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Republican Party

party · in 56 videos (2007–2025)

US political party; in 2008 Hank said nothing would scare him more than Republicans in the White House again, while stressing that Nerdfighters include Republicans. John's policy videos cite it on Medicare, redistricting and delegate rules, and in 2020 he noted it released no new platform for the first time in over 120 years.

Includes: 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries

Videos by year: 2007: 3 · 2008: 7 · 2009: 1 · 2010: 3 · 2011: 2 · 2012: 3 · 2013: 3 · 2015: 5 · 2016: 7 · 2017: 6 · 2018: 3 · 2020: 2 · 2023: 1 · 2024: 4 · 2025: 6

Also known as: Republicans, GOP

Threads

Also named in the threads: John's 'senator' haircut and the political spectrum of hair (2007) · Hank's Anagramming Guide to the presidential elections (2007) · Project for Awesome 2007 edition: the final Brotherhood 2.0 project (2007) · Hank's new haircut, which reminds John of FIFA left-back Kennedy's (2015) · John and Hank's hair contest in the 2015 Nerdfighteria Census ('The Cold War of Nerdfighteria', 2015) · John asks viewers to call their members of Congress to fund PEPFAR and the Global Fund (2025)

Often together

What comes up in the same parts of the videos; the number is how many parts.

United States Congress (15) · Donald Trump (16) · Barack Obama (13) · United States presidential election (11) · United States (23) · Montana (7) · Daniel Biss (3) · Florida (3) · social media (3) · climate change (3)

What the videos say

The most important statements of each year; all statements.

2007

2008

  • 2008-02-04 · Obama Says Subscribe — Hank says nothing would scare him more than Republicans in the White House again, rejecting talk that things can't get much worse. — 00:01:32
    • Hank says this is not a Nerdfighter endorsement: nerdfighters span every color, race, creed and political persuasion, Republicans included. — 00:02:31
    • Hank says Republicans generally don't treat the environment as an issue, and McCain, who does, has a much weaker climate plan than Obama or Clinton. — 00:02:31
  • 2008-02-21 · People Who Love Giraffes Who Love Giraffes — John: Asked which Republican presidential candidate he'd vote for, John jokes Abraham Lincoln; of living ones, he votes for the individual not the party and wants none of them. (playful) — 00:02:17
  • 2008-03-04 · SETTING THE QUESTION TUESDAY WORLD RECORD — John: Asked whether he'd rather drink his own pee or vote for a current Republican candidate, John says it depends on how much pee: a few drops, sure. (playful) — 00:00:57
  • 2008-06-04 · VEEPSTAKES! — John: On Joe Biden: the best grasp of foreign policy in the Senate and knows Sunnis from Shias, unlike certain Republican nominees; but he is too 'Joe Biden-y'. (playful) — 00:01:15
    • On Jim Webb: former Republican and Secretary of the Navy, a big military guy who writes genuinely good novels; but he has a reputation for misogyny. — 00:02:42
  • 2008-06-16 · Maine Inspires Deep Thoughts — Hank says he is 100% in favour of there being Republican nerdfighters. — 00:00:40
  • 2008-08-29 · Sarah Palin: An Introduction — John tells Hank, who does not like watching the news, what he needs to know about presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, a pick that surprised John. — 00:00:02
    • John says Palin is reliably conservative on social issues important to the Republican base: strongly pro-life, against gay marriage and a lifelong NRA member. — 00:00:34
    • John asks Nerdfighters, particularly Republican nerdfighters, to say in comments what they think of the Palin pick. — 00:02:22
  • 2008-09-26 · Obama Llama Song — Hank: The song says Republicans claim to want change but then want to stay the same; the singer will vote neither left nor right, only for change. (playful) — 00:00:26
  • …and 1 statement more in 2008 — all statements of 2008

2009

2010

  • 2010-09-06 · I HATE PENNIES!!!! (Also Nickels.) — John: Second, John says coinage reform isn't partisan: about half its major advocates in the last ten years were Republicans and half Democrats, so it fires up no base. — 00:03:10
  • 2010-11-15 · Hey! You! Fix the Budget! — John says the astonishing thing is that even all the Democratic leadership's tax increases plus all the Republican leadership's spending cuts would still leave a huge deficit. — 00:00:59
  • 2010-12-20 · Thoughts on the Project for Awesome — Hank jokes that Mike Huckabee's attempt to 'hack' the Republican presidential nomination kept P4A from taking over the whole first page of 'most discussed', but P4A's hack was more successful. (playful) — 00:00:19

2011

  • 2011-11-23 · Why are Barns Red and Kardashians Famous — Hank dismisses the loaded autocomplete questions 'Why are Jews liberal?' and 'Why are Republicans stupid?' with exasperation rather than answering. (playful) — 00:02:01
  • 2011-12-21 · 2011 Presidential Anagrams!! — Hank: In 2008, in the vlogbrothers' first year, Hank anagrammed the presidential candidates' names; now, nearly in 2012, he anagrams this year's (2011) Republican presidential hopefuls. (playful) — 00:00:00
    • Hank says Jon Huntsman, though far behind, is pretty much his favourite of the Republican field; his anagram is 'John's Math Nun'. — 00:01:40

2012

  • 2012-04-03 · Idiotic Governance: How Our Political Discourse Hurts Our Economy — John: To be fair, John adds, some congressional Democrats want to reform Medicare, a few congressional Republicans thought the FAA funding fight an embarrassment, and President Barack Obama has consistently supported smart Medicare reform despite huge blowback from his own party. — video description
    • John says long-term highway deals fail because they involve big numbers: Tea Party-backed Republicans oppose big spending, so rather than, say, one $250 billion bill, Congress votes for ten $30 billion bills. — 00:02:05
    • John says Republicans have proposed interesting Medicare reforms, but Democrats refuse them as cutting seniors' care, since seniors tend to vote for Democrats. — 00:02:41
  • 2012-09-21 · You. Must. Vote. — Hank: To 'I don't live in a swing state', Hank says that if Utah Democrats or California Republicans stayed home they would be underrepresented locally and politicians would ignore their views. — 00:01:59
  • 2012-11-07 · The 51st State — Hank: The UN, President Obama, Governor Romney and both the Democratic and Republican platforms all agree Puerto Rico should decide for itself whether to become a state. — 00:01:35
    • Probably all of those members of Congress would be Democrats, so a Republican House would not be excited to give statehood a supermajority. (hedged) — 00:02:26

2013

  • 2013-01-01 · Why Does Congress Suck? — John says his Indianapolis congressman is Democrat Andre Carson while his across-the-street neighbour in the same zip code has Republican Dan Burton, because the district was redrawn to take in pricier houses expected to vote Republican. — 00:01:45
    • John says most districts are now 'landslide districts', at least 20% more Republican or Democratic than the country, so incumbents like Carson or Burton win general elections by about 30 points. — 00:02:14
  • 2013-03-12 · Understand the Sequester (Spoiler: It's Bananas.) — John says news coverage focuses on blame, with congressional Republicans calling it Obama's idea and Obama asking whether he passes legislation, which distracts from the sequester being a disaster. — 00:05:09
  • 2013-10-01 · The Lowdown on the Shutdown — Hank says Obamacare, passed in 2010 and upheld by the Supreme Court, went into full swing that day, and the Republicans are not done fighting it. — 00:00:56
    • Hank says the Republican-led House voted on the continuing resolution with an added one-year delay of Obamacare; the Democrat-controlled Senate refused, saying a stopgap is not for sweeping changes to the most significant domestic policy in 50 years. — 00:01:02
    • Hank says the Republicans don't actually think they will stop Obamacare, which he finds weird. — 00:01:57

2015

  • 2015-03-06 · WE WON! Net Neutrality and Re-Thinking Cynicism — Hank says the decision came down to party lines: three Democrats and two Republicans voted on the FCC, and the Republicans voted against net neutrality. — 00:02:30
  • 2015-08-11 (said on 2015-08-10, implied) · 454 Days: Understanding America's Ridiculous Political Campaigns — John: In a primer for non-Americans, John says most US states hold primary elections five to ten months before the election, where Republican and Democratic voters choose their party's candidate. — 00:01:03
  • 2015-08-18 · The Cold War of Nerdfighteria — John says he won't run a negative campaign, then jabs at Hank's hair: a haircut Tyler Oakley discarded in 2011, a young Republican's haircut, a de-mustachioed Leon Trotsky's face. (joke) — 00:02:57
  • 2015-10-20 · Nerdfighteria's Resident Comptroller? — John says Daniel is a Democrat but widely respected; a Republican member of the Illinois House once called him one of the smartest people (in cruder words) he had met. — 00:01:16
    • John says neither Illinois's Republican governor nor the Democratic legislative leaders are serious about the reform needed to end decades of fiscal mismanagement. — 00:02:24
  • 2015-10-23 · Benghazi: Explained — Hank says the controversy is so entrenched that many minds will never change: some will always believe Obama and Clinton were criminally negligent, others that it was only a Republican attack opportunity. — 00:05:46

2016

  • 2016-03-22 · Understanding the Primaries: Delegates, Democracy, and America's Nonstop Political Party — John explains that nominees are not chosen by voters but by delegates at the parties' national conventions in July: Republicans in Cleveland, Democrats in Philadelphia. — 00:00:34
    • John says 2,473 Republican delegates and about 4,765 Democratic delegates will vote at the conventions. — 00:00:48
    • John says the same day in Ohio Kasich got 47 percent of the Republican vote but all 66 delegates, because Ohio's Republican rules give all delegates to whoever gets the most votes. — 00:02:13
    • John says that in 2010 Missouri had six Republican and three Democratic districts; Republicans, controlling the legislature and helped by a Democratic congressman whose district became safer, eliminated a majority-Democratic district. — 00:03:11
    • John says every district yields the same five Republican delegates, yet about 34,000 Republican votes were cast in the 1st district versus about 150,000 in the 7th, making a 1st-district vote five times more powerful. — 00:03:51
    • John says nominating has become much more democratic: as recently as 1968 only 34 percent of Republican and 38 percent of Democratic delegates were chosen by primaries. — 00:04:47
  • 2016-04-19 · Literally Hitler — announcement: John says that next Tuesday (26 April 2016) he will look at the Republican candidates' tax plans. — 00:03:20
  • 2016-04-26 · Understanding the Tax Plans of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz — announcement: John says that today he will discuss the tax plans put forth by Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. — 00:00:04
  • 2016-08-09 · Why I Didn't Vote (And Six Reasons You Might Not) — John: To minority-party voters in one-party states, John says down-ballot votes might matter and the vote matters regardless: not voting makes politicians think the state is less politically diverse than it is. (hedged) — 00:01:26
  • 2016-10-11 · Understanding Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton's Tax Plans — John says serious, thoughtful Republican tax and budget plans exist, but cuts this large require cutting entitlements like Medicare or defense; serious Republican plans do one or both, Trump's does neither. — 00:09:33
  • 2016-10-25 · Will the U.S. Presidential Election Be Rigged? — John says elected officials of both parties agree the US election system is more secure than ever in the nation's history. — video description
    • John lays out the claim: Ohio's Republican secretary of state engineered long lines, purged voters, kept 25% of new registrants off polling lists, and 150,000 rural votes were switched to Bush. — 00:02:18
  • …and 5 statements more in 2016 — all statements of 2016

2017

  • 2017-01-06 · Too Excited about Pears! (Question Tuesday with Hank) — Hank says there is no new Republican health care plan: Republicans want to keep Obamacare's good parts but make it cost less by waving their hands around. (playful) — 00:00:28
  • 2017-01-31 · Understanding Trump's Executive Order on Immigration — John: Many, though by no means all, Republican members of Congress and senators agree. — 00:02:56
  • 2017-03-28 · Why Can't America Have a Grown-Up Healthcare Conversation? — John: Citing the Congressional Budget Office, John says even modest cuts to insurance subsidies, like those in the GOP repeal and replace of the ACA, would leave tens of millions without coverage. — video description
    • John says therein lies the problem: serious reform means big changes for many of that 70%, as Republicans learned when abstract reform talk met pen and paper. — 00:03:25
    • John says the Republican bill would have cut government health spending but cost millions their insurance (a hard sell to moderates), while its tax credits meant more spending (a hard sell to conservatives). — 00:04:04
    • John says neither the ACA nor the GOP bill addresses overall cost or quality; to discuss those we must accept, as Healthcare Triage always says, that trade-offs are inevitable. — 00:04:20
  • 2017-08-04 · Why Bullets are Good for the Environment — Hank says that, for a really weird reason, it is worse for conservation to have a Republican in the White House than a Democrat. — 00:00:02
    • Hank rejects the idea that Republicans simply hate the environment: it is more complicated than that. — 00:00:11
  • 2017-09-26 · Trump and Russia: An Introduction to What We Know (and What We Don't) — John: The Trump campaign cut proposed language supporting Ukraine in its conflict with Russia from the official Republican Party platform. — 00:01:20
    • WikiLeaks and the Russian government deny it, but US intelligence and both Republican and Democratic members of Congress overwhelmingly agree. — 00:01:44
    • The email hack created an information imbalance: the public saw many sleazy Democratic emails but no similar Republican ones, so by choosing whose emails we saw, Putin had much say in the election narrative. — 00:01:59
  • 2017-11-17 · Why Are Taxes So Complicated? (The Musical?) — Hank says Republicans in Congress want people like him to pay much less tax on money made by their corporations; he does not know why, since it is still income to him. (unsure) — 00:02:47

2018

  • 2018-03-23 · Trump, Guns, and Net Neutrality...With Governor Steve Bullock?! — Steve Bullock: Bullock says his best advice came from Republican Tom Ridge: you run for office to win, but you win to run government. — 00:05:45
  • 2018-05-22 · The Liger Delusion — John: You start with what you know is true (Republicans are crooks serving wealthy donors, or Democrats are crooks wanting government control of everything) and then look for the how and why. — 00:01:17
    • John says it is known that Republican donor Elliott Broidy paid a woman over a million dollars not to discuss their alleged affair. — 00:01:55
  • 2018-10-26 · The Rigged Election — Hank: A real error in a computerized election system counted a precinct of 600 voters as minus 16,000 votes for Gore; though caught, many saw it as proof machines were hacked for Bush, since the maker's CEO was a major Republican donor. — 00:00:29
    • Many in Hank's ultra-lefty college friend group went on assuming the Republican Party had defrauded democracy and Bush was an illegitimate president. — 00:00:58
    • Republicans have long argued individual voter fraud is a big problem, which many experts dispute, and for decades used it to pass laws making voting harder, especially for poorer people. — 00:02:33

2020

  • 2020-07-31 · Your Brain Gets Smart, but Your Head Gets Dumb — Hank says a growing number of Americans think college is bad for the country: in 2016 the share of Republicans saying college has a negative effect rose from 37% to 58%. — 00:00:42
  • 2020-10-27 · The time I met Joe Biden — John says that for the first time in over 120 years the Republican Party released no new platform this election cycle, no plan on issues from taxation to COVID. — 00:02:26

2023

  • 2023-11-24 · It Wasn't Supposed to be Thanksgiving Yesterday — Hank says FDR's opponents mockingly called it Franksgiving, and his main Republican challenger said he had sprung it on an unprepared country with the omnipotence of a Hitler. — 00:02:05
    • Hank says that for a while there was a separate Thanksgiving for Republicans and for Democrats. — 00:03:15

2024

  • 2024-07-19 · The Assassination Attempt and the Comfort of Certainty — Hank says Crooks was a registered Republican who once gave $15 to a progressive get-out-the-vote organization. — 00:03:58
    • Hank says a conservative might claim Crooks registered Republican only to vote against Trump in the primary; maybe, but nobody saying it knows, and loving guns is not generally liberal. — 00:04:22
  • 2024-09-13 · My Governor is Weirder than Yours — Hank observes an influx of wealthy Montana politicians who aren't from Montana: Democrats tend to field locals, Republicans rich people not from here. — 00:01:23
    • Ryan Busse: Busse says he and his running mate Rafe are probably the only Democrats in a century to run against Republicans who raised property taxes: 'the low-tax Democrats'. (playful, hedged) — 00:08:03
    • Ryan Busse: Busse says Gianforte blamed the county commissioners for the tax rise and then sued the counties to make them collect more; the Republican commissioners can't stand him. — 00:09:33
    • Ryan Busse: Busse says Republicans now come to his events: the property tax mess showed them that voting straight ticket is not always a good deal. — 00:11:50
    • Ryan Busse: Busse says the abortion initiative I-128 polls at 65 to 70 percent, so most Republicans agree; Montanans don't want a governor in their doctor's office. — 00:32:31
    • Ryan Busse: Busse says it is incumbent on him to redefine what a Western Democrat is: direct, no teleprompter statements; Republicans gravitate to him because they believe what they say. — 00:35:09
  • 2024-10-18 · My Ballot Made Me Angry — Hank: Since Montana is a red state where Republicans are generally in power, Hank's first thought was that those in power were ordering the ballot to give themselves an advantage. (speculative) — 00:00:14
  • 2024-11-08 · These Maps are Lying (if you let them) — Hank says the popular vote-swing maps show something important but specific: the 2020-to-2024 percentage change in the Republican–Democrat spread in each county. — 00:03:04

2025

  • 2025-02-28 · We Will Eradicate Measles — Hank says his elected representatives are all Republicans, none of whom are pushing back against this. — 00:06:56
  • 2025-04-11 (said on 2025-04-10, implied) · How Actually Crazy is This Mess? — Hank approves of Republicans in Congress saying the Constitution gives the power to levy new taxes to Congress, not the president. — 00:17:13
  • 2025-04-15 · Chatting with ... a U.S. Senator? — Adam Schiff: Schiff says both parties have marginalized moderates and made compromise a dirty word, but the problem is far worse among Republicans because the president enforces right-wing orthodoxy. — 00:06:27
    • John says most people he talks to are scared, freaked out and overwhelmed by a social media fire hose, and frustrated with both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. — 00:07:27
  • 2025-04-25 · How We Form Opinions — Hank says vaccines were once outside the ideological divide until scary stories made them a fight; vocal political pro-vaccine advocacy now gets more Democrats but fewer Republicans vaccinated, because it is tribal. — 00:06:02
  • 2025-06-10 · 90,000,000 Lives for $20 — John: A later channel comment says 'it's working': PIH hears enough moderate House Republicans told Speaker Johnson they oppose PEPFAR cuts that the White House will amend the package; keep calling. — creator comment
    • John says several Republican senators recently called cutting PEPFAR a red line, yet PEPFAR is in real danger. — 00:00:29
    • John says a Republican member of Congress told him in a recent meeting that he didn't disagree, but his constituents don't care about this. — 00:02:55
  • 2025-07-04 · This Graph Changed My Life — Hank says that seeing such comments, most people think all Fox News viewers, all Republicans and half of Americans think this way: imagining a group, we assume all its members believe the same things. — 00:01:28