Would the Galactic Republic fall without Sidious

[Baffalo]

The average GFFA citizen does not have access to the same information that we do, they only know what they see every night on HNN.

That does raise the question of just how much authority and sway Chancellor Palpatine had over the HNN. Taking this quote from Wookieepedia, I wonder if he didn't have quite a bit of sway.

The HoloNet News can be traced as far back as the Freedon Nadd Uprising. With the tagline "The Information Sources For The Republic," the publication was segmented into news on business, regional sectors, Jedi, sports, and common Republic life, as well as general news headlines. There were also weather forecasts (available to those who knew their six-digit planet code) and a poll. A number of placed advertisements sponsored the publication, and full feed annual subscriptions were available for 45 credits in 22 BBY, although there was a free-access version as well.

Emphasis mine.

There was a complete segment about the Jedi at all times. This means that the Jedi could very easily have spoken about the war or at least had someone occasionally come on the program to explain why they were doing this or doing that, something to boost public awareness and let the people themselves know about what was going on in their lives because of the Jedi. Hell, ask a reporter to come out every so often, if you don't have an official liaison to the HNN offices already, to do an interview. If the Jedi don't work to maintain their own image and simply leave it up to the HNN, then I'm sure it's a complete shock that they find themselves seen in a different light than they'd prefer.

Also, I'd like to point out that in 22BBY, the HNN was temporarily used for the Republic's military broadcasts. Given that they barely lasted beyond this before becoming the Imperial News, I'd say there were people already in place to make the transition. If Palpatine, no doubt the grand chess master that he is, decided to actually maneuver the pieces into place early, manipulating and spinning certain Jedi actions, a bit at a time, would do wonders to corrode confidence in the Jedi. And once he declared Order 66, the Jedi segment was plastered with known Jedi fugitives, warning of their danger and to call a special hotline immediately if any Jedi are spotted.

[Jedipilot24]

The Jedi sections of HNN are reports by the People's Inquest, which is a citizens watchgroup that does not have a favorable opinion of the Jedi.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/People's_Inquest

After the Clone Wars HNN changed its name to Imperial HoloVision but otherwise remained more or less the same. Palpy didn't have to pull their strings because they were already loyal to him as a matter of course.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_HoloVision

[Scrib]

Palpatine knew the people would back him because 1-The Jedi are dead and 2- He had an extremely inflammatory doctored tape

If the people of the galaxy were really turning against the Jedi while they fought to save the Republic (and two became huge heroes) because of Dooku and Greivous well then the Jedi were doomed anyway and the people of the Republic deserve to be slaves. I mean,fuck the lightsabers of the good guys and bad guys are color-coded how do you get confused?

People get confused because they don't see how the difference in lightsaber color matters. In Wild Space even the very well educated Bail Organa didn't know squat about the Sith and Padme was only told because she'd actually seen one.

Even in the KOTOR era when the Sith were public knowledge, most people didn't see the difference between them and the Jedi:
"The Jedi... the Sith... you don't get it, do you? To the galaxy, they're the same thing; just men and women with too much power, squabbling over religion, while the rest of us burn."
―Atton Rand

Some random refugee on Nar Shaddaa remarks to the Jedi Exile that "Sith" and "Jedi" were "two different words for the same thing."

If this was in Bane's time the argument about obscure philosophical conflicts with the Sith might fly more if the Jedi performed a preemptive strike. Here there's a clear political divide. One side wants to secede, the other side doesn't. It's not about the Force or incomprehensible things like that, the reasons are clear and it has nothing to do with being a Jedi.

Assuming, for the sake of argument only, that anti-Jedi sentiment arose because the Jedi had the gall to become warriors for the Republic, what did they do wrong? I mean, any sane person would think that the antipathy was small and any sane person would also focus on fighting a war. There's not much they can do about a few grumblers and they don't have the time either. Going out and being more friendly doesn't seem like it'd help if dying won't. It won't give you any special insight, all it will do is potentially create a rift in the Order and damaging millenia old tenets for...what exactly?

As far as the average galactic citizen is concerned, the war started because two Jedi and a pro-Jedi Senator traveled to a CIS world, got themselves captured, and the Jedi Order decided to commit an act of war against the CIS to get them back. Not exactly calculated to inspire feelings of patriotism, or Pro-Jedism, is it? In fact I wager most people, upon hearing this, thought to themselves "What were they doing on a CIS world in the first place?"

There are no CIS worlds. The CIS is not a legal body. You cannot commit an act of war against something that doesn't exist.

"So the CIS was building an army of battle droids, well so what?

An extralegal group of seperatists building an army is not a concern?

Weren't we also debating whether to build our own army? Why did our leaders have to start a war over all this?

The seperatists tried to murder a Senator-thrice? Who started the war exactly?

Surely some kind of agreement could have been negotiated to keep the peace, isn't that what the Jedi are for?" "We're using an army of Clones? Ordered by a Jedi ten years ago? Well isn't that...convienient?" "The Jedi just brokered a treaty with the Hutts? Have they completely lost their minds? How can anyone trust those gangsters?" "So let me get this straight: A bunch of bounty hunters take the Senate hostage and our government's only response is to give them what they want? And they still blew up the Senate afterward? Where the kriff were the Jedi?" "Whose bright idea was it to bring a monster to Coruscant?" "What the heck happened? We were about to have peace, kriff it! Who had to go and ruin it all? And for what?" "Is it just me, or are the Jedi deliberately trying to piss the Mandalorians off? Like we really need to go through that all over again." "Someone bombs their Temple and the Jedi blame one of the least likely culprits? This doesn't exactly fill me with confidence in their judgment in other areas--like the war for starters." "The Jedi just tried to murder the Chancellor? How dare they, after all he's done for them? Maybe he's right that we need to get rid of the Jedi, this whole blasted war has been one big Jedi screw up after another."

The average GFFA citizen does not have access to the same information that we do, they only know what they see every night on HNN.

I notice that some of the things you point out seem to be about failures on the part of the Jedi. It's natural that people get frustrated at failure during a war.I just don't think there's much to be done about that at all. It's easy to get mad at people actually fighting and failing or them making unpleasant compromises to win when you don't have to. It's also even easier to retroactively justify an action that has already happened.

[Jedipilot24]

If this was in Bane's time the argument about obscure philosophical conflicts with the Sith might fly more if the Jedi performed a preemptive strike. Here there's a clear political divide. One side wants to secede, the other side doesn't. It's not about the Force or incomprehensible things like that, the reasons are clear and it has nothing to do with being a Jedi.

Except that in Wild Space Bail Organa didn't know even know what the Sith were, let alone what their political beliefs were. Think about that for a moment: Bail Organa is well-educated, a Senator, and an aristocrat and from one of the most important Core Worlds. And one that we now know, from SWTOR, actually has a history with the Sith. Despite all that going for him, Bail Organa still had never even heard of the Sith. Padme Amidala does know about the Sith but only because the Jedi told her after the Battle of Naboo, since she'd actually seen Darth Maul. All of this is explained in Wild Space. It seems that despite the role that the Sith have played in the GFFA history, by the time of the Clone Wars the Jedi have suppressed all information about the Sith to the point where most people won't have even heard of the word "Sith." So if they see someone with a lightsaber, they will think "Jedi" because they literally have no other explanation.

There are no CIS worlds. The CIS is not a legal body. You cannot commit an act of war against something that doesn't exist.

Where do you get this idea? According to the Republic's own Constitution, membership was purely voluntary; so since members have the right to secede, they also have the right to organize into another interstellar polity.

The seperatists tried to murder a Senator-thrice? Who started the war exactly?

Padme thinks that the Separatists are responsible and while she is ultimately proven to be right, at the time the incident is officially attributed to disgruntled spice miners. And what evidence was there really to implicate the Separatists? A now-dead bounty hunter who killed the suspect in the second attack? Any half-decent lawyer could easily argue that away, pointing out that it's just as likely--if not even more likely--for the bounty hunter to have been hired by the Separatists to stop the assassin. The idea that the Separatists would actually want a war with the Republic is dismissed by as crazy by almost everyone in the novelization of AOTC.
The only other evidence I can think of is Obi-Wan's report about overhearing Nute Gunray's conversation with Dooku. And because he's reporting what someone else said, the evidence is hearsay at best. Plausible hearsay perhaps but still hearsay.

[Lord Revan]

Was it out right stated that Bail Organa didn't know what the term "sith" meant or simply that he didn't know much (if anything) about them, since events of SWTOR or even the last sith war would have been ancient history when Bail Organa went to school so he might have heard of the term but simply didn't make the connection between something he had heard in a history class and the current threat.

EDIT:it for modern analog, lets say that in the story there's referrences of the bad guys being members of the Templars (order that's as far as we know has been dead since the 14th century), it might take you while to grasp that thse guys are the same as the ones in the history books.

[Jedipilot24]

Was it out right stated that Bail Organa didn't know what the term "sith" meant or simply that he didn't know much (if anything) about them, since events of SWTOR or even the last sith war would have been ancient history when Bail Organa went to school so he might have heard of the term but simply didn't make the connection between something he had heard in a history class and the current threat.

EDIT:it for modern analog, lets say that in the story there's referrences of the bad guys being members of the Templars (order that's as far as we know has been dead since the 14th century), it might take you while to grasp that thse guys are the same as the ones in the history books.

Here's a summary of the scene:
Bail Organa gets a strange message from his intelligence network and then calls up Padme and arranges a meeting with her; Bail is acting very agitated and scared over something. When he gets to her apartment, Bail asks her if she has ever heard of the Sith. Padme has two momentary flashbacks, first to Naboo and then to Geonosis. And then, because of a promise that she'd made to Master Yoda to keep what she knew of the Sith a secret, Padme lies and says "No, who are they?"
Bail replies "I don't know. Until this morning, I hadn't heard of them either." Then he tells her about his message from his secret contact, namely that the mysterious "Sith" are planning an attack to devastate the Jedi."
Padme, naturally, is quite disturbed at this and calls up Obi-Wan since Anakin is away on a mission (the mission in "Downfall of a Droid").
Bail is surprised that all Padme has to do to get a meeting with a Jedi is to snap her fingers, to which Padme replies "Isn't that why you came to me with this?"
Obi-Wan explains to Bail that the Sith are a "corruption of the Jedi" and when Bail gets upset that the Jedi have apparently kept this a secret from the Senate and the Chancellor, Padme jumps in and admits that she'd lied to Bail: she does about the Sith and so does the Chancellor, they were both briefed after the Battle of Naboo and they both agreed that it should remain a secret.
By the end of the meeting Bail has acquired some basic understanding that the Sith are a threat that "make the Separatists look like playground bullies" but he still thinks that they are the kind of threat that can actually be put on trial--an opinion that Obi-Wan and Padme see as foolish. Bail doesn't come around to their point of view until after his and Obi-Wan's experiences on Zigoola. And I can't say any more than this without giving away spoilers. Check out the Wook article: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mission_to_Zigoola if you don't care about spoilers.

[Saxtonite]

without the Grand Army of the Republic the Separatists would have been able to dictate the terms of any conflict and/or negotations with ease.

The Separatists would have slaughtered the Jedi and overwhelmed the Republic, leading to either an even more extreme act passed by the Senate giving Palpatine more power or to the actual destruction of the Republic and the conquest of the galaxy by the Separatists and their secret leader Darth Sidious. It was a no-win situation.

The Seppies would have just left. The Droid Army was a way of enforcing any secession attempted/a defense. The fact that the Jedi and later Clones attacked the Separatists FIRST showed how prudent that was.

You guys are seriously skating the line between want and opportunity. The CIS and all it's followers were mostly financially motivated. I know of no systems or planets that wanted to get out from under the military yoke of the Republic or it's oppressive nature, y'know, since they didn't have one. They did want to not have to pay money to the Republic for XYZ reason. What are the other reasons that systems defected?

Jabiim wanted to get out as it paid tax money but got no help. The Kaleesh (Grievous' species) was fucked over by Republic sanctions for defending itself against another spies which attacked first, and that gave Grievous his grudge against Jedi. The Sluissi felt disenchanted by the Republic's government and seceded Sluis Van & also brought most of the rest of Sluis Sector in via domino effect. Also the ICS mentions the Recusants were mass produced by "aggressively indepndent" star systems who built them to prevent from being reconquered by the Republic/for independence. Names like Patriot Fist and all that.