They’ve been dominated by the bigots and fanatics for decades.
No. In and out of Congress, the Democrats are right wing.
No, there are just some less right wing voices; liberalism is a dead issue in American politics. The range of allowed positions in American politics is both right-wing and narrow. And even granting your claim, that’s just playing word games; a voice no one listens to is no different than having no voice at all in this context.
Nonsense. The “surge” was both unnecessary since we shouldn’t have been there at all, and it didn’t “work”; the fighting died down some because it was done; the ethnic cleansing was successful. We just sent some extra troops there and declared victory. They were wrong about compromising on the stimulus and health care; but again, that’s them being too right wing, not too left wing. And the Republicans are much more fiscally responsible than the Republicans (not that that is difficult).
But the middle position is this case is also an extreme one, just somewhat less extreme. “Middle” is not the same as “moderate”.
Seems to me the problem is oversimplified by calling people Left/Right.
I know a lot of socially progressive rednecks who quietly pray, keep guns, think gays should be allowed to serve in the military, want socialized medicine, and will take a bullet to defend a KKK member while cursing him for a biggoted fool.
This represents an acceptance of the notion of a basically one-dimensional political “spectrum,” with Republicans and Democrats as points on the same line. Democrats are “to the left” of Republicans, Republicans “to the right” of Democrats, and members of each may be left or right of each other, but the whole range–the terms of debate–is laid out on one band with two perceived clusters of viewpoints.
Given this image, of course it seems reasonable and natural to think that answers will be found somewhere on that band, and probably between the two towers of partisanship. “Extremism” is defined mostly as the more-outlying points on the same band–perspectives unrelated to the allowed spectrum typically aren’t engaged at all.
I don’t accept this notion myself, and I believe it is more effective in supporting the ongoing two-party/one-dimensional system than anything else.
The Republican party is certainly a lot further right than they were, say, a few decades ago. Otherwise you wouldn’t have people like Newt Gingrich up in arms against the health care plan that was designed by people like Newt Gingrich.
It was nice to see someone do an imitation of Glenn Beck spewing mindless hatred, but from the left, just to prove Decypher right. Funny joke. At least, I hope a doper regurgitating pure hatred towards people just because they are a different political party is a joke…
It’s the same sort of republicans. You think Newt Gingrich was content just reforming welfare? He wanted to kill it I’m sure, he just couldn’t because the general idea was popular but needed fixing. Same with social security, republicans over the years would have been happy killing it. Instead they tried reforming and fixing it (and failed even at that because Bush’s idea to affect 1 or 2% was painted as if he were satan incarnated eating old people for lunch or something). If health care becomes popular, a big if at the moment considering how it was passed, then republicans won’t dare repeal it. Instead they’ll reform and fix it.
OTOH, if it is unpopular and get repealed, perhaps that’ll serve as a warning to those who think the way to get things done is jamming through a law even a lot of their supporters don’t like using trick procedures and shutting out the opposition. And maybe later we’ll get REAL health care reform instead of just enriching insurance companies even more.
Ah, a typical tactic of the Right. The Republicans are indefensible on their non-existent merits; so instead, pretend that disapproval of them is bigotry.
The Nazis too were a political party; is it alright to condemn people for being Nazis? If the answer is “yes”, then you are acknowledging that yes, it IS allowable to condemn people for belonging to political parties and the only argument is whether of not the Republicans are bad enough. I say yes, they are.
Because it’s impossible that someone who stereotypes an entire group of people as fascists and nazi’s might really be expressing bigotry. Thanks for showing us a sane and reasonable view from the left, as opposed to that extremist Glenn Beck who does stuff like stereotype an entire group of people as fascists and nazi’s.
Of course it isn’t impossible. That doesn’t make me wrong. It isn’t the Democrats who have been fighting tooth and nail in the name of just about every form of bigotry you can name.
While I agree that this is largely true on the national level, it’s fortunately not true locally.
I think most non-Americans would consider my political views center-left, which of course means I’m a left-wing extremist to Fox viewers. And yet, I’ve almost always had a major candidate to vote for at the city council/county commission/etc. level whose viewpoints were reasonably similar to mine. In a few cases, I’ve found myself voting for the “more right” of the top two candidates (and in one case, that was a Green).
Admittedly, nobody would argue that the places I lived (Baltimore, DC, Los Angeles, West Hollywood, and San Francisco) are typical American cities–but between them (and a few more), we’re talking about a sizable percentage of the country. I think it’s at least plausible that the majority of Democrats in local office are center-left.
The problem is that these politicians can’t move up to higher offices without the backing of the national party. And, since the DLC takeover in 1992, the national party has been continuously moving rightward. They’ve gotten very good at “helping” politicians move into what they define as the mainstream, without realizing they’ve changed their views. For example, the Gavin Newsom of 1992 would have hated the Gavin Newsom who’s currently Mayor of San Francisco (for the same reasons he hated Dianne Feinstein back in 1992). He doesn’t believe he’s moved to the right, but 18 years of fundraising, party politicking, and just hanging out with different people have changed his views. And I’m willing to bet that by the time he becomes Governor or Senator (which he will), he’ll have moved even farther.
How does the party get away with being way to the right of most of their core voters and even their local politicians? Simple. There’s always the Republican Party farther to the right, so they can always carry the base by “It’s us or Bush” type arguments. (In fact, they even pulled that off in the 2003 SF mayoral election, where the opposition was from the Greens–the ads all reminded us that “Sacramento has fallen to the Republicans, so we can’t let the Democrats lose San Francisco too”.)
On top of that, the Republican Party and their friends at Fox play right into the DLC’s hands by constantly harping on how “liberal” the Democrats are. The swing voters may have learned to see through that nonsense, but the Democratic faithful still fall for it just as fully as the Republican faithful do. Liberals vote for the Democrats because they’re liberals, and see no contradiction in doing so.
And, whether the Republican Party moves farther out into right-wing looneyville or heads back to the center after 2012, it will probably have no effect on the Democrats. Why should it? Imagine a center-right party in Europe that could count on automatic overwhelming support from the center and center-left without having to make any concessions. They would be invincible, and completely stable, unless things got so bad that fascism or marxism or some other extreme point of view became a viable threat. That’s where the Democratic Party is today. Unless some intra-party faction pulls off the same kind of coup the DLC did, nothing’s going to change.
So, what’s the solution? Ban national political parties? Make things easier on third parties? Publicly fund elections? Break up media conglomerates like Fox? I doubt there is an easy answer that would magically fix the problem.
I have to agree with** Inigo Montoya** and a few others. You can’t just distill everything down to “Left” or “Right”. The Republicans have become a little to right wing for my tastes, by Der Trihs seems like a left-wing lunatic to me (no offense). I’m pretty liberal on some issues like gayness, abortion, and a few others. But I’m also pretty Right on others. And when it comes to economics or business, I don’t follow a particular political idealogy. I am in favor what makes sound economic and business sense.
Nobody’s saying you have to vote for Der Trihs (I suspect not even Der Trihs). But wouldn’t it be nice if his viewpoint were as well-represented in the national discourse as Glenn Beck’s–and, more importantly, if people significantly closer to the center than him were represented even better than either of them? The reality is, the center-left viewpoint is almost inaudible in American politics, possibly even quieter than the mid-left or far-left viewpoint (because extremists shout louder). That’s what I took to be his biggest complaint, and I agree with him.
That being said, I agree completely with your other point about the single-axis spectrum being almost useless. The problem isn’t that the Democrats and Republicans are center-right; the problem is that there’s a whole range of important issues where they agree, wherever that agreement might fall on the spectrum, so there’s no room for any other position to get heard.
The problem is with severing general conservative thinking and political philosophy (e.g., preference for smaller gov., concurrently lower taxation and spending) from the current leadership and trend-setters of the Republican party–the Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs, Sarah Palins, and Michelle Bachmans. Aside from political extremism, their over-the-top rhetoric and pandering to the base elements of the party, which has little to do with political conservative theory, is ratings- and earnings-based, not governance based.
Holding a debate about the relative spectrum positions of the two parties without acknowledging that there are three animals in the room (an elephant, a donkey, and a Fox) misses enough perspective as to be meaningless.
