Over at (u)SP, my good friend Eric thinks that in gloating over the ass-kicking his party got in MS-01, I may have lost some perspective.
So much so that even Josh Feit at the Stranger has weighed in, noting the hypocrisy of poo-pooing results in West Virginia while cheering events in Mississippi…
Yeah… thing is… I never poo-pooed the results in West Virginia, because it never occurred to me that a Democratic primary there might say anything about a partisan, Congressional runoff in Mississippi. See, one was a contest between two Democrats, and the other a race between a Republican and a Democrat. So what’s your point?
But Eric continues…
An even more important take-away is that Democrats are winning in red districts by running conservative candidates… So, celebrate away, Democratic friends. Just don’t pretend this is some great advance for liberalism. It’s a reminder that the GOP brand name is in sorry shape, not that these red district Democrats are simpatico with urban liberals.
Huh. I keep re-reading that post of mine that Eric linked to, and for the life of me I can’t see where I made any reference at all to the triumph of liberalism. Perhaps it’s between the lines?
See, the mistake Eric makes is believing his own bullshit about the wide-eyed, radical “nutroots.” I know it must be comforting to believe that liberal bloggers like me are all batshit crazy, but it doesn’t do his side any good to have such an inaccurate psychological profile.
In fact, we are for the most part strikingly pragmatic. I’m perfectly happy to have Southern Democrats like Travis Childers and Heath Schuler in Congress, if that’s the best we can do in those districts, and I could really care less if Dems in Mississippi host NRA barbecues as long as voters in urban districts have the right to place sensible local restrictions on the sale and ownership of the kind of handguns and other weapons most commonly used in violent crimes.
The netroots strategy is also a lot more subtle than Eric or his legacy media counterparts give us credit for, as illustrated by a neat bit of analysis today from Matt Stoller:
Finally the GI bill passed with overwhelming margin of 256 votes in the House, including 32 Republicans. It included a war surtax of one half of one percent on people making over $500k a year to pay for the GI bill, at the behest of Blue Dogs. This might actually be the most remarkable piece of the votes today; conservative Democrats agreeing to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for educational benefits for veterans. Bill Foster and Don Cazayoux both voted well on the new GI Bill and on the Responsible Plan bill with timelines, but were ‘yes’ votes on war funding. So yes, they are conservative, and I expect Childers to be conservative as well. Still, the MS-01, the IL-14 special election result, and the LA-06 special election result – all red seats picked off by Democrats – are devastating Republican discipline in the House.
This war is going to end because it is politically unsustainable. The Senate is going to add the funding back in and the House will make sure the money goes to the war, but recognize how big a deal this is. The Republicans in the House and the Senate are going to utterly collapse this fall, and Democrats will have a mandate to end the war. It’s something Obama has promised to do, and now the political logic there is undeniable.
Sure, I’d love for voters in Mississippi and Louisiana and West Virginia to self-identify as liberals (hell, they already agree with us on almost every major policy issue) but I’m more than happy if they merely call themselves “Democrats.” The purpose of politics is to seize, maintain and exercise power—that’s how we’ll get a progressive domestic agenda enacted, and that’s how we’ll end this goddamn war in Iraq—and we can’t do this without holding a comfortable majority in Congress. And that’s what my gloating over the GOP’s ass-whupping in MS-01 is all about.
Not that recent Democratic victories are entirely devoid of ideology. Eric got one thing right, “the GOP brand name is in sorry shape.” And it’s going to continue to stay that way as long as Republicans like Eric continue to deny that their sullied brand has anything to do with their party’s legacy of failed, ideologically driven policies.
Talk about a loss of perspective.
David, as regards ass-kickings, the Flyers will be toast after tonight.
The California Supreme Court today struck down that state’s voter-passed gay marriage ban as unconstitutional by a vote of 4-3.
“An even more important take-away is that Democrats are winning in red districts by running conservative candidates… ”
The most important take-away is that we’re taking seats away from the GOP right and left.
2 And Schwartzenegger pledged to respect their decision.
@3 Come November their heads will explode and we get to watch it happen. I’m sure some heads will explode right here at HA.
Schwarzenegger says: “I respect the Court’s decision and as Governor, I will uphold its ruling.”
He’ll uphold the ruling? What choice does he have?
“He’ll uphold the ruling? What choice does he have?”
Well…there is always the George Bush model: Ignore the ruling.
The GOP strategy, for the last half-century, is to make the terms “liberals”, “communists”, and “Democrats” mutually interchangeable. Rove’s ascendency have added “homosexuals” and terrorist-lovers”, etc. As that began to lose effect, they’ve added a few adjatives in for good measure, referring to every Democrat as a “far-left liberal whacko”, regardless of the facts. If you listen to the daily sound bits and Fox News, you can see the repitition of these phrases as the talking points are disseminated among the Republican faithful.
As I’ve said before, I really hate the “left/right” and “liberal/conservative” dichotomy which the media uses as a short-hand way to pin rather misleading labels on the rather complicated political views of Americans. But the Republican party has embraced it for years, using their propoganda machine to paste negative labels on the Democratic Party. Their hope, which was fairly effective in the 1980’s and the early 2000’s, was that they could force voters to believe they had a choice between voting for “far-left-liberal-communist-homosexual-terrorist loving-whackos”, or, well, anyone else.
It turns out that “anyone else” was a supurbly bad choice.
Hirsch, “An Unnatural Disaster” It reminds me a bit of Lincoln’s decision to replace McClellan with Burnside, but at least Burnside had the honesty to argue that he wasn’t qualified for the post, and then went on to prove it.
So now that Americans have seen beyond the Republican propoganda machine which has dominated America’s elections and politics for well over the past decade, now they are trying to re-brand themselves.
It’s interesting, in a perverse “slowing down to gawk at the car wreck way”, to watch their Machiavellian tactics. They try to pin the blame for Bush & Co’s disasters on the “Democratic Congress”, even while they used vetos and filibuster (or threats thereof) to stop every constructive effort to stop the bleeding. They try to take exclusive credit for the emergency cash rebates Americans are now receiving, as if Democrats didn’t have anything to do with a measure which is bad fiscal policy, but the only measure they could take to throw a “life ring” to the economy which had suffered a hit due to Bush & Co.’s mismanagement of their oversight duties regarding financial markets.
But now their bloggers seem willing to abandon the Republican Party identity altogether, if only to attribute Democratic victories to the election of “Conservative Democrats”. Never mind that such rhetoric tears down the curtain and reveals the lie which has been the Republican propoganda machine for so long – that not all Democrats are “ultra-left-wing liberals”, and that their are many faces within the Democratic Party. In the South, where I grew up, being a Southern Democrat might mean that you were a fiscal conservative, owned guns and enjoyed shooting them for sport, were anti-abortion, but dedicated to equal opportunity and fiercly devoted to protecting the farmers and blue-collar workers against the corporate interests which sought to make a dishonest buck of his or her vulnerabilities.
So, if the Un-Sound Politics bloggers like to claim that successful Democrats are, well, “not liberal”, then go right ahead. The labels are all pretty silly anyway, and the Republican party seems to be living or dying by the labels, and right now it seems that it is dying. So if they want to keep playing that game, then let’s just write “DNR” on their foreheads, and start the wake early.
Childers taking that republican seat in Mississippi is on the same order as some republican, any republican, liberal, moderate or mainstream wing-nut, taking Jim McDermott’s seat here in Seattle. This trifecta of republican losses is a big deal and a harbinger of the thrashing they are going to take in November.
Someone should probably post this as the start of a new open thread, but this kind of train wreck is typical of what’s happening with people who call themselves “conservative” yet continue to align with the Republican party.
The funny part is that this incident is already documented on the wikipedia entry for Kevin James.
What I find interesting —
When Travis Childers was running for Congress, Republicans said that people in Mississippi shouldn’t vote for him, because he was a “Liberal”.
Now that Childers has been elected, Republicans are saying that the only reason he was able to win in that Mississippi district was because he is a “Conservative”.
Hypocrisy in the extreme by the Republicans.
Roger Rabbit @ 2
Why do opinion polls show voters almost evenly divided when they are asked whether same sex marriage should be legal?
But when voters are presented with constitutional amendments that would limit marriage to one man and one woman, these amendments tend to get passed overwhelmingly by the voters?
The California decision is actually good news for McCain. The religious right will be out in full force. I am sure the pastors will be urging their congregates to register to vote for months to come.
Unfortunately, perhaps for the first time, the dog may be right.
Don Jo @ 10. Yep. That was a classic.
@14: Absolutely not. You have to remember. Conservatives win some battles, but over the last 200 years they have consistently lost the war. 2004 will go down in history as the high water mark of the “anti-gay” tide”. I hope all those good church going lunatics beat their brains out to try and get their silly amendment passed. It has no chance. This will deflect their efforts politically to win political offices. I support their efforts in this regard.
The GOP will not carry California in ’08. No. Possible. Way.
Count on it.
David, the Flyers prevailed tonight, but, like Hillary, they are doomed. It’s only a matter of time, and you know it.
just wanted to say fuck you byebyegop from n.h.
There’s a chance that a GOP sponsored bill in california will split its electorial votes. Haven’t heard anything about it for a couple months. Last heard it would affect this presidential election.
#14 All the talibangelicals’ sheep are already registered, and already vote. Who is registering and will be voting this fall is minorities, and young people who together are about 80% to 90% democratic voters these days. If the love jesus (sic) but hate gay frauds get youngsters to register to vote, more than half of them youngsters will still vote for dems.
America is waking up.
The Republicon Party is dead.
You heard it here first.
R.I.P.
@ 14
Sorry, but, as usual, the dog is FOS. If McCain couldn’t make it happen in Arizona, it’s not likely to have much of an effect in California.
“ideologically driven policies”?
Like what? Sound fiscal policies? Sane environmental policy? Which “driven” policy? The current GOP is so far removed from Ronald Reagan, Goldwater and the conservative platform as to be unrecognizable.
Therein lies the problem. The GOP HAS NOT been ideologically driven this past decade. They have acted like liberals. Like democrats. It is a recipe for failure. For the party and the country writ large.
The vast majority of historical American successes have been accomplished by the GOP and its members.
Ending slavery: Lincoln.
Establishing the National Park System: TR.
Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts: Dirksen, et al.
Commanding victorious troops in battle: Eisenhower, Patton, MacArthur, LeMay, Schwarzkopf (most general officers in the 20th Century were Republicans).
Food and Drug Reforms: Again, TR. (Why are ALL the faces on Rushmore Republican presidents? Simple. They were the best we’ve ever had.)
The GOP needs to get back to its roots. Hopefully McCain, Osama or Mrs BJ won’t do such severe damage that there will be some semblance of a USA to rehabilitate in 4 or 8 years…
@12
If you look at polling going back about thirty years you’ll see support for gay marriage growing at about 10% a decade. Right now support for gay marriage among people under 30 is quite high (I think it’s around 75%) and it’s quite low among people over 60. As the oldsters kick the bucket we should see support for gay marriage grow much faster than its current 10% a decade.
The answer to your question could be that the highest support for gay marriage is found in the segment of the population with the lowest voter turnout.
Um… HRC and BHO have almost identical voting records in the senate. Eric needs to check his head.
I hope Seattle updates its
before November….The call system will be overwhelmed by HA contributors after McCain wins the house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I might just have to drop in to this site the day after to witness the carnage.
I hope Seattle updates its suicide hotline before November….The call system will be overwhelmed by HA contributors after McCain wins the house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I might just have to drop in to this site the day after to witness the carnage.
Keep dreaming Rick.
cmiklich: I thought that chimpanzee you voted for twice could do no wrong. Same with the Frist/DeLay Congress.
Republicans have a very keen sense of who won and who lost. I’m sure that Eric Earling is aware of the unavoidable truth that losing to a Democrat in a Republican district in Mississippi, fer Chrissake, is a huge symbolic kick in the ass.
Get used to it, Eric. I’ve been working my entire life for a November like the one coming up. You will be routed, defeated, and shunned by every voter in the country with an IQ over 105.
Cheer up! You still have the ‘tard vote — your ‘base’.
Who is registering and will be voting this fall is minorities, and young people who together are about 80% to 90% democratic voters these days.
The young that would vote democrat will be too busy getting drugged up like they always do and not come out in large numbers. When they finally have to go out and get a real job they become republicans real quick. Social studies 101, you can count on it baby.
The young that would vote democrat will be too busy
So far they have been turning out in large numbers to elect Democratic candidates.
My guess they will be very busy this November kicking ass on shit-eating curs like Doofus.
You still have the ‘tard vote — your ‘base’.
Doofus! He’s talking about you!
#31, Doggie, I see you didn’t go to my caucus….. Standing room only. Packed.
When it comes to November, is there a word for an election worse than bloodbath?
The chairman of the RNC recognized, publicly, the threat that the loss of the Mississippi seat evidences for the GOP (and let us not forget the Illinois and Louisiana seats). The trolls here, nonetheless, argue that all is well. They argue that all is not only well, but going exactly as planned. Do we not have a mental health professional on board who can diagnose our trolls’ mental frailties, and maybe even an MD who can prescribe a medication to cure, or at least sedate, them?
@10 It’s hard to believe that Bush’s press secretary doesn’t know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was, isn’t it?
Where the hell does the GOP find these dopes? Fortunately for Bush & Co., this country seems to have an endless supply of them. But that’s unfortunate for the rest of us.
cmiklik,
–Ending slavery: Lincoln.
–“Establishing the National Park System: TR.
–Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts: Dirksen, et al.
–Commanding victorious troops in battle: Eisenhower, Patton, MacArthur, LeMay, Schwarzkopf (most general officers in the 20th Century were Republicans).”
Maybe I am misunderstand you here…are you saying that the best Republicans are dead Republicans?
@35 Dr. Rabbit at your service! In my professional opinion, their brains have fossilized. The proof of this is that if they fall off a 10-story building and land on their heads, only concrete dust comes out.
Lincoln … TR … Dirksen … Eisenhower … Patton … MacArthur … Schwarzkopf … what do they have to do with the gang of criminals comprising today’s GOP?
LeMay? He was a fucking nut.
Comparing this band of bozos to Lincoln is beyond insulting, it’s obscene.
The elephant in the room……The Bu$h crime family. People can only be fooled so long. This November will reflect the bad taste most of us have had for some time now.
LOL the right wing bible thumpin freaks are now attacking Starbucks because of their logo. If you can look close enough you can ALMOST see a representation of a naked mermaid. These pervs can’t handle the exposure to BREASTS! No wonder LilBitch/PiddlyDick and Marvy’s wife ran to my bed!
With all the real trouble in the world you have to admire the christians’ ability to generate faux outrage over the most ridiculous shit!
CMIKILICH @ 23, in addition to many other errors, says “Why are ALL the presidents on Rushmore Republican Presidents? Simple. They were the best we’ve ever had”.
There are four Presidents imortalized on Mt. Rushmore (from left to right): Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln.
Washington never belonged to a known political party. He argued that the rise of political parties spelled the end of Democracy in America. He had Whig sympothies during the Revolutionary era, but his only other option would have been to be a Tory.
Jefferson belonged to the Republican-Democrat party, which was opposed to the Federalist party under John Adams. The Republican-Democrat party later was shortened to the Democratic Party. The modern-day Democratic Party traces it’s roots to Jefferson, and it’s annual gala is the “Jefferson Day Dinner”.
Lincoln was indeed a Republican, as was Roosevelt. But both would be ashamed of the modern-day Republican party. For example, Roosevelt was indeed a conservationist who founded the National Park System (credit is due when credit is earned). In contrast, the current Bush administration is pushing through administrative rules to make it easier for power plants and other polution-generating industrial uses to be located immediatley outside park boundaries, even though they degrade the air quality within the park. (Think of Yellowstone, except with the smell that used to be associated with Tacoma some 20 years ago).
RP has a good point; they were tarring Travis Childers as “liberal.”
But the bottom line is that they’re Democrats. They won’t campaign for Republicans like the assholish Lieberman. They’ll support president Obama during his campaign and after.
And I still think it’s significant that MS-01 was Trent Lott’s seat. That’s a freakin’ kick to the ol’ GOP nuts. Yeeargh!
@35…PL…
I don’t argue that…
In fact, I’m perfectly prepared to call a spade a spade and recognize that my party is in deep kim chee.
The operative question is why? The answer is that it lost its way in the morass of Washington, with too many becoming corrupted by the system in place in D.C.
As painful as it is, the analysis by Peggy Noonan in today’s WS Journal is accurate.
Nevertheless, this state of affairs does not mean that Americans are funning pall mall into the liberal camp and endorsing the craziness advocated by so many of the HA Happy Hooligans – if anything, the internal squabbles in the Democratic Pary evidence the truth of that.
Froma Harrop, a liberal columnist with an original POV, argues in today’s Seattle Times that Obama supporters run the risk of a backlash against their candidate by supporters of HRC for their gloating and piling on.
At this stage, it wouldn’t take much for those Blue Dog or Reagan Democrats who supported HRC in the nomination process to wander off and vote for John McCain in the general.
One or two more outbursts from Rev. Jeremiah Wright or another Obama blunder like the San Francisco guns and religion speech, and BHO will have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do to millions of blue-collar Democrats who already suspect he’s not one of them and he looks down at them as lesser beings or racist at heart.
Those who crow about poll numbers in May need to remember that Michael Dukakis had a 17 or 18 point lead over George H.W. Bush at this stage in 1988. Ultimately, the only poll that matters is the one taken on election day.
What was Dewey’s victory margin over Truman?
There’s a lot of campaigning yet to be done, and the world is a funny place prone to producing the unexpected when it’s least expected…ask John Kerry what he thinks of the favor Osama bin Laden tried to do for him just prior to the 2004 election – with friends like that, who needs enemies?
There are some on the right who actually welcome a drubbing come November as a purifying fire – rid the party of the RINOs, and force it to return to the values that attracted voters in landslide numbers in the past. I’m not sure I’m prepared to go that far, but I am willing to call B.S. on the GOP when it screws the pooch, as I did in my last article at Crosscut where I was critical of the King County convention.
Win, lose, or draw for me is one thing, but for some (many? most?) of the HA Happy Hooligans, it’s another thing altogether. The rigidity and dogmatic “kill or be killed” attitude of so many of them will only result in them losing no matter who wins.
It’s one thing to campaign and another to govern. That BHO has promised to be a bi-partisan President reaching across the aisle to embrace Republicans (and their programs?) will surely anger many of the HAHHs. Many of the shriekers and screechers will find this patently unacceptable such that they’ll soon start in on him for betraying them.
But for them, the only POV that’s acceptable is the one that comes out of the person they see in the mirror every morning.
Let’s take an issue: immigration. Not a hottie on the campaign trail right now, but indeed something in dire need of attention and a fix.
So many of the HAHHs think that blanket amnesty is the way to go and that efforts to control the borders are racist. Problem is that just the opposite is the POV of the American people, and they made that clear last year when public outcry stopped an immigration “reform” effort along those lines.
What has to happen, and what will happen eventually, is something along the lines of addressing the security interests first followed by a recogniztion that a lot of people are here now and something has to be done about them one of which is that they will have to pay the consequences of breaking the law to get here.
In other words, some middle ground somewhere.
It may mean severe penalties in back taxes and fines for illegally entering the U.S. or something, but it will cost.
But since the eventual solution deviates from HAHH orthodoxy – read ultra-left, open borders orthodoxy – there will be stuck-pig howling from a lot of the regulars here.
What else is new?
The micro view of the political landscape isn’t encouraging for conservatives. The macro, however, is reassuring; we’ve been here before, taken it seriously, and emerged stronger and more victorious.
Self-awareness is necessary for maturity. The GOP is experiencing a refining fire toward that end. Are Democrats becoming self-aware? Or are they simply continuing to read their own press clippings about their virtue?
The fawning among the HAHHs over BHO or The Darcy is a case in point. In reading the cesspool spew and even the posts from Goldy, et al, you come away with a sense that both are lambs with no defect…just the type that are usually led to the slaughter.
It would be nice to see some candor here instead of the constant left-handed drumbeat touting the perfection of the clearly imperfect.
Or do you all legitimately believe that BHO and The Darcy have no flaws? Weaknesses? Vulnerabilities? If so, then maybe November won’t be so bad for me after all.
Either way, it will be interesting…
The Piper
PS
McCain favors a guest worker program.
I predict a Democratic president, Democrats gain 24 seats in the House, and they gain 7 in the Senate.
@47…DL…
But he now favors securing the borders first, which is a change in his position from a couple years ago.
Like I said, the eventual solution will be somewhere in the middle, but it must have as the first step the security of the country, not easing the plight of illegal aliens.
The Piper
Piper @ 46
Wow. Talk about self-deception and a lack of candor. Americans aren’t shucking off the Republican brand because of corruption or a departure of the Republican party from its core values. Americans are dismissing the Republican party, because they’re waking up to the fact that a quarter-century of implementing those Republican principles has left everyone but the richest 1-2 percent of the population behind.
From Iraq to the sub-prime lending crisis, from inflation to high gas prices, all of our current problems can be traced directly to policies that reflect Republican principles. People are figuring out that a politician who says, “government is the problem,” is a politician who is going to shirk the responsibilities of governance.
Do Sen. Obama and Darcy Burner have flaws? Unquestionably. They’re human beings. To suggest otherwise is pure fantasy, and to focus on their flaws as if Republicans are not equally flawed is to engage in precisely the same demagoguery of which you accuse us.
But, the central question isn’t about “who”. It’s about “what”. It’s about policies, and, for that, there really is only one observation that’s relevant. You, Piper, have an amazing track record of avoiding, at least on this blog, any substantive debate with anyone over policy issues. And, to most of us, the reason you haven’t is rather obvious.
I still can find a win/win out of the upcoming election. I feel Obama will be a good president for the upcoming crisis in America. But if McCain wins, by some strange confluence of events and rigged voting machines, the way he will mishandle America will destroy any further support for the Republican party for generations. Just my opinion.
@50…DJ…
We’ll simply have to agree to disagree on core principles. I don’t find anyone anywhere who’s in love with higher taxes, more governmental regulation and intrusion into their lives, catering to illegal immigrants over those here legally, retreat in the face of international challenges, herding the American people like sheep into a near-third world living standard all in the name of environmental purity, punishing success, rewarding indolence, and effectively making us all dependent upon the government for the meeting of our every need.
That’s the America I was raised to hope for.
No more respect for the individual liberties of citizens, keeping taxes and governmental interference in our lives as low as possible, the strongest national defence, fostering a business climate that rewards risk taking and enterprise, protecting innocent and unborn life, respecting the traditional values most Americans still practice in their homes, absolute integrity in government, a judiciary that applies the law as it is rather than makes it up to suit their own ideological bias, a foreign policy that puts the interests of America first – that kind of stuff.
As for me not discussing policy? Unlike so many of the HA Happy Hooligans whose idea of discussion is a less than clever and very unoriginal combining of personal attack and expletive, I discuss policy issues all the time.
You just don’t like what I say so you first, dismiss it, then treat any disagreement with your POV as an out-of-bounds attack, which is the typical liberal response to anything.
And it’s not that BHO and The Darcy have shortcomings as people – no, Sweetie, it’s deeper than that. Their policies – what about their policies? Are they all perfect and needn’t be modified in the slightest?
Or do the hold positions on issues that are wrong-headed, ill-conceived, or simply dangerous?
And their character? Can we trust these people in the clinch? Do they share our values? Do they exercise sound judgment? Or are they suspect? To a lot of Americans, these questions are more important than jots and tittles on policy.
Many Democrats voted for Ronaldus Magnus Reaganus even though they disagreed with him – they simply knew that he could always be counted on to stick to his guns and tell you where he stood on an issue.
I remain convinced that the US is still, at heart, a conservative country. What we lack is a genuinely conservative political party with a message that will resonate with the people.
I will be candid – when Congressional Republicans had the oppotunity to select for leadership positions men and women who were commited to reforming the earmark process but instead choose as leaders those who participated in earmarks, I was as disappointed as I’ve been politically in years.
I want my leaders to inspire me, not pander to me.
BHO talks an inspirational game, but he’s all theory and no reality – he’s never had to make the executive decision that would cost people their lives or risk the security of the nation. Lots of book learning, very little street smarts. That is one Helluva gamble!
Last time the Democrats tried this shell game, we got screwed by Jimmy Carter.
The Piper
Re Darryl:
Yes, I would certainly say the best Republicans (excepting myself of course) are dead.
Likewise, the best democrats aren’t only dead, they’re so far rotten-dead that no one can remember what they were ever about…
The anti-family limp-wristed sodomites, hate-America-first, anti-scientific/anti-God global warming freaks, tax-tax-tax-tax, hate the poor, hate the achiever, hate-whitey, hate yourself crowd that calls itself democrat today is far more marxist-communist elitist than anything it had ever misrepresented itself as before.
I think it’s a bit disengenious to say that the Republican’s only problem was that they were captured by “the system”.
As far back as the Reagan years, it has been clear that there is a vast chasm between Republican rhetoric and their actions in office. Beginning with Reagan, the first task of every Republican administration has been to push for tax cuts for the wealthy, military contracts for their supporters, and everything else gets delegated to an indefinate “next term”. So while they appeal to the Christian fundamentalists on abortion, school prayer, and gay rights, they are unwilling to invest ANY political capital in providing solutions to those issues (perhaps the last thing they want is for those issues to go away?).
There may be a division between the financial interests which have controlled the Republican Party for most of the past century, as compared with the rank-and-file which may have legitimate ideological issues which they thought the Republican Party supported. If so, when they get really close to the party, they are often quite dissolusioned. Ask David Stockman, Reagan’s first budget director, who believed that their goal was fiscal prudence and a balanced budget, but instead was forced to make up numbers to match the White House PR office’s “rosy scenarios”, as he called them. And ask the guy who was in charge of the White House Faith-Based Initiative programs, who overheard Rove & others laughing about how they were just using the Christian Evangelicals for their political benefit.
They weren’t corrupted by the system. They ARE the corrupt system.