Eventually. He got elected Governor and Senator before that, though.
Looks like he served one term as a US Senator before the people of his state figured him out for what he was. So they picked a corpse over their incumbent.
As has been pointed out, the Religious Right and the hard-core of the party are (and will remain) important to the Republicans for only a couple of reasons (but, boy, are they BIG reasons) - they are organized, they donate, and they participate. “Idealogy be damned, we need their votes” seems to be the motto of the moderates of the party (who probably outnumber the extremists by a hefty margin, IMHO).
As long as this continues to be the case, the Republican Party is going to remain thoroughly in the thrall of the extremists. Can you see Mamie Eisenhower or other “country club” Republicans (who used to typify the party) protesting at an abortion clinic or falling in lock-step behind Randall Terry? That whole wing has sold itself to the far-right for the opportunity to control the both houses of Congress, the White House, and the majority of state legislatures (which is what political parties are designed to do).
How would anyone suggest they wean themselves from the teat of the Rabid Right Wing?
As far as the war between the demicans and republicrats the it comes down to who has the best pr campaign. The information that’s made easily available to the electorate is crap. Most of us have real lives to lead and don’t have the time to discover the truth for ourselves - so the truth remains out there [rational ignorance].
What we’re left with the what’s presented in the name of making a buck. The media aren’t interested in informing the electorate as much they’re interested in selling adspace. Nor are politicians interested in an informed electorate. They’re only interested in an electorate that knows what they want them to know - “We’re great and the other guys suxx0rs.”
As an electorate, we’re pretty much high and dry on our own here. We are twisting in the wind. We have lives to live that keep us from being able to devote the time and energy necessary to counter the disinformation that comes from the media and the poloiticians. The media and the pols, however, providing us with malinfo is their lives and livelyhood.
Rational ignorance is the number one threat to the republic for which we stand (no matter what that whiny luci says about cd).
ps
The recent upsurge in the apparent trust placed in politicians leaves me mostly (but obviously not entirely) dumbfounded.
I don’t recall saying that; I’m merely refuting the assertion by Sam Stone that today’s DNC is already moving in that direction (I wish!).
If anything, I don’t think the DNC should “move” in one way or another, but should adapt to build broader appeal. Staying as a niche and appealing to exclusively to either the more idealistic left or the Republican-lite moderates is doomed to failure, IMO. But that’s probably a topic for a separate thread.
Don’t have much to add to the excellent posts above (esp. DoctorJ’s) except a giant “meh”. The people who Danforth is addressing might wince and wipe their asses with the NYT in the case of an emergency, but this statement will not only be ignored, it will be laughed at. In an essentially evenly-divided US among the “mainstream”, the Christian Right are the tiebreakers, and probably will be until the rest of those who vote Republican decide there are more important things than tax breaks. Far too little, and way, way too late, John.
Is there any consensus on whether the republicans are comfortable bedfellows with the Religious Right?
It would seem from Senator Danforth’s article as well as a few other grumblings I have heard that not all is peachy between the two. Grumblings include both those from republicans who think some of their agenda has been hijacked to some religious right types who complain that they got those people in there and not enough is being done to advance their agenda…time to pay up. Of course I could be way off hence the question.
I wish I could find the link for one analysis of how Bush and company handled the Terri Schiavo thing. Essentially the analyst was making a case that it was a cheap and simple bone to toss to the religious right to placate them without actually doing anything that ultimately meant anything. The republicans mouthed the right platitudes, showed their concern by passing bogus laws, got to bad mouth the liberal courts for thwarting the desires of Congress and in the end changed nothing and really did nothing of substance or permanence. Next election time they likely will have little to no political fallout from the Schiavo bit but will have maintained goodwill with the religious right. Pretty straightforward political calculus.
Another doper, who shall remain nameless, since this isn’t the Pit, opined that the pubbies were deeply sincere on this issue, and though bracing for the inevitable fallout from their principled battle for Terri’s life, were willing to make that sacrifice for the Culture of Life.
If I rolled my eyes any harder my head would snap back.
That remains to be seen. A large part of the Religious Right leadership seems to feel that George and Jeb’s failure to send in the SWAT team, or the National Guard, or the Marines, or the Impossible Mission Force, or somebody, is an intolerable stab in the back.
Indeed and that, to me, is one of the scariest things about the religious right (or more to the point their agenda). For them to think that the President and/or the Florida Governor should in the end just flout the rule of law and do what they please and be ok with that is deeply troubling. Regardless of how you feel about what they did George, Jeb and other republicans worked within the system. Heck…they managed some clever moves too (sending a Congressional subpoena to Terri for instance). As self-serving as I felt their attempts were they at least never stepped out of the bounds of the laws they are sworn (sworn to God no less) to uphold.
It would be easy to over-emphasize the importance of this. The values schism between the Fundies and the Mammonite Church wings of the Republican Party has been apparent for a long time: the Fundies want Britteny Spears tittie’s off the TV, the Mammonites sell Ms. Spears titties on TV. The Fundies consult thier Bible on issues regarding the depravity of rap music, the Mammonites consult thier spreadsheet.
The comparatively rational wing has been buying off the Fundies with promises and symbolic gestures, just one more election, one more big push for Jesus and the Gipper, and we’ll roll back America to the Golden Age of wholesome family values and hygenic, dull sex. It is a promise that they almost certainly cannot deliver, so they make gestures and use crypto-scriptural language to underline that the Prez is One Of Us. ("…google gaggle, google gaggle, one of us, one of us…").
What to do when you control all the public reins of power and yet still cannot turn back the clock. Blame what you don’t control. Used to be, it was those liberals in Congress that were thwarting God’s Will, now its those activist judges. Will it work? Probably, because the targeted rubes cling to the notion that they are the people, the vast majority of Americans agree with them. Well, the real Americans, at any rate.
I commend Mr. Danforth for his public scolding, and wish him well. I sincerely hope his quest is met with success, we need a rational right wing to argue with, to keep some of our goofier elements in check. We’re not always right, just more often right than wrong, but only a fool believes he needs no check on his credulity. The rational right can provide the damping influence that keeps progress from degenerating into revolution, that we can proceed apace with reasonable changes .
I note with rueful disappointment that running dog jackal of the ruling class, the ineptly yclept PatriotX, once again fails to grasp the desperate danger inherent in the epidemic of Cognitive Dissonance, and can only assume he has some plans afoot for an investment strategy to exploit same, as is typical of his particular species of scoundrel. Rational ignorance is a psychological mechanism, CD is a pandemic pathology. Chicken pox is not smallpox, dumb is not brain dead, and Tom DeLay is a seeping pustule on the body politic (no, that’s not part of the analogy, just threw it in…) Of course, one cannot make any specific diagnosis on such scant evidence, but suffice to remark that such inappropriate threat assessment is one of the principal symptoms of Cognitive Dissonance, the Number One threat to the Republic.
(“whiny”? “whiny”? I’m a recovering Texan, son, we don’t whine, we re-load…)
I am very aptly yclept thank you very much.
I’m an Arkansan and we carry and extra pistols so we don’t have to take the time to re-load.
Excuse me, but what in the name of God’s Green Earth do you mean by the economic libertarians needing the fundies? We don’t need 'em. Matter of fact, if we pitched 'em all overboard, we might just pick up matching votes in people coming back from the Democratic side.
Admittedly, they’re a big block, and they vote, but they’re never gonna vote Democrat, so it’s not like we can lose them by pissing them off, now, is it?
You must’ve forgotten about the Great Society, the most ambitious liberal agenda of the last half of the 20th century.
True. Of course, the right painted him as a dangerous leftist while he was in office.
“Totalitarianism”? It must be semantics time. Can we bring Jeane Kirkpatrick into the discussion? Ain’t no totalitarians left these days, except maybe Castro; just authoritarians. And how many of those did Truman oppose? Examples, please, if answering with a number other than ‘zero’.
Link, for those of us who missed your original discussion?
Saddams were a dime a dozen in Truman’s day, and Ike’s, and Kennedy’s, and LBJ’s, and Nixon’s, and Ford’s. And we cozied up to them.
Then Carter started talking about human rights, which wasn’t a cozy subject for these guys, and was promptly demonized by the right.
So, what was ‘loony left wing’ about these guys, with respect to their party? Mondale in 1984 was the same mainstream Democrat he’d been in 1975. Dukakis was a technocrat, not an ideologue of any sort; he won the nomination because Dems were in fact looking for a centrist. And like I said earlier, one might learn a lot from a Kerry/Perot comparison.
You mean B-1 Bomber-killing, Panama Canal giveawaying, human-rights whining, Somoza-and-Shah-dumping Jimmy Carter?
The very ones you paint as moderate were slammed as far-left when they were in office. Going by the right’s evaluation of Dems past and present is a waste of time; the target’s always moving, but today’s guy is always too liberal, way out of the mainstream, and all that, while if he hadn’t been the Dem choice, he’d be held up as an example of the sort of Dem the party should have gone with. Guys like (pro-lifer and Mormon) Harry Reid, and (Mr. Rogers personified) Tom Daschle, are the prototypical examples. If the Dems had nominated Dean last year, right now you’d be saying they should have nominated someone like John Kerry.
rjung can speak for himself, but I think they need to run as Democrats. Not liberal Democrats or conservative Democrats, but people who are staking out some clear Dem alternatives to GOP positions on enough key issues so that the difference between us and them actually matters, and aren’t willing to sell out on those positions.
We’ll figure out who we are far better by doing it ourselves, rather than listening to every conservative who really wants Democrats to be GOP-lite, or every pseudo-Democrat who’s willing to sell out his party’s principles to look ‘reasonable’ in the eyes of the Beltway commentariat.
Here’s where the opening for a third party is:
First, Bush crushed the Democrats on national security. It’s the single biggest gap between the Republicans and the Democrats. Not Christian values, not health care, not Social Security. The Republicans have a 30% advantage over the Democrats when people are asked, “Who do you trust to keep the country safe?”
The reason? Because the Democratic party is full of foreign policy wingnuts. John Kerry wanted to turn Iraq’s security over to troops from other Arab nations, for God’s sake. On the eve of the elections in Baghdad, Ted Kennedy gave what may be possibly the worst-timed speech in the history of the Senate, calling the Iraq situation a disaster and saying it was time to cut and run.
The Sam Nunn/Jeanne Kirkpatrick wing of the Democratic party used to be a significant part of the party. Now it’s being held up by Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton. Amazing, that.
As long as the Democrats keep screwing up on foreign policy in an era of war, they’ll continue to lose.
On the other hand, the Democrats have a huge lead on the Republicans over this Terry Schiavo affair - something like 80% of the public wanted the government to butt out of this decision. The Democrats also hold huge leads over issues like stem cell research, Social Security, and fiscal policy. That last is amazing - the Republicans have totally screwed the pooch on fiscal policy, and the public is waking up to it.
So what to do when 65% of the country things the Democrats are wrong on foreign policy, and 65% think the Republicans are wrong on domestic policy? That represents a huge gap in the middle that could easily be filled by a tough, fiscally conservative, socially moderate candidate. Someone like Arnie. If some charismatic, moderate, hawkish figure emerges and starts a 3rd party, it would be a great thing for everyone. Because both the Democrats and the Republicans need a little bitch-slapping, and watching 40% of the public move away from them would be a good wakeup call.
The irony is that Team Bush has royally screwed the pooch - bolstered AQ et al’s sympathizers and recruiting, tied down American forces and tied up huge amounts of US treaure - and gets lauded for it.
Having a great PR campaign makes the difference.
I know I made something like a 20% return on my investments last year by betting against Team Bush doing good for the US.
I’ll give you this, you may have a point here. But that saw cuts both ways, doesn’t it?
Wasn’t Eisenhower ridiculed by liberals in the 1950’s? I seem to recall that he was portrayed as an ineffectual boob by a lot of the talking heads of the time. Strange that liberals today seem to desire a Republican party run on tolerant Eisenhower-style lines?
Nixon, similarly, was portrayed as a right-wing bombthrower when in fact he was a moderate that positively infuriated doctrinaire conservatives at times. And some liberals seem to be pining for Reagan in the Bush era, now that he’s safely dead.
Now, I could cut a deal with you to leave the Democrats alone, and you’ll leave the Republicans alone. But that doesn’t seem like nearly as much fun, now does it. 
No, it doesn’t, at least in this discussion. I wasn’t trying to make any point about Republicans past, so whatever may or may not be true about them is really kinda meaningless here.
Of course, I strongly disagree with you. Al-Qaida has suffered a disaster with the Iraq war. Bin Laden came out against Democracy, and the people of the Middle East are clamoring for it. Zarqawi became the ‘face of al-Qaida’ in Iraq, and started killing fellow Muslims. Oops.
Can you point to examples of how al-Qaida’s sympathizers have been bolstered? Can you show me cites claiming that recruitment in al-Qaida is way up? How about funding? How’s al-Qaida doing there?
Wow. If you’re able to translate your strategic insight into intelligent stock market picks and outperform the market 4-1 as a matter of anything but luck, you can give Warren Buffet a run for his money.