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With the House GOP in full meltdown, Democrats could offer a way out
(www.washingtonpost.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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politics
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The thing is, there are still a handful of Republicans willing to work with Democrats, and with the 214 votes the Democrats can offer, it only needs three more Republicans to cross the aisle in a power-sharing agreement. So it's not that far-fetched. It's a question of which Republicans will find the courage to defy the extremists in their party.
You misunderstand the current state of politics.
Simply reaching out and talking with Democrats causes various Republicans to lose office. Its literally political suicide. Next year is an election year, and the House needs to win every 2 years to stay in office. They simply don't have any political cover and their careers will immediately end if they do what you suggest.
Then we have the same problem in 2025 when the new Congress appears, except everyone who worked with Democrats was voted out. Etc. etc. This has been going on for like 15+ years, from Boehner to Paul Ryan and more. This shit is the culimation of a decade-worth of radicalization of the Republican voter base.
Not in districts where Republicans win by narrow margins. Only in districts that are reliably red. Not every Republican seat is perfectly safe.
Losing Republican votes is more deadly than losing Democrat votes that you never had to begin with.
Just look at the last damn decade man. Literally every moderate Republican has been forced out of office in the last decade. The remaining moderates know what will happen if they fall on the sword like you think.
Its safer for a purple-state Republican to go MAGA than for a purple-state Republican to pretend that any Democrat would vote for them and try to reach out to the left. Losing 10% or 20% of the MAGA voters is suicide, and possibly even puts up a primary challenge to kick you out before you've even reached the main election.
The problem with your analysis is that it fails to take reality into account. A Republican congressman in New York (can't remember his name) specifically called out the extreme end of the party as SpaceGhost pointed out above.
House Republicans in particular are not a monolith and the numbers are very tight.
I think the argument here is that a moderate Republican who works across the aisle gets primaried in his district at the next election by a MAGAt, who wins the primary on the (few) angry Republican voters in a low-turnout Primary. Sure, that MAGAt goes on to be demolished in the General and a Democrat wins that seat, but the end result is the Moderate Republican is kicked out of office.
That's a risk, yes. But some of them have kept their seats because they crossed the aisle and the Democrats in their districts didn't work that hard to unseat them. So no, it's not a foregone conclusion. I'll concede it's becoming more common, but we don't need a lot of Republicans to defy their leadership. Just a handful.
Yep. But asking a congress-critter to put their job at risk by working with the Other Side (tm) is usually a bridge too far. Unless we intend on supporting the aisle-crossing Republicans by, say, voting for them in the primary, it's a bit hard to expect them to risk that cushy job (and all the payola and influence that comes from it) by working with us. I'm HOPING that 6 of them work with us, for sure, but I'm EXPECTING them to not break ranks with their MAGAt colleagues.
I would disagree only partially. Because we know these folks are going to vote for whoever has the (R) in their name.
It's also not like Democrats couldn't get members to switch parties, then support them in their election. This is not as much political suicide, as it is a leap of faith. I could understand why republicans would not want to give up what they have for something new and unknown.
Yet, 3 republicans will make that leap if things become dire...... speaking of which.... How's the world doing in our political absence?
But those candidates who reach out will be primaried, and gerrymandering has pushed the primaries to the extremist candidates.
Yep. My rep, John Duarte is a republican and kind of has Obama-era GOP vibes; not quite MAGA, but also not exactly turning his back on MAGA either. I didn't vote for him, and don't plan on voting for him (largely due to his policy proposals), but he's a reasonably professional run-of-the-mill congressman. He's worked with democrats on a number of issues; I suspect it's in part due to the fact that his district is pretty purple and he won with margins so thin, you could see right through them.