Chris Douglas at First Republicans Forum has a good post on what I view as the devolution of the Republican Party. Over the past few decades, the GOP has lost many of its Yankee Republicans as it has become the party of the Southern Conservative.
What was the Yankee Republican? Pro-business, pro-personal responsibility, pro-tolerance, and pro-progress.
. . .
As the Republican Party has moved nationally from Northern Yankee to Southern Conservative in character, it has begun to repel forward-looking people. As the Party slides to the South, perhaps it is we who should be standing athwart it saying “stop” and instead begin directing it back to the Northern roots from which its success in Indiana grew.
That’s what happens when you absorb a group in without fully vetting their “real” agenda first.
Well, it’s always a little easier to repent of your crime after you’ve spent all the money.
I view it as a direct progression from the Voting Rights Act of 1964 and Nixon’s subsequent Southern Strategy. Reagan embraced the strategy when he kicked off his campaign with a speech endorsing “state’s rights” in Philadelphia, Mississippi where three civil rights workers had been famously murdered.
Yeah, that’s a bunch of crap right there.
What the heck does “pro-progress” mean?
How exactly are Southerners less pro-business than Yankees. That’s nonsense.
Pro-tolerance? I’ll give you that one. But what exactly are people asked to be tolerant of? Abortion? Homosexuality? I can understand why people aren’t tolerant of things that, morally, they simply CAN’T tolerate.
How about some tolerance for Southerners and not simply assuming that they’re racist rednecks?
Pro-personal responsibility? Again, how are Southerners in any way against that?
What I see is a bunch of libs that used to run the party (i.e. Nelson Rockefeller) who have some sour grapes. Fact is, Rockefeller is long dead (died schtuping his mistress, no less!), and his ilk left the party long ago.
Finally, if Yankees want the party to be something different, go out and make it different. Seeing as how our candidates this year were McCain, Giulliani, and Romney, I fail to see this Southern domination of which you speaketh.
Pro-personal-responsibility, eh? Would that be the Yankee Republicans who supported Nixon through Watergate or Reagan through Iran-Contra?
I gotta say that I totally don’t understand where Doug is coming from, being a Democrat. Fact is that college educated married white males are supermajority Republican. Almost as monolithically Republican as African Americans are Democrats.
So what exactly are you getting by being a Democrat? Cosmic peace?
Get over your personal hangups with Southerners and come back to the party that, you know, actually represents people like you.
Giuliani was never really embraced by the party and Buzzcut, you forgot to mention Huckabee who had a certain amount of success.
But, let’s take a look at the GOP’s recent leadership positions. You have Bush, a Texan. You had Trent Lott of Mississippi. You had Tom DeLay of Texas. You had Bill Frist of Tennessee. You had Newt Gingrich of Georgia. You have Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. While some Midwesterners have positions of influence as well, you’ll certainly not find New Englanders in the mix.
I don’t have the time to run the numbers, but I’ll bet that if you look at the GOP members of Congress, a substantial majority come from south of the Mason-Dixon line. I expect that percentage to become even more pronounced after the 2008 elections.
My hangup with the national Republicans these days come from the following:
1. Deficit spending. In my younger days, I was much more concerned with the national debt than I am today. (It’s still a priority, but other matters have gotten even worse.) Under Reagan and Bush I, the debt exploded. The Democrats don’t necessarily cover themselves in glory here, but I’ll take tax and spend over Red-Ink Republicanism. And, as it turned out, Clinton did a reasonable job at reducing deficit spending. But, for me, the status of the national debt in 1992 led me to vote for Perot — a gateway candidate.
2. Impeachment. The impeachment of Bill Clinton — for whom I never voted, by the way — was intolerable. It was a clear power grab by politicians who should have taken their responsibilities more seriously. Using the power to impeach a President is messing with the fundamental structure of our democracy. It’s there for a reason, but should only be used for exceedingly compelling purposes. None were present during the Clinton impeachment.
3. The 2000 election. The Supreme Court decision stopping the recount on non-precidential equal protection grounds was an abomination.
4. National debt, again. Bush’s tax cuts — particularly the focus on estate taxes — combined with increased spending led to another explosion in the debt.
5. Iraq. Hoo boy, what a shit sandwich Bush & Co. are making us eat with this one. Presumably it tastes better for those with a lot of bread. (KBR shareholders, for example.)
6. Religion. The Schiavo affair was quite a spectacle. Proponents of states’ rights and individual liberties taking quick action to focus the awesome power of the federal government to meddle in the case of the husk of a woman and prevent her husband from implementing her wish to let the husk die. And, we have nonsense restrictions on stem cell research in particular and a widespread disregard for the value of science generally.
7. Intolerance. Republicans haven’t covered themselves in glory with respect to race relations over the past 30 years. That goes hand-in-hand with a particular interest in gay-baiting over the past 10 – 20 years and a general tendency toward creating fear of The Other.
8. Chest beating foreign policy. I’ll take smart over tough any day. Republican foreign policy over the past 8 years hasn’t been the former.
For me, it’s not so much that I’m in love with the Democratic Party. It’s more that I feel that the national Republican Party has been god awful.
I went out to dinner with three of the local MD’s last night, Republicans all. I mostly listened as they went on and on about how global warming is a myth supported only by junk science. The warming we are seeing is all sunspots or something. When talk turned to Bush, one lamented that, “Like Bush, another president was once considered an idiot, and had to fight a war not of his choosing. That man was Abraham Lincoln.” So what I learned from three highly educated members of a party that “represents my interests” is that man has nothing to do with global warming, and the Iraq war was forced on a reluctant President Bush. I just can’t suspend reality enough to be a Republican.
Meanwhile, the Republican nominee has UBS Bank’s lobbyist crafting his response to the subprime mortgage situation. So this would represent me how? I mean, sure I’m educated, have a career that would supposedly make me some kind of big deal Republican. But I ain’t no multi-billion dollar foreign bank. I think people who believe they are a natural part of the Republican constituency really kid themselves into believing they’re bigger than they really are. You aren’t the rich the Republican policies aim to help. They’re out to help people much, much bigger than you.
You aren’t the rich the Republican policies aim to help. They’re out to help people much, much bigger than you.
See, that’s BS right there. The mega rich are, by and large, Democrats. They have tax lawyers and other hangers on to deflect little things like the estate tax. They won’t lose anything with an Obama presidency.
But those of us who aspire to be rich, who are just trying to get a nest egg together and make some momey when the opportunities arrive, we’re the ones who will be screwed by the higher taxes that Obama is GOING to implement.
The Clinton impeachment was little more than tit-for-tat. It just took 20 years to get back around to a place where it could be made to happen. It’s the Democrats’ own fault (long-winded exposition on Watergate and 20th century politicians’ behavior omitted for brevity). President Clinton was just the enabler. If he could have kept his corkscrew in his pocket, the Republicans might still be waiting for that particular payback.
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the Watergate crimes were equivalent to Clinton’s lies about infidelity; it really doesn’t matter to the question of influencing my current views. From my personal experience, Watergate is closer to Teapot Dome than to the Lewinski scandals (i.e. “history” and not “current events.”)
Thanks for the list, Doug. So you are looking for Cosmic peace after all.
Regarding the debt, the only time we saw a balanced budget was when Gingrich brought some discipline to Congress for a couple of years. I think that the devolution of Congressional Republicans into pork barrelers is the best example of why we need term limits. 6 years and you’re out (that’s how long it took for the ’94 Revolution to peter out).
Impeachment? 2000 election? Get over it, dude. Ancient history.
Iraq? Saddaam had it coming. Sorry its a shit sandwich, but after 9/11, there are some things that simply can’t be tolerated, like a goofy two bit dictator with regional aspirations, nuclear ambitions, and who flaunted UN resolutions left and right. Not to mention who started two wars. Sadaam had to go. And he is.
Is that chest beating? I guess I subscribe to cowboy diplomacy. I want the mullahs and the goofy dictators to fear us. I don’t want my President meeting with the Castros, Jung Ils, or any other dictators without reservations.
I guess I should ask myself if you can have liberal guilt and be a conservative.
Doug and T have given a goodly number of examples that boil down to liberal guilt (intolerance?!?).
The Watergate events and President Clinton lying under oath are not equivalent events.
But, Watergate was pursued by a party whose own behavior can hardly be deemed as any better, even just in the decade prior to 1973. Hypocritical, just doesn’t do the whole thing justice. If you think that various Democratic political personages didn’t behave the same, given similar opportunites, you are sadly mistaken.
It was an opportunity that was grasped as a punitive measure.
Impeaching President Clinton was the same. An opportunity that was grasped as a punitive measure. In that, they are equivalent.
I’ll shed no tears for Sadaam, but our treasury and military are taking a beating. Cost outweighs benefit.
In my legal practice it’s kind of like I’ll occasionally get a potential client who wants to sue “for the principle of the thing.” By and large, I’m not interested in getting into those cases. I much prefer a case with a client who is coldly rational and is mostly focused on the math of the thing.
My communication skills must be faulty. My political views aren’t based even a little bit on feelings of guilt. My apologies if I have created the impression that I feel guilty about something.
The mega rich are, by and large, Democrats. They have tax lawyers and other hangers on to deflect little things like the estate tax.
No. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/even-more-on-income-and-voting/
k, the people we are talking about are the top one half of one percent, maybe. Looking at the top quintile, or whatever, is not going to show you the Democrats that I’m talking about (Soros, Gates, etc.)
Forget 1/2 of 1%. What do billionaires fall into? Multimillionaires?
I’ll shed no tears for Sadaam, but our treasury and military are taking a beating. Cost outweighs benefit.
Only because you can’t remember what a f-ing bastard Sadaam was. Nor have you thought out the consequences of letting him stay in power.
Now, if he had been removed from power by some means other than war, fine. Celarly, that would have been a better alternative. I don’t see how that would have played out, he seemed pretty secure over there. Hell, we couldn’t even kill him from afar, and it took months to find him after the invasion!
Corporations, man! They get sweetheart deals to not build stuff in Iraq, take those billions and plant them in tax havens in the Caribbean, and make fat donations to the Republicans. THOSE are the rich who are rich enough to benefit from the Republicans. Mining companies who get to have their executives become Department of the Interior officials, who then gut the environment to the benefit of their old companies. THOSE are the kind of rich I’m talking about. Not the aspiring wealthy like me who get thrown a little tax bone here and there to entice us to get on board with the wholesale rape of the environment for the benefit of the few mega-rich, or to get on board with a couple o’ trillion dollar boondoggle war that bankrupts the country but is able to again enrich the corporate wealth.
Again, the people you think are rich aren’t, according to the Republican establishment. I’m somewhere in the upper 2% or so, but the ones making hay due to this administration’s policies are the upper 0.1%. For me, I may get a modest benefit that doesn’t come close to offsetting the degradation of the environment, inattention to infrastructure, disregarding of science, mismanagement of the budget, and general dumbassery of the last eight years. I don’t know if I can be bought or not, and generally like to think I’m a person of integrity. But these clowns are making it so easy for me to vote my convictions rather than my wallet, because they’re not even making it close.
Saddam was a bastard, but one whose tyranny had a small impact on the United States. We had him hemmed in and even his neighbors didn’t seem particularly afraid of him anymore. Call me heartless, but I didn’t feel a need to make the problems of Iraqi citizens our problems. The world is full of such bastards, but we don’t feel a need to drain our treasury removing them. There is no compelling distinction that makes Saddam a special case.
Oh, that’s it. We don’t remember Saddam?
Yeah he was a bastard. He was OUR bastard! He was armed by us to offset the Shia revolutionary government in Iran. A necessary part of that was suppressing his own Shia population. He also suppressed the Kurds, which is something our NATO ally Turkey is also doing.
He also showed the courtesy of locking onto our fighters with radar so we could turn and blow up said radar installations. That was great training. He never accumulated anything that would be considered a danger to us, never attacked us. He generally kept his people fed, supplied with power, medicine, etc., better than we’re doing. He squandered national money on his own enrichment, like many of our puppets and friends have done before and many will in the future.
He was not what we were told he was, prior to the war. He was a rich, belligerent local putz. He had once committed his entire military to the conquest of Kuwait, and was defeated on the ground in a five day war. That was the most he could do, and it was smacked away like a gnat.
The “consequences” of him staying in power were jack shit.
T is absolutely right.. I couldn’t say it better. And instead of keeping him in the box, we unleashed Pandora’s Box.. and now what?
The consequences were to embolden other “putzes”. Is it a mere coincidence to you that both the Libyans and allegedly the Iranians abandoned their nuclear programs in late 2003?
And instead of keeping him in the box, we unleashed Pandora’s Box.. and now what?
Stay the course and finish the job. Surge is working.
And keep a presence in Iraq… forever.
T, when you’re paying the full payroll tax on all your earnings, the top income tax rate goes back to 40%, what little capital gains you’re making get taxed at the full income tax rate, your dividends are fully taxed as income, and the estate tax goes back to its pre-2001 rates, we’ll see if voting Democrat was in your economic interests.
Not to mention that job one when medicine is socialized will be to cut down on doctor salaries significantly.
I can give Doug a pass on voting Democrat, since he’s a lawyer and the Democrats are the party for lawyers.
They’re also the party of public employees and public school teachers.
But outside of those groups, I don’t see what voting Democrat does for people.
Wish I had gotten this in earlier in the thread: but Republicans and Democrats are often “pro-business” in various ways. (For example, Reps want to take your money and give it oil companies; Dems want to take your money and give it to alternative energy companies. Both tend to support regulations which, at least inadvertently, benefit big business.)
In contrast, Libertarians are pro-market.
In my mind, their biggest sell-out is with respect to fiscal conservatism. They have bowed, much more fully in recent years, to special interest groups which have a financial interest in direct and indirect benefits– at the expense of the general public.
The Libyans? Come on, man, it’s not 1985 anymore. I think I left my concern for Libya in an old box with my Rubik’s Cube and parachute pants.
You seriously can’t be that dense. The massive debt will have to be paid at some point, or just rolled over with interest. As someone in a high tax bracket, I will be on the hook for that now and later. In the past, I was taxed not appreciably more than now, but the debt was not increasing. Now, I’m being taxed and the debt is growing anyway. At some point when that bill comes due, I’ll be taxed even more.
So I could vote for the party I think will govern better, not start wasteful, bullshit, Libya-deterring (I’d laugh if not for all the dead bodies in Iraq) wars, address energy concerns without just drilling until its gone, not trash the place, etc., and have a reasonable hope that doing some of those things will save me some tax liabilities in the future. And if not, I can’t really cry because I think living here is still a pretty nice bargain.
Or, I could vote for a big juicy tax cut, and get bloated government, a foreign policy that consists of kicking random hornets nests and then tossing money at the swarm and acting like it was impossible to have predicted, a shit on it all environmental policy, impotent banking regulation leading to probably a massive bailout of banks, and a skyrocketing debt. I could do that because I’d be getting a tax cut NOW, knowing in my Republican heart that the budget and money fairy is going to come down and sprinkle some pixie dust on it all and make it all better so that massive debt now doesn’t ever result in a bigger tax bill for me in the future.
I am somewhat in agreement about capital gains. I mean, I’m not sure why I should pay less on investment income than someone pays for income at their job. But I’m all for paying less if I can, all else being equal (see above long missives about how all else ain’t equal).
For those who are too young to remember, “capital gains” are when investments increase in value, resulting in “capital” being “gained” by the investor when that investment is sold. Such things used to be commonplace, but have become much more rare over recent years.
I would rather pay 35% tax on some real capital gains in a vibrant economy in an otherwise better world, than have the option of paying 15% eventually on some capital gains if they ever happen in a sputtering economy in a more uncertain and less pleasant world.
In my mind, their biggest sell-out is with respect to fiscal conservatism. They have bowed, much more fully in recent years, to special interest groups which have a financial interest in direct and indirect benefits– at the expense of the general public.
I don’t disagree. That’s why term limits are needed. That’s also why campaign finance needs to be repealed, and gerrymandering outlawed. Incumbants are the enemy. In that regard, perhaps a Republican bloodletting in ’08 wouldn’t be the worst thing, as long as Obama isn’t the winner as well and the Dems don’t get 60 votes in the Senate.
I think I left my concern for Libya in an old box with my Rubik’s Cube and parachute pants.
Because why? The Libyans became less belligerant. Why did that happen? Reagan taught them a lesson.
But would you really want them with nukes? A country that with the Lockerbee bombing showed that it was a terrorits nation bent on revenge?
Why should the capital gains tax rate be zero? Because capital gains are my return on investment, and I already paid taxes on the principal.
Not to mention that the corporation that I invested in paid taxes on the profits before they were distributed to me.
So under the current system, what’s that? Triple taxation?
Considering that we’ve got debt on the books from WW2, much less the American revolution, the idea that the debt ever need be repaid is foolish.
What matters is our ability to service the debt. What is worrisome to me is not our level of taxation now, but the level of entitlement spending projected out in the future.
The Democrats lost me in ’93 because of their scare mongering on Socialist Insecurity. If Slick Willey had done the right thing and privatized it back then, I would probably still be a Democrat.
Medicare is even worse than Socialist Insecurity. The promises made to seniors simply can’t be kept.
But Slick Willey vetoed Gingrich’s Medicare fix, too.
I’m like McCain, not very bright about economic issues,but isn’t part of the current economic meltdown made worse by investors who are speculating and buying up oil shares thereby pushing the barrel price higher,which in turns makes a gallon of gasoline more and more unaffordable? These investors(just like you and me) want to see their dividends from investments go higher,because working for salary,when there are no longer union scale wages, no longer provides sufficient means to live the traditional good life.
It’s kind of ironic if so, because the ‘investor society’,which was supposed to ensure a 1000 year golden age of Republican rule has already begun to destroy itself from within.
Re: no capital gains because you paid interest on the principal.
1) What about someone who didn’t pay taxes on the principal? (See e.g. heirs or others who benefited from a stepped-up basis for whatever reason — or, if your principal was the product of a previous capital gain)
2) Would this compel elimination of the sales tax as well? After all, I already paid a tax when I earned the money the first time. Should I have to pay a tax when I go to spend it?
To get back to the original point- I would have thought it more Western Republicanism, as in Goldwater of Arizona, that today’s GOP has run screaming from.
Heh. Well, now I can see where Buzzcut and I have something in common.
He’s an obnoxious and unpersuasive advocate for Republicans because he used to be a Democrat.
I’m an obnoxious and unpersuasive advocate for social anarchism because I used to be capitalist Libertarian (hi, Mike!).
But unlike Buzzcut, I hold out little hope that my political philosophy won’t be crushed by an authoritarian boot stamping on a human face, forever. Bully for him that he gets to lace up those boots every morning. ;-)
Ah, Goldwater.
Next week, after I’ve moved to North Carolina, I anticipate being able to resume my reading agenda. Next on the list and back-to-back are The Communist Manifesto and The Conscience of a Conservative.
(I kinda read the former in high school, but it was assigned reading–in an Indiana public school, no less!–and back then I was all-but-convinced that capitalism was perfect, anyway, so I didn’t really pay close attention.)
I plan to Fisk ’em both on BlueNC, and I expect to thoroughly enjoy myself.
Doug, if I don’t see ya again, so long and thanks for all the fish!
Lockerbee was bad. I think we already bombed them, sued them, and isolated them long before Bush got into office. Claiming that we hit Iraq in order to point to Libya and say, “That could have been YOU!” is an ex post facto rationalization. It’s an interesting way to try to shine the turd that is our involvement in Iraq, in a Rube Goldberg kind of way.
So here we are explaining how Iraqis had to get blown up as an example to Libyans. Then in future years we’ll just not be able to understand why Iraqis hate us.
Branden- You’re a social anarchist and you’re drawn to the Dems? Good luck with that, and NC.
He’s an obnoxious and unpersuasive advocate for Republicans because he used to be a Democrat.
Obnoxious and unpersuasive? I like that. I might need to change the name of my blog.
Jesus Christ, why do Dems have to move to Red states and f it up for everyone there? Why don’t Dems move to the states that they control, like New York and Illinois?
You guys are like the Clap. Unwanted, yet spreading.
It is not an ex-post-facto justification (spare me the Latin, please. I’m a public school graduate after all).
Look, Somalia made us look weak. It led to other terrorist acts like the Cole bombings. Going into Afghanistan and Iraq and pretty much having our way with them showed some vitality and willingness to take risks to destroy our enemies.
Funny thing about risk is that it sometimes goes against you, as happened in Iraq.
Afghanistan made sense. To the extent we needed to make an example of anyone; Afghanistan was the place to do it — after all, it was the terrorists they harbored and refused to give up that led to 9/11. Saddam, bastard though he was, had done squat to us and didn’t have a whole lot of time for a pack of Sunni religious extremists who didn’t share Saddam’s goal of a lot of secular power for Saddam.
But you’re right about risk. We took a risk by training and arming bin Laden and the future members of the Taliban when we wanted to use them against the Soviets. And we took a risk by supporting Saddam when we wanted to use him as a counterbalance to Iran. And we took a risk when we sent Kermit Roosevelt into Iran to initiate a coup against Mossadegh and in favor of the Shah. We take lots of risks.
Buzzcut said:
They don’t control New York and Illinois. They control Chicago and New York City.
Someone had a cool map after 2000 or 2004 elections that did red vs blue counties rather than states, and it puts the US in almost complete red with the exception of major city centers.
It is undisputed that Republican voters own more acreage of real estate.
Jason, this ex-New Yorker is here to tell you that the entire state is Democrat. NYC, Long Island, Westchester, Rockland, Albany, Syracuse, Binghampton, Rochester, and Buffalo are all solidly Democrat. The ‘burbs are too.
As New York State depopulates, the people who are left tend to be Democrats: public employees, the elderly, and people on welfare. Thus, even formerly Republican areas are trending Democrat.
Mike Kole,
Forty years ago I might very well have run with the Goldwater crowd. I’ll make a temporary alliance of convenience with whoever presently happens to 1) be getting through their heads that, hmm, maybe authoritarianism is a bad idea–not just in rhetoric, but in practice, and 2) is in a position to do something about 1), in a Pareto-effective way.
I can’t say I don’t think that if the Democrats regain control of all three branches of government, they won’t, at some point, recapitulate many of their past excesses. That doesn’t change the cold hard fact that, right now, it’s the Republicans who are more effectively fucking people over.
When and as Greens, Libertarians, and independents actually have a credible shot at making a difference (and, particularly in the Libertarians’ case, when they betray some evidence of having paid attention to domestic politics since 1980), I’m happy to support them. I expect I’d be able to do so more often if we were to implement meaningful ballot access reform and preferential election methods.
T, I remember the crisis in Libya happened while we were all camping outside of Big Bend National Park in Texas. The only radio station we could pick up was a Mexican AM station (okay, now I’ve got the song “Mexican Radio” going through my head-speaking of the ’80’s!) that faded in and out. We didn’t kow the crisis had happened until it was already over and we were picking up Engilsh-speaking stations in western Texas. Reagan was in and out and it was over. Crisis averted. (BTW I remember seeing Haley’s Comet at the same time.)
Bush Daddy, with Kuwait, was in and out. Saddam was b*tch-slapped. We got to watch 24 hour coverage on CNN for a week. Then it was back to normal life. Crisis averted.
There have been other situations in other nations where we have stepped in, lended a hand, and then gotten out.
But what we are doing now is occupying a nation.
Our presence in Afghanistan I understand. We should also really be in Pakistan. And we should probably not be kissing the Saudi’s butts so much. That’s where the real terror cells are that threaten us.
Found the map. New York State looks pretty red to me, Buzz
I know it is agreed that Republicans own more land. However, I’m trying to dispell the red/blue state idea. There are no blue states except in the extreme Northeast.
Why is that? What is so different about people that live in the city vs the rual areas? It can’t just be farms & faith.