You made some excellent points, but you left out the Bush years-- especially 2006 thru 2008-- where the left was highly energized and the right was beaten down pretty badly. And McCain did little, if anything to counter that with the horrendous campaign he ran.
Quoth Sam Stone:
The majority of Republicans aren’t members of the Republican party, either. Most US states don’t have any such thing as official membership in a political party. And even those that do, mostly don’t have an official “independent” registration, just lack of registration in either of the two major parties. I consistently vote for mostly Democratic candidates, I’ve contributed money to Democrats, I’m on Democratic mailing lists, and if (Og forbid) I were ever to run for office, I would describe myself as a Democrat, but I’m not a registered member of the Democratic party, because in my state, there’s no such thing. If those statistics are just based on official party registration, then you’d expect them to show a huge number of “independents”, just from all those states without party registration. It doesn’t mean they’re not, in practice, Republicans.
43% of Tea Partiers are independents. Bush had almost no independents supporting him when he left office. A good part of the tea party is libertarian-oriented, and they hated Bush towards the end because of his big government conservatism. 8% of the tea party is made up of registered Democrats, and I think it’s fair to say that Bush didn’t have any of those people.
So maybe 20-40% of the Tea Party is made up of the people who were still with Bush at the end. The rest, not so much.
But it is a fair bet that a majority of those independents were the people sucking Bush’s dick for the first 6 years and calling the rest of us traitors for pointing out that the Conservative agenda was going to bankrupt the country and destroy our standing in world. You know, the stuff that DID happen and that they got mad at him for trying to fix at the very end.
We can start another thread if you wish, but at your leisure you can explain how the ‘Conservative Agenda’ was going to bankrupt the country.
Take your time.
Not so much that as the intellectual traps conservatives talk themselves into. They find themselves insisting that if capitalism is good, then unhindered capitalism must be even better, despite repeated ghastly demonstrations that it just ain’t so. Whats worthwhile about conservatism is prudence and caution, but when the Wall Street boys bring in the roulette wheels and faro tables, they just get all weak in the knees and forget everything Mamma taught them about credit and leverage.
Remember when banking and securities wasn’t a fast-action, high-stakes game of Monopoly for blood? When the ideal was a modest but secure return on a solid investment? Regulation isn’t so needful when the participations have risk-aversion and a lust for security built into their DNA. When the people who are supposed to be dull, boring, and phlegmatic begin to thirst for adventure, look out
If you won’t allow government to regulate this high-rolling shit, who you gonna wait for to do it? God?
Whenever people start talking about how gloriously non-partisan the Tea Partiers are, I ask this question: of the stated principles of the Tea Party, which ones would George W. Bush disagree with?
I’m not talking about what the polls say Tea Partiers believe; I mean their stated principles for coming together. And I’m not talking about what Bush actually did, but what he believes and what he espoused as his principles when he ran.
Substitute John McCain, or Michael Steele, or whatever Republican you feel represents the establishment that Tea Partiers are presenting themselves as an alternative to. What principles do they actually disagree about?
Small government, low taxes, free markets (regardless of consequences), scaling back or ending entitlements…this is bread and butter Republicanism. I’ve never seen a Republican candidate for anything that didn’t support those ideas.
Tea Partiers are, almost to a man, pissed off Republicans. Some of them are pissed off enough to call themselves independents. 8% if them claim to be registered Democrats, which is understandable because a lot of areas in the South are still 80% Democratic and have closed primaries. (I live in such an area.)
There’s nothing wrong with being pissed off Republicans. But when they try to act like their movement is inclusive across the political spectrum, it’s like a church saying that they welcome members of all faiths around the world to join them to worship Jesus Christ.
The answer to the OP is really simple. The economy sucks. People blame the government when this happens. Since the current government is Democractic, people switch to the Republican side. Or, that’s what would normally happen. But Republicans have a lot of problems in their party.
So instead, a few rich and powerful conservatives that were dissatisfied with the Republican party created a group that kept the anti-government sentiment, but was vague on everything else. But they hide the fact that they are rich, so the poorer discontents will join. As people join, the conservatism gets mixed back in. You paint the current government as liberal, and so everyone in the group chooses to be conservative to counter it.
Liberals could very easily do the same thing if McCain were the one elected–though I’m not sure it wouldn’t manifest in just the Democratic party focusing on the most progressive people as it’s ground was not in shambles.
In short–the Republican party had become quite weak, so anyone who wanted to stay a conservative had to push a new party, while carefully making sure they would still vote Republican.
Those same people started the group, but there are definitely people who are just in it because the economy sucks. And I’m certain the only reason they have any power at all is the economy. At the very least, it legitimizes any racism.
People just don’t get that, if any president is responsible, it is the previous one.
There are issues that the left can and does run on that appeal to the well educated
- Pragmatism, science and competence. The contemporary GOP keeps descending further and further into theocracy, superstitution, pseudoscience, dogma, ideological purity, etc. when it comes to almost everything they touch. They want supply side economics running the country and creationism taught in schools. In fact, the GOPs marriage to dogma and superstition is one of the biggest motivators for the professional class to abandon the GOP. In the book ‘the emerging democratic majority’ the authors talk about the professional class abandoning the GOP in favor of the dems in large part due to the GOP attitudes on issues like pragmatic governance and science.
The religious right (who are generally hostile to women’s rights) taking over the GOP is also a big reason that women have been leaving the GOP.
- Economics is a factor. Almost all the GDP growth goes to the top. Even highly educated people are struggling. So the left can and does run on the concept of economic justice. Fewer and fewer people are finding themselves in situations where they have stable jobs, decent benefits, good incomes and reliable health care. Even if you are educated, that is slipping away.
I also don’t agree that faculty at colleges are left wing and sway their students. Of the 60 or so classes I took as an undergrad, I only remember 1 or 2 where the professors said anything politically left. I remember 1 where the professor said things that were right wing (she hated Bill Clinton).
I was exposed to more political bias in 10 minutes of MSNBC or Fox News than I was in my entire college career.
Whoah, whoah. You can’t have it both ways.
Either the Tea Party is suburban/rural “middle America”, or it isn’t - but if it’s underrepresented in the cities, in the South, and on the coasts, then it’s overrepresented in terms of old people.
But you see, the fact that colleges are dedicated to education makes them “liberal biased” pretty much by definition given the way the Republicans are now; at least to the extent they try to do a good job of it. As the line goes, reality has a liberal bias. The Republicans more and more outright deny reality in favor of “theocracy, superstition, pseudoscience, dogma, ideological purity, etc”; which means that merely reciting the facts on many subjects is “liberal” - at least as they would see it.
Hmmm, as another other line goes, those who can’t, teach. Probably as accurate as the above, but there you go.
Cutting taxes at the beginning of a war is a good start on bankrupting the country.
Starting a second war before finishing the first, too.
Well, sure, but they put it all on the credit card! So, you don’t have to actually pay for it…
Thanks for the post.
So would you mind throwing some numbers around? As in,
- The total cost of the war (I’m not arguing that it was stupid, or expensive)
- The total change in on-balance sheet government debt over the past few years
- The total change in off-balance sheet government debt over the past few years
Since excessive debt, of course, is what ‘bankrupts’ an entity.
And we can start picking through what decisions, and what agenda items, were responsible for each.
Just for starters, let’s make sure we have handy at our fingertips some of the big drivers of debt and government spending
- The amount of losses subsidized at Freddie and Fannie, and a reasonable estimate of how much more of the $5 trillion portfolio will go bad, causing more losses
- Ditto for the student loan market that the government is now effectively subsidizing
- The $867 billion Obama stimulus
- The costs of Obamacare going forward
- Various other and sundry bailouts (such as GM)
And then we can start to size it up.
It is no accident that the tea Party came into existence after a black man’s inaugeration as the president of the United States.
It is no accident that racist expressions are forthcoming from Tea Partiers .
The only explanation that I have is that there is a serious racism going on in America, and that white people who do not normally vote are being energized to take back America for the whites and they are using the Republican party as their best bet…
Am I serious? Well I am seriously thinking about it. Its not something I care to admit. I don’t think many Republicans want to admit it either.
Frankly, I doubt it. Actual racism, the kind I grew up with, is simply not acceptable any more. Most people who I’ve seen express racist views don’t even know they are racist views. For instance, they hold the view that everybody on welfare is a lazy bum, and in their minds eye, when they think of a welfare recipient, they think of somebody black, but they don’t make the connection. Because they don’t admit, even to themselves, that they are holding a racist view.
And if you tell them they are being racists, they get mad at you for insulting them!
Hypocrisy isn’t always pretending to believe something you don’t. Sometimes its not knowing, not questioning the assumptions you make without thinking.
I don’t have a lot of time to do your homework for you and get you numbers for the first section, but I can tell you immediately that:
[ul]
[li]Fanny and Freddy didn’t cause the Great Recession.[/li][li]Student loans were already made with government money. They just gave it to private businesses to lend. We’re saving money by removing them from the equation.[/li][li]The Stimulus was necessary and is thought to have been instrumental in saving the economy from getting much worse. This is a consensus view. I’m sorry if it doesn’t jibe with your ideology.[/li][li]Obamacare saves us money. It is fully paid for and reduces the deficit. Ask the CBO.[/li][li]The auto bailouts saved millions of jobs and have been all but paid back.[/li][/ul]
Was this a joke? It really seems like you should have known this stuff.