012 and 2016. You have the social conservative/evangelical wing, with guys like Santorum. You have the hawkish Neocons, like Graham (and Bush). Then you have Rubio who came from the Cuban-American community which has historically been strongly Republican (though that is changing with the younger generation). And you also have guys like Romney and Pataki who represent the more moderate, remnants/spiritual successors of the old group of liberal, Rockefeller Republicans who mainly hailed from the northeast. There's plenty more groups, and of course it's possible for a Republican politician to appeal to different groups at once - Huckabee for instance appealed to evangelicals and blue-collar conservatives.

This is also why sometimes things get weird in local elections, for lack of better wording. That is, for example, you might see some pockets of the Rockefeller Republicans in local politics of the Northeast in places like Maine or Massachusetts, even though they're pretty much extinct on the national level. Or, conversely, you still have the conservative southern Democrats here and there whose positions may or may not be more aligned with the GOP but are Democrats nevertheless (these include guys like the late Senator Robert Byrd, President Carter, and the more centrist Bill Clinton and Al Gore).

The reason why people talk about re-branding the GOP is because it is seen as the party of old white dudes. There is good evidence backing this up, showing that the GOP doesn't do as well as the Democrats when it comes to racial minorities (black, Hispanic, Asian, whatever), women, and the young. There of course are some exceptions - Cuban and Vietnamese Americans, unlike many of their Hispanic and Asian brethren, have tended to be strongly Republican due to their strong anti-communist stances, although this is eroding with younger generations (case in point: from personal experience as a Vietnamese-American, if I were to give really, really rough estimates, I'd say people older than my parents lean Republican like 90% of the time; people around my parents' generation and a bit younger are 60/40 in favor of Republicans; and people my generation are 70/30 in favor of Democrats).

As such, the idea is that the GOP needs to appeal more to these groups if it wants to be able to compete well with the Democrats in the future. For instance, in the 2012 Presidential election, around 75% of Hispanic voters supported Obama over Romney, and the only group that voted more than that were Asians who were a few more percentage points in favor of Obama. Hispanics are an increasingly large voting bloc in many parts of the country, which is why people talk about them a lot. However the other groups matter too - Asians are the fastest growing minority, for instance, and women, well, women are about half the population out there. Of course, one must remember that these are hardly monolithic voting blocs. Take Asians for instance - sure, in 2012 they voted way more in favor of Obama than Romney, but this varied greatly within different Asian groups. South Asians (i.e. Indians, Pakistanis, etc.) voted for Obama like 9 to 1 or 8 to 1. Vietnamese meanwhile were only 44% in favor of Obama. Voters also care about different things, coming back to the issue about different factions mentioned earlier - some Hispanics care more about the economic well-being of the country or social welfare more than immigration (even though immigration is an important topic for them); others worry more about social welfare programs and health reform. And so on.

 

[Ajidica]

Why do the republican party have such an immortal image of being able to do economic policy well?

First off, a lot of that image comes from the rhetoric painting the Republican Party as 'spending less', or at least spending money on 'important things', such as making sure we had a military that could go toe to toe with the Soviets without NATO allies.
Secondly, the Democrats (and Eisenhower-style Republicans) during the '50s and '60s really pushed Keynesian economics -both in their rhetoric and practice. However, economics was still mainly a theory driven discipline and really struggled to deal with the 'stagflation'* that set in during the '70s and was exacerbated under Carter due
contemporary economics theory not really knowing how to deal with it. The traditional Keynesian response to rising unemployment was to spend money, but that was causing more inflation than expected which in turn negated much of the benefit of the reduced unemployment.
After Reagan came into office, he and his advisors set about either gutting or reducing the regulations. In some cases the regulations needed to be reworked, some cases the reworking created bad incentives later on, but that is a different subject. (For example, the railroads -especially in the east coast- were being regulated to death. Passenger trains were still run by the railroads in the 70s (as required by federal law) and in the east coast would suck up to around $0.59 for every dollar of revenue the railroads made. That simply wasn't sustainable when coupled with the high land costs (many cities and towns would jack up property taxes on industrial fixtures, knowing full well the railroad couldn't move their classification yards to the next town) and the need for many infrastructure pieces to get a full overhaul.
Because Reagan emphasized a new economic style (and a lot of the Democrat-backed policies, such as housing projects, were turning into a disaster) the narrative that Republicans were better at economics took off. Whether or not Reagan's policies were what brought us out of stagflation is a debate in and of itself. (I lean toward the opinion that at best his policies allowed the fundamentals laid down by Carter, Nixon, and LBJ to come to fruition.)

Economic history really isn't my thing, especially when we move outside of Europe (which is odd, given I'm American, but hey) so I might have missed a few things. But before Reagan the leadership of both political parties (with a few exceptions such as Barry Goldwater) were Keynesian through and through (IIRC, Nixon said at one point "We're all Keynesian now") so the difference originated in how the parties fiddled with fiscal policies. A horribly simplified version is that the Democrats generally preferred to work through projects, whether housing or social; whereas the Republicans largely worked through the tax code.

Republicans don't do economics. But they talk about it a lot.

Well, the GOP does do economics, just too many of their politicians and leaders fell asleep during econ 201 where you learn about just how many things were simplified in econ 101.

 

[Hygro]

well played Lohrenswald. You're right. It's become a party that seeks power for the sake of it, stuck with the constituents it has.

However, economics was still mainly a theory driven discipline and really struggled to deal with the 'stagflation'* that set in during the '70s and was exacerbated under Carter due contemporary economics theory not really knowing how to deal with it. The traditional Keynesian response to rising unemployment was to spend money, but that was causing more inflation than expected which in turn negated much of the benefit of the reduced unemployment.

The inflation that was driven by fiscal/monetary policy was a political problem. The expansionary policies in the face of supply-driven unemployment was the correct choice in the face of bad options. The weaklings who surrendered to Volckerism, Reaganism, and the general anti 70s reactionist response are responsible for letting the other side control the narrative. Keynesian economics worked fine the entire 70s. The political opposition exploited the situation very well.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Republicans don't do economics. But they talk about it a lot.

Basically this. The concept of limiting government involvement to its most core capabilities, keeping taxation and spending low, and allocating funds primarily to services that aren't feasible for the private sector to provide reliably is sound. Spending beyond that can and should be evidence based (I suspect a number of social programs have merit from an economic standpoint, but are horribly managed in practice right now).

But I can't think of a single moment in my lifetime where the Republican party has actually conformed to that, and worse it attaches itself to social positions that vex me. Meanwhile, the Democratic party is okay continually funneling money into programs where people have no functional incentive handle it properly and racking up more debt in the process of accomplishing less with more...an unfortunate feature it shares with its opposing party.

Neither of them have delivered in practice, and I see no reason to believe either will do so in the future, because they don't have to do it. It's hard just to get decent information on the day to day operations of a given place, not to mention the decision process that went into an elected official's choices...yet they technically make immense amounts of these choices with minimal public understanding of their consequences.

Republicans talk about economics but they don't practice anything you'd learn about it. What they really do is pander a bit more to corporate interests (both parties do this, albeit to different interests and republicans more so) while advertising it as good for the economy. When it comes to operating the daily actions at each tier of governance, and assertion by the republican party that it's adhering to economic principles with the interest of everyone in the country at heart is a farce.

 

[Hygro]

racking up more debt in the process

we got one!

Pray tell, why is this a problem?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

we got one!

Pray tell, why is this a problem?

Can't spend more than you make forever. Generally speaking, you want debt to be used on sound investments.

It's hard to find merit in the extent of it over the past decade and a half though.

 

[Hygro]

Can't spend more than you make forever. Generally speaking, you want debt to be used on sound investments.

It's hard to find merit in the extent of it over the past decade and a half though.

Spending more than we make would show up as [size](demand-side)[/size] inflation. We don't see inflation, though....

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Spending more than we make would show up as [size](demand-side)[/size] inflation. We don't see inflation, though....

If you're going to school me, do it properly.

I don't have enough attachment to either party to care if you want to put one up in flames, though it's useful to note that both of them have had a nice turn at this particular practice.

 

[Hygro]

If you're going to school me, do it properly.

I don't have enough attachment to either party to care if you want to put one up in flames, though it's useful to note that both of them have had a nice turn at this particular practice.

Yeah, they both do. That both parties (unwittingly) lie about it hurts us.

Basically the word "debt" is misleading in the context of national debt. Treasuries are printed dollars very similar to the cash in your wallet. Just like you own the cash in your wallet, people who own the treasuries already own that money. When that money gets turned into money-money later, the government does so by unprinting the bond and re-printing the money-money that the bond was originally swapped for.

Btw the cash in your pocket is called a "debt-instrument" of the United States. In other words, that money you own is debt. Clearly, not in the bank-loan/credit card/gave money to a friend senses. National debt is actually technical jargon.

To put it differently, in the sequence:

• We have a money economy.
• All the goods and services need to be represented with money.
• A growing economy means a demand for more money (recessions are usually a money shortage, not a real-economy shortage).
• We get new money two ways: bank loans/valuations and deficit spending.
• The money government gets to spend comes from the spending, not the taxing
• We choose, somewhat arbitrarily, to offset newly printed money-dollars with newly printed bond-dollars, 1 for 1.
• This means the total amount of dollars people own changes either way
• The government doesn't "owe" anyone the money in the sense we think of it. The money is paid out. The "debt" part really just means they will honor what that currency means.
• Uncle Sam can never run out of money.
• Taxes uncreate the money

So we're not borrowing to spend. We're just spending new money in that finances the growth of the economy without needing banks to do it.