I fail to see this new found maturity in the GOP as a whole. Sure Boehner finally grew a pair, and the more mainstream think tanks and such are starting to fight back. But the extremist part of the party isn’t ready to compromise at all.
Is the far right going to compromise before there is a rash of well funded nasty primaries? Doesn’t look like it so far.
“moderate” Republicans are trying to position their people as far more reasonable than the TP group, so that when election time comes around, they have a chance of beating the D’s. the more they identify with the TP, the less likely they are, in their individual states and districts, to beat the D’s. Control of the legislature depends on the TP keeping their safe districts and states, and the moderates holding the seats where D opponents have a chance. Of course, to round things out, the D’s have safe seats, as well.
The TP seems to have crested. The future depends on whether the R’s can maintain a ‘sane’ base to compliment the TP. If they can’t, the voter of the future who might have identified as a moderate R will be a moderate D, instead. Moderate R leaders today see the need to mount a strong “we aren’t crazy” public relations stance for their personal survival and to hope to keep the House.
Politico ran a piece a couple of days ago that compares the current GOP to that of 1912. It makes the same point.
The TP crested quite a while back, at least as far as general elections go. What is yet to be determined is whether they’ve crested in Republican primaries. That’s where they’ve been quite successful, the the ultimate detriment of the party as a whole. A right-wing loon takes out a moderate during the primary, and goes onto a flaming defeat in the general.
The TP has now threatened to primary every Republican who voted favorably on the compromise to end the shut-down. If the party as a whole is really coming to terms with reality, the vast majority of these primary challenges will fail. If not, the Republicans will have a new crop of wing-nut candidates to drive them even farther to the right, but the actual government will be able to move somewhat to the left because the Democrats will gain more seats in both houses.
I think the biggest problem with the GOP is it’s dependence upon the solid South. In my lifetime, I have the the Dixie Belt switch from solid Democrat to solid Republican.
When the South was solid Democrat, it did help the Dems win majorities in the House, but it hurt the party in assembling a national strategy to win the White House. FDR was able to negotiate an uneasy truce during the Depression Era, but that fell apart with the rising Civil Rights movement that marked the postwar ERA.
Now any national GOP leader is beholden to the Southern states that used to stretch from Virginia down through the Carolinas, across the Dixie Belt and into the Southwest. You can’t be a national GOP candidate without being aligned with the social conservatives of that region. But the solidity is breaking up, with the growing Latino vote threatening to take away Texas, New Mexico (already gone) and Arizona. Once Texas transitions from Red to Purple to Blue, the GOP will cease to be a national party and either the party changes radically or else it goes the way of the Whigs.
Virginia, once the heart of the Confederacy, and Florida, its bitter end, are now narrowly but firmly Democratic electorally too. It’s *already *impossible for a Republican to be elected President under the current alignment.
Not to mention the fact that it also had not hing to do with a “failure” of communism, since there was nothing the least bit communist about the Soviet Union.
And CCJ’s appeal to “human nature” is a complete non-starter, since even the most cursory examination of the ethnographic record makes it quite plain that there is no such thing.
…except that the ruling party was the Communist Party whose explicit ideological purpose was the eventual creation of a communist society.
Pretty far from “nothing the least bit”.
Probably the very last funny thing Dennis Miller ever said;
“Who would have thought the problem with Communism was that there was no money in it?”
They call themselves whatever they want.
Whether that was actually the case or not is debatable, but even granting that, the key word is “eventual.” They were nowhere near it in 1990–they had, instead, created a particularly pernicious form of capitalism.
There are copious writings over most of the 20th century. It started with Lenin and continued till the end.
From the same time, the third Program of the Communist Party, 1961 (available by pdf)
From 1986, the fourth Program of the Communist Party:
This is not “debatable”. Building communism was the explicit purpose of the entire country, a purpose which they endlessly reiterated. It is simply mistaken to say that “there was nothing the least bit communist about the Soviet Union”. It was the purpose of their government. They failed, but they were expressly clear about the ideal they failed to meet. A failed communist is a still a communist. Their stated ideals don’t become null and void just because they didn’t succeed, especially since no one has ever succeeded.
I’m not going to post again in this thread. It’s off-topic. You’re free to start a thread in Great Debates if you like.
I don’t care what they said their intentions were. I’m interested in what their actual intentions were.
That wasn’t Dennis Miller – it was A. Whitney Brown
It’s in his book The Big Picture.
Another source is here, at the end of the 23rd paragraph:
Back in 2008, you weren’t sure if it was Dennis Miller or Brown in this thread":