The GOP shifted dramatically to the right. They now support torture and pre-emptive war. They are abusing the filibuster in ways it hasn’t been abused in the last 220 years. Ronald Reagan pulled out of Lebanon when a truck bomb went off. The current GOP is too far rightward to do that.
The GOP has gone from a libertarian party to an authoritarian party. Know-nothingness is becoming an asset rather than a liability. They have moved to the right. Nixon for example was fairly moderate. He supported the environment, talked to his enemies, tried to pass universal health care, etc. Even John Dean, who worked for Nixon, said the current GOP has gone so far to the right that they are unamerican due to their disdain for due process, democracy, pragmatism or debate.
Again, I’m not getting the ‘rightward’ thing. You are aware that a lot of hawks pushing the Iraq war are Democrats, right? And that the biggest force that was pro-war on the Republican side was its most moderate wing, the ex-liberal neocons? The ‘paleo’ right, which is futher to the right of the neo-cons when it comes to tax policy, immigration, abortion, and most other social and fiscal issues, was the most skeptical branch (i.e. the old Reagan conservatives).
The GOP has never been a libertarian party. The closest it came was during the Reagan years, and even then they couldn’t bring themselves to drastically reduce the size of government. The Gingrich revolution was somewhat of a more libertarian bent, but they didn’t manage much real dismantling of government either.
As for how the current Republicans are ‘authoritarian’, or more so than any other politicians, I have no idea.
‘Know nothingness’ means you’ve moved to the right? Quick: someone alert Nany Pelosi and Joe Biden. They’ve got bags to pack.
Yes, Nixon was a moderate Republican. Nixon was also before Reagan. Eisenhower was also somewhat moderate. This is irrelevant. We were talking about the Republican party shift since Reagan. And the fact is, you went from Republicans talking about dismantling the Department of Education to Bush promoting “No Child Left Behind” and creating a huge new Medicare entitlement.
I will agree that the Republicans became more animated about social issues immediately after the Bush election. I’ve lamented that many times on this board. Here’s a description of what really happened to the Republicans - They moved away from fiscal conservatism as their driving philosophy to being more fiscally liberal, but they focused more on conservative social issues. They didn’t move to the right socially - there was just as much opposition to abortion and gay marriage in the 1980’s, but the focus wasn’t there.
The reason for this was the cold war. It absorbed the attention of both parties, forcing them to work together. Social issues were put aside by both sides. Conservatives weren’t marching against gay marriage, but then Democrats weren’t pushing for it, either. Clinton signed “Don’t Ask - Don’t Tell”, remember? Gay rights were not on the agenda in the 1990’s, for either party.
The cold war ended, and both parties started to become unserious. The Republicans lost their Reagans and their Goldwaters, but the Democrats lost their Sam Nunns and their Tip O’Neils. The lack of a common external focus has set both sides down a path of corruption and partisan bickering, and in my opinion both sides have elected a bunch of lightweights in the last decade.
Back in 2000, after the election debacle, I wrote up my thoughts on what happened, and here is part of it, which relates to your question in the OP:
Ten years later, and the situation has not changed. There are the Limbaughs and the Glen Becks and they do a great job for the Republican party, making odious statements that the mainstream Republican politicians dare not make, but which are nevertheless needed to fire up the base enough to get out and vote.
The Democrats don’t seem to be as good at this as the Republicans are.
Apparently there is something called ‘overton’s window’ that describes what I was getting at.
Overton described a method for moving that window, thereby including previously excluded ideas, while excluding previously acceptable ideas. The technique relies on people promoting ideas even less acceptable than the previous “outer fringe” ideas. That makes those old fringe ideas look less extreme, and thereby acceptable. The idea is that priming the public with fringe ideas intended to be and remain unacceptable, will make the real target ideas seem more acceptable by comparison.
I think the extreme plays another role, besides priming the public. They are a testbed of ideas. That is, the extreme floats an extreme, for its time, idea like “Privatize Social Security” or “Deport all illegal immigrants”
If the mainstream part of the party sees that the public at large reacts with disgust, no harm, since it is not they who said it. If the mainstream part of the party sees that this issue has traction among the public, they start to slowly introduce it into their discourse.
Having an extreme part in your party allows you to safely “dip your toes” to test the waters before taking a stance on a potentially controversial and disastrous issue.
No but they are abusing the concept of majority rule democracy for the first time in US history, showing they are becoming more and more extremist and disdainful of democratic institutions.
In the senate about 98% of GOP senators voted for the war vs. 60% of democratic ones. In the house it was about 97% to 39% between the 2 parties. There were and are democratic hawks. But where were the paleoconservatives in that voe?
What makes you say that? The opposition to civil rights in the 1964 from Goldwater was due to a dislike of US government intervention in social affairs. Modern opposition to civil rights is based on religious fundamentalism. So the GOP went from opposing civil rights due to libertarian motivations to doing so for authoritarian motivations.
You can’t dismantle government. There are about 6 issues that use up most of our federal budget. Medicare, social security, defense, interest on the national debt, unemployment/welfare and other medical programs (medicaid & SCHIP).
Granted, four of those are welfare/entitlement programs. And one is interest because we aren’t taking in enough tax revenue to fund those programs. But you really can’t dismantle the welfare state w/o massive public outcry. Even in 2005 when Bush had 55 senators, the GOP in congress and the white house he wasn’t able to partly privatize social security to those who wanted to privatize their accounts.
Also that is a bad comparison. Pelosi & Biden might put their foot in their mouth, but they are not the same thing as Palin. Palin didn’t know what the difference between North & South Korea was. That is not the same thing as saying something embarrassing or awkward.
There are democrats who are totally clueless. But I don’t know of any who were so popular with the base of the democratic party as Palin was with the GOP base. And I don’t know of any who’d be given the title of VP to a potential president who was 72 when the election happened.
The birth of movement conservatism (which is anti-intellectual, extremist and authoritarian) started in the 1970s. So it wasn’t just Reagan who started it.
You seem to be saying conservatism moved from paleoconservatism to neoconservatism. To you that is a leftward shift. To me that is a rightward shift. I think that is where part of the disagreement comes from.
My view is neocons may be more comfortable with the welfare state, but they are more authoritarian, less fiscally responsible, more dogmatic, less respectful of democratic institutions, less willing to compromise. So that moves them further to the extreme fringes.
But there are serious domestic and external threats to focus on. In fact, in my view, the seriousness of our problems is more severe than during the cold war.
The rise of China as a political & economic competitor (they own some of our debt, are building alliances, and are making us dependent economically)
The rise of Islamist terrorism
Climate change and energy independence
Entitlement crisis around the corner
Health reform (we can’t keep doubling health costs every 7-10 years)
The shrinking middle class (we are a consumer driven economy, so this is bad for our sustainability) due to loss of high paying jobs and them being replaced by part time service sector jobs
Peak oil
However my view is the contemporary GOP has no interest in addressing these issues in a serious way. When they do want to address them they’d rather address them from an ideological rather than pragmatic perspective (assuming they care about these issues in the first place, which they normally do not). I tend to think the GOP of 40 years ago would be open to pragmatic solutions to these problems. The GOP of today is not, not unless those solutions are ideological first.
As far as gay rights, civil rights for minorities weren’t on the radar in 1930. But they eventually came. So that isn’t the same thing. It was only a matter of time before gay rights became an issue. Same with animal rights, children’s rights, women’s rights, etc.
I think part of it is you seem to feel that the move to becoming a borrow and spend party that (tacitly) supports the welfare state has moved the GOP to the left.
I’m saying the fact that the GOP has become a party of religious extremists, authoritarians and people who have no interest in pragmatic efforts to solve the major problems facing the US and the world, and no interests in compromise, makes them more extreme. And I feel that that extremism is pushing them to the right.
Speaking of the overton window, I’d like to point out that single payer medicare for all is not the far left position on health care. A VA style system is the far left position.
Medicare for all involves government funding of 100% of all medical procedures and expenses, but with private doctors. A VA system involves 100% government funding, but medical professionals are all government employees as well.
The democrats should’ve started with a VA system. Then bartered down to single payer medicare for all. Then bartered down to a strong public option.
Can’t you see the connection between your words and I quote, “you talk only to people who think the same way as you do”… and my reference to the average board member getting news from an org. that thinks the way they do?
This country has waged the class war since it’s inception. What is slavery and the ‘removal’ of indigenous Americans?
And the late ‘removal’ of the middle class?
Infrastructure in place? Check
Women and blacks included in the great consumer mass? Check
War as an instrument of policy established in the public mind? Check
Pull the plug on the middle class? Check
ALL govts are kleptocracies owned and run by kleptocrats shielded by corporations and ‘national security’ statutes. You know, the folks who invest in war,drugs and oil, foment trouble and make out no matter who wins. Or the guys who print our money and take as much as they’d like for their trouble. Basically, organized crime.
All a poor man can do is hope that his govt will share the spoils, provide him with 24/7 cultural entertainment and allow him to engage in debates such as this. God Bless America!
And what stops the non-rich majority from voting themselves ever-greater benefits from the public treasury, fostering an ever-expanding government? OH WAIT.
If there is a class war, it’s the freeloaders, not the Evil Rich, who are winning.
Right. Family dynasties die off, their holdings dispersed among heirs.
Corporations, however, are immortal 'person’s with civil rights according to SCOTUS. They don’t die, they merge and become more efficient at what they do, usually at the cost of downsizing. I hear that some are too big to fail and too big to jail.
And who backed corporate and union welfare in reorganizing GM?
More to the point there’s a lot more flux of who “the rich” and “rich corporations” are, much more than the flux of who’s sucking on the government teat - public sector employees, subsidy seekers (most recently “green industry”), and the ever-growing class who get benefits and pay no income tax.
The federal income tax is barely 1/3 of all tax revenue. And it is a progressive tax. Not as progressive as it was or as it should be, but still progressive.
That is like me saying the rich are freeloading because they pay a far smaller % of their gross income in social security taxes, property taxes, fuel taxes, sales taxes & sin taxes.