Not necessarily news but stil a very interesting read. Please move this to GD if it becomes a problem.
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Ezra Klein - this is boring, but it's almost always the case - has yet another smart piece today in which he posits Barack Obama as a moderate Republican from the early 1990s. I don't know about the label, but the substance is right on target: Obama favored an individual mandate universal health care plan, which - as I've insisted here before - was originally a Republican idea (the first version I saw in the early 1990s was Stuart Butler's Heritage Foundation plan, if you can believe it). Obama favored a cap-and-trade plan to limit carbon emissions; the first Bush Administration passed a (very successful) cap-and-trade plan for acid rain emissions. Obama favors a mix of tax increases and program cuts to melt the deficit, so did George H.W. Bush. (And that worked, too, in large part because Bill Clinton kept Bush's discretionary spending freeze and added higher rates for the wealthy.) I could also add in Bush the Elder's successful non-crusading foreign policy, which has been emulated by Obama (with a few exceptions, like Libya, but then Bush had his exceptions, too: Panama).
Given the success of all these programs, my thoughts turn not to Obama - but to the Republicans. Why aren't they moderate Republicans anymore?
Seriously, the early 1990s were a fecund time for policy thinking - especially for programs, like those above, that seemed to combine liberal ends with conservative means. There were severe blind spots, to be sure: both Bush the Elder and Clinton were in the thrall of Wall Street greedsters; Clinton, especially, worked overtime to prove his bona fides and eligibility for campaign contributions by joining in the parade of financial deregulation. But there did seem to be a mainstream consensus - or, at least, negotiable differences - on many, if not most, important issues. [URL="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/time/us_time/storytext/httpswamplandtimecom20110426therepublicancrackupxidrssfullnationyahoo/41233509/SIG=12sfklvkt/*http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2048933_2048932_2048841,00.html"](See "Twelve for '12: A Dozen Republicans Who Could Be the Next President.")[/URL]
Now we have this craziness. The Republican party has rejected all of the polices mentioned above, except for financial deregulation. It has gone off the deep end on taxes. It has denied the long-term economic and societal benefits of universal health insurance. It has gone into climate change denial…it is hard for any card-carrying Republican to say: I believe that Darwinian evolution is God's plan. These sad realities probably led to Haley Barbour's decision not to run for President and may well lead to the same decision for Indiana's Mitch Daniels. They have led Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty to make mortal fools of themselves.
A hundred years from now, historians will be having a field day: How did the Republicans go so far astray? Why did it work, from time to time, electorally? Why weren't the Democrats more effective in stopping them? Why didn't the society's major conservative economic stakeholders (outside the uber-reactionary Oil Patch) renounce the sideshow and demand a more reasonable brand of conservatism?
Two words immediately come to mind: Fox News. And two more words: Rush Limbaugh. And two more words: Newt Gingrich. And two more: Frank Luntz. But it seems clear that all eight of these words are part of the same, superficial, demagogic media phenomenon. And it also seems clear to me that there is a lot more to the profound political swing to the right that we've witnessed than telecharlatanism. The fear that has accompanied our economic slump has made the fear that right-wing demagogues sell a more attractive product. There is also the accumulating decades of educational incompetence, since - let's face it - a whole lot of smart female teachers were liberated to pursue their dreams and we were left, as Albert Shanker used to say, with the bottom 20% of college graduates to preside in our classrooms. And another thing: Perhaps this is just rear-view, rose-colored glasses, but after Bill Clinton took his lumps in 1994, he learned how to out-argue and out-think the extremists. His message was complicated, but his persona was clear - he was the McDonald's-eating, lounge-singer-screwing, good ol' boy with the 800 SATs, who really did understand how Americans (especially blue-collar American males) think, and really cared about their welfare. It was just flat embedded in his DNA after a childhood of having the cool athlete guys laugh at his sax-playing obese butt. [URL="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/time/us_time/storytext/httpswamplandtimecom20110426therepublicancrackupxidrssfullnationyahoo/41233509/SIG=120geathf/*http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2065000,00.html"](Read a Q&A with a group of Republican freshmen.)[/URL]
These are still early days for this President, a cooler cat than Clinton. His policies track with the Bush-Clinton sanity of the 1990s. He has arrested some truly dreadful trends that Bush the Younger launched us upon overseas and at home. He would have to be considered a favorite to be reelected in 2012, especially given the loony-bin nature of the current Republican party. But I do wonder why Obama isn't more forceful, at times, in defense of sanity. And even more than that, I wonder about my media colleagues: Why are we so often chasing the palpable nonsense that Fox News peddles? Why aren't we continually pointing out that there was a time - as Ezra implies today - when we had something resembling a consensus on some of the most important issues facing us? Why aren't we going back to basics - I'm looking at you, CNN - on some fundamental things like evolution and the science behind climate change? (On the other hand, CNN has done a sensational job explaining what is actually in the federal budget.)
Last night, I watched two examples of the media at our best: Lawrence O'Donnell quietly filleting Rush Limbaugh on the subject of Jesus of Nazareth's economic policies and Anderson Cooper proving the utter non-existent nonsense of Donald Trump's "investigative" efforts to discover the "truth" about Barack Obama's birth certificate in Hawaii. Regular readers here know that I've avoided all mention of Trumpet from my posts on the grounds of life being too short for me to be played a sucker by that lame fool, but Anderson's work is probably a necessity for a mainstream outlet.
For most of the 40 years that I've been a working reporter, the country chugged along pretty damned well. There were plenty of important issues, but none that threatened the essence of our American miracle. That's no longer true. We face a future dominated by the celebration of ignorance and sloppy short-term thinking. I think those of us who are trying to actually report the world as it is - flawed and mistaken as we sometimes are - are facing a great challenge right now. We really owe the public a good, smart, rigorous couple of years between now and election day, 2012.
[url]http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/httpswamplandtimecom20110426therepublicancrackupxidrssfullnationyahoo;_ylt=Aov7ZkupxVcGsRep.dUwQKis0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTVibjliYWN2BGFzc2V0A3RpbWUvMjAxMTA0MjcvaHR0cHN3YW1wbGFuZHRpbWVjb20yMDExMDQyNnRoZXJlcHVibGljYW5jcmFja3VweGlkcnNzZnVsbG5hdGlvbnlhaG9vBGNjb2RlA21vc3Rwb3B1bGFyBGNwb3MDNQRwb3MDMgRwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX2hlYWRsaW5lX2xpc3QEc2xrA3doYXRoYXBwZW5lZA--[/url][/release]
So where has the sense gone in the republican party? They seem so extreme in the beliefs, they could almost gain the name radical republicans.
nowhere, you just hear about the "loonies" because the news knows thats what people want to hear.
[QUOTE=c0nk3r;29467962]nowhere, you just hear about the "loonies" because the news knows thats what people want to hear.[/QUOTE]
No. Unfortunately, the lunatics, extremists and retards are the ones leading the republican movement today. All that it once was is gone, and the moderates are shunned and sidelined.
I imagine it's actually just the extreme are much louder than the moderates, even though chances are there's less of them.
I feel sorry the ordinary republicans who are probably feeling left out of the party they supported.
[QUOTE=c0nk3r;29467962]nowhere, you just hear about the "loonies" because the news knows thats what people want to hear.[/QUOTE]
Most of the presumptive republican nominees for the 2012 election deny that obama was born in the united states in one form or another. So no, you hear about them in the news a lot because that is the direction the party appears to be moving to.
[QUOTE=Doozle;29468010]
I feel sorry the ordinary republicans who are probably feeling left out of the party they supported.[/QUOTE]
I feel bad for my dad and my grandaparents, this first time I heard my grandma say nigger was when Obama was elected.
They aren't republicans anymore.
[editline]e[/editline]
(And that's a good thing)
It's because the moderate Republicans know it's better to be quiet. That's why we don't hear about them.
One kind of off topic question. What's the difference between republican/democrats and conservative/liberals?
There probably are a few moderate republicans today, however as some people have already posted it's the loonies that make the papers/lead the pack. As silly as this may seem this is how politics work.
Eh, it's all part of the political machine. As soon as the Republicans have both a man in the white house and a majority in congress they will pretty much say "fuck it" to the current principles they are running on and become Democrats with red ties.
I used to be a moderate Republican, but with all the dumbfuckery committed by the party I consider myself Independent now.
fox news should be torn apart for false advertising and propaganda. The religious right needs to be looked at in the same way as Islamic extremist terrorists and the crazies should have their heads checked whether they like it or not. Luckily this trend won't last long as most of these tea partyers and "conservatives" are just senile old people being told what to think because they didn't have the advantage of having as wide a media source for information as the internet. Once the internet generation (anyone born after the mid 80s) becomes the oldest generation we will have a better world.
Michael Steele seemed ok as a Republican on Jon Stewart.
They lost a presidential election, that's what happened.
[QUOTE=Badal;29470107]I used to be a moderate Republican, but with all the dumbfuckery committed by the party I consider myself Independent now.[/QUOTE]
Same.
The moderates moved to the independent or liberal side.
What used to be a sensible party is now the dark side.
The Republican party decided that the best way to get their men elected is by securing the votes of America's sizable complete fucking lunatic population. By playing into media hysterics and fueling the perceived threat du jour (muslims, socialists, the Chinese, them gays what's tryin ter get murried, etc.), modern Republicans get the votes of the uneducated, the bigoted, the racist, and the religious extremist idiots.
Thus, any Republican candidate has to be a complete whackjob for the party to support him, and any moderate/sensible/educated potential congressman/president gets pushed aside.
[QUOTE=Thom12255;29470336]Michael Steele seemed ok as a Republican on Jon Stewart.[/QUOTE]
Except the only thing he has going for him in the line of crazies is his skin color.
the Republican party is the punchline of every bad political joke up here in New York
What!? This article is outrageous!
Fox News is moderate! Otherwise it wouldn't have the motto "fair and balanced"!
How the hell do they not realize that Obama's a liberal, progressive extremist?
:downs:
The Republican party was representing the Union in the American civil war, while the Democratic party was founded in the Confederate states.
I sense a deep, underlying irony somewhere in this fact.
[QUOTE=archangel125;29471824]Believe it or not, Republicans were once relatively liberal, while Democrats were once relatively conservative.[/QUOTE]
That's exactly the deep underlying irony I was trying to hint at.
[QUOTE=SM0K3 B4N4N4;29470261]Once the internet generation (anyone born after the mid 80s) becomes the oldest generation we will have a better world.[/QUOTE]
that's what the baby boomers thought in the 1960s, look where it lead us
I'm a moderate Republican and so is the rest of my family.
Shit sucks being a minority.
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;29472477]that's what the baby boomers thought in the 1960s, look where it lead us[/QUOTE]
What? How do we not have an amazing world right now?
The tea party. Thats what happened.
[QUOTE=slinkman;29473026]The tea party. Thats what happened.[/QUOTE]
Nope, that's what happened to the confused republicans.
[QUOTE=Contag;29472991]What? How do we not have an amazing world right now?[/QUOTE]
Other then the corruption and the baby boomers trying to limit rights and the financial crisis its actually decent in living standards. Oh and the income gap.
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