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This isn’t really a problem. If you want Republicans who primarily criticize Democrats you can switch on Fox or try any of dozens of other outlets or commentators.
Hanania’s point, which he kind of keeps drilling in, is that a lot of Republicans aren’t serious people. They have a poor understanding of their own voters, their own principles and political strategy in general, kind of a trifecta of disastrous realities.
Romney did fine but was up against a hugely charismatic president on his second term who drew out the black vote and was a darling of white progressives.
Romney would have won in 2016, I’ve had arguments on this topic before and it’s an unproveable counterfactual but his problem was his opponent, not that he was ex-Bain or looked like a hedge fund manager. Similarly, 2008 McCain would also have won in 2016.
And of course the general perception of Obama was that he was a wholesome “nice, non weird” leader who loved his wife and kids, didn’t publicly cheat and seemed like a friendly enough guy, so Romney didn’t exactly have an ‘advantage’ in that area. Hillary, by contrast, was hated and seen as a soulless mercenary who chose to stay with her husband not out of love but out of a ruthless desire for political power.
I see Hanania more as a provocateur, less in the Fuentes or BAP sense where establishment conservatives will just switch off because of the language and overt extremist views, and more as someone who asks interesting questions about where US conservative priorities actually are.
The challenge for the right - which Hanania correctly diagnoses - is in converting little bursts of public outrage about things like BLM, trans bathrooms, the bud light controversy, Asian anger around affirmative actions, uproar in some southern states about critical race theory in schools etc into a coherent ideological program with policies at the local, state and federal level.
People like Rufo, Tucker and LibsOfTikTok have a big reach and make people angry, but their shtick is outrage bait. That’s not a bad thing, but it often goes nowhere.
He's pragmatic, which I think helps. He knows that sentiment, getting people mad on twitter is not good enough. Change comes from affecting institutions and in the courts.
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not just an unprovable counterfactual, but a belief of yours which is apparently immune to any sort of evidence against it
whenever you fill in the any details or support for your counterfactual argument, significant claims of yours are wrong and yet when it's corrected the belief survives
it's the great myth of alternative GOP winner who will win resounding victories for the electorate of... 1984
Not only would Mitt Romney have won, but John McCain, a candidate who represented George W. Bush's 3rd term, a president so disastrous it caused a cultural shift making right-wing behavior and words as low-status and the opposite as high status and whose admin was so unpopular by the end of it that a near 60 Senate majority of the opposition party which made substantial changes to law and government which fundamentally shifted the entire apparatus leftward, was going to win in 2016? Okay.
Do you not understand the difference between low turn out midterms and high turnout presidential election years?
And 2rafa is right: 2014 was the best recent Republican Congressional year, when they peaked at 54 Senate seats and 247 House seats (more than any time since the 1920's in the House). The fringes of the Tea Party cost the GOP Senate seats in 2010. Remember the Witch? Republicans could have had a Senate seat in Delaware.
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Your claims are typically that Trump won because he energized some hardscrabble white working class communities in a handful of key states. Regardless of whether that’s true, it’s ridiculous to suggest that it represents the sole possible route for a Republican candidate to win in 2016.
This section is entirely your opinion about vague cultural shifts and the qualities of Bush as a leader. The brief “60” seat majority for the Democrats was during the biggest financial crash in postwar American history. The GOP losses in 2006 were within normal bounds well into the term of an existing president (Obama lost as many just two years into his first term).
There’s no actual argument to your thesis, and certainly no evidence. By contrast, Hillary was the most unappealing Democratic candidate in decades, possibly ever, reviled in polling data and distrusted even by many Democrats. All suggest any Republican would have won, as does polling from the 2016 primaries in which match-ups between candidates and Clinton (while Trump was already by far the dominant candidate) show Cruz and even Kasich outperforming Trump.
Eg.
Bush-era congressional Republicans had already harnessed the tea party movement to do extremely well in 2010. They understood some of their constituency. Blue voter turnout would be depressed with Clinton against a neocon type and 8 years of minimal change™️ minus a Trump-tier villain, which no amount of CNN could turn a Romney into. There were plentiful routes through the suburbs (which had done very well for the GOP in 2010) that didn’t require Trump’s county-by-county path to victory.
The onus is on YOU to prove that polling from 2016 clearly suggesting many or even all GOP candidates could beat Clinton in a match-up is somehow wrong.
Yeah. My perception at the time was that the Democrats nominated the only candidate who could have lost to Trump and the Republicans nominated the only candidate who could have lost to Clinton.
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My basic argument is Trump motivated non-regular voters and non-voters (as well as swapping Obama voters) in key states to win in 2016, some of which the GOP hadn't won in over a generation, and these states were necessary in order to make the electoral college math work for GOP victory. I didn't say white nor working class, although "working class" likely correlates. Trump made the election about trade and immigration while the non-GOP wouldn't have. I would address your alleged "other way to win," except I've never seen you make that argument. The comments I've seen on this topic are typically short and lacking an explanation or details for support. Any details provided, as I've linked, are at best missing details.
In this comment, your suggested "pathway to victory" is "There were plentiful routes through the suburbs (which had done very well for the GOP in 2010) that didn’t require Trump’s county-by-county path to victory." So like what routes in which states? Mitt Romney didn't do "very well" in the suburbs in 2012. Presidents aren't elected by national polling, they're elected by individual states. When you talks about a pathway to victory, you need to talk about states which you're going to win and why. I made those arguments in linked comments.
Losing 6 Senate seats isn't within normal bounds of a midterm for a 2nd term president. Losing another 9 Senate seats in 2008 with McCain on the ballot isn't within normal bounds either for a "recession," one which only in hindsight is described as "the biggest financial crash in postwar history." Winning 6 seats in 2006 and 9 seats in 2008 is not within the normal bounds of 2 cycles. This fact-pattern supports my narrative of a deeply unpopular admin leading to a turning point. And a ~65 seat swing in the House and a 5 seat swing in the Senate in Obama's first midterm wasn't the norm either.
the linked thread includes "evidence" at least as good as the "evidence" you present here; it's good enough for your argument, but apparently represents "zero evidence" when on the opposite side
what are we to make of that?
Mitt Romney lead in some early primary polls over Barack Obama in 2012 and yet he lost. Using early primary polling data even in election years where the polling wasn't garbage (and it was in the 2016 cycle) is tricky because it doesn't have much predictive power; it's an unknown versus an unpopular known. Trump was known. Hillary was known. Mitt Romney was not. Mitt Romney was going to beat Obama! And then he didn't get close.
If only Democrats had run someone like Hillary Clinton in 2016, she would have made even Mississippi competitive! We have good early polling data clearly suggesting Trump was a terrible candidate who would certainly lose. It's too bad that other Hillary Clinton actually did run in 2016 and lost the state of Mississippi by over 17 points.
Your own example shows the issue with relying on this sort of polling data to support your counterfactual.
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A case could have been made that Trump mattered in the swing states which delivered his 2016 win. A more mainstream candidate would not have delivered those key votes.
A more mainstream candidate could probably have won Virginia, New Hampshire, and Nevada. And maaaaaybe New Mexico.
Plus, Bush '04 lost Wisconsin by a few thousand votes. Michigan and Pennsylvania may or may not be taller orders.
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This is very slowly happening, with conservative normies coalescing behind positions like ‘the race narrative stuff has gone too far’(that is a direct quote) and ‘Ukraine lost, get over it’ and ‘trans are .3% of the population or whatever, they don’t need any accommodation if they don’t want to be reasonable’.
The outrage bait fuels a bunch of this stuff. Yes the right needs better thought leaders and narrative setters, but having too much of an ideology is actually counterproductive. To run as an ideologue you need a specific program, and the only specific programs available to the right are mostly very unpopular. It’s better to be a little vague on ideology and lean into it not being ridiculous or unworkable. Center-right parties the world over do exactly this; the usual term is something like ‘pragmatic good-governance’ or the like.
Center-right parties the world over go into coalition with far-left and center-left parties and let them drive the bus, rather than go into coalition with far-right parties, so I don't think center-right parties are really a good example of anything.
And, notably, the US party structure makes that failure mode much more difficult. RINOs caucusing with the democrats exist but it’s generally an extreme minority of the party.
Keeping center right normies married to the actual right wingers by not talking about 0 week abortion bans(which is what the Republican Party would dearly love to enact) is a key part of a republican strategy for the foreseeable future.
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There are very few viable coalitions that could include the far right that don’t. It happened a handful of times but when they hit 20% the center-right almost always capitulates, as happened in eg Austria several times and in Sweden recently. In France the center-right would vote with Le Pen in parliament on most issues. Vox could easily become part of a future Spanish coalition. The AfD is a unique case because there are some state member parties with relatively close NPD / neonazi ties through figures like Höcke, but even in Germany it’s not impossible to imagine a CDU-AfD coalition at some point in the future.
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