Think all conservatives are buying into the current agenda? Check this out:
I’m not the biggest fan of Eisenhower or Nixon, but they (and Reagan) are clearly preferable to this post-Reagan Republican Party. Those presidents won national majorities for a reason. They weren’t strict conservatives, but they certainly weren’t any less conservative than the Bushes, McCain, or Romney. They didn’t pretend they were going to abolish the welfare state — often, they didn’t even pretend they would cut the welfare state — unlike so many of today’s Republicans, who don’t follow through but do use their rhetoric to polarize. That gives us the worst of both worlds: big government plus the delusional sense within one party that it represents the antithesis of big government and may freely hate other Americans who don’t mouth the mantra. And what goes for big government goes for Judeo-Christian values, a strong national defense, and all the rest: the GOP’s rhetoric occupies a separate mental compartment from its actions, even as its voters and ideological apologists continue to believe that there is a profound moral difference between them and the rest of the country. It’s a losing strategy, and worse, it’s made the country ungovernable even as government grows.
That was Daniel McCarthy, editor of The American Conservative. His article, "Is the GOP Still a National Party?" hits many nails on many heads as to the current state of Republican politics.
For instance:
The ideology of suburbia ("porky populism," with its hatred of organic food and fetishistic attachment to SUVs and Wal-Mart) and the most intense expressions of heartland Protestantism, together with certain Southern good ol’ boy attitudes (less overt racism than a scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours ethos), are the matrix of GOP and “conservative” identity. The financial and neoconservative elites have designed ideologies of their own to integrate with this matrix: neocons spin their foreign policy as an expression of values (God and America are practically the same thing, aren’t they?), as a token of Protestant-Jewish solidarity (support for Israel), and as necessary for national honor and the Southern economy (wars and bases). Wall Street relies on Mitt’s 47 percent myth: the people who aren’t part of the GOP coalition are lazy and lack self-responsibility; i.e., they are sinful and un-Protestant, while the Gospel makes you rich and happy.
Your turn, "porky populists."
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well seen the GOP has really been totally replaced with TGOP members i say it lost that a long time ago.
And as long as the threat of being "Primaried" hangs over the heads of those few moderates remaining , things are only going to get worse . They will arrive at a point where they are putting forth a full slate of Akins , West , Kings and Bachmans only to have their a$$es handed to them. They have lost their way following Faux news into the rabbit hole , believing that they are the majority and what is wrong with everyone else.
Nixon wouldn't stand a chance EPA? ERA? OSHA? one stop short of IslamoFacist socialism by todays standard
Yes - but let's not forget that some of those IslamoFacist Socialistic programs were actually designed to be Democratic boondoggles to break the will of the people who were predisposed to IslamoFacism in the first place.
I think that we, the people, need to use the system and not fight against it so hard. Voting a straight democratic ticket for a while would shake even the densest conservative and wake them up to the fact that with today's technology, they can't stretch the truth as much. We can find out when they tell outright lies. And we have access to just as much raw data and are quite capable of stringing a few facts together in order to understand both the problem and the solutions. We need to send this message in a loud, clear voice: It's time to serve the American people who put you in office and not the party to which you belong.
If, as Dr. King believed, "the moral arc of the universe" truly does "bend toward justice", then NO. No, it's not.
Next question?
Get Enraged and Engaged:
Mooch the Vote 2012!
;-)
It hasn't been a national party for decades.
Gore Vidal pointed out long ago that the GOP is actually not even a political party. It is a group that provides an outlet for whatever the most intense irrational anxieties are at the moment.
The success of GOP presidencies had to do with how successful they were at channeling those anxieties. There are two theories to why the wheels have flown off the "party".
The first is demonstrably not so. There are plenty of GOP operatives who are competent and understand the forces. I subscribe the the second view. It is not just that the GOP is SOL from a demographic perspective. They simply cannot be the party of a silent homogeneous group of citizens because that homogenous group no longer exists. Ward and June Cleaver can now turn indulge whatever anxiety they might have about their world, and find amplification with like minded individuals. It is a social differentiation magnified by intense fragmentation of diverse media sources.
The Dem party has its own share of lunatics and anxieties, but has been oriented to coalition building and live and let live consensus building. We will retain the advantage until the GOP adopts a similar approach to tent building. A loud mouth like Christie is an old school anxiety harnesser. A Huntsman type is a tent builder. I'll lay you ten to one odds they ignore the Huntsmans, Scarboroughs, and Steve Schmidts.
John,
I like that idea but would take it in a slightly different direction though. The internet has allowed the various fractions of the GOP to actually present their very different viewpoints. As those extreme positions have coalesced into independent functional blocks the cobbled together coalition has failed.
The center cannot hold
It isn't just a US phenomenon. Do you recall the mass murder of over 70 liberal youth in Norway? The murderer (Breivik)'s lawyer was on NPR yesterday who described Brevik as coming from a normal family in Oslo, went to the same school as him, nothing particularly extreme or unusual in is psychological makeup until he started socializing exclusively on the internet. He became convinced that Muslims were attempting to take over Norway.
It is weird what happens to people's minds when they are gripped by anxieties. It seems incredible to us when it happens collectively to a nation- for example Germany in the 30s. But we tell ourselves it only happens in totalitarian or near totalitarian countries. Well, it isn't so. Joe Klein and Howard Fineman were working this over on Chris's show on Tuesday's show (first segment if you have it on DVR- It's worth a look.) Fineman is off- he led in by saying it is a party of nostalgia but he and Kliein and Matthews were touching the nerve when they started talking about verities from the past- how fear was propelling to cling to illusions (my words).
How do you explain the belief among 64% of Republicans that the US found WMD in Iraq? Or that so many believe that he was not born in the US etc?
Verisimilitude is a fancy word for the appearance of reality. Modern neuroscience tells us that what we take to be reality is actually a model that our mind constructs for us based on its sensory inputs. Everything we regard as real is in fact an appearance based on cognitive constructions of what our mind trusts to be the most reliable representation of what we are sensing. So what we know to be true and real actually is much more malleable than we would think.
As far as June and Ward are concerned, the world outside their windows has been getting steadily more disturbing... Like some Rod Serling twilight zone of a seemingly normal couple subjected to progressively more disturbing phenomena, they become more and more anxious and more and more ready to accept radically alternate representations of what is truly is going on. They listen to Glen Beck, Michael Savage or any other number of folks like Louis Gomert that stoke the fears, and offer explanations for how it is that they woke up to find a world where the Beaver is spending lots of time over at the house of the gay couple down the street, where the leader of the free world has a middle name of Hussein, and whose white mother from Kansas had sexual relations with a black man from Africa.
It freaks out June and Ward.
All June and Ward want is to make it back to Pleasantville.
They didn't get it with Reagan
They didn't get it with Bush I
Or Bush II
They aren't getting it from Romney. But... They will keep trying.
The huge problem for them is that Pleasantville never existed, as Chris Matthews pointed out on Tuesday's show.
Definitely a "need to watch" movie-Pleasantville.
If Romney is the likable throwback to the 50s who in reality has something sinisterly wrong with him, then the cult film Parents with Randy Quaid might also be of interest. If you are into 50s kitch visuals, it is great.
Anyway, it could turn out that Romney's 47% otherness is darkly alienating to more than the centrist independents. Maybe the "Romney as the real Other" counter meme has to do with this sort of Ward Cleaver face on the cannibalization of the middle class.
This guy threw his body over a grenade, I say he deserves a medal. It's the radio jocks that need to get this memo, but that is so unfathomable. The radio guys that only seek profits are the thorn for the right wing. Listening to the hate, doom, and gloom is like heroin to a junkie for the base...
Finally a conservative acknowledging not just the failure of the GOP, but how they've co-opted the religuluous reich! By embracing these sheeple with a feeling that they can "keep them in line" - what they didn't count on was the intense intransigence combined with ignorance of facts or willingness to understand by those same sheeple!
Nixon may have started that "Southern strategy" but even he had moments of pragmatism (@ least until that break-in). The really sad part in all of this is the inability of the sheeple to see that they have been used to further an economic agenda that is disenfranchising them also!
Hmm. The GOP fighting an economic Civil War. Complete with its racism.
The South doing everything it can to take away the riches of the North. While at the same time saying that all of the country's problems are caused by the North.
very apt analogy, I think.
Situation normal. GOP still on track for implosion. No word yet on what a new conservative party or parties may look like. Continuing to monitor the situation. Over.
Schism on Nov. 7th.
The new Tevangelicalibertarian Party will be plagued by infighting and will implode within two years.
This indeed may be the beginning of the end- I still think the Tea Party will persevere. My brother made an interesting point- all we have to do is wait for some of the most obstinate, pseudo-racist, pseudo-sexist members of this party to die, and then maybe something can be accomplished. The younger generations will be the way forward, is his point, however harshly put (he actually said this to my uncle who is one of these types of Republicans). So maybe in 20 years we can start to move back to real sanity, as opposed to preventing the insanity from taking over. We have been on the brink, after all. I sure hope this is the turing point though. If it is not, the country is in for a lot of lows and much smaller highs, IMO.
I would like to agree with your premise that younger Republicans can bring the party back to the center; I want to agree with that. However, I think back on the video of Scott Brown's staffers "performing" at an Elizabeth Warren rally and I surmise that attitudes and opinions aren't changing.
" ....all we have to do is wait for some of the most obstinate, pseudo-racist, pseudo-sexist members of this party to die,...."
Let's not forget though, they breed..........
@Dawn, worse than (in)breeding, the attacks on education, and seeds of hatred that have been sown have made us a nation that hate each other. Most of us don't hate them right as much as the right hates, but I'm getting there.
@RM I think things will change, just for the worst.
@SRA to quote John Maynard Keynes :"..., but in the long run we are all dead. " Today's GOTP is still fighting FDR's New Deal after seventy five years. They killed Glass-Steagel, Romney's website has Bacon-Davis and Social Security on the proposed chopping block.
Best picture ever! Eff yeah!
The one thing the Republican Party has going for it is that their opponents are the Democratic Party, an organization that has demonstrated amazing incompetence over a 30 year period. Matt Taibbi's Article in Rolling Stone this week http://t.co/ZanYVvuv gives only the current group's incompetence. I can attest that Democratic Party incompetence goes back to at least 1980 with the Kennedy Challenge to Carter.
How is it that for the last sixty years Democratic governments have done far better economically than Republican governments? Multiple studies over multiple years from multiple third-party institutes have confirmed it. Democrats are often idiots, it's true, just like the rest of us, but statistically, they are MUCH better at governing.
Imagine what the Democrats could do if they just acted competently, they don't eve have to act brilliantly. Dems saving grace is that there are so many thinking humans inside the organization they eventually muddle through from crisis to crisis.
The difference between Charles Pierce and Matt Taibbi is that Charles Pierce is, in fact, right about everything and Taibbi only thinks he is.
I know what window sticker I'm now getting for the Bravada.
That eagle is AWESOME!!
Yeah, in a few months, we may find McConnell, Boehner, Cantor, Ryan, O'Reilly and Hannity holed up in a second floor Sumerian mud dwelling groveling over just what the Romans have done for them!
The whole Republican effort has equaled the worst Monty Python parody ever to be produced. (Not the allusion above taken from Life of Brian - a film every evangelist would benefit greatly from if any were brave enough to sit through a viewing.)
(I took my evangelical parents to see it on the big screen back in the day, and they saw it so blasphemous they were rolling in the aisle laughing their asses off. But then again, my parents, as pious as they were, still had a sense of humor not to hold others to the faithful standards they themselves found worthy within their own worship.)
The modern Republican party is but a shadow of itself - a very evil shadow! -Kevo
kevo
Your parents have good taste in movies and good sense about religion.
My tongue-in-cheek tribute to the South...apologies to Charlie Daniels
Well, the train's a grindin' switch is runnin' right on time
And that McCrory Boy is cookin' down in Caroline
People down in Florida can't be still
When ol' Rick Scott's pickin' down in Jacksonville
People down in Georgia come from here and there
To hear the promise of repealin' that Obamacare
Chorus:
So gather 'round, gather 'round children'
Get down, well just get down children'
Get loud, well you can be loud and be proud
Well you can be proud, hear now
Be proud you're a rebel
Cause the South's gonna do it again and again
Paulie Ryan standin' on a stage up high
He ain't good lookin', but he sure can lie
And there's Todd Akin and you can't forget
That old brother Willard's gettin' soakin' wet
And all the good people down in Tennessee
Are diggin' Rush Limberger and Huckabee
Repeat Chorus
For years, I have argued that the Republican Party (as we know it) is dead. i think that the schism will occur sooner or later where the then Republican Party will be a centrist party of a minority of voters that lies between the Democrats and the Tea Party, also a small minority.
The New Republican Party will be made up of the Conserva-Dems on one hand and the honest old school Republicans who cannot find a home in the radical "don't tread on me" Tea Party.
The New Democratic Party will be essentially a Progressive Party, and it might even adopt the name the Progressive Party rather than the Democratic Party.
Out int he cold - the Libertarians and the Tea Party....all governing coalitions will come to exist between the New Republicans and the Progressives...
Balanced budgets here we come.
It's the ego lurking within the party that is worrisome. They just. hate. to. lose.
Some very egoistical people with control issues are ensconced within the GOP and seem to see laws and fairness as hurdles to jump (Citizen's United). The party fracturing along religious or extremist/centrist lines won't necessarily force this exaggerated need to win out of the party, and it interferes with compromise, rational dialogue, and common sense.
You almost want to feel bad for this guy. I mean, who is he supposed to root for? Ron Paul? Gary Johnson? That said, not knowing his work, I am pretty sure he carried water for the cretins who made the Tea Party what it is today.
He - and the rest of his party - really have no one to blame but themselves. AKA They Built That.
The difference between the Republican Party of Eisenhower, Nixon and even Reagan was it had not been taken over lock, stock, and barrel by the Southernist Party and its "peculiar institutions" which southerner Ed Kilgore identified the other day as "ancient authoritarianism" along with it's weird religious tradition.
Even in the days of Nixon first opening to these people and Reagan playing to them, they did not control the party as they do.
Traditionally in America there have been three political parties - two national parties, the conservative party and the progressive party - and one regional party, the Southernist Party (I call it "Southernist" because today it is more identified by ideology than by region, though it is still strongest regionally); this part has essentially been a parasite that attached itself to the national party that was open to allowing it to continue its "peculiar society" (not just limited to slavery). The national party could do as it wished nationally and in other regions, so long as the South was left alone. This continued with the Democrats as the host to the parasite until the "treason" of the 60s over civil rights. When the GOP opened itself to the parasite, the parasite decided it would prevent any future "treason" by taking over the GOP. We all know what happens when the parasite takes over the host.
If you doubt that the Southernist party has taken over the GOP, read this quote from Confederacy VP Alexander Stevens from 1861, speaking of economics (or "southernomics" more exactly):
Allow me briefly to allude to some of these improvements. The question of building up class interests, or fostering one branch of industry to the prejudice of another under the exercise of the revenue power, which gave us so much trouble under the old constitution, is put at rest forever under the new. We allow the imposition of no duty with a view of giving advantage to one class of persons, in any trade or business, over those of another. All, under our system, stand upon the same broad principles of perfect equality. Honest labor and enterprise are left free and unrestricted in whatever pursuit they may be engaged. This old thorn of the tariff, which was the cause of so much irritation in the old body politic, is removed forever from the new.
Again, the subject of internal improvements, under the power of Congress to regulate commerce, is put at rest under our system. The power, claimed by construction under the old constitution, was at least a doubtful one; it rested solely upon construction. We of the South, generally apart from considerations of constitutional principles, opposed its exercise upon grounds of its inexpediency and injustice. Notwithstanding this opposition, millions of money, from the common treasury had been drawn for such purposes. Our opposition sprang from no hostility to commerce, or to all necessary aids for facilitating it. With us it was simply a question upon whom the burden should fall. In Georgia, for instance, we have done as much for the cause of internal improvements as any other portion of the country, according to population and means. We have stretched out lines of railroads from the seaboard to the mountains; dug down the hills, and filled up the valleys at a cost of not less than $25,000,000. All this was done to open an outlet for our products of the interior, and those to the west of us, to reach the marts of the world. No State was in greater need of such facilities than Georgia, but we did not ask that these works should be made by appropriations out of the common treasury. The cost of the grading, the superstructure, and the equipment of our roads was borne by those who had entered into the enterprise. Nay, more not only the cost of the iron no small item in the aggregate cost was borne in the same way, but we were compelled to pay into the common treasury several millions of dollars for the privilege of importing the iron, after the price was paid for it abroad. What justice was there in taking this money, which our people paid into the common treasury on the importation of our iron, and applying it to the improvement of rivers and harbors elsewhere? The true principle is to subject the commerce of every locality, to whatever burdens may be necessary to facilitate it. If Charleston harbor needs improvement, let the commerce of Charleston bear the burden. If the mouth of the Savannah river has to be cleared out, let the sea-going navigation which is benefited by it, bear the burden. So with the mouths of the Alabama and Mississippi river. Just as the products of the interior, our cotton, wheat, corn, and other articles, have to bear the necessary rates of freight over our railroads to reach the seas. This is again the broad principle of perfect equality and justice, and it is especially set forth and established in our new constitution.
very nice TC. seems like quite a plan for a country to fail, each piece only out for itself. I wonder what would have happened if Mr. Stevens said the same about the creation of the confederate army: "The true principle is to subject the defense of every locality, to whatever burdens may be necessary to facilitate it. If Charleston needs defended from Sherman, let the commerce of Charleston bear the burden." Quite a bit of hypocrisy there, it seems.
Probably would have been a much shorter war, if one at all.
Let's face it...the real strategy is this: how can the Top 0.1% become really really really really rich? Cheap labor and raw materials. For cheap raw materials we need friendly dictators around the world; for cheap labor, we need "free trade" for Chinese/Mexican workers and non-Union laborers in the U.S. How do you do get keep people to vote for you when you want to screw them over? Use the divisive issues like abortion, gun rights, and gay rights. That's how simple it is!
To my mind - when it happens, as I'm convinced that it will (please, let it be soon...) they can lay the blame directly on this Supreme Court. We tried...hard...to dismantle, or at least pull the teeth from FOX News. We tried...hard...to stop the corporate onslaught onto elections. So many, many, many times this Court has had the chance to halt this steep descent into pseudo-Christian budding hegemony, but passed it by. I have no doubt that this Court will deservedly go down in history, along with GWB, as the worst of the worst, inflicting untold damage that will take generations to undo. Now, we have a very large minority of the population thoroughly convinced that (1) they are the majority, when they obviously are not; (2) that watch or listen to nothing except hate-filled RW ranting 24/7 that bears little to no resemblance to truth; (3) will be convinced on 11/7/12 that the election was 'stolen' by the evil 'libruls' or 'libtards' or 'Muslim-lovers' or - fill in the blank of whatever hateful epithet spews at that moment.
the riotous jingoism of that eagle image has me wondering if you stole it from Colbert. :)
Both the Liberals and Conservatives have become so extreme in their respective ideologies, yet BOTH herald Reagan and Clinton for some of their more moderate views and ability to work not only within their own parties but with the opposing party as well. Total hypocrisy.
If LGBT rights had been able to come this far during the Reagan era, I am sure he and the GOP would have moved even further to the right. Remember, this is the man who refused to acknowledge the AIDS epidemic for most of the 80s and also brought the Moral Majority (precursor to the Tea Party) into the national spotlight. If the AIDS epidemic had started during his time as CA's governor, he might have been more responsive given his opposition to the ban on "homosexual" teachers in public schools, and greater number of liberal constituents.
No, thats not true...the liberals have actually remained liberal, while the conservatives have in fact become radical conservatives...what does Mitt call himself? A SEVERE conservative....LOL
facts please.
Mr. McCarthy sounds too nuanced and introspective here to be a Republican.
This is a good piece of writing. I am heartened to see serious critiques beginning to emerge from the Right on the state of right-wing politics. We've been without an authentic conservative politics in this country for decades, and both conservatism and liberalism suffer as a result.
What today's Republican Party offers is not conservatism, but a radical and often vicious caricature of conservatism that eschews that philosophy's communitarian virtues in favor of maximizing individual profits; that concentrates to the point of obsession on other people's private sexual behavior while avoiding any conception of morality that would encompass the public square, or the "free" market.
The "traditional values" they espouse comprise an effort to undo not just recent social progress but all human progress since the Renaissance, with their rejection of science and verifiable fact in favor of "faith" and received "truth."
The "freedom" they seek is the freedom of the schoolyard bully to ply his trade at will, without adult intervention; the freedom of the fox to set up camp inside the chicken wire.
While the evaporation of the Republican Party, as we know it today, is the wet dream of inetellectual moderates of all stripes, a gaggle of hard right extremists will always exist. Fear, racisim, religious extremisim, militant pro-life, anti-intellect, you name it. There will always be outrageous fringe elements that will seek a common organization to represent them. So you can call it the Republican Party, the National Fascists Party, Nazi Party, or Grover's Groupies, they will be there to challenge common sense and logic at every step, and we must be ever watchful for their cancerous presence in our society.
The GOP is old. The mind set of men like Newt Gingrich is old. Year after year they never change. Younger Americans both democrats and republicans are fed up with ancient reminders of Jerry Falwell and the 80's moral majority. We do not fear our neighbors in America any longer, no matter how hard FOX news tries to get us too. We are a diverse country now and Americans are use to that fact. We have grown to love that fact about us. We hate those who try to divide us as a nation and label us like cans of soup and sort us into rows of higher and lower importance based on color, financial status, sexual orientation and religion. The GOP corral's negativity to energize its base, but over the years a positive energy has taken hold as Americans began to reject the negativity and the hate in favor of a hopeful message. We as a country are not willing to go backwards to a world where hating your neighbors because they were not a carbon copy of yourself was okay. Bill O'Reilly is an example of this. Fox News wants us to think there are real Americans and then there are just plain lousy Americans who are trying to ruin the country with liberal ideas. This is not the case. Liberals care about our country and to say otherwise is a bold lie. The polls tell us people are no longer buying what Bill O'Reilly is selling. In fact, Fox News own poll taken a few weeks ago tells us that too!
Rachel Maddow, you are an idiot! Or maybe, you are just a person with no sense of humor. I just became aware of the fact that you actually thought Romney was serious when he joked that it was too bad that the windows in his wife's plane could not be opened when the cabin became filled with smoke. Even a Democrat would have understood that Mitt Romney was trying to lighten things up because he was so concerned about his wife that he felt, that concern, now that she was okay, would do no one any good. Back off, Rachel.