Time for a GOP Northern Strategy

[soniquemd21921]

I think the party needs to pursue some sort of strategy to win back it's old territory again in the near future: namely by appealing to white New England voters and assuring them that the GOP was born
in this region and was the strongest in this region, that the "Family Values" voters don't at all reflect classic GOP values, and also trying to moderate on social issues. And if it means alienating evangelicals to the point of leaving the GOP and forming a new party, so be it.

The evangelicals have destroyed everything the party has stood for (I actually consider the second half of the Bush administration to be hands down the GOP's worst period - far worse than the New Deal era or Watergate).

[Frodo]

Isn't this 'Northern Strategy' already in effect in the Midwest? 

[Mechaman]

I think the party needs to pursue some sort of strategy to win back it's old territory again in the near future: namely by appealing to white New England voters and assuring them that the GOP was born
in this region and was the strongest in this region, that the "Family Values" voters don't at all reflect classic GOP values, and also trying to moderate on social issues. And if it means alienating evangelicals to the point of leaving the GOP and forming a new party, so be it.

The evangelicals have destroyed everything the party has stood for (I actually consider the second half of the Bush administration to be hands down the GOP's worst period - far worse than the New Deal era or Watergate).

Got some bad news for you: It's not going to happen.
(I'll let Yankee tell you why)

[DC Al Fine]

The problem is, love em or hate em, the evangelicals are probably the safest voting bloc the GOP has. Abandoning them would be like the Dems throwing blacks or under the bus.

Consider this graph.



White protestants voted 70% GOP in 2012, while whites in general voted 60% GOP. Given that some whites will never vote GOP, (Just like some blacks and Hispanics will never vote Democrat), there isn't that much of the white vote left to pick up.

Following a "northern strategy" as you describe it would be risking a large, loyal voting bloc for relatively little gain.

[soniquemd21921]

Protestants have always been the voting core of the party, but it was mainstream Protestants in northern states, not evangelicals and southern Baptists. And Congregationalists (UCC) were the safest GOP voting bloc until the 1960's (Landon got 78 percent of the vote of Congregationalists, Eisenhower got about 82 percent).

[Blackacre]

GOP northern strategy: New Hampshire. That's the only one they can get that they haven't already

[Frodo]

Okay -I take we are not counting the Midwest as part of the 'North' anymore.

Duly noted...   

[soniquemd21921]

The Upper Midwest is the North as well. I mainly meant places like upstate New York, suburban Pennsylvania, Maine and especially Vermont.

[Frodo]

The Upper Midwest is the North as well. I mainly meant places like upstate New York, suburban Pennsylvania, Maine and especially Vermont.

Then it should have been entitled,'Time for a GOP Northeastern Strategy'.  

[memphis]

It's gotten to the point now where the evangelicals are sufficiently GOP that there's no longer any reason to appeal to them. You think they are going vote Dem?  And I think the Republicans get that. Except of course in strongly gerrymander districts where the real race is the primary, but that's a different ball of wax. Trouble is, having walked back the Jesus schtick, they don't stand for anything anymore beyond opposition to Obama and taxes. They need to be for something. And they also need a makeover in style. Grumpy Old Men is so 1990s.

[soniquemd21921]

It does seem like the "Family Values" well has been run dry, having reached its peak during what I personally call the 'Teri Schiavo/Tom DeLay/Mark Foley Era' (for obvious reasons). But while I doubt rural New England and upstate New York are ever going to revert to pre-Goldwater GOP percentages again or even Nixon-Ford-Reagan era levels, I'd like to see a return to 2000/2004 voting levels again, i.e. 40%-42% of the vote in Vermont rather than 31%, and 45-50% in Maine rather than 37-40%.

I actually expected Romney to do 5-7 points better in the Northeast than McCain had because it's been 4 years since Bush, so I was somewhat surprised that the swing towards Romney was only 1-2 points across the region.

[Del Tachi]

The GOP needs to be the party of the Sunbelt, not the Rust Belt.  They can do this by starting to appeal to the well-educated, wealthier areas of the South like NoVa, the Research Triangle, the I-35 Corridor, and Silicon Valley.  How do we do this?  Drop all this Tea Party/Libertarian and crap and go back to want the vast majority of middle class, White Americans want but don't know it:  authoritarian neoconservatism with a technocratic twist.    

#SouthernStrategy2.0

[sg0508]

The problem is, the perception of the candidates the GOP runs (i.e. Angle, O'Donnell, Akin, etc) really damages them, particularly with minorities and progressives.  It's not going to work.

What is the party complaining about though? They got what they want.  They isolated themselves into the party that it is and now it almost can't win.

[soniquemd21921]

It's pointless trying to appeal to secular transplants in New England, but what about New England Protestants such as Congregationalists? In 50 years, they've gone from being the most Republican of any mainline denomination to the least.

[memphis]

The GOP needs to be the party of the Sunbelt, not the Rust Belt.  They can do this by starting to appeal to the well-educated, wealthier areas of the South like NoVa, the Research Triangle, the I-35 Corridor, and Silicon Valley.  How do we do this?  Drop all this Tea Party/Libertarian and crap and go back to want the vast majority of middle class, White Americans want but don't know it:  authoritarian neoconservatism with a technocratic twist.    

#SouthernStrategy2.0

NoVa and the Research Triangle are heavily dependent on federal dollars. Even if they can rebrand and get people to forget their Elmer Gantry schtick, how does the party of cutting government appeal to these folks? By I-35, I guess you mean Texas? The GOP is already doing fine down there. As for Silicon Valley, it's a highly creative and innovative sort of place. Lots of diversity too. Meanwhile, Republicans are so damn stuffy and crusty, and CA is such a lost cause for the GOP anyway. What they really need is Pennsylvania. Those all white suburbs in Bucks County looks like as good a place as any to try to work some magic.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It's pointless trying to appeal to secular transplants in New England, but what about New England Protestants such as Congregationalists? In 50 years, they've gone from being the most Republican of any mainline denomination to the least.

The nature of Congregationalism as a faith tradition has changed quite a lot in that period.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

I think the party needs to pursue some sort of strategy to win back it's old territory again in the near future: namely by appealing to white New England voters and assuring them that the GOP was born
in this region and was the strongest in this region, that the "Family Values" voters don't at all reflect classic GOP values, and also trying to moderate on social issues. And if it means alienating evangelicals to the point of leaving the GOP and forming a new party, so be it.

The evangelicals have destroyed everything the party has stood for (I actually consider the second half of the Bush administration to be hands down the GOP's worst period - far worse than the New Deal era or Watergate).

I don't think we need to moderate on social issues, but we need to de-emphasize social issues in our campaigns in blue-leaning areas.  However, I do think that message may be of benefit when trying to win Latino votes.  It would seem to me that New Englanders would be a perfect fit for the GOP even today; most of them are extremely independent-minded and fiscally conservative.  But we've alienated them on social issues so much that they are afraid to vote for any candidate with an R next to his/her name (that is, unless it's a media mistake and they put an R next to a Democrat's name on TV ).
As you may know, a Republican resurgence in New England (and the north as a whole) would literally be my dream come true, and it's part of why I'm planning on becoming a campaign strategist and media consultant for the GOP (to help win back that old territory).

[Oldiesfreak1854]

The Upper Midwest is the North as well. I mainly meant places like upstate New York, suburban Pennsylvania, Maine and especially Vermont.

They need to do it in the Upper Midwest as well.  Not far from where I live is Oakland County, Michigan, which was a Republican-leaning county up until the early 90s, when voters started picking Dems over social issues.  This has hurt the GOP's statewide chances in a key swing state like Michigan.  Likewise, Illinois was a swing state up until the early 90s, when the suburbanites in Chicago started voting Dem (also over social issues) and never looked back.  We need a strategy for both the Northeast and the Upper Midwest.  And I'm from the Upper Midwest, so I am looking forward to working to win those places back.  Anybody want to sing the "Battle Cry of Freedom" with me?

[TJ in Oregon]

The upper Midwest makes/made sense from the perspective that minorities won't vote for a Republican anyway so we may as well not waste our time (this isn't necessarily true for Hispanics but this strategy yielded that result) because swing states like Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota (if that counts as a swing state) have very high white percentages of the population.

Other than making an attempt for Hispanic votes, I don't think there's a magic bullet here. The Republicans actually going after the evangelicals would destroy the party because it doesn't make sense for the GOP to launch a huge attack on the just about the only people who still vote for them. We do need to find better spokesmen of our message and make an effort to find better candidates not just "true conservative" a.k.a. whatever-we're-pushing-at-the-moment. Not a majority, but certainly some white secularists are willing to vote for the GOP if our politicians make more sense than the Democrats and talk about something other than Jesus every once in a while. We need to start asking ourselves exactly who are we convincing by saying whatever we are.

[Del Tachi]

The GOP needs to be the party of the Sunbelt, not the Rust Belt.  They can do this by starting to appeal to the well-educated, wealthier areas of the South like NoVa, the Research Triangle, the I-35 Corridor, and Silicon Valley.  How do we do this?  Drop all this Tea Party/Libertarian and crap and go back to want the vast majority of middle class, White Americans want but don't know it:  authoritarian neoconservatism with a technocratic twist.    

#SouthernStrategy2.0

NoVa and the Research Triangle are heavily dependent on federal dollars. Even if they can rebrand and get people to forget their Elmer Gantry schtick, how does the party of cutting government appeal to these folks? By I-35, I guess you mean Texas? The GOP is already doing fine down there. As for Silicon Valley, it's a highly creative and innovative sort of place. Lots of diversity too. Meanwhile, Republicans are so damn stuffy and crusty, and CA is such a lost cause for the GOP anyway. What they really need is Pennsylvania. Those all white suburbs in Bucks County looks like as good a place as any to try to work some magic.

Exactly, NoVA and the Research Triangle love to get money for their pet projects/contractors from Uncle Sam.  Unfortunately, in the ongoing budget debates Republicans have been going after a Trojan horse:  discretionary spending, which is exactly the kind of spending that places like NoVa depend on.  Republicans can trade earmark bans and discretionary spending freezes for sensible, middle-of-the-road entitlement reform that could be supported by >70% of the electorate if they found the right spokespeople.  I think that this kind of economic philosophy, one where the government plays an important role in research, technology, transportation, etc., while pursuing long-term reforms to help balance the budget is better for our economy and more electorally viable. 

So, basically the GOP would need to:

1) Drop the anti-discretionary spending mumbo-jumbo for real, sensible entitlement reform.
2) Adopt the economic policy that it was known for in the 1950s:  support for technology, science, and infrastructure by supporting research initiatives, especially at universities.  This should help a lot with the Asian vote as well as in places like the Research Triangle and Silicon Valley. 
3) De-emphasize social conservatism in their campaigns, without necessarily becoming more liberal or even libertarian.  They need to keep their social conservatism in order to not lose any more appeal to Hispanic voters.         
4) Steal some plays from the British Conservatives' playbook and become the "law and order" party to a larger extent then they are now.  This plays well in the suburbs, which is where elections will be won for at least the next 40 years.
5) Find better spokespeople.  This goes without saying.   

[soniquemd21921]

San Mateo, Santa Clara and even Marin (of all places) were Republican strongholds before the 80's as well. Envisioning Marin County as actually being a Republican county is even harder for me to imagine than envisioning the Pioneer Valley as a Republican stronghold.

[DC Al Fine]

San Mateo, Santa Clara and even Marin (of all places) were Republican strongholds before the 80's as well. Envisioning Marin County as actually being a Republican county is even harder for me to imagine than envisioning the Pioneer Valley as a Republican stronghold.

What % Hispanic were those areas in the 80's compared to now? I suspect that's the reason for the change. The GOP's future lies in doing well with Hispanics, not secular Northeastern liberals who would never vote for them.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

What they really need is Pennsylvania. Those all white suburbs in Bucks County looks like as good a place as any to try to work some magic.

If the GOP goes that route and/or continues toning down social conservatism, they leave an open flank for us to take back some working-class whites. Also, why would you curse me with becoming a red state?

But I think that along with winning over the fiscally center-right/socially moderate whites, the GOP would do much better with Asians (who are socially conservative but not in the Bible-thumping way, but more of a "family is the central unit of society" way, and also despise anti-intellectualism).

[soniquemd21921]

San Mateo, Santa Clara and even Marin (of all places) were Republican strongholds before the 80's as well. Envisioning Marin County as actually being a Republican county is even harder for me to imagine than envisioning the Pioneer Valley as a Republican stronghold.

What % Hispanic were those areas in the 80's compared to now? I suspect that's the reason for the change. The GOP's future lies in doing well with Hispanics, not secular Northeastern liberals who would never vote for them.

Marin County is the most liberal white majority county in the nation. It's the county on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge - one that has long had a reputation as being a land of "hot tub" liberals. Barbara Boxer and Lynn Woolsey represented Marin County in Congress - that's how liberal it is. Yet it used to be fairly Republican back in the 50's and 60's - it voted for Dewey, Eisenhower and Nixon by solid margins. Much of American Graffiti was shot in Marin County as well.

San Mateo County is the county on the San Francisco peninsula directly south of the city. There's a mixture of working-class suburbs (Daly City, South San Francisco) and some upper-income, formerly rock-ribbed Republican suburbs (Burlingame, Hillsborough). Anti-war GOP congressman Pete McCloskey represented that area for many years.

Santa Clara County is the heart of Silicon Valley, and where San Jose is located. That area has a fairly sizable Asian population.  Tom Campbell was the last Republican congressman to represent that area.

From what I understand, Bay Area Republicans were very moderate - maybe even more liberal than Northeastern Republicans were.  Again, as in the Northeast, I blame the social issues on the loss of Bay Area Republicanism (which used to be very strong). Even Oakland used to have a rock-ribbed Republican suburb, Piedmont (50's GOP senate leader William Knowland was from there).

[All Along The Watchtower]

The problem is that the evangelicals, Tea Partiers, and other far-right types not only  control and dominate the party, but have almost completely purged it of the influence of others. As others have said, these are the most reliable Republican voters there are-and many Republican leaders are evangelical/far-right/Tea Party types.

Anyway, there is plenty of room in the Democratic Party for people who are "mainstream" conservatives but don't want to be associated with the Republican brand (if they aren't Independents, of course...) In places like much of Southern CA, the SF Bay Area and New England and the Northeast in general, the Republican Party, as a rule, does not win elections (though more moderate/mainstream individual Republican candidates may win). Why would anyone from those areas run for office as a Republican, when they can more easily win elections and influence matters as a Democrat?