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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Rubio won't be able to sell the GOP to Latino voters unless the party also moderates its immigration platform. They aren't stupid, after all - any more than blacks would vote for a black Republican candidate who wants to end affirmative action.
Edit: I love the Green platform. I'm just afraid that it is too idealistic to sell to the American public at large. If they had a viable chance at the Presidency, I'd vote for them in a heartbeat.
edited 7th Nov '12 6:17:13 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"That's called being socially liberal, Kostya. Which most of us are here, without affiliated with the Libertarians. The libertarians are defined by the specific political policy of "as little government intervention as possible" and also the love of free markets.
Given that Greens are defined as to the left of Democrats, I'm going to say they're at least as socially liberal as the Dems, and probably more so. Again, they have a very socialist platform as regards what they think should be done in society.
The Lib's love of free market clashes directly with what the Greens think need to be done for the good of the environment.
@Triv: Social liberty is is pretty obvious, but people can get confused about what's actual economic liberty and what's just bullshit spewed by rich assholes.
@Kostya: You can either be liberal or conservative on specific issues, not libertarian. Libertarians are a mix, in that they have liberal social views and conservative economic policies, while greens are full on liberal across the board.
@Potatoes: That's somewhat unfortunate, but she's still got my vote for 2016 (unless there's a more liberal/better politician than her running as in the democratic primaries, in which case they've got my vote).
edited 7th Nov '12 6:22:37 PM by Ekuran
The Green Party is way to the left of the Democratic Party on both economics and social issues, as well as on foreign policy. They basically started as Single Issue Wonks for the environment, but have become a generally liberal party.
I, too, love the Green Platform, almost as much as I love the Peace and Freedom Platform.
edited 7th Nov '12 6:20:07 PM by deathpigeon
I can personally attest that the conservative Christians would flock to his banner. Not so sure about the rich corporates. The tea partiers are easy to get, just make a lot of noise about taxes and firearms. And Rubio has the potential to put some cracks in the democrats' stranglehold on minorities as well. Most importantly, he carries weight in Florida, which will as always be key to a GOP win in 2016.
<><No, it's not obvious. The idea of regulating a liberty, for its own good, applies in social issues just as it does in economic issues.
We just had several states legalize marijuana. That's a social liberty. Now imagine if marijuana was unrestricted. That results in people that do not want to use marijuana to have their safety violated. Threat to public safety affects marijuana users themselves too. There needs to be some control over it to make it effective.
Gun control also applies here, though strangely the American right and left are reversed on this.
You can be libertarian across the board. All it means is more individual freedom and less restrictions and regulations. I would say that's a simpler classification than left/right.
edited 7th Nov '12 6:31:43 PM by Trivialis
re: The Fall of the Republican Party.
Jhimmbob spoke with more eloquence and authority than I could have on the subject, but I'll add my two cents.
The left would like to think that there are people out there who don't believe in secure borders, who expect immigrants in this country to legally become citizens, who don't think "Hope and Change" are financial plans, who resent being told they must take the government's healthcare, who think life is precious no matter how young or old it is, who think being Christian doesn't make them racists and misogynists, and who don't think they should be labelled "hate speechers" because they dare to say they don't agree with homosexuality.
They exist. We exist. We're not as few as MSNBC or Jon Stewart would lead you to think. And we're not going away.
Let's be clear, we will not be petty. We will be loyal to the President and support him as much as we can, for he is our President as well. We will be loyal to the new Democratic controlled Senate, for they are are our Senate as well. We will stand with you in fighting climate change, in providing equal rights even to those whose lifestyles we oppose, in providing a fair means for the undocumented residents in this country to become citizens, and in bringing the greedy arrogance of Big Business to heel. Because you're our brothers and sisters and this is our country also.
But, we won't devolve into irrelevance. And we're going to fight for what we believe is best for this country. As will you.
We'll see you in 2016.
It was an honorI agree. The GOP needs to radically change its position on immigration, take on issues like human trafficking and free speech, tell the racists to go jump in a lake, and reassert themselves as the party of traditional values. Economic conservatism and militarism are all fine and good, but those conservatives aren't going to vote for democrats anyway, and they don't live in swing states.
In other words, less pandering to the other parts of their base, and more pandering to my part of it!
The GOP needs to lay off on immigration or they are going to have a hard time down the road. If Texas actually starts coming into play as a swing state that won't be fun at all for them. Bush 43 tried to pull it off but 9/11 and his own party got in the way.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.@Triv: I don't see the point your trying to make. Non-enforced social liberty will almost certainly lead to no social liberty/anarchic bullshit (i.e. no social liberty). I thought this would be obvious to everyone on this thread.
I also said specific issues, not a general ideology like libertarianism.
edited 7th Nov '12 6:36:47 PM by Ekuran
@Starship. It's a nice sentiment, but from what I've seen, you're...not representative of the far-right base, the people who are being pandered to. You're defending the majority, a group of people who view any attempt to live differently than them as some sort of persecution. People who think the gradual loosening of years of historic privilege constitutes oppression. People who put backward, oligarchic, empirically unsound economic policies above what benefits everyone, (some less, and some more, but everyone), not just a select, lucky, few.
I know, from what I've seen of your posts that you're better than that. But the people that the Republican party is currently representing are not. They're not conservatives. They are regressionists. The faster they die out, and are replaced with an honestly conservative party, the better for both of us, and the better for America.
edited 7th Nov '12 6:38:54 PM by DrTentacles
I also said specific issues, not a general ideology like libertarianism.
I'm saying that non-regulated social liberty isn't true social liberty, just as the unrestricted free market capitalism isn't true economic liberty (which everyone in this thread plainly knows).
Have to clear this up because of the bashing getting thrown at free markets here as people talk about "true" economic freedom. Markets are right-leaning and aren't bad.
I think you can be libertarian on each individual issue: just pick position that is most individualistic and non-interventionist.
edited 7th Nov '12 6:39:51 PM by Trivialis
EDIT:
edited 7th Nov '12 6:44:15 PM by RadicalTaoist
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

The Green Party, in short, is economically and socially left. The Libertarian Party is, in short, economically right and socially left. They have as much in common as Stalinist Communism and Fascism. Actually, slightly less, since fascists tend to be centrist, when it comes to economic policies.