They haven’t been the anti intellectual party for that long. And how did we get there? By stealing the angry white men from your party. Well, I’m telling you to take them back. Please take them back.
There’s as much chance of those guys turning Democrat as there is of them turning Muslim.
Wow. Everybody needs to bookmark this post. After years of adaher telling us over and over that the Southern Strategy was a figment of liberal imagination, a slur and slander against brilliant policy minds, he now admits that it really formed the core of the modern Republican Party.
Talk about positive developments!
But they are now? And you’re still in it? I don’t envy you. But you do have a choice. Did you ever consider what ground you’re standing on with them, that it may be a con?
There is no scenario where they become the intellectual party. The last honorable Republican behavior was Ike, Nixon and Ford actually working well with others to make the country operate and I know there is irony there.
I’m going to say negative for now as a liberal, but this is the kind of thing you can’t know the full impact of until a decade afterwards.
Right now, it coarsens the language and brings open hatred and xenophobia into the mainstream. That’s bad. But if it ends up with Clinton or Sanders winning in a landslide and forces changes to the GOP that moderates its position, then its a good thing.
If Trump’s ascendancy in the GOP ends in a presidential win, then its a bad thing. But if he wins but screws up the country so bad we get decades of liberal rule, then its a good thing.
Its hard to say right now because we don’t know what the ultimate outcome will be
Reading this thread is depressing and enlightening at the same time.
Fear Itself says “I think there is a real possibility of violent civil unrest” if Hillary is elected.
Have you paid any attention to which side is rioting these days?
Here are a few reminders
Riot 1 Ferguson
Riot 2 Freddie Gray
Riot 3 Anti-capitalist demonstration
Riot 4 Kimani Gray
Now, one side certainly has folks who like to use violence to futher its agenda but it isn’t the side you think it is. Interestingly, if you look at the list of riots on Wikipedia, it seems that every political riot in the past 20 or 30 years is from the left. Not a conservative one in the bunch, though I doubt the list is exahustive. I am sure there are a few.
I don’t like Trump, but you folks really need to get a grip. If Trump were elected about the only blood that would be shed would be from all the liberal heads 'sploding at once.
As far as Trump being a postive or negative development, I think it is slightly positive. We NEED outsiders to get in the race. Think about it, do you really think it would be healthy to have
Bush
Clinton
Bush
Obama
Clinton (or in a really long shot, Bush)?
The problem is that we need new people but the system is set up so that new, qualified people don’t want to run. Trump jumping in and getting some traction might push other qualifed folks into trying a run later down the road.
Slee
The left demonstrates and the right doesn’t. So what. There are some good reasons.
I am not worried about demonstrations, even ones that lead to riots, as much as I am worried about “Second amendment solutions” and demagogues. That issue is in your court.
I stand by my prediction. When Hillary is elected, the civil unrest that will erupt from the right will dwarf anything BLM has done to date, in both savagery and prevalence. These are the good guys with guns, deluded that they must avert tyranny. It could get ugly, and it is due in large part to the reckless inciting of the mob by Trump and the right wing media.
So make believe unrest is a much greater concern than real life anarchy caused by leftists? Of course those on the left are purely rational and aren’t letting fear cloud their thinking.
You forget that a party is not the embodiment of some Platonic ideal set of beliefs. Parties change like all competitive institutions do in order to conform to the environment. If the Republicans need to modulate to be more appealing they will. Just as the Democrats did under Clinton by shifting right.
Speaking of which, with global trade and no real illegal immigration prevention how is left wing economic policy ever to regain any form of relevance? The Republicans forced a rightward shift on matters that matter while the Dems can claim gay marriage and the rise of the PC police. What do you think has a bigger impact on the world?
Heh. I see your bar for anarchy is set no higher than your bar for tyranny.
I’m glad to hear you admit that your party is without a real philosophy.
You really want to get into a discussion about what a big impact the rebuplicans have had on the world? Even if you win you lose. What is it, stopping the govt when you don’t get your way?
I’d love to see your plan for moving the Repups into the 21st century while your base dies out, and you’ve come out as the enemy of everyone else. Every other party will be more relevant than yours when you don’t have one.
“Of course those on the left are purely rational and aren’t letting fear cloud their thinking”
Have you seen Fox news much or watched the debates of "Future Harmers of America?
You know, those guys lining up to not be president, and then have someone write a book in their name, go on Fox news, become a lobbyist, and then, well, the sky’s the limit, as long as the fear holds up.
I can’t wait for those idiots all to publish their books and people realize there’s 12 of them at once, and don’t buy one.
A food stamp for a vote isn’t much of a philosophy yet it’s evidence you don’t need philosophy to be successful. You just need to pander to a critical mass.
Man, that’s so old it’s petrified.
Philosophies, fresh ideas, compassion, political platforms, sometimes they synergize.
Sometimes being the key word. More often its pandering with an acceptable language to acquire power. The dims would be far less "compassionate " if they had to pay for their electoral bribery.
Obama and Clinton are more or less identical ideologically lol. “Bill Maher Democrats” constitute the ideology of edgy MRA college students not of any great silent Majority.
How has Obama “dishonoured” Israel and why should it be relevant for an American President that he has done so? Obama and Clinton are taking the same line on American foreign policy-pro-Israel but not a cuck for Netanyahu and Likud.
Both Sanders and Trump have far more sensible economic policies that anything ever produced by the Austrian School. Funny that when your beloved policies of laissez-faire had full sway in the 19th Century you saw massive economic depressions every 20 years or so,
Unless of course Trump drives up turnout.
I mostly agree although I disagree that being the vehicle of business and upper-middle class interests necessarily means being the “intellectual” party. But I do hope you take back the Fairfield and Marin County residents who’ve made the Democratic Party the party of infantile hand-wringing over guns and snobbery.
Regretting the Southern Strategy already? Of course, taking the angry white men back means that the Democrats will become once more the natural majority party of the United States.
By making sure free trade is run in the interests of Labour as well as Capital and maintaining reasonable restrictions on immigration (no slave-labour in disguise via “guest worker provisions” for example). Neoliberalism has gone the way of geocentricity in terms of intellectual respectability since 2008.
Why not? Many of the voted Democrat as recently as about a decade ago and recent election results (see Louisiana) indicate enough of them are willing to vote for the right sort of Democrat.
And that is why the Democrats have the chance to be a stronger party in the long run-its economic agenda has the potential to pander to more people then that of the GOP.
Can you really be excepting Republicans and their bought cable network from this statement? In all intellectual honesty? REALLY?
Economic agenda is not synonymous with patronage and perpetual unearned ‘entitlements.’ It is however a very effective way of securing power in a democracy.