I was once a Republican, but I left the party decades ago go to become an independent voter. Fareed Zakaria explains why and my frustrations with the Republican Party in the article he published today. The Republican Party lost its way a very long time ago. And that's unfortunate, in a 2 party state, we need 2 healthy parties. Unfortunately, that's not what we have today and we need to ask ourselves why and take corrective measures. Trump's candidacy should be a clarion call to all of us. Fareed Zakaria: "In recent days, I have had a dream: that America has a real Republican Party, a party offering a serious right-of-center alternative to the Democrats. Such a contest of ideas would improve the public debate and offer Americans a real choice, not the cartoon campaign we have today. Donald Trump had the opportunity to reset his campaign this week and managed to derail it. But forget the detour for a moment. Trump's much-heralded speech laying out his economic policies was a mishmash of populism, hypocrisy, and pandering. It promised protectionism, trade wars, and tax cuts for the rich and proposed no changes to America's fast-growing entitlement programs. It was ideologically incoherent and fiscally irresponsible. When did this Republican intellectual decay begin? According to the conservative writer David Frum in his brilliant book, "Dead Right," it started in the Reagan years. Historically, the Republican Party was all about fiscal discipline. Reagan had viciously attacked Jimmy Carter for racking up deficits and debt. In fact, by the end of Reagan's two terms, the national debt had tripled. Republicans came to recognize that, whatever it might say, the public in fact didn't want cuts in government programs. The country was, in George Will's phrase, "ideologically conservative but operationally liberal." This was the Republicans' moment of truth, Frum argued, and they blinked. Since then, most Republican presidential candidates have promised the public huge tax cuts without any real spending restraint to pay for them. The result, of course, has been massive deficits. The only Republican who tried to adhere to some notion of fiscal conservatism, George H.W. Bush, was attacked and destroyed for this sin by conservatives led by Newt Gingrich. Republican economic plans nowadays are simply not serious. In the primaries, the three main candidates of "the party of fiscal discipline" — Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump — presented plans that added $8 trillion, $10 trillion or $11 trillion in debt over the next decade (according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center). Even the much-respected Paul Ryan proposed a plan with a $2.4 trillion hole in it. These vast gaps are papered over with magical assumptions of higher growth and the usual vague calls to end waste, fraud and abuse. (Whether you like or dislike Hillary Clinton's economic plan, its numbers add up.) Trump's plans are a replay of these dishonest techniques. He proposes large tax cuts but of course doesn't pay for them, assuming the usual bogus growth numbers to make them look better on paper. He promises to cut regulations, saying at a rally this week that he might reduce them by 70 or 75 percent, which is so absurd that I don't think even he believes it. His added twist is protectionism, but even here the technique is the same. He makes wild promises that he would never be able to fulfill. Imagine, instead of all this, a Republican Party that believed firmly in limited government — and proposed policies that were true to these beliefs. It could present a serious plan that rationalized America's unwieldy and corrupt tax code, simplifying the structure, even cutting rates — but only to the extent these were actually paid for by increased revenues from closing loopholes, deductions, and credits. Imagine a Republican Party that focused less on tax cuts for the rich and more on improved access to the market for the poor and middle class. For example, a party that proposed not to eliminate Obamacare but to reform it using stronger market mechanisms, allowing greater competition and transparency in prices and services. Imagine a party that presented specific plans to cut regulations that hamper the formation and growth of small businesses and encouraged large companies to hire more workers and make new investments (rather than engaging in financial engineering and stock buybacks). A party that encouraged states to get rid of the ever-expanding licensing requirements put into place to keep out the competition. (In the 1950s, less than 5 percent of jobs required a license to do the work. Today 29 percent do, at a cost of nearly 3 million jobs, according to University of Minnesota professor Morris Kleiner, who has studied the topic extensively.) As the Kauffman Foundation has discovered in surveying small businesses, they care far more about too many regulations than they do about their tax rates. Political systems need debate and choices. But for these to be useful, both sides have to accept certain informal rules — that their proposals will be serious and coherent and that their numbers will add up. America would benefit greatly if the Republican Party were to focus on its core ideas, and be a substantive, market oriented, right-of-center party. For now, it remains a dream." Breaking News at Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/FareedZakari...ial-trump/2016/08/12/id/743375/#ixzz4HJfG7rHO Urgent: Do You Back Trump or Hillary? Vote Here Now!
I was an independent for a number of years. Didn't improve the circumstances in the least. We seem to be locked in a two-party system.
I too was a Republican, now an Independent. There is a good reason why we have primarily a two-party system. This helps to ensure that the majority of the nation supports the winner. The problem Republicans have is they have no economic policies that haven't already failed. They have nothing to offer. Supply-side economics [Reaganomics] failed, as did Laissez-faire Capitalism. They have nothing but tax breaks for the rich [just a spin supply-side economics] and even Republican voters are starting to question the utility of that... though it is shocking how many poor Republicans appear to feel sorry for the uber rich. Here is another problem: "Family Values" and "Social Conservatism" are just code for religion and the imposition of religious beliefs on the rest of us. Righties cry about the Left getting in your business - big brother, nanny State, gonna take you guns, blah blah blah - while it is the Right that seeks control of our bodies and personal behavior. They don't even want to let a person suffering horribly and without hope, to have a dignified and peaceful death. They not only want to control how we live but how we die. I don't concede my right to die without asking the Republicans for permission. And as the ultimate hypocrisy, we see hyper religious voters who want to control everyone else, supporting a scumbag like Trump who openly condones the most unchristian policies we've ever heard from a Presidential candidate. The problem Republicans have is Republicans. And that is why the party is dying.
Just now I am listening to a Trump supporter criticize the media for what they cover. His argument asserts that a Presidential candidate who by his own words wants to torture, kill innocent people, use nukes, and use military tribunals instead of courts for American Citizens, isn't news! That in itself is horrifying! Just when does his stated desire to install a totalitarian State start to matter? After he's in office?!?! I care a lot more about those claims than what tax breaks he intends to give himself and his buddies. Yesterday I was listening to some billionaire who is a big supporter of Trump's economic plan. When the subject of tax returns came up, he responded that Trump surely "paid little to no personal income tax. No one in real estate pays taxes. Everyone knows that". He added that this can be seen in tax returns from years ago already made public.
The question in my mind, did the Democrats change anything while in power? In fact, most support the uber rich (no real change). I personally have no problem with wealth. I do have a problem with disproportionate influence because of wealth, which seems to be the problem in government, a sin that apparently afflicts many elected representatives. They appeal to their voter base; but again, have they really made any changes in the larger picture? Republicans have enjoyed control for a long time, yet all those social ills they supposedly were fighting are alive and well. I would hazard a guess that they were just a hollow cause to gather support from their constituency. Sadly, I think both parties can be summed up quite easily: Money. Money, Money.
Like when was that? Never in Fareed Zakaria's lifetime. No, it's not a dream. It's the Democratic Party. Oh bullshit. Frum's mythical Republican Party, the one with intellectual integrity, has never existed in his entire adult life. Or Zakaria's adult life. In that book, a man who was to become a speechwriter for W, a cheerleader and liar for the Iraq War, is lecturing us on the intellectual decay - - of other people ? Frum has been getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to write, as if it were a revelation, deceptive and self-excusing little bits lifted from what actual intellectuals and analysts and responsible journalists have been trying to get past his and his fellow slag merchants's dominance of American public discourse for decades. If he had any intellectual integrity, or even common decency, he would give his fancy house, his status in life, his perennial seat on the TV pundit circuit, the earnings from his books, and all of the money he has ever made as a public "intellectual", to the people he's been lifting from, who have not spent the past thirty plus years shilling for swine. Instead, he has spent his career denigrating them, slandering them, and lying about them. Look: If the intellectual decay of the Republican Party had only started when Frum now says it did, during Reagan's tenure, an intellectual clusterfuck like Reagan would never have had a chance at the Republican nomination in the first place. Reagan was not when it started, Reagan was when it took over, completely, having recovered from Nixon's disgrace and discovered the healing powers of amnesia. David Frum wants to forget that, because the campaign of Ronald Reagan was where David Frum signed on to the Republican Party, and Reagan's triumph is partly due to Frum's efforts. David Frum signed on, from his cute little College Republican first days as a campaign volunteer, political analyst, and in-group intellectual, to a Republican Party that was already rotten, horribly, fundamentally, and quite obviously. He furthered and abetted that rot his entire adult professional career, and got paid handsomely for doing so. Because the supposed Republican "decay" - better known as "business model" - started, if the concept makes any sense, with George Wallace's demonstration of political power in the 1960s. That's when guys like the financial backers of Richard Nixon saw the chance to break the Democratic hold on the Confederacy, and use the leverage of racial bigotry to roll back the New Deal. They hated the New Deal. Hated it. And David Frum was and is one of their hired little minions, a tool in their long and increasingly successful efforts to destroy representative American democracy in the interests of their aristocratic dreams. So one first step in reforming the Republican Party might be to cut off the gravy train from the likes of David Frum. Make sure he doesn't get paid any more for doing what he's been doing these past twenty or thirty years, make sure his TV time is re-alloted to the people who actually thought up anything worthwhile he has to say. He provides the valuable service of a screen of respectability for people who should be disgraced, an inculcated amnesia for stuff we need to remember, and a deflection of attention from what's actually happening in American politics.
Think it will take way more than political parties to fix all the issues in the United States or even close. It will take the citizens themselves to change their ways in cooperation with a government who actually care about its citizens, in order for any real change to take place. Good for you though joe, for following a new path!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1964prescountymap2.PNG Goldwater's vote in 1964 - had he not been running against a popular Texan and incumbent during wartime most analysts think he could have earned the electoral votes of the entire Confederacy. He later endorsed Nixon and Reagan, and pundits such as George Will declared Reagan's victory a victory for Goldwater Republicans. He is known these days as a libertarian, but mostly for opinions he delivered after years in retirement. He was the representative of "States Rights" when running, at a time when everyone knew that meant Jim Crow laws and violent black voter suppression - not libertarian policies.
"I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass." "You don't need to be straight to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight." - Goldwater
