Octopus Overlords

Paul Ryan is more than a Gingrich Republican, he’s a Fox Republican. He’s part of the new generation of liars. The Sean Hannity pretty-boys who pretend to play the everyman by putting lipstick on extremism.

Many positions Republicans often tout as traditionally conservative are actually relatively new to GOP ideology. Indeed, although the party’s stance on the issues has shifted rightward over the past 20 years, Republicans have studiously avoided using the word “conservative” in platforms.

For decades, the party presented itself as “moderate” or even “progressive.” The 1960 plank, for example, touts “progressive Republican policies” such as “liberal pay” and says the government “must be truly progressive as an employer.”

In 1972, the platform celebrates Republicans’ use of wage and price controls to curb inflation, a doubling of federal spending on manpower training, and a tripling of help to minorities.

Even the party’s most conservative platforms avoid that word, which first appears in 1992. From the 1960s to 2008, platforms liberally criticize “liberals,” but “conservative” is used almost exclusively to refer to judges.

From the 1960s through the ’80s, each plank reads like a snapshot of its time, capturing the frustrations of the party or the pride of those in power, sometimes wryly needling Democrats, other years slamming them hard. But from the 1990s forward, the platforms exhibit a sameness of rhetorical style, a reflection of the cut-and-paste reality of the computer age, in which entire sentences appear over and over in successive planks.
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For decades, Republicans emphasize federal funding for public transit. Then, in 1980, a turn: “Republicans reject the elitist notion that Americans must be forced out of their cars. Instead, we vigorously support the right of personal mobility and freedom as exemplified by the automobile.”

Throughout the 1960s and ’70s, the GOP platform includes vigorous support for an equal-rights amendment to protect women. Then, in 1980, the party stalemates: “We acknowledge the legitimate efforts of those who support or oppose ratification.”
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The first appearance of the abortion issue represents a party very much split between business-oriented moderates and religious conservatives: Abortion “is undoubtedly a moral and personal issue” on which Republicans disagree, the 1976 plank says.

Four years later, the issue has been settled: The GOP seeks a constitutional amendment protecting “the right to life for unborn children.” By 1992, the platform includes a call to appoint judges who oppose abortion.
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In 1960, Republicans give “firm support” to “the union shop and other forms of union security” and say that “Republican conscience and Republican policy require that the annual number of immigrants we accept be at least doubled.” Four years later, the GOP bashes Democrats for being “federal extremists” wedded to an ever more intrusive central government.

msduncan wrote:There hasn't been a shift and the suggestion that there has is liberal fantasy bullshit. If any shift has happened, it's been the Democrats coming out of the closet in favor of mimicking European policy and society. This was a stigma 15 years ago, but the left has become more brazen and honest about it the past 5 years or so.

What's amusing is the created fantasy about Republicans shifting right. It's simply bullshit. Republicans have always been pro-gun, anti-abortion, pro tax cuts (Reagan, Bush I, Bush II), hawkish (Grenada, Iraq I, Iraq II, Afghanistan, Iran I, Iran II).

I understand where some of you might delude yourself thinking Republicans have shifted right. It's easy to mistake when your entire party shifts leftward towards European policy to think the other side shifted and you stayed still. There were a lot of people that thought the Sun revolved around the Earth too. The Democrats are the modern day versions of that.

RunningMn9 wrote:Yes, the party has shifted to a more extreme version of itself. Those that have shifted with it are likely unable to notice though. SEE: msduncan's post.

YellowKing wrote:I understand where MSD's coming from in terms of the idea that general policy stances haven't shifted much, but I think "entrenchment" in those policies may be the shift we're seeing that is causing some more moderate conservatives like myself to bail on the hard social right-wingers.

There's no doubt that the country is more polarized now than it has ever been in my lifetime. If party stances on the big issues haven't changed, that must mean that the least moderate elements of the party (i.e. those that are most immovable on their stances) must have greater control and influence.

msduncan wrote:There hasn't been a shift and the suggestion that there has is liberal fantasy bullshit. If any shift has happened, it's been the Democrats coming out of the closet in favor of mimicking European policy and society. This was a stigma 15 years ago, but the left has become more brazen and honest about it the past 5 years or so.

What's amusing is the created fantasy about Republicans shifting right. It's simply bullshit. Republicans have always been pro-gun, anti-abortion, pro tax cuts (Reagan, Bush I, Bush II), hawkish (Grenada, Iraq I, Iraq II, Afghanistan, Iran I, Iran II).

I understand where some of you might delude yourself thinking Republicans have shifted right. It's easy to mistake when your entire party shifts leftward towards European policy to think the other side shifted and you stayed still. There were a lot of people that thought the Sun revolved around the Earth too. The Democrats are the modern day versions of that.

msduncan wrote:There hasn't been a shift and the suggestion that there has is liberal fantasy bullshit. If any shift has happened, it's been the Democrats coming out of the closet in favor of mimicking European policy and society. This was a stigma 15 years ago, but the left has become more brazen and honest about it the past 5 years or so.

What's amusing is the created fantasy about Republicans shifting right. It's simply bullshit. Republicans have always been pro-gun, anti-abortion, pro tax cuts (Reagan, Bush I, Bush II), hawkish (Grenada, Iraq I, Iraq II, Afghanistan, Iran I, Iran II).

I understand where some of you might delude yourself thinking Republicans have shifted right. It's easy to mistake when your entire party shifts leftward towards European policy to think the other side shifted and you stayed still. There were a lot of people that thought the Sun revolved around the Earth too. The Democrats are the modern day versions of that.

Kraken wrote: Or, they split. The Tea Party wing becomes a real, independent third party and the Republican Party is freed to be serious about governing again. The Tea Party eventually fizzles out as all third parties do in our winner-take-all system and its members reluctantly rejoin the Republicans as the marginal voice that they historically were.

msduncan wrote:There were a lot of people that thought the Sun revolved around the Earth too. The Democrats are the modern day versions of that.

Holman wrote:

Kraken wrote: Or, they split. The Tea Party wing becomes a real, independent third party and the Republican Party is freed to be serious about governing again. The Tea Party eventually fizzles out as all third parties do in our winner-take-all system and its members reluctantly rejoin the Republicans as the marginal voice that they historically were.

That's a dramatic scenario, but does the math add up? The Tea Party and the Christian Right are natural bedfellows (even when they don't coexist in the same person), and they are the core base to which all GOP candidates must appeal. If they somehow split and re-branded under a new flag, it's the remaining rump of the GOP that would become the irrelevant third party. The last few elections have shown that the GOP is way more Bachmann than Huntsman, especially in the House and in Red State government.

Kraken wrote: I think of the evangelical/tea party wing as being small but loud, seizing the spotlight while mainstream Republicans try to distance themselves. But I admittedly live in a liberal echo chamber, where the thought of the wingnuts as an actual majority is hard to believe. My hunch is that the party leadership and rank-and-file members would be glad to be rid of them.

Maybe you're right and the center has really been that hollowed out over these past few years. From what I see here, formerly mainstream conservatives are rebranding themselves as libertarians and dropping out of the Republican Party.

There is a big market in this country for a socially liberal/fiscally conservative party. Maybe the Libertarian Party will rise to fill that need.

msduncan wrote:There were a lot of people that thought the Sun revolved around the Earth too. The Democrats are the modern day versions of that.

Kraken wrote:There is a big market in this country for a socially liberal/fiscally conservative party. Maybe the Libertarian Party will rise to fill that need.

GreenGoo wrote:Socially, the culture absolutely has moved left, so I will give MSD that. I don't see this forum fighting over social issues very often though, which is why I didn't think to mention it prior.

Kraken wrote: There is a big market in this country for a socially liberal/fiscally conservative party

Defiant wrote:On some issues, it has moved left - gay rights being the clearest example.

Some have stayed the same of even moved to the right: abortion, gun rights, civil liberties

Combustible Lemur wrote:

Defiant wrote:On some issues, it has moved left - gay rights being the clearest example.

Some have stayed the same of even moved to the right: abortion, gun rights, civil liberties

Has the culture moved right or the political policies? Some of the laws are a response to the people stretching the limits. Guns more gun laws because of abuses and reactionism. Abortion a reaction to more openness and availability. Peolple just didn't talk about abortion and unwanted pregnancy before. Civil liberties we can say and do things that our parents could never do, and politics has used this freedom as cover to vastly increase the surveillance state.

Holman wrote: It's telling that the libertarians are dropping out the GOP. The Tea Party and the Religious Right aren't dropping out--it's their party now, and they know it. It's possible that there are two Republican parties under one label (just like the two Democratic parties of the 1950's and 60's), but are there enough socially moderate conservatives to survive on their own?.

If demographics is destiny, the Republican Party has a rendezvous with irrelevance — unless its policies change. This is the message some Republican leaders have been sending in the closing weeks of the presidential campaign. “The demographics race we’re losing badly,” Senator Lindsey Graham recently told the Washington Post with characteristic bluntness. “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”

The numbers tell the tale. Minorities have accounted for 85 percent of the country’s population growth over the past decade, according to the US Census Bureau. A record 24 million Hispanics will be eligible to vote in the 2012 presidential election, up 22 percent since 2008. Meanwhile, nearly 87 percent of registered Republican voters are white. And whites have declined as a portion of the electorate in every presidential election since 1992.

It’s getting harder and harder to cobble together a winning coalition based on the grievances of a diminishing faction of white men, and many Republicans know it. An unnamed strategist was quoted in the National Journal in August explaining that Mitt Romney campaign’s formula for winning the presidency involves capturing 61 percent of the white vote (more than any candidate since Ronald Reagan). “This is the last time anyone will try to do this,” the strategist said.

... Is it any surprise that of the 34 states introducing voter ID bills last year, 33 had Republican-majority legislatures?

For four decades national Republicans have pursued a strategy, often successful, of racking up huge majorities of white male voters and winning just enough others to carry the day. The orthodoxy is deeply set by now. George W. Bush, John McCain, and more recently, Rick Perry were blasted for making overtures to immigrants that might antagonize the party’s base.

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In June, Pennsylvania’s majority leader boasted to a Republican committee meeting that a strict new voter ID law there “is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” Democrats seized on this statement as proof that so-called “election integrity” laws are simply intended to stop minorities from voting. This would seem cynical, or paranoid, except that no substantial evidence of intentional election-day voter fraud has ever been presented. These laws are a solution in search of a problem.

Republicans are facing a serious quandary of electoral math. They should be working to broaden their party’s appeal and build a true majority of voters, not treating America like it is one nation, divisible.

Kraken wrote:No, I'm saying that Romney can target 61% of the white vote because he can count on 100% of the racist vote, which would not be true if the incumbent were white.

Defiant wrote:

Kraken wrote:No, I'm saying that Romney can target 61% of the white vote because he can count on 100% of the racist vote, which would not be true if the incumbent were white.

I don't think that's true. Even limiting it to people that are racist against black people, I think there are some people that might vote for Obama because despite their anti-black feelings, Obama's actions as president have been sufficient to persuade them to vote for him (in other words, Obama might have had a harder time getting their vote, but he managed to do it).

Holman wrote:I don't think anti-black racism is producing extra votes against Obama because the same folks would have rejected *any* liberal candidate, no matter how white. They don't get to vote harder out of sheer bigotry.

Holman wrote:Here's a New Republic article making the rounds: How the GOP Destroyed its Moderates, a history of the conservative movement's struggle to purge the GOP.

Kraken wrote:

Holman wrote:Here's a New Republic article making the rounds: How the GOP Destroyed its Moderates, a history of the conservative movement's struggle to purge the GOP.

Good read. I wish it had addressed Romney's nomination more directly, since that partially belies the contention that the lunatics are running the asylum. But that's outside the scope of a nominal book review.

El Guapo wrote:

Kraken wrote:

Holman wrote:Here's a New Republic article making the rounds: How the GOP Destroyed its Moderates, a history of the conservative movement's struggle to purge the GOP.

Good read. I wish it had addressed Romney's nomination more directly, since that partially belies the contention that the lunatics are running the asylum. But that's outside the scope of a nominal book review.

It should address it, but it's not inconsistent with the basic thesis given that Mitt had to spend the last five years talking like a lunatic in order to get the nomination, and even then came close a few times to losing it to the latest lunatic du jour.

It should address it, but it's not inconsistent with the basic thesis given that Mitt had to spend the last five years talking like a lunatic in order to get the nomination, and even then came close a few times to losing it to the latest lunatic du jour.

YellowKing wrote:

It should address it, but it's not inconsistent with the basic thesis given that Mitt had to spend the last five years talking like a lunatic in order to get the nomination, and even then came close a few times to losing it to the latest lunatic du jour.

That doesn't explain John McCain's nomination though. I don't recall him moving significantly to the right (at least not the way Mitt did).