chocoloco said:
ZenfoldorVGI said:
chocoloco said:
mhsillen said:
chocoloco said:
Has not changed my vote and I still have a very, very, very bitter taste in my mouth from the Bush era. So hell no he should be fine. I'm pretty sure I can't be the only one. Also the youth vote leans towards liberals and the aged voters who favor conservatives keep dying more and more each year.
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Actually people under 30 are liberal and then when they grow up and have to make tough decisions they become more conservative.
Liberals just don't want to perceived as bad so they take the easy way out
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Actually this is just an ideal people tell themselves. People from urban areas are more liberal and rural areas are more conservative as you probably know. The population growth in America is in urban regions while populations are falling in rural areas. So most of the young come from areas were being a liberal is dominant. If it was true that young liberals always become older Republicans than there would never be a Democrat in office. Why, because young people hardly vote and elderly people vote the most. So if young people all converted to conservative Clinton and Obama would never have been voted in and thats just using logic.
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Yes, but you are implying that one party will grow old and eventually become irrelivant, but that will never be the case. In a two party system, in our case, libertal vs conservative, even if every conservative were to quit politics tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, you would have a new conservative party rise to power, just as potent as the previous one. Neither party is significant without an equal and alternative party, and thus, no matter how many older conservatives cease to run or vote, liberals will not stand unopposed. It's a two party system, if you have some misguided hope that your party will somehow dominate in a few years, you're wrong. The pendulum swings both ways and it always will. Whatever reasonings you might be able to come up with to support such hope are based on false pretenses.
Your best hope for a liberal future is that the republican party moves farther towards the left in coming years to compensate for the more liberal younger demographics as they age, and thus bringing the country more towards the left as a whole. Anyone who thinks the republican party is powerless and insignificant only need listen to any Obama speech, because they are the only thing our president can seem to talk about despite the fact that they currently have very little power. :P
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To make things clear I am certainly not a democrat just liberal in a lot of ways. Mostly I just despise republicans and actually think libertarians are better even tough they are more conservative. I try to use the words like liberal and conservative to show that I am not associated with either democrats or republicans. They only imply ways of thinking not political parties.
Now that that is clear I think your idea that there has to be a two part system is wrong. There are many parties and conflicting ideals so the two party system cannot last forever. I also never would say the republican party will compleatly die it will just dwindle to insignificance much like the green party is now.
If this does not happen the repulican party will not die they will just be forced to change their stance on issues to survive in a new generation of voters that is way more tolerant of diverce people than the current republican party is. Politics change with times and parties adapt with the changing wave of what is relevant for that time. This can be seen recently as Republicans have become more neutral on enviornmental issues. When a counter culture such as extreme envioronmentalism becomes mainstream and their ideas are relevant people change. In the end, it is a shift towards liberal thought. The names republican and democrat may remain the same, but the ideals are always evolvoving. In the future, other parties may rise and some may fall but I do believe the youth is absorbing liberal values and not conservative ones.
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Well, there are modern issues like the environment, and the founding issues like the national debt. I think that there is certainly some sort of correction due in the latter, and I think there will never be an end to a dominant generation that values fiscal responsibility. As long as there are a majority of people who value government independance, the Republican party will probably not become irrelivant. In fact, their main failing at the moment comes in the form of more modern issues like abortion, enviromentalism, and the like. These issues have had a moral role reversal over the last generation, and you are absolutely right, the party has not changed with the average young person's opinion.
However, this is not the basis upon which the party is founded. The republican party is based on fiscal responsibility and government independance. Same for the libertarian party. The ideal is that people should be allowed to succeed or fail based upon their personal efforts and lady luck, without government interferance. The liberal way of thinking is that the Government's job is not only to protect its people but to help those that fail in the earlier example, as a priority, above fiscal responsibility. With a strong argument and counterargument for each ideal, these two parties are what make up our current political system. Relative to other countries, our country is right leaning. A correction shift towards liberal values is seemingly inevitable, but assuming that one of the main two political parties will refuse to shift with it, is fallacy, and wishful thinking. You can't be an impartial observer, and logic dictates that at least two relavant alternatives will be present for the American people, it is our nature, and the pendulum of history has shown that balance of power shifts on a regular basis between the two parties. Soon enough, our midterm elections will probably become a defining example of that shift for the current generation. It is inevitable that Democrats lose seats, due not necessarily to any real reason, but due to the princible of the pendulum. Even if they don't lose the house or the senate, and no matter how much anyone tries to spin it, we are seeing the pendulum in action, first with the Bush era, and probably again in the midterms, a bit earlier than predicted. The faster one party attempts to swing the country towards one direction or the other, the faster the pendulum corrects itself. People don't like change, they like the idea of it, and they will struggle against it when push comes to shove.
