Coming soon to American politics: An unholy alliance between the GOP and Silicon Valley

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http://www.salon.com/2014/06/21/coming_soon_to_american_politics_an_unholy_alliance_between_the_gop_and_silicon_valley/



As conventional wisdom and a bevy of polling indicate, Republicans are poised to do well in the midterms in November. But the 2016 electoral math does not favor the GOP – and it only gets worse from there. People can quibble with the presumed inevitability of a President Hillary Clinton, but if the Republicans keep losing, they’ll eventually be forced to moderate some of their positions, even if the opposite seems true at the moment. Already, they’re reconciling themselves to nationwide same-sex marriage.

Twelve years in the desert sent the Democrats rushing straight into Bill Clinton’s arms, a fairly enormous transformation from McGovern in ’72. Likewise, there’s no reason why the GOP wouldn’t reevaluate a losing strategy — especially if they lose to another Clinton. Out of phase with an increasingly diverse and secular America, the Republicans are eventually going to have to cut the crazies loose. And the best replacement to fill a Tea Party-shaped hole in the conservative coalition is the tech industry, whose place in the Democratic fold is starting to grow uncomfortably awkward.

Although located in one of the most overwhelmingly Democratic regions in the country, Silicon Valley is the Republican Party’s natural ally. Such an axis could even lead to a wholesale reconfiguration of the American political landscape. While the suggestion that the Republicans will shake free of their most retrograde ideas sounds far-fetched, the party has performed dramatic 180s before: As recently as 1976, the GOP was explicitly pro-choice, and the only African-American senator was a Republican. If mounting electoral losses drive the Republicans to ignore the haters, American politics might shift into a battleground of progressives versus libertarian centrists. Tea Party dead-enders will be full of sound and fury, but legislating nothing.

Currently, the Republican Party — dying in California and virtually extinct in most of the northeast — is an unwieldy alliance of heartland true believers and their cynical coastal bankrollers. (Yes, for all the Tea Party’s folksy appeals to sepia-toned Real America, it’s Wall Street that puts up the money.) New York magazine’s Kevin Roose recently identified an incipient convergence of established banks and financial startups, a fusion that is only likely to solidify. Banks know they have to look west to innovate, and tech companies require infusions of capital, making it a natural pairing. “All these [financial startups] are kind of waiting for Visa to pick them up,” one analyst is quoted as saying.

[MisterP]

1. they even share the same plan-development programme: 1) napkin scrawl

(Laffer curve, Hyperloop)
2) slick $200M CGI-laden ad campaign
3) ???
4) profit