Is the Republican Party America's natural governing party?
POSTED BY: Skywalken
UPDATED: Friday, April 7, 2006 04:56
VIEWED: 6016
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I found this question somewhere very recently. The Liberal Party of Canada is often referred to as "Canada's natural governing party". Well FDR four election victories aside, the United States Republican Party has been pretty damn successfull when it comes to winning elections. Since 1861, a Republican has won 23 of the last 37 presidential elections. Also 18 of the 27 US Presidents since 1861 have been Republicans. So is the Republican Party America's natural governing party?
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No, I think they just lie and cheat better. (Not that Democrats don't lie and cheat, they are just not as good at it.)
"I have never understood why it should be necessary to become irrational in order to prove that you care. Or indeed, why it should be necessary to prove it at all." -Kerr Avon
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They win because they appeal to greed, fear, and stupidity. All American values.
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Hummm, not sure how accurate that is? They have great success in getting Presidents elected but I remember Newt Gingrich saying that in 1993 they broke 50 plus years of Democrat domination of congress.
I do think Republicans have a natural advantage campaigning for President in that they tend to have fabulous party organization and they pick people that look presidential. They have great skill in making their man seem the sane and natural choice and they campaign on a broad platform.
But that's just an outsider's POV.
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IMHO, The republican party is more closely tied to the founding fathers, and has a wider base of appeal. The democratic party is a splinter groups and basically and aberration. The American political left should abandon it can construct something new. I've been gnawing over this for a while, and it seems to me that the democrats never change. They started out the party of indian genocide and slavery, and though they've left those two positions, they still are violently agressive and oppressive, as look at Clinton, Kerry, even some of the proposals of the Carter admin. Carter I think is basiclly a good man, but his being an okay president was greatly helped by his losing in 1980 which stopped him from implementing an already laid out potentially disasterous second term agenda. If you go back further, Johnson, Truman, etc., things are just as bad.
The contrast is I don't think that the American left, as a voting group, is like this at all. I think they're just continually suckered into supporting the democrats on the groups that "at least they aren't republicans."
I bash the left a lot, sure, but I understand in reality, there are some things that people who aren't me care about that are different, like whether people who can't make it in our sink or swim society have a support structure, whether there are state supported access to healthcare, jobs or education.
The democrats occassionally throw these people a bone, but in large part, they are about something else. Most democratic plans seem to involve control, keeping society domestically and abroad stable by keeping a hand and an eye on everything that goes on. Republicans by contrast tend to let go. Bush is really to some extent an exception to this, as was Hoover, but generally speaking.
This leads democrat-sponsored social programs to come with a large a mount of direct interference in people's lives, and internationally it leads them to seize control of key assets such as food, oil or weapons, and attempt to force people into positions. This occassionally works, but has had some spectacular disasters in its day. In the end, people remember the bad, and the democrats perpetually fail to gain majority support.
One additional point, on the "democrats are seldom in power, outside of FDR" Outside of FDR, only one democrat has ever gotten a majority of the vote, and that was LBJ, after Kennedy's assassination. Largely I think this was a simpathty vote, and partially the result of a successful truly sleazy campaign. But 4 years later LBJ couldn't win his own primary, so he can hardly be said to have had majority support.
So the American left should give up on the democrats if they don't like the product. Or, of course, I invite them to come join our side.
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It's funny you should ask that.
About 13 years ago I did a study of U.S. Presidential elections and was amazed at what jumped out at me.
Since the Civil War, only one non-incumbent Democrat won the White House under "ordinary" circumstances -- Grover Cleveland.
From 1860 through 1912, eleven men were President of the United States -- Grover Cleveland being the only Democrat.
Wilson, who won in 1912, only won because Taft (the Republican incumbent) split the party vote with former President Theodore Roosevelt. Wilson had 41.6% of the popular vote, to a combined 50.4% of Roosevelt/Taft. (Taft, the incumbent, embarrassingly came in third.)
Following Wilson, there were three more Republicans. It took a major economic depression to get another Democrat elected (in 1932) -- which, suffice it to say, was a "get rid of the incumbent" decision.
Historians all agree that Kennedy (the next Democratic non-incumbent to win the White House) bought the election with voter fraud in Chicago (and a few other places) -- a mere 100,000 votes -- a 0.2% difference in the popular vote. And, unlike a later Presidential candidate, Nixon chose not to contest the election (which he had every right to do) -- something for which few people credit him.
It took "Watergate" to get the next, non-incumbent Democrat into the White House -- and that was a close election. Carter's 50.1% to Ford's 48.0%.
And in 1992, the Democrats can thank Ross Perot (and the liberal press who unabashedly and persistently tore into President Bush) for the next, non-incumbent victory.
And one thing a lot of people like to overlook is the fact that even though Clinton was twice elected, he never once had a majority of the vote (43.0% in 1992; 49.2% in 1996). More people voted against Clinton for President than ever voted for him, yet he was President twice. Go figure.
Although, to be fair, the President to gain the largest percentage of the popular vote (61.1%) was a Democrat -- incumbent Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
Since the birth of the GOP, the average Republican margin of victory over their opponents in Presidential elections was around 12% -- to the Democratics margin of victory over their opponents at around 8%.
Since the birth of the GOP, Democrats only garnered a majority of the vote a total of 7 times in 38 elections, while Republicans earned a majority 17 times in those same 38 elections.
EDIT: I think that Dream meant that aside from FDR, LBJ was the only Democrat to get re-elected with a majority of the vote. 
In the 20th century, only 7 U.S. Presidents gained a larger margin of victory over their opponents in their second election*. Five of those seven were Republicans.
Nixon from a 0.7% margin of victory in 1968 to a 23.2% MOV in 1972.
Reagan from a 9.7% MOV in 1980 to a 18.2% MOV in 1984.
FDR (the only Democrat) from a 17.% MOV in 1932 to a 24.3% MOV in 1936.
Ike from a 10.7% MOV in 1952 to a 15.4% MOV in 1956.
McKinley from a 4.2% MOV in 1896 to a 6.1% MOV in 1900.
Clinton from a 5.6% MOV in 1992 to a 8.5% MOV in 1996.
GWB from a -0.5% MOV in 2000 to a 2.8% MOV in 2004.
Of the 11 U.S. presidents to be re-elected (i.e. elected a second* time) since the Civil War, 7 were Republicans and only 4 Democrats. All seven of those Republicans were re-elected with a higher percentage of the vote , while only 3 of those Democrats received a greater percentage for their re-election bid. (And this isn't counting FDR's 3rd and 4th terms -- where he got less votes in his 3rd term than in his 2nd term, and even less in his 4th term than in his 3rd term.)
(*NOTE: this statistic cannot be applied to incumbents who entered office without being elected, as their re-election was actually their first election -- i.e. TR, Coolidge, Truman, LBJ, Ford)
As a point of Presidential trivia -- can anyone here name the THREE men elected U.S. president, who garnered more popular votes than their opponents in at least three consecutive elections? (see spoiler below for answer)
Select to view spoiler:
Andrew Jackson,
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I think its just marketing and having a better idea what people might buy.
Democrats waste allot of marketing money on what people should buy rather then what they might buy.
And of course marketing, as we all know here, depends on how much money you put into it. Republican's have traditionally spent upwards to 10x what other parties have spent on marketing. All comes down to money and who has the most...again.
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Quote:
Originally posted by cartoon:
Although, to be fair, the President to gain the largest percentage of the popular vote (61.1%) was a Democrat -- incumbent Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
B]
That wide margin of victory can be credited on the classic political ad from 1964 that was strategically run during the last four days running up to election day. This of course was the ad showing a little girl playing with a doll and counting backwards from 10. "10 9 8 7 6..."
Then she is frozen in frame and we hear a mechiancal cold voice finsh the count "5 4 3 2 1 " And then we observe a mushroom cloud.
The raw fear that this ad sewed into the population of the time flung LBJ into a landslide win. To this day, most all 20th century historians credit this marketting strategy for LBJ's huge victory....though many contend he would have most likely still won the election on a much narrower margin anyway.
Do not fear me. Ours is a peaceful race, and we must live in harmony.
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Yeah, I do remember seeing that ad (not contemporaneously, mind you -- as I was not interested in politics yet at that wee age).
I think that had a lot to do it -- as did Dream's mention of the JFK "sympathy" vote which the party got. (Don't forget, the 1964 election was less than 12 months after the assassination.)
And to be honest, most people would agree that JFK would never had been re-elected (he actually didn't get elected the first time, if you want to get technical about it). As I've said elsewhere, if not for his assassination, most people today would never had heard of him.
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"Natural". Hmmm...
Supposedly the natural governing party in the USA
is The People.
An argument could be made, however, that the natural governing party is any body of criminals
who can convince The People that they are made up of two opposing parties. It's called 'divide and conquor'. And it worked.
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