WI Condi with the Democrats

[Scott Rosenthal]

I dont' want to put words in Ian's mouth, but I believe what he is saying is that the GOP as a party is adopting more conservative positions over time, i.e. that conservatives, while not necessarily increasing in numbers, are increasing in influence within the party. There is some good evidence to support his contention IF you believe that the party platform has any real meaning. Conservatives clearly dominate the platform comittee within the GOP the same way that liberals do in the Democratic party. The significance of this is questionable, however, as platforms tend to be honored more in the breach than anything else. It is very difficult to find a liberal wing in the GOP anymore (these used to be called "Rockefeller Republicans"), the same way that conservative democrats have pretty much disappeared. There are a few of each still around (Christine Todd Whitman on the GOP side, and Charles Stenholm (sp?) on the Democratic side), but by and large, they are few and far between.

Now, does this mean that the parties are truly moving to the fringe, or staying in the center? I would suggest that the evidence provides some mixed answers. Clearly at the national level, there seems to be a general drift to the center, as more and more areas of policy seem to move by inertia. An excellent example of this is abortion, where despite the election of a conservative president with strong personal feelings about abortion (feelings tht I do NOT share, by the way), the only significant change in abortion policy at the federal level has been the 'partial-birth' abortion ban (note that this ban had very large majorities in both houses of congress BEFORE Bush came to office, but died after being vetoed by Clinton), and the so-called 'gag-rule' on public funding for medical advice. Hyperventialating by both sides notwithstanding (and I am NOT trying to argue the merits of these policies), these are astonishingly marginal and limited changes, given the fact that the GOP has majorities in both houses, the presidency, and friendly courts. In an similar vein, most of Clinton's presidency (post-Hillarycare) was reasonably moderate, with no truly 'lefty' proposals surfacing.

I know...too much detail...sorry, we ex-wonks don't give it up easily...smile...

 

[wkwillis]

McCain and Kerry

Scott
I thought Kerry and McCain were friends. They both have served in the Senate and have worked with each other regularly. Granted, McCain did repeat NVA propaganda, but since he was a prisoner in the Hanoi Hilton and being regularly tortured at the time, I don't think Kerry holds it against him. I certainly don't. If I had a choice of being strung up by the balls or chanting 'President Bush was legitimately elected', I'd give it some amount of thought.
Incidentally, McCain's torturer was some scumbag called 'the cat' by the other prisoners. If McCain wound up as president, that guy might as well just kill himself and eliminate the suspense.

 

[Mike Collins]

This answer to this should be obvious-its not just about the leading men its about the other party members and the party itself. The GOP has determined ( correctly) over the last 40 years that it can receive the votes of whites in Dixie who were and are sympathetic to segreagtion by a barely concealed pandering to old segregationist views and attitudes like those of Thurmond.

Please give some examples of these "barely concealed" panderings.




While Im waiting I'll say this. I think you are wrong. In the current political climate, even concealed (let alone barely concealed) support of segregation would be an absolute show stopper. I think black support of Democrats over Republicans comes from two things. Least important is what I beieve is this incorrect notion that Republicans are out to get them back on the plantation (or at least in the back of the bus!). More important is a realpolitik calculation from the leadership of the black community that Democrats will give them more goodies. This is probably true and certainly a legitimate rationale. But the goodies may be causing the current problems black face.

 

[Max Sinister]

The moment I see the word "Democrat" after someone's name, I visualize a hippie who wants to tax every last cent I own and cave in to dangerous enemy foreigners at the drop of a hat.

Damn Mike, I hope you were joking, 'cause if you meant that serious, I guess that we will sometimes find your picture in a lexicon, under the entry "prejudice".

 

[Mike Collins]

Max, Im not joking much. You could say I am prejudiced against Democrats as I have prejudged them to be useless and/or dangerous. So be it!

 

[Scott Rosenthal]

wkwillis: I personally witnessed a catfight between McCain and Kerry that came very, very close to descending to fisticuffs (personally, I'd bet on Kerry's reach over McCains strength, but not for a knockout...), and though you may be generous enough to forgive some of Kerrys remarks during the VVAW days, McCain isn't. Now does this mean that they cannot work together, obviously not (Teddy Kennedy and GW collaborated on NCLB, for instance, and if you see any love lost between those two you have sharper eyes than I), but it is a marriage of convenience at best.

Mike: There are some good Democrats, I wouldn't write them all off. I concede that, like you, I probably to start them off at a disadvantage, but even among those with whom I vociferously disagree, there are some good men of honor. I loathed just about everything that Paul Wellstone stood for, but his integrity was unquestioned, and he did what he believed to be good for the country. Mo Udall, someone I felt was tragically wrong in just about every stance he took, would have been an outstanding president...

 

[Susano]

And this even though teh democrats arent realyl left-wing!

 

[David Howery]

Susano> yeah yeah. Ok, just mentally put in this qualifier every time we talk about right and left: "as it applies to American politics, which has nothing to do with European right and left, and they never get tired of pointing out that American politics are all way to the right of what they think it should be".

 

[Susano]

COuldnt help myself. I know its stereotype, but remember it was in answer to mkes admitted prejudices

 

[Leo Caesius]

Susano> yeah yeah. Ok, just mentally put in this qualifier every time we talk about right and left: "as it applies to American politics, which has nothing to do with European right and left, and they never get tired of pointing out that American politics are all way to the right of what they think it should be".

Someone should really kill off these outdated metaphors from the French Revolution. They are just about as pointless as discussing good and evil in the context of American politics. I guess it simply boils down to the fact that we lack the language to discuss American politics effectively.

 

[Ian the Admin]

Ian, simply take the policies of say JFK (the real one) and compare them to those of any democratic candidate today. The idea that the Dems haven't moved WAY to the left is simply nonsense, though I will certainly concede that the Republicans have moved to the right as well.

Like what policies? (I don't know much about how JFK's policies might have differed from other Democrats - he was only president for three years - but I have a fairly good idea of the broad thrust of Democrat ideology).

Not military strategy - the Clinton Democrats support of multilateralism and international institutions is quite mainstream in the post-Soviet era. And it's not really much different from the early post-WW2 ideas of building international institutions to cooperatively counter the Soviet bloc - the UN, NATO (and its analogs in other regions), Breton Woods, GATT, etc. Any change in strategic policy is difficult to compare anyway because of the huge change in the strategic situation.

Not military interventions - the Clinton Democrats weren't particularly reluctant to launch military actions when it seemed actually useful. They preferred UN approval, but that's largely because in the post-Soviet era it's actually feasible to get UN approval for a lot of interventions. If the UN was still always deadlocked, they wouldn't have cared about it.

Not trade policy - the Clinton Democrats had a big push for free trade.

Not overall government taxation and spending policy - the Clinton Democrats presided over tax levels that remained rather low by post-WW2 standards, and on top of that they went to quite a lot of effort to eliminate the federal budget deficit.

Not levels of government regulation - A big part of the Clinton "New Democrat" platform was being at least vaguely in favor of the same deregulation ideas that the Republicans had been preaching. Democrats weren't big regulators during those administrations. I mean, good grief, in the 70s _Nixon_ implemented wage and price controls! Both parties are currently a long way from that.

Not criminal policy - the Clinton Democrats were basically in line with the "war on drugs" and "war on crime" style, ultra-punitive justice system that is a HUGE swing to the right for the US justice system (started in the mid-70s). Clinton angered a lot of Democrats when, in his re-election campaign, he came out blatantly in favor of these policies in order to avoid being portrayed as "soft on crime".

Health care? The Clinton Democrats made a push for universal health care, but this can hardly be regarded as "far left" (it's an idea that has broad support from the US public), and is hardly that different from the New Deal and Great Society social programs of the past.

Environmental policy? That's definitely come a long way from the 60s and earlier when basically nobody gave a shit about the environment. It's not really an example of the Democrats specifically "moving left", though - concern for the environment has become totally mainstream.

Social/cultural policies? The Democrats made tepid pushes for affirmative action, they glanced in the direction of gay rights but didn't really do much about it ("don't ask, don't tell" is a long way from the 50s, but it wasn't exactly radical leftism), and in general they spent a lot of time on the defensive against the religious right in this arena. This is a far cry from earlier eras when we saw the civil rights movement, desegregation, the (unsuccessful) push for an equal rights amendment, and so on.

Are there some other policies I've missed?

 

[Ian the Admin]

Ian> Ok, now you're confusing me. On another thread awhile back, you said that some study you'd read noted that conservatives are not increasing in numbers. Now on this one, you said that the GOP has moved to the right. What gives? Are the conservatives increasing, or is the GOP moving to the right just a little so they don't quite qualify as conservatives (if you can split political hairs that fine )?

The number of hard right conservatives hasn't increased, but their political influence has increased _hugely_. In the last few decades the religious right and their cultural fellow-travellers have achieved a far higher level of political organization than they had before. And on economic policy specifically, there was a big rightward shift in the 1980s.

The research I cited earlier about traditional left/right positions not increasing but a great shift towards a "dog-eat-dog nihilism" sort of perspective, occurred _during the 1990s specifically_, and applied to the overall social/cultural/political opinions of average people, not to the policies of the parties in power.

To a large extent the modern Republican party has gained an unusual ability to get people to vote for them even when their actual policy actions are to the right of what the voters want. This appears to be particularly true on economic policy. If you compare Republican actions on tax levels, program spending, regulation of business, and so on to what people actually believe, you find that their actions are far to the right of what typical Republican and moderate voters believe those actions are. I don't just mean Republican actions are more to the right of what people would want them to be. I mean that voters consistently believe that Republican economic policy is much more moderate than it actually is. They appear to be a lot better than Democrats at being more extreme than the voters but still getting elected.

 

[Ian the Admin]

Please give some examples of these "barely concealed" panderings. [to the segregationists etc.]

The Republicans actually do this really, really often. Basically "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" reminders to the extremists that the Republicans take them seriously even when they won't advocate their views in public. Showing up at a place like Bob Jones University is one way to do this (it's a minor institution but advocates such things as interracial dating being against the law of God, though they dropped their outright prohibition against it a few years ago). Another way is their recent appointment of a well known segregationist to some position (judicial or other... I'd have to look it up) on Martin Luther King Jr's most recent birthday). There are a couple of blogs out there that track this stuff - basically the Republicans frequently make symbolic gestures that are easily recognized by the extreme right. The Bush administration likes to make such gestures on fridays, when the mainstream media tends to give weak coverage of government announcements (but the extreme right will still pick up the message).

 

[Scott Rosenthal]

Ian, this is your board, and I am not going to waste either of our time pursuing a contentious thread that isn't going to convince either of us. If you want to interpet that as a win, knock yourself out. There were so many overt errors in your last post that even someone as long-winded as I am just doesn't have the time or energy to pursue it. If you really believe that JFK's foreign policy (multiple interventions of latin american states without even a by your leave from the UN), economic policy (huge tax CUTS, combined with targeted breaks that overwhelmingly favored the wealthy), free trade (you are quite correct that Clinton favored this...the one thing I liked about him, but the Dems in general do not), military spending (big increases for a whole range of weapon systems that are reviled by todays Dems), etc. would have found a home in the democratic party today, you are living in an ATL yourself.

Now, in fairness, many of moves made by the Clinton administration (or at least those forced on him by the Republicans after 1994) were more JFK-like (particularly that whole Monica thing, but JFK at least had better taste in women...), but the folks running the Democrats now are running away from those policies as fast as they can...

In any event, the field is yours...enjoy it...

 

[Max Sinister]

Max, Im not joking much. You could say I am prejudiced against Democrats as I have prejudged them to be useless and/or dangerous. So be it!

Well, and I happen to think that the republicans made a man president who destroyed his brain with alcohol, cocaine and Christian fundamentalism (and was nothing but a spoiled upper class brat before). That's not a prejudice, that's not an insult, that's the truth. Nuff said. So be it.

 

[Mike Collins]

The Republicans actually do this really, really often. Basically "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" reminders to the extremists that the Republicans take them seriously even when they won't advocate their views in public.

Well Ian, if they basically do this really really often you should have a really really whole lot of specific examples. You havent named any names yet and made note of some communication with a small Southern university. Try harder.

 

[MerryPrankster]

"( 100% of the Congressional Black Caucus)"

The Congressional Black Caucus refused to allow JC Watts to join, and he's black and in Congress. Am I the only one who sees a problem with that?

I have an idea. How about all the people who aren't going to vote on Election Day vote Libertarian? If the Libertarians make a big enough splash, they'll get assimilated (probably by the GOP) and Libertarianism would probably moderate the neocon/religious right stuff in the GOP quite a bit. You're not "wasting your vote" b/c you wouldn't have voted anyway.

Nader did well in 2000 (enough to swing the election to Bush...he got 90,000 votes in Florida) and the current batch of Dems is FAR more leftist than Clinton.

 

[Mike Collins]

"( 100% of the Congressional Black Caucus)"

The Congressional Black Caucus refused to allow JC Watts to join, and he's black and in Congress. Am I the only one who sees a problem with that?

But you forget, youre not really black unless you are a liberal. Ask Michael E. Johnson. Im sure he will tell us J.C. Watts, Condi Rice, Justice Thomas, etc. are not black. Quite sure of it.......

 

[Ian the Admin]

But you forget, youre not really black unless you are a liberal. Ask Michael E. Johnson. Im sure he will tell us J.C. Watts, Condi Rice, Justice Thomas, etc. are not black. Quite sure of it.......

Mike, you have really been doing a lot of trolling lately. And this is another great example of how not to behave on this board.

 

[Michael E Johnson]

Well Ian, if they basically do this really really often you should have a really really whole lot of specific examples. You havent named any names yet and made note of some communication with a small Southern university. Try harder.

Below are some of those specific examples you requested.-MEJ


Armey Needs A Lesson In The Republican Party's Racial History
Earl Ofari Hutchinson

In a letter to NAACP president Kweisi Mfume House Majority Leader Dick Armey accused the organization of "racial McCarthyism." He specifically cited the NAACP's attack on Bush for indifference to the Texas dragging murder of James Byrd by three white supremacists and for inciting racially-divisive protests over Florida voting irregularities. Armey asked Mfume for a meeting. But if he is serious about easing racial polarization, he could start by looking at his own party's shameful record on race. In 1964 the Republican party was practically defunct in the five deep South states. Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater set out to change that by riding the first tide of white backlash. He opposed the 1964 civil rights bill, railed against big government, and championed states rights. At the Republican convention nearly all the Southern delegates backed him. Despite his landslide loss to Lyndon Johnson, Goldwater deeply planted the seed of racial pandering that would be the centerpiece of the Republican's "Southern Strategy" in the coming decades. The strategy was simple: court white voters, ignore blacks, and do and say as little about civil rights as possible.

In 1968, Richard Nixon picked the hot button issues of bussing, and quotas, adopted the policy of benign neglect and subtly stoked white racial fears. He routinely peppered his talks with his confidants with derogatory quips about blacks. He enshrined in popular language racially-tinged code words such as, "law and order," permissive society" "welfare cheats," "crime in the streets," "subculture of violence," "subculture of poverty," "culturally deprived" and "lack of family values."

Ronald Reagan picked up the racial torch by launching the first major systematic attack on affirmative action programs, and gutting many social and education programs. He refused to meet with the Congressional Black Caucus, attempted to reduce the power of the Civil Rights Commission over employment discrimination cases, and opposed the extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Reagan Attorney General, Ed Meese complained that the bill discriminated against the South.

In 1988, Bush, Sr., made escaped black convict Willie Horton the poster boy for black crime and violence and turned the presidential campaign against his Democrat opponent, Michael Dukakis into a rout. He branded a bill by Ted Kennedy to make it easier to bring employment discrimination suits a "quotas bill" and vetoed it. He further infuriated blacks by appointing arch-conservative Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Bush and Reagan's thinly disguised racial salvos were too much even for Colin Powell. In his autobiography, My American Journey, the general called Reagan "insensitive" on racial issues, and tagged Bush's Horton stunt, "a cheap shot." Republican presidential hopeful, Bob Dole waltzed through his failed campaign against Clinton in 1996 making only the barest mention of racial issues. He flatly rejected an invitation to speak at the NAACP convention. In 1998, the Republicans had a golden opportunity to loudly denounce race baiting, extremist groups when it was revealed that Senate Majority leader Trent Lott, and Georgia representative Robert Barr had cozied up to the pro-segregation, states rights, Council for Conservative Citizens. They, and that included Armey, were stone silent on the Council. Before, during, and after his campaign, Bush repeatedly promised a total racial makeover of the Republican Party. His appointments of Condeleezza Rice, Powell, and Rod Paige to top level posts supposedly is the signal that he means what he says. But those appointments, and photo-ops at inner-city schools, can't easily wipe away the rotten taste Bush left when he spoke at racially-archaic Bob Jones University, ducked the Confederate flag fight, and racial profiling, refused to support tougher hate crimes legislation and promptly ignited a racially-destructive battle by appointing ultra-conservative, John Ashcroft as attorney general. Undoubtedly there's much more to Armey's extended hand to the NAACP than a burning urge for racial reconciliation. He can do the math. Republicans have lost Congressional seats in every midterm election since 1994. In 2004, 20 republicans and 13 Democrats are up for re-election in the Senate. If black voters are convinced that the Republicans are bent on doing everything they can to damage their interests they will again angrily march to the polls in big numbers. This could wipe out the razor thin edge Bush and the Republicans have in the Senate.

It's no accident why blacks have given the Democrats 80 to 90 percent of their vote since the Goldwater rebuff in 1964. They give them near monolithic support not because they are madly in love with their polices, but because the Republicans have blown every chance they've had to prove that they are friends and not mortal enemies of civil rights. This is a point Armey did not mention in his letter to the NAACP.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is the President of The National Alliance for Positive Action. website www.natalliance.org email:ehutchinson@natalliance.org