Radicalization of the Republican Party & Where Does It Go From Here?

Discussion in 'Politics' started by joepistole, Apr 28, 2015.

  1. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    16,479
    a balenced budget is the hallmark of keynsian economics that left still supports. its the right wing attitudes that prevent a balanced budget which is why you see deficiets sky rocketing in rightwing controlled areas that attempt to do so. they don't know how.
     
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Nevertheless, Democrats are more rightwing on some issues and more leftwing on no issues than in the past.

    In other words, there is a continuing trend toward more "cross-ideology" voting among Democrats in Congress, but not Republicans. If you are viewing the Parties as representative of ideologies, the Dems are crossing Party lines and the Reps are not.

    The lack of cross Party voting is partly a statistical illusion caused by the Republican leadership forcing many votes on one or two Party line issues (Obamacare, say) while preventing votes on many other less Party line matters (appointee confirmations,say),

    and partly due to the Republicans increasingly taking stands that no competent Congressman with a reasonable governing agenda can support, regardless of ideology. In these matters Republicans are organized and disciplined as a Party, with the goal of ruining governance by their foes and gaining power for their Party, and this creates the illusion of a Party line vote by the Democrats. (Threatening government shutdown to protest having to raise the debt ceiling, say).

    This produces sanity line votes, which are only Party line by circumstance.

    What the Tea Republicans said they were trying to push for was a budget balanced at the end of every year - not just a government whose revenue covered its expenditures over the long term, as Keynesian economics produces, but one that zeroed its balance sheet each and every year, as no government ever has or could and still function.

    A smart family that doesn't see any value in sending their kids to college or starting a business or living in a nice house might do that, maybe.

    But that's not how a smart government works. It's how a stupid government tries to work, and crashes; or more likely it's how a smart pack of crooks gets hold of the machinery of government and forces other people to pay their bills.
     
    Last edited: May 6, 2015
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  5. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    Show some evidence.
     
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  7. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    Voted republican, huh? I voted for Kerry.

    I will repeat:
    • What specific things do you consider "radical" about conservative views?
    You know, the "crazy" stuff that makes you think republicans are the bogeyman. Be specific, if you can.
     
  8. wellwisher Banned Banned

    Messages:
    5,160
    Liberal is about gaming the system with language; verbal makeup job. If a groups tries to copy the founding fathers, who wrote the constitution, this is only radial, if the goal is a liberal monarchy; King Obama or Queen Clinton.

    Freedom of speech was radial at the time the US was splitting with England. Before this big government monarchies would restrict want one could write and say. If the Tea Party wants freedom of speech, this would be radical in a world of monarchies who like to censor the people; PC correct.

    The original Constitution did not have an income tax, although Congress could raise taxes to support wars. The only tax was there to support the military. The rest of the taxes were based on fees, excise and usage taxes, but no income tax. This path of lower taxes, is not new or radical, but is consistent original intent.
     
  9. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    3,515
    Try reading that again. I said 150 years of history, not "conservatism". And your limitation on historical precedent is arbitrary.

    Really?

    "I'm a pretty conventional FDR liberal myself, but several years ago, I came to the same conclusion Bartlett did: Bush may be a Republican--boy howdy, is he a Republican--but he's not the fire-breathing ideologue of liberal legend.

    Don't believe it? Consider Bartlett's review of Bush's major domestic legislative accomplishments. He teamed up with Ted Kennedy to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, which increased education spending by over $20 billion and legislated a massive new federal intrusion into local schools. He co-opted Joe Lieberman's proposal to create a gigantic new federal bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security. He has mostly abandoned free trade in favor of a hodgepodge of interest-group-pleasing tariffs. And after initially opposing it, Bush signed the Sarbanes-Oxley bill with almost pathetic eagerness in the wake of the Enron debacle, putting in place a phonebook-sized stack of new business regulations.

    Want more? He signed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, a bête noir of conservatives for years. His Medicare prescription-drug bill was the biggest new entitlement program since the Great Society. He initially put a hold on a wide range of last-minute executive orders from the Clinton administration, but after a few months of "study" allowed nearly all of them to stand. And he has increased domestic discretionary spending at a higher rate than any president since LBJ."
    - http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0603.drum.html

    If anything, politicians pander to the religious simply because they have proven to be a significant voting block. Before Reagan, most of the US was just assumed religious, and something so ubiquitous could not be capitalized on by pitting it against some dichotomous interest. It was not until Reagan that it became obvious that there was something to pit religion against, and that this block was significant.

    It is not religion in the republican party that has changed, it is the dichotomous interests of the democrat party that has actually moved away from the ubiquitous religiousness of the US.

    In presidential elections, it has been a historical trend for voters to tire of the party that has served two terms, especially with a limping economy. You might think that the current republican Congress majority would have an impact, but it has never proven to. Just like republican Congresses passing every major civil rights legislation in history somehow adheres to the sitting POTUS at the time. Democrats, by way of Obama, are at a disadvantage. Remember, while mid-term elections generally turn out more of the politically active, presidential elections do not.



    ___________________________________________________________________

    Worldwide, more conservative candidates are winning office. Netanyahu, Cameron, etc..
     
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  10. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    22,910
    LOL, yeah you are just s bat shit crazy you preach conservatism and Republican memes, but then you vote Democrat.

    Unfortunately for you, Syne that only works in right wing circles like Republicans talk radio and Fox News. I think the reasons why Republicans are back shit crazy has been explained at length. Your refusal to acknowledge evidence doesn't make the evidence disappear.
     
    Last edited: May 9, 2015
  11. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    This is what you actually wrote:
    That is only true if you ignore all the times where it hasn't been true (e.g. Baby Bush). I don't recall Baby Bush every apologizing for his conservative views. Perhaps you have a few examples in which Baby Bush apologized for his conservative views. How well did "unabashed" conservatism work for Daddy Bush, Reagan's former VP? Daddy Bush lost his reelection bid. When you look at actual policy, there isn't much difference between Reagan's policies and the polices of the Bush dynastic line. They were all big spenders. They each expanded government. They each favored crony capitalism and each of them used US military power abroad aggressively.

    Funny how that works...

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  12. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    The Tea Party's does not fully support either party, but has more in common with republicans. The Republican establishment tries to undermine them. Both party establishments are for maintaining the large government status quo, but them in charge in alternating fashion. The republicans limited freedom and grew government with national security paranoia, while democrats do it with high taxes, regulations and quota systems using rich against poor paranoia. The rich get richer, the poor get more, and the middle class gets the squeeze.

    The republicans are charged with sending jobs overseas, so rich can avoid taxes. This hurt the middle class. The democrats are worse since they import cheap labor from overseas, through illegal immigration. This also hurts the middle class. This is worse, since jobs overseas does not result in more welfare. If we send jobs to Mexico, we don;t use tax dollars to give families free medical. The middle class gets this squeeze. The rich get cheap labor and the social programs grow. The two parties benefit.

    The Tea Party is about having the middle class being catered to, for a change. They do not want a handout or special dual standards, just fewer thieves stealing their liberties and their taxes. I am not sure why the liberal middle class, does not hook up with the Tea Party; Taxation without full representative redistribution, kills the middle class.

    Both parties have sent their propaganda teams, to avoid a middle class alliance. All the middle class has paid for decades, and now it is their time to be special interest group that gets a cut of the pie. Why shouldn't the middle class lobby for special considerations, like the rest who have got their way for decades? This will impact the status quo and the thieves in both parties are working hard to avoid this.

    Picture if a third of the tax revenue goes to the rich, a third to the poor and a third back to the middle class. This is not redistribution, but it returning earned property to its original owner, and out of the hands of takers.
     
    Last edited: May 9, 2015
  13. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    22,910
    Actually, and not surprisingly, that is flat out wrong. The Tea Party is a faction of the Republican Party. They play a similar role to that played by Hitler’s Brown Shirts. Their intent is to enforce ideological purity. They are not a separate political party, but faction of the Republican Party.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement
    The Tea Party is one of the drivers of radicalism within the Republican Party.
    Hmm, how do you reconcile that with the fact Reagan is the only POTUS in more than 3 decades to grant legal amnesty to illegal immigrants? The fact is both parties have had an interest in fomenting illegal immigration but for difference reasons. For Republicans financial backers, illegal aliens are a cheap source of labor. For Democrats they are a potential vote.
    And there is no evidence to support your assertions with respect to illegal immigrants. Studies have shown, illegal immigrants do not steal jobs from Americans.
    Actually, no, the Tea Party is about a bunch of misinformed middle class old white people who have been stirred up by Republican entertainment (e.g. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Levin, et al). The Tea Party is responsible for pushing the Republican Party into nearly causing a debt default, not one but twice. It was the Tea Party leaders (Michelle Bachman, et al) who ran around telling folks a debt default was no big deal. It was the Tea Party crowd you pushed government into a government shutdown and then were all upset when the government actually shut down. The Tea Party is the face of Republican extremism. It’s not only the face but the back bone of radicalism and extremism within the Republican Party.
    There isn’t anything wrong with middle class folks lobbying for their interests. But the Tea Party isn’t arguing for middle class interests. Tea Party folks are being used and manipulated by folks like the Kochs, the guys who have funded the Tea Party movement. And the Koch’s don’t give a rat’s ass about middle class interests. The Kochs are all about the Kochs. That is why they spend hundreds of millions attempting to advance their interests and financing the Tea Party movement.

    The Tea Party movement is a bunch of angry ignorant folk who are being manipulated to advance the interests of folks like the Kochs and have played a significant role in radicalizing the Republican Party.
     
  14. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

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    4,201
    I don't want to play your stupid game Syne. You act the part but you aren't that dumb. I'm not using the word "radical" - I said "bat shit crazy". If you don't find bat shit crazy to be radical when exhibited by the highest political officials in the land that is your privilege. If you want examples of "bat shit crazy", then click on this link:

    https://www.google.com/webhp?source=search_app&gws_rd=ssl#safe=off&q=batshit crazy stuff republican

    I'm not the originator of the adjective, by far:

    In sane parts of the world people are commenting on the state of politics in the United States and like many Americans, even long-time conservative scholars, they describe Republicans as an “off the rails train wreck” or the vernacular equivalent, “batshit crazy.” Insanity, craziness, or madness is a spectrum of behaviors characterized by abnormal mental or behavioral patterns that may manifest as a person becoming a danger to themselves or others and it aptly defines the current crop of Republicans. Americans affected by Republican hijinks they call economic policies can attest to the danger Republicans are to the American people, and Republican insiders quietly admit that they are rapidly becoming a danger to themselves. However, unlike mentally dysfunctional people who are hardly to blame for defects that prevent their brain from processing normally, Republican insanity is self-inflicted and borne of their racial animus and irrational obsession over the people’s choice of an African American man as President.

    http://www.politicususa.com/2013/08/26/republican-insiders-admit-party-danger.html
    Here are a few appetizers:

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    Now Syne, I would love to see a refutation of all 103,000 examples of "bat shit crazy republicans" found on a simple google search. Or even an explanation of how it is not bat shit crazy to try and shut the government of the US down, knowing that it will cause the entire world economy to go into a tailspin because - hey - you guys were having a hissy. I'll settle for just that one... OTOH, while you're at it, please explain the bat shit crazy outlook the Republicans have about the Jade Helm 15 stuff - you know, cause it's not bat shit crazy to think the US government might attack Texas, right? Like what might happen - Texas might get annexed or something?

    Please...


     
  15. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    16,479
    open your eyes and look around. the evidence is all around. this isn't some sort of secret. most half way intelligent figured it out years ago.
     
  16. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

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    4,201
    Here's some evidence from this very forum, right here, right now:
    (re Jade Helm)
     
  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    All of that is simply continuation of Reagan's policies. That is what Republican governance has been like since Nixon in 1968.

    And you can make a similar list of foreign policy actions, including starting two land wars in Asia (one of them an occupation) , increasing the massive corruption in military contracting, and abetting national economic betrayal by multinational corporations.

    Of course this isn't "conservative" in the old school sense, when the word had a meaning. But neither is the Republican Party. If you are looking for conservative politics try Hillary Clinton - she's a standard Eisenhower Republican, born and raised in WASP Ohio.
     
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  18. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,849
    I'll just add that wars tend to be started, not by only Republicans or Democrats but simply by however controls the executive branch.

    In the 60's it used to be said that the Democrats were the party that started wars. Now it's the Republicans but really it is just whatever party controls the White House for the most part.
     
  19. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    You appear to be confusing traditional, meaningful conservative ideology with Republican Party ideology.

    Traditional conservatism, as one finds it in dictionaries and political analysis written by scholars and such over the years, can be approximated in the US by center/right economics and mildly authoritarian social positions. This combination describes the main body of the Democratic Party in US national politics. (Conservatism's specific approbations vary according to local traditions and customs - in the US alcohol and pork sausage and Christianity and cars are conservative, cocaine and naked saunas and Buddhism and bicycles are liberal. In Finland, Colombia, China, Japan, or Iran things are different - but conservatism remains the same. )

    What is often described as "conservative" ideology in US mass media, and is identified with the Republican Party, is something else entirely - its closest standard or established ideological category would be fascism, it is essentially identical with standard fascism, and that would be its name except for the confusion with the more florid and dramatic aspects of the NAZI Party in 1930s Germany. This is unfair - there have been many fascist governments in the modern world, from Franco's in Spain to Pinochet's in Chile, and while they were all at heart ugly and insane they did not all set up concentration camps and unleash death squads and goose-step in jackboots.

    Ok, maybe they all did unleash a few death squads, eventually. But not at first, and not all the time.

    There is a major media supported, multi-pundit advanced political myth in the US that there is a large body of genuine or real or sincere or at least sane Republican conservatives among the main body of Republican politicians, representing a like body of citizens. Nixon called these citizens the "silent majority". The myth holds that these Republican conservative politicians - the genuine ones - are on one side, and the liberal left on the other.

    They do not exist.

    Since Nixon's Southern Strategy brought the Confederacy into the Republican Party, all the wars have been started by Republican Presidents.
     
    Last edited: May 10, 2015
  20. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,849
    And before Nixon Vietnam was effectively started by Democrats.
     
  21. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    3,515
    You seem to conflate republican with conservative, and see republican bogeymen in any advocacy of conservatism. These are not equivalent. I have never voted for a republican, but party affiliation has never guided my voting. Unless you are an unwavering ideologue, your views tend to evolve over time as they interact with reality. Had I voted in the last handful of elections, I would/did vote as follows:
    • Ross Perot (Reform 96)
    • Al Gore (Democrat 00)
    • John Kerry (Democrat 04)
    • Ralph Nader (Independent/Reform 08)
    • no viable candidate, but Ron Paul if he had run Libertarian (12)
    Now if I had voted in the 2012 primary, I would have liked to have voted for Ron Paul, but I was registered democrat. Because you keep jumping at your imagined republican bogeyman, you keep making erroneous assumptions about watching Fox News and the like. I have not read every post on this forum, so if you are so sure about the evidence of radical republicans you should be able to readily provide it. So far, it seems you have a bunch of outliers rather than a trend for the party as a whole. Can you provide some evidence that the majority of the party is radical?

    Since I have made the argument several times (that you have responded to), I would think you, at least, could remember that the historical precedent I have been consistently talking about is the one where NO democrat in the last 150 years has followed another into POTUS unless he was a VP finishing out his predecessor's term and getting reelected. I know, I said "conservative" once too many times in that above quote, and that must be a serious trigger warning for your amygdala, so...good effort, mate.

    LOL. Aside from the ridiculously literal reading of "unapologetic conservatism", you only seem to reinforce what I said, i.e. that if unapologetic conservative is not new, then the 150 year precedent is not likely to be broken. Unapologetic conservatism is conservatism that does not kowtow, accommodate, or appease the opposition...like W. Bush did:

    "Put in plain terms, Bartlett's charge is simple. George W. Bush, he says on page one, is a "pretend conservative." Philosophically, Bush actually has more in common with liberals than he does with true conservatives.
    ...
    I'm a pretty conventional FDR liberal myself, but several years ago, I came to the same conclusion Bartlett did: Bush may be a Republican--boy howdy, is he a Republican--but he's not the fire-breathing ideologue of liberal legend.

    Don't believe it? Consider Bartlett's review of Bush's major domestic legislative accomplishments. He teamed up with Ted Kennedy to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, which increased education spending by over $20 billion and legislated a massive new federal intrusion into local schools. He co-opted Joe Lieberman's proposal to create a gigantic new federal bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security. He has mostly abandoned free trade in favor of a hodgepodge of interest-group-pleasing tariffs. And after initially opposing it, Bush signed the Sarbanes-Oxley bill with almost pathetic eagerness in the wake of the Enron debacle, putting in place a phonebook-sized stack of new business regulations.

    Want more? He signed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, a bête noir of conservatives for years. His Medicare prescription-drug bill was the biggest new entitlement program since the Great Society. He initially put a hold on a wide range of last-minute executive orders from the Clinton administration, but after a few months of "study" allowed nearly all of them to stand. And he has increased domestic discretionary spending at a higher rate than any president since LBJ."
    - http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0603.drum.html
     
  22. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    3,515
    Wow, from a website that calls itself "Real Liberal Politics". Who would have thunk it? You seem to only be admitting to drinking the kool-aid. And memes are what the ignorant use instead of argument.

    That is a ridiculous demand. No person is likely to even agree with many of the outliers of any group, much less be expected to defend them. I am not talking about outliers, I am talking about the majority of the party.

    But since you seem to like memes:

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  23. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    You are right. Good job! Conservative is not synonymous with republican. But when talking to people who have a knee-jerk reaction to paint every expression of the former as the latter, it is largely pointless to distinguish the two. If by "center/right economics" you mean laissez-faire economics, then again, you are right, as this is in opposition to crony capitalism and socialism. And if you mean anything other than "prescriptive" then you would need to define "mildly authoritarian social positions." You would have to make a better case, than just proclaiming, that democrats are conservative (other than the recent development of forceful moralizing, which is more fundamentalist than conservative).

    You are repeating the tired and erroneous political spectrum liberal meme. Here is the correct spectrum:

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    The real spectrum is governmental power versus individual liberty. You know, a spectrum that does not have dictatorship at BOTH ends of the spectrum.

    The Nazis (National Socialists) utilized the discretion of the gun control laws of the Weimar Republic (German Reich) to disarm Jews and other opposition. Between gun control and the IRS targeting of political opposition, the US left sounds more akin to fascism, especially when you add the current rash of moral outrage.
     
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