Why Gop

[Gromit]

The Republican Party has suddenly started to be referred to as the GOP. Until recently I had never heard the term. Anyone know why this is happening?

[Gromit]

Did you know that the bear on the California flag is the result of a misprint.

The instruction to the flag designer was to have a Star and a PEAR. But the designer misread the note and thought it said BEAR. The flag came back and they were stuck with the animal instead of the fruit.

http://www.snopes.com/lost/bearflag.asp

[Gromit]

I suspect GOP acronym was not used much outside of the USA in written media. I think I am seeing it more now because a lot of the British newspaper websites have a lot of US and overseas readers. Coverage of US politics is written for US consumption as much as for British readers, hence a few colloquailisms are appearing.

[jno]

that's true, I used to read Time magazine 50 years ago when there was just the American edition, and it used GOP a lot.

[mikey4444]

It would seem to me that the Republican Party is now dead in the water, and unless they do something soon, the Democrats will just sail on and on.

They lost the last election because they seemed to have completely lost their senses. They chose a candidate in Mitt Romney, who had to spend most of his time defending his rather controversial religion, rather than debate the really important issues. Its not really very edifying for a Presidential candidate to have to explain why he wears Magic Underpants.

They also preferred to surround themselves with, frankly, swivel-eyed loons like that daft woman from Alaska, and therefore made themselves into a laughing stock into the bargain.

They seem to be in the same position as the Labour Party found themselves in after consistent defeats by the Tories. They need to re-invent themselves and only some serious naval-gazing is going have an effect on their future.

But, just like the Labour Party did, they will probably spend the next few years in an war of attrition amongst themselves, rather the getting on with the job.

[Gromit]

There is a good chance the Republicans will instigate another shutdown in January. As if they don't realise the damage the recent one did to their standing with the public. I mentioned a schism and the militant tendency in an earlier answer. The Republicans need to rid themselves of the Tea Party or they will remain in opposition for another term.

[jno]

not really, mikey, the Republicans control the House of Representatives by a comfortable majority, divided though they may be. The Democrats hold the presidency and a majority in the Senate.

[FredPuli43]

The polling company Rasmussen's most recent polls make quite interesting reading.
Passing over that 77% of Americans polled think Americans "are becoming ruder and less civilized" (just thought I'd mention it), Obama's overall approval rating is 48%, yet only 13% think the US is 'heading in the right direction', and 50% think the Republicans are extreme, 46% think Democrats are, 33% and 41% respectively think the parties are 'mainstream.
And Congress ? 74% of Democrats and 62 % of Republicans think it is performing poorly

[mikey4444]

Be careful with American Polls fred...nearly 50% of yanks think that the planet Earth is only 6000 years old, and that early man chased dinosaurs for his lunch !

On a more serious note, see this Wiki about the 2012 election.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2012

Note the map. Isn't it interesting that the division between Democrat and Republican nearly exactly follows the Mason-Dixon line ? This is years and years after slavery was abolished.

[FredPuli43]

Mikey, I was more struck by the existence of a Republican fringe. We have a Celtic fringe of those who the rest never managed to drive into the sea, and they have a Republican one. Unsurprisingly it is quite a wealthy fringe in their case. But that's the Presidential polling map. The US has a constitution with what might seem to us a fatal flaw, in that it is quite possible to have one or both of the Senate and the House in the hands of the opposite party to the President's, a position not improved by mid-term elections which, in the very nature of mid-term elections, tend to go against, in America, the President's party. As, historically, this has been a very common position for a President, Americans have learned to live with it and approve it, thinking that compromise is their watchword, and far better than one party government.

But here we have a perfect example of what can go wrong. The system depends on compromise. If one party takes the attitude that they should oppose anything and everything that the President was elected to do, or wants, they end up as here.

[jno]

I'm not sure about fatal flaw, FredPuli. In essence, the Americans have a much stronger legislature than we do. Legislators can actually stop the president doing what he wants. Compare that with Britain, where MPs are doormats for the administration to walk over. Their problem is the sort of deadlock they've had over the budget. Ours is lack of oversight of legislation because no MP dares oppose his party leader for fear of loss of preferment.

[FredPuli43]

True, jno, but we know what we are going to get when we elect a party and its leader. When we elected Mrs Thatcher or Clem Attlee we knew what laws and policies would be enacted. And they were. We did not find , having voted for a leader, that 2 years later, or ab initio, he or she couldn't do anything because the other party was able to obstruct it.

[Clanad]

For those still wondering why a donkey and elephant (in the context of this thread), here's the entire article, explaining in detail...

http://people.howstuffworks.com/donkey-elephant.htm

[jno]

thanks, Clanad.

FredPuli, that would be up to Americans voting one way for president, another way for Senate and/or for House of Representatives, along with different ways of counting votes. A bit like having a Tory government and a Labour borough council. The US system gives legislators more priority than ours does, and that seems to me a good thing, though it would help if (a) voters made up their minds what they wanted; and (b) lawmakers acted responsibly.

Counsel of perfection, I know...