Pat Robertson ran for President in 1988.

[LoZoccolo]

He did not win the Republican primary.

Did his followers abandon the Republican Party?

Did people who voted for Alan Keyes or Gary Bauer do so?

Have the Republicans been successful?

[NYCGirl]

1. There were so few who voted for Keyes and Bauer,

we'll never know.

:evilgrin:

[AntiCoup2K4]

2. No, his followers took over the Republican party....

...They control it outright in many states, and still have a great deal of power in the national GOP - which is why homophobia was able to swing 11 states to the Chimp.

I think I know where you're going with this, so if you're suggesting Dean supporters should take over the Democratic party, I'm all for it :)

[LoZoccolo]

4. I don't think they took over.

Abortion is still legal, and we still belong to the UN. I would say they have something of a symbiotic relationship with the rest of the party, though.

[Yupster]

24. They did take over the party

They came to precinct conventions with a video tape from the Robertson organization on how to take over a precinct convention. Then they went step by step replacing county delegations, then state delegations until today most Republican state parties are run by the Christian right supporters that Robertson was first and best to organize.

It's a model that would work just as well on this side of the aisle.

[Telly Savalas]

3. Most importantly...

have they found those missiles in Cuba yet?

[robbedvoter]

5. As someone quoted him: winning the POTUS was not the objective

he got out of it a mailing list of 3 million and a lot of influence in the GOP.
I heard this from Greg Palast - or another participant in a NYC workshop that were advising Dems that gaining power is NOT an electoral thingy.

[ulysses]

6. yes, the Republicans have been successful.

Had they, however, had a strategy of coopting Democratic talking points and watery versions of progressive goals - in other words, had they been under the influence of a center-leaning bunch like the DLC on our side - they would not have been and those people *would* have walked away from the party.

[LoZoccolo]

8. Yes they have.

Bush* uses a lot of liberal rhetoric - think about compassionate conservatism, No Child Left Behind, or the interventionist rhetoric he uses to justify the Iraq War. He puts a liberal spin on a lot of his agenda.

[Cheswick2.0]

10. nope

Rhetoric is not the point. Policy is the point. You may think his rhetoric is liberal (it's not really) but his actions are not liberal and that is the point.

[LoZoccolo]

11. Witness people freaking out at things...

...like Dean saying that there's a place for pro-lifers in the party. Rhetoric is important, and it's especially important for getting the center.

[ulysses]

12. ok, yes - Bush uses the rhetoric.

I wouldn't call it "liberal" rhetoric, but it's certainly more moderate than the reality.

But that's just the thing. Bush can *sound* moderate on the campaign trail to soothe the center, but his base has no reason to doubt what he'll do in office. I understand the need to sound moderate during a campaign, but when you combine that with an enormous credibility problem with your base, as is the case with the Democratic party, you're in trouble.

[ulysses]

7. let me put that another way.

Robertson's supporters may not have gotten Robertson himself, but they've always gotten a reasonable facsimile of his stated goals from other GOP campaigners.

Progressives are left to fight for specific campaigners, such as Dean, because they get little or nothing except contempt from others in the party hierarchy.

[LoZoccolo]

9. No they haven't.

Abortion is still legal, and looks like it will remain that way despite all three branches of the government being under Republican control. And it's the #1 issue of the religious right.

[ulysses]

14. looks like it will remain that way to whom?

Even if Roe remains intact over the next four years, which I doubt, you can bet your ass that more restrictions will be applied to reproductive rights. The RRs have gotten plenty of movement on other fronts as well, especially in education.

[LoZoccolo]

16. Bush* said somewhere...

...that he didn't think people were ready to have Roe vs. Wade overturned. If one of our leaders said something like he didn't think we were ready (that being the only reason given) for something like single-payer health care, you could imagine the repercussions on the far left.

[ulysses]

18. got a link?

I'm googling and can't find it. Even so, Bush doesn't have a credibility problem with his base, as I say. Even if Roe isn't overturned, they know he'll keep chipping away. They can trust the party, no matter what the rhetoric is.

Actually, I think the progressive reaction to a Dem saying that the country wasn't ready for single-payer health care would be relatively muted. We *KNOW* they're not going to do anything really meaningful on that front - it's no longer a surprise.

[LoZoccolo]

19. Here.

http://www.nationalreview.com/daily/nr031899.html

[ulysses]

20. that was from nearly six years ago.

Updated 3/18/99 1:15AM

Also, it occurs to me that the GOP benefits from killing Roe slowly instead of at one fell swoop, because it keeps their religious base secure that much longer. Meanwhile they still get sops on vouchers, etc.

[Cheswick2.0]

13. What I want to know is................

do you really think you can force people to stay in a party by demanding they do so?

The republicans gave the extreme right what they wanted. They have embraced their politics and their rhetoric in a way unimaginable 25 years ago.

[LoZoccolo]

15. No, I don't.

But I can point out how ineffective it is. If people care about whether or not they are ineffective, they might learn something. The rest I kind-of don't care about from the standpoint of how I spend my time trying to affect change.

They have embraced their politics and their rhetoric in a way unimaginable 25 years ago.

Emphasis mine, of course.

And yet the modern conservative movement is over thirty, maybe even over fourty years old. They spent years building the infrastructure to be able to get the support they need to stay in power, rather than fracturing the right and remaining a minority. Had they seceded because of some of Nixon's more liberal domestic policy accomplishments like the EPA, or Reagan's failure in getting the Republican nomination in 1976, I imagine they wouldn't be so powerful.

[LoZoccolo]

17. I should add...

...that I think Dean himself "gets it" in the way that he's mirroring Pat Robertson's strategy from when the Christian Coalition was organized.

[IndianaGreen]

21. DLC/PPI is anathema to progressives

This is like putting Nazis and Jews together, it won't work!

As to your Robertson analogy, the fact is that they took over the party and they purged those that did not believed in turning America into Jesusland.

[LoZoccolo]

22. Who said anything about /them/?

This place has gotten scary.

Your subject line is analagous to saying "Saddam was a brutal dictator" in response to strategic or legal critiques of the Iraq war.

[LoZoccolo]

23. And, no they didn't.

Arnold Schwarzenegger?