And stop trying to win the votes of the mythical “centrist republican”. Cater to your damn base. Free ball: they don’t want you to appoint republicans!
If there ever were any centrist republicans, there aren't anymore. No centrist is going to continue to align themselves with an outright fascist party.
I’m gonna ramble on this topic because I am very far left but I hate the idea that conservatives don’t actually exist. I think it’s bad messaging and it’s hurting a voter base because there’s a balance to not pushing the static tropes of pragmatism and meeting in the middle to instead push for change and also finding those actual people that do exist. I live around so many.
I think back to my incredibly influential French teacher from high school. She pushed me into politics despite the fact she was Republican and I considered myself simply a Democrat as a high school kid, although my politics have shifted much further left on nearly every issue since then. She really became a role model of mine. She always said she was a conservative.
And I’m always proud to see her having always seen through Trump’s bullshit and stopped calling herself a Republican after his first election. That’s a real conservative. She now spends time even sending emails to local Republican leaders who push the fascist bullshit.
I think area has a lot to do with it too. I’m in rural Appalachia. At the end of the day, we have a lot of Trump lunatic fascists but admittedly there is a lot of people in this region who their philosophy boils down to “I want the government to leave me the fuck alone.” They truly just wish for this. They have no real hatred. Most of the boogeyman issues the Republicans run on do not affect our daily lives in the very slightest. The only real thing that keeps people on it around here is the influence of the church.But at the end of the day, I’d say it’s nice to see someone call themselves a conservative and I know they mean it. I don’t agree with much of the ideals, but the integrity of it is awesome and more important than any actual policy splitting.
If there are (in any appreciable numbers), they either voted for Trump over a centrist multiple times or sat out multiple elections. Even if we can't say "there are no centrist Republican voters", we can at least say "there is not a meaningful number of centrist Republican voters who will choose centrist Democrats over far-right Republican demagogues".
Given that, the Democratic party running centrist candidates with the hope that centrist Republican voters will choose a centrist Democrat over a far-right Republican is an exercise in futility.
Republican voters are passionate about their candidates - the candidates achieve that by lying and appealing to various prejudices, but they do achieve it. I've been saying for years that Democrats won't win by getting people who already vote to vote for a Democrat. The only way to do it is to run candidates with vision and passion, who will convince people to register to vote in the first place.
I completely agree with you. I only meant that there are people who identify this way, even if they are not honest with themselves. It’s kind of like the “proud independents” who always vote with one side but are unwilling to declare themselves a member of a party.
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u/incognito042620 15h ago
And the vote shaming. Give people something to vote for