I know our regular commenter Engineer of Knowledge, and probably our old blogging friend Flash will agree - the old style Republicans, as distinct from the extremist fringe that have hijacked the right now, had far more statesmen. These were people who were not obstructionist, legislators and political leadership who were mainstream, who were not crazy conspiracy theorists, who were not anti-science, anti-objective reality. Groups who are now accepted - like the John Birchers founded by the father of the current political 'buyers' of elections the Koch Brothers, and the white supremacists / neo nazis were NOT welcome in the past. Notably the intellectual conservatives like William F. Buckley, backed by many Republicans, drove them out of the party AS TOO EXTREME, as destructive, as a voice of hate and division and regression.
Don't get me wrong - we had some other horrible conservatives, in particular the Dixiecrats, who hated Republicans, but also hated liberals. These were the people who engaged in the worst abuses of the Jim Crow era, and the ugly and ignorant anti-evolution era legislation that was the basis for the Scopes Monkey trial days, and the horrors and abuses of Joe McCarthy and McCarthyism. They weren't so much driven out of the Democratic party, it was more leaving in a huff because their views did not prevail and they gradually lost power. They were embraced by the Republican 'Southern Solution' politics of the GOP, as a calculated, amoral political maneuver by the same Republicans who employed the plumbers and pioneered modern dirty politics.
I would make the argument that it is the politics of McCarthy that were Un-American, that it was the politics of the Dixiecrats that was inconsistent with the foundational premises of civil rights and representational government that is Un-American, and that the modern extremists in the GOP and Tea Party and other conservatives are similarly Un-American. They may genuinely love this country - I don't dispute that. They may give lip service to the word freedom and to embracing the Constitution, but that is not what they do, their acts differ from their words, and the meaning they give the words differ from the standard meaning of civil rights and freedom inherent in the document. They offer ONLY the freedom to conform to their extremism, and that is a tyranny that imposes or attempts to impose their narrow, intolerant and frequently bigoted views on the broader constituency of this nation.
Those people who used to be a minor force in the GOP, and a regional force in the Democratic party, have taken over the Conservative right, the tea party, and the GOP. The bad conservatives were a disaster for this country then, but their scope was sharply limited by the mainstream base of both parties. Not anymore. Now they are a greater force and a bigger disaster for this country; they will nominate Romney for the 2012 election.
Here are a few examples that illustrate this - Republicans who did not support the insanity, the inanity, the simplistic anti-taxation problem-not-solution idiocy of Grover Norquist.
From this past weekend, an insightful and extended interview that illuminates the above commentary:
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For those of us who are not savvy DC insiders, here is a little contextual background on Mann and Ornstein: Mann is obviously not the famous German author, this is Thomas E. Mann (from wikipedia)
And for those of you who were not pol sci majors in college, here is a bit of background on the DW nominate scoring, and nominate scaling:
NOMINATE (an acronym for Nominal Three-Step Estimation) is a multidimensional scaling method developed by political scientists Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal in the early 1980s to analyze preferential and choice data, such as legislative roll-call voting behavior.[1][2] As computing capabilities grew, Poole and Rosenthal developed multiple iterations of their NOMINATE procedure: the original D-NOMINATE method, W-NOMINATE, and most recently DW-NOMINATE (for dynamic, weighted NOMINATE). In 2009, Poole and Rosenthal were named the first recipients of the Society for Political Methodology's Best Statistical Software Award for their development of NOMINATE, a recognition conferred to "individual(s) for developing statistical software that makes a significant research contribution."[3]
Don't get me wrong - we had some other horrible conservatives, in particular the Dixiecrats, who hated Republicans, but also hated liberals. These were the people who engaged in the worst abuses of the Jim Crow era, and the ugly and ignorant anti-evolution era legislation that was the basis for the Scopes Monkey trial days, and the horrors and abuses of Joe McCarthy and McCarthyism. They weren't so much driven out of the Democratic party, it was more leaving in a huff because their views did not prevail and they gradually lost power. They were embraced by the Republican 'Southern Solution' politics of the GOP, as a calculated, amoral political maneuver by the same Republicans who employed the plumbers and pioneered modern dirty politics.
I would make the argument that it is the politics of McCarthy that were Un-American, that it was the politics of the Dixiecrats that was inconsistent with the foundational premises of civil rights and representational government that is Un-American, and that the modern extremists in the GOP and Tea Party and other conservatives are similarly Un-American. They may genuinely love this country - I don't dispute that. They may give lip service to the word freedom and to embracing the Constitution, but that is not what they do, their acts differ from their words, and the meaning they give the words differ from the standard meaning of civil rights and freedom inherent in the document. They offer ONLY the freedom to conform to their extremism, and that is a tyranny that imposes or attempts to impose their narrow, intolerant and frequently bigoted views on the broader constituency of this nation.
Those people who used to be a minor force in the GOP, and a regional force in the Democratic party, have taken over the Conservative right, the tea party, and the GOP. The bad conservatives were a disaster for this country then, but their scope was sharply limited by the mainstream base of both parties. Not anymore. Now they are a greater force and a bigger disaster for this country; they will nominate Romney for the 2012 election.
Here are a few examples that illustrate this - Republicans who did not support the insanity, the inanity, the simplistic anti-taxation problem-not-solution idiocy of Grover Norquist.
and incidentally, if you were not familiar with this famous speech against the military industrial complex warning by President Dwight Eisenhower - here is a brief bio on Ike, and a YouTube video of that speech. It should be a required part of modern American history education. That someone with his military background could make this statement about that same military industrial complex gives it a much greater depth of meaning and significance. It was a microcosm of the larger and later expansion of the role of special interest taking over government. While it certainly happens on both sides of the aisle, the right has been dominated to a much greater degree by this corruption.
From this past weekend, an insightful and extended interview that illuminates the above commentary:
For those of us who are not savvy DC insiders, here is a little contextual background on Mann and Ornstein: Mann is obviously not the famous German author, this is Thomas E. Mann (from wikipedia)
Thomas E. Mann
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thomas E. Mann (born September 10, 1944) is a political scientist, author, and pundit who works at the Brookings Institution. He primarily studies and speaks on elections in the United States, especially campaign finance reform. In The Rise and Fall of the Media Establishment, Darrell West calls Mann "The king of the pundits", for his numerous appearances on CNN and in prominent newspapers such as The Washington Post.
He was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and attended the University of Florida, where in 1966 he received a B.A. in political science, then went on to get an M.A. (1968) and Ph.D. (1977) at the University of Michigan. He first went to Washington D.C. in 1969, where he worked as a Congressional Fellow in the offices of Senator Philip A. Hart and Representative James G. O'Hara.
Mann is a member of the Advisory Board of the Future of American Democracy Foundation,[1] a nonprofit, nonpartisan foundation in partnership with Yale University Press and the Yale Center for International and Area Studies,[2] "dedicated to research and education aimed at renewing and sustaining the historic vision of American democracy".
and here is Norman J. Ornstein's bio excerpt - one of our own Minnesotans, I would like to point out, since this is a blog headed by two Minnesotans, (from wikipedia):
Norman J. Ornstein is a political scientist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a Washington D.C. think tank. Ornstein was born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota[1] in 1948 and received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1974. He is married to Judith L. Harris, a litigation attorney specializing in regulatory matters.
Ornstein studies American politics and is a frequent contributor to The Washington Post and many magazines. He has written a weekly column for Roll Call since 1993, and is currently co-director, along with Thomas E. Mann, of the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project.
Ornstein helped draft key parts of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, also known as the McCain-Feingold Act.[2]
Ornstein is a long-time friend of current U. S. Senator and left leaning comedian Al Franken. Ornstein considers himself a centrist.[3]
He was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and attended the University of Florida, where in 1966 he received a B.A. in political science, then went on to get an M.A. (1968) and Ph.D. (1977) at the University of Michigan. He first went to Washington D.C. in 1969, where he worked as a Congressional Fellow in the offices of Senator Philip A. Hart and Representative James G. O'Hara.
Mann is a member of the Advisory Board of the Future of American Democracy Foundation,[1] a nonprofit, nonpartisan foundation in partnership with Yale University Press and the Yale Center for International and Area Studies,[2] "dedicated to research and education aimed at renewing and sustaining the historic vision of American democracy".
and here is Norman J. Ornstein's bio excerpt - one of our own Minnesotans, I would like to point out, since this is a blog headed by two Minnesotans, (from wikipedia):
Norman J. Ornstein is a political scientist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a Washington D.C. think tank. Ornstein was born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota[1] in 1948 and received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1974. He is married to Judith L. Harris, a litigation attorney specializing in regulatory matters.
Ornstein studies American politics and is a frequent contributor to The Washington Post and many magazines. He has written a weekly column for Roll Call since 1993, and is currently co-director, along with Thomas E. Mann, of the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project.
Ornstein helped draft key parts of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, also known as the McCain-Feingold Act.[2]
Ornstein is a long-time friend of current U. S. Senator and left leaning comedian Al Franken. Ornstein considers himself a centrist.[3]
And for those of you who were not pol sci majors in college, here is a bit of background on the DW nominate scoring, and nominate scaling:
NOMINATE (scaling method)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 W-NOMINATE coordinates of members of the 111th House of Representatives. | |
| Inventors | |
|---|---|
| Keith T. Poole, University of Georgia | |
| Howard Rosenthal, New York University | |
I began to realise that there was a shift to the extreme right when I saw a PBS documentary on Nixon and thought--"he sounds like a liberal!". That was because he proposed many of the things which current "conservatives" now call liberal or even socialist!
ReplyDeleteThis begins to explain how this came about. Thank you.
Let's remember that the top marginal tax rate (for the highest-income individuals) at the federal level was around 90% during the Truman/Eisenhower years. It is now 35%. President Obama has stated publicly that he wants that top tax rate to be raised 4.6% to 39.6%, which is where it was during the Clinton Administration. Yet the G.O.P. resist doing that, saying that President Obama's suggestion is "class warfare." I doubt that (Republican) President Eisenhower would agree with them. The G.O.P. has veered ever rightward on multiple fronts.
ReplyDeleteNote: The only time the top marginal tax rate was lower than at present was during the early 1990s, a period of time during which we slipped into recession.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=213
And don't forget that is a blended tax rate.
ReplyDelete