The Republicans post-Reagan have always put someone on the ticket to placate the hard right. That’s why Bush picked Quayle (well, that and he reminded him of his son), that’s why Dole picked Kemp, that’s why McCain picked Palin. (W didn’t need to go that route because he was acceptable to that crowd all by himself.)
The only difference now is that the hard right is harder and righter. (Directionally speaking, not as in correct.)
I (unfortunately) don’t think those are, historically, particularly extreme in the context of similar young, fire-brand VP candidates chosen to dish out red-meat to the base to cover a more moderate Presidential nominee. Palin’s “pallling around with terrorists” is if anything a weaker version of Nixon’s red-baiting against Stevenson in 1952 (Nixon is another good example of a rightwing attack dog brought in to excite the base about an otherwise older, more moderate Prez ticket who later turned into a disaster, granted Nixon was a far bigger trainwreck than Quayle/Edwards/Palin).
Palin’s death panel comments post-date her VP run (and even her Governorship).
And citing God as a reason for American Military adventures is, sadly, way to common amongst politicians to be “extreme”, and has been a staple of wartime political rhetoric since forever.
The GOP is full of Sarah Palin fans. Nobody really could tell how many there were until someone picked her as his running mate. So if McCain is more responsible than Palin if she’s representative of the problem.
She wasn’t a delicate little flower waiting in Alaska for a gentleman caller. She reached out to any conservative who cruised past. But I agree McCain had the ultimate responsibility. I’ve hired lots of people, but none of them were ever as ignorant as she was, and it should have shown.
This country has a long history of anti-intellectual religiosity, xenophobia, and anti-government sentiment. I’m not sure if there’s a clear inflection point. You could blame the religious revival in the '70s, which was in part originated as a backlash against secularist culture and hippies.
If you had to blame only one person in the modern era, Rush Limbaugh might be a good candidate. A lot of these ideas are old, but right wing talk radio is where a lot of the mutations started going out of control and were disseminated to the the wider culture. When the internet came along people ran with what he built, using the sort of language he used.
I think he deserves a lot of the blame. He’s the godfather of Hate Radio, and unfortunately the main source of news for far too many. Thanks to him and his ilk, as well as Fox News, right wingers have an alternate reality they can immerse themselves in and not be bothered with pesky little things like facts. In the 1960s, we all disagreed on the issues but we could at least agree on what some of the basic facts were because we all watched the network news and we all read the same magazines and papers. No longer. Thanks to Facebook, ignorant rants and outright lies travel around the nation a dozen times before the truth even gets its pants on.
Wasn’t it Newt Gingrich who came up with a list of Nasty Things to Call Democrats in the nineties? The name Lee Atwater springs to mind too.
I think that’s mostly it. The idea that SP is the cause of ANYTHING is laughable. She’ll be lucky if she rates a footnote in the history books.
It’s hard to single out any event since the Southern Strategy and say, “here’s where it all began.” The Southern Strategy was really the modern GOP’s original sin. There are mileposts along the way, and Palin’s nomination was one of those, certainly. But it was one of many. The rise of right-wing talk radio after the Fairness Doctrine was deep-sixed, Ken Starr, Newt Gingrich, plenty of other mileposts.
I’d back it up four years earlier to Barry Goldwater. While Goldwater himself was an honorable, principled person, his rhetoric (repeal civil rights and Social Security, “saw off” the Eastern Seaboard, etc.) was the worst sort of pandering.
And the Republicans loved it. Sure, Goldwater lost, but he managed to win five Southern states, which opened the door for Nixon and his gang to develop their Southern Strategy.
Not to mention that campaigning for Goldwater thrust Ronald Reagan into the national spotlight. If the Southern Strategy was original sin, Goldwater was at least the serpent.
Part of the reason the Republicans are so extreme is that they have gotten away with it electorally. Let’s not forget that they control a majority of state legislatures, governorships, and both houses of Congress. They have a reasonable shot at winning the Presidency with someone like Rubio who is fairly conservative.
The worst case scenario for them is a Democratic president and a marginally Democratic Senate which will be blocked by a solidly Republican House. The best case scenario is they control every level of government. Why would they change ?
The interesting thing is that Palin as Governor of Alaska seems a Hell of a lot more moderate than even Palin the VP candidate (VP candidates are basically the pitbulls of campaigns in general though) and faaaaar more moderate than Palin the talking head. It appears that it went to Palin’s head that she became the darling the far right and changed her tone to be the demagogue for that faction.
Eeeeeeeexactly. Perfectly stated, sir.
Yes. Before Sarah Palin the Republicans were the pinnacle of respectable representatives. They cared for nothing but the well being of the country and the citizens. Then she came along and ruined the entire party and the country with it.
I would not blame any individual GOP politician, so much as an attitude and worldview that gradually came into being and took root, starting way back in the era of the Nixon resignation, with a trajectory something like this:
• Nixon resigns in disgrace; Democrats joyfully opine that this could return the country to a long Democratic rule, and the Nixon era dismissed as an anomaly caused by conservative reaction to the turbulence of the 60s; Carter defeats Ford in '76.
• Reagan defeats Carter and his politics are distinctively conservative, he’s the first conservative (as opposed to moderate) Republican president in, like, forever, and he’s popular; his re-election is a landslide, echoing the Nixon landslide against McGovern, and now it is the Republicans who see the country returning to its roots and the Carter administration is dismissed as an anomaly caused by the country’s reaction to Watergate; Congress goes Republican for the first time in, like, forever. The religious right thinks in terms of Destiny with a capital D, and there’s a spirit among the conservatives that they’ve got a permanent lock on American politics, that liberalism is dead, etc; after Reagan, Bush defeats Dukakis.
• Clinton defeats Bush and the Republicans and their conservative constituency are apoplectic! Bloody hell, Carter was just an anomaly, right? THIS wasn’t supposed to happen! It’s another anomaly obviously, let’s block him and push his liberal ass offstage ASAP and get back to running the country. But Clinton beats Dole and is re-elected despite Monica Lewinsky and the impeachment proceedings. Republican voters and conservatives and the religious right becomes ever more insistent on ending this horrible cheating anomaly that is occupying the space that rightfully belongs to them, the ascendant new permanent conservative majority and so on and so forth.
• Bush II defeats Gore in the razor-close & controversial election of 2000. He campaigns as Conservative Lite (this fact is often forgotten when looking back); Democrats and liberals hate him less for anything he’s doing in office than for stealing the election (Gore won the popular vote, Bush the electoral college via winning Florida by a razor’s margin requiring recounts / conservative Supreme Ct judges and Florida officials were perceived as settling the issue on partisan grounds).
• Events of 911 cause nation to rally around the leader; 1 year later he changes course with invasion of Iraq and Democrats and liberals are outraged; he opts for more conservative domestic politics also; Democrats try to unseat him but he beats Kerry; during his second term Democrats and liberals treat him as an anomaly, unfairly in power and abusive of it, benefitting from 911 wartime patriotism, and they want him gone ASAP
• Obama beats McCain and Republicans continue to react as if the White House naturally belongs to them and any Democrat occupying it is an anomaly who must be blocked at every turn and shoved offstage. They obstruct as much as possible. Obama beats Romney and they remain furious and continue to obstruct as much as possible.
Note that both contingents have come to think of the other party’s occupation of the White House as anomalous and accidental; but the Republicans / conservatives have been especially prone to think that the American voters will NOT mind if they block and obstruct and use hardball tactics to interfere with the Democratic president’s administration, because they think the American voters agree with them that the place rightfully belongs to the Republicans and that the Democrats don’t belong there and should not by any rights be exercising any power there. The Democrats and liberals are less nutcase about it and believe they will prevail most of the time (the EC has become their turf) but are inclined to think that if they misbehave, voters will indeed hold them accountable.
While Palin probably has a lower IQ than GWB, their viewpoints and backgrounds have much in common.
[QUOTE=George Walker Bush, 43rd President of the United States]
I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.
Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. Biblical prophecies are being fulfilled… This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.
You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.
I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what’s moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves.
My plan reduces the national debt, and fast. So fast, in fact, that economists worry that we’re going to run out of debt to retire.
[/QUOTE]
That BTW was reported by the then French president as one of the points Dubya used with the French president to try to convince him that France should join the “coalition of the willing”. The then French president Chirac was flabbergasted at the ignorance. Chirac said no to Bush.
And now we are considering to have even worse biblical end of time candidates (Carson) and hot headed ones (Trump) that could get a hold of the biggest military in history?
Heck no.
This has been a slow decline since the southern strategy. The party has based itself on winning over as many bigots, know nothings and the superstitious in an effort to use those people to forge a winning coalition. However now those people make up a very large chunk of the GOP and they want their voices heard.
Add in the echo chamber media and it was bound to happen. Palin is just a symptom, not the cause.