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graniteclimber
Trad climber
Nowhere
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"If the Republican Party thinks they can unite people by focus grouping Republicans and telling them they need to be more like Democrats they will fail. They may gain those with Democrat leanings but they will lose the rest of us. That is a strategy that is absolutely nuts."
Absolutely correct. If they returned to Goldwater conservatism that would be enough.
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Rokjox wrote: "In a few years, nobody will ever believe that they were against Medical research, gay marriage, single payer medical insurance, or universal health care; or pro torture, indefinite detention and domestic spying and wiretaps."
When you think about it, the abovementioned topics are so evident - per what should be done, the so-called "obvious choice" - that anyone or any party strugling with them can hardly be taken seriously. Pestering gays? Opposing universal health care? Domestic spying al a the old Stassi of East Germany? These are the strategies of zealots and fools, surely.
It's only been a few months since your boy GWB was shown the door, but already the old policies seem stone age. Trying to hold onto any of these old philosiphies seems a fast track to extinction.
I wonder what direction the GOP goes from here? What does "conservatism" even mean in light of the meltdown, or are conservatives trying to fob that off on others?
JL
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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This argument is at least 2500 years old.
Anyone that thinks we wlill become a one party country for any length of time is dilusional.
The treasury has been emptied, our children robbed. The present course will starve itself, but not without strife. BHO has declared war on the upper middle class. He's poured sugar in the gas tank of our economic engine. It's only a matter of time till it sputters to a stop.
From VDH
The Same Old Equality of Result
Rather than nitpick about Obama’s envisioned brave new world, I think it wiser to see it in the larger context of age-old divides over the nature of Western democratic and liberal society. Nothing that we have seen proposed since January 20 is novel; everything is merely the promise of the past outfitted with a new snazzier veneer of hope and change.
Take his domestic policies. What overarching philosophy seems reflected in raising taxes, borrowing trillions to spend trillions more on new entitlements, creating a new health care bureaucracy, cap-and-trade, allotting trillions more for education, and the expectation of the appointment of more liberal judges?
It’s old…
In a word, it is adherence to the idea of equality of result rather than an equality of opportunity, the age-old debate that goes back to the Greeks. From Aristotle’s Politics and Plato Laws, we learn of the original dilemma: a stable city-state of roughly similar property owners, who vote as equals, and fight as comrades in the phalanx, tragically, but inevitably, soon becomes tragically unequal.
Divide the land up equally to found the polis; give everyone an similarly-size plot (klêros); and then health, luck, brains, accident, strength, ambition, character, and a myriad of other factors, some understandable, some capricious, conspire to create inequality. I agree with Aristotle; I have seen it with families and communities in which equal inheritances soon led to radically different outcomes, as one sibling on rocky ground thrives, while another in deep loam starves; one town with abundant resources goes broke, while another without natural advantages thrives.
As Aristotle saw, some lose, some expand their original homesteads, and suddenly we have Hoi beltistoi and Hoi polloi — and the rallying cry that someone’s liberty to do as he pleases means that egalitarianism of the lowest common denominator becomes impossible.
American vs. French
The notion of freedom then butts up against equality, as if they are as often antithetical as symbiotic. (N.B.: note the French Revolutionary sloganeering of “fraternity” and “egalitarianism” versus the American Revolutionary emphasis on “Give me liberty, or give me death”, “Don’t Tread on Me!”, “All men are created equal” [by opportunity rather than by result]. And note Obama’s references to the French ideal.)
In response, the state has two choices to preserve its original ideal of equality (and we see elements of this further debate voiced in the Old Oligarch, Aristotle, Plato, Hobbes, Hume, etc, as well as in histories of the middle and late Roman Republic).
The Therapeutic
1. The state and culture at large can be coercive to ensure an equality of result — in the modern liberal world by high redistributive taxes, generous means-tested entitlements, inflationary monetary policies to diminish the power of capital (in the ancient world by forbidding the alienability of land, mandating the maximum size of estates, coining cheap bronze/silver coated money in vast amounts, redistribution of property, cancellation of debt, etc.).
Such efforts at commonality are what we are now witnessing with income tax hikes, $1.7 trillion dollar deficits, inflationary federal spending and borrowing, along with huge new entitlements. Its extreme form is the European Union, its extreme, extreme manifestations are the failed -isms and -ologies of the bloody 20th century where authoritarian elites broke the requisite eggs for the omelet of “for the people” and in service to “equality.”
The Tragic
2. Or instead of the therapeutic mode, we get the tragic acceptance of innate inequality combined with the notion of personal responsibility to care for one’s fellow citizen.
That is, in the American version of equality of opportunity, we accept some will always end up poor, some rich, some in-between due to factors both in, and beyond, our control. But rather than sacrifice liberty to use the coercive powers of the state to enforce equality, we set a foundation at the bottom, a safety net to ensure a minimum level of support for the poor, and laws at the top to prevent buccaneering and piratical behavior — in theory.
Then the tragic view accepts that some will be very wealthy, but assumes that the race for individual riches will, first, create greater prosperity for society at large (the much caricatured “trickle down”). And, two, a host of private mechanisms exists to channel individual bounty back for the general welfare: the status; and/or sense of right of giving to non-profits, charities, etc; the shame of living it up to an excessive degree; the patriotic call upon one to invest their riches in the public good; the informal practice of lending and giving to family and friends, etc. In other words, millions risk dying to leave temperate, naturally rich equality of result Mexico to enter the once equality of opportunity United States.
Been There, Done That
It seems to me that on three occasions during the last seventy-five years we have someone who really did believe in the therapeutic, equality of result — FDR, LBJ, and Jimmy Carter (Truman, JFK and Clinton proved to be centrists in comparison).
FDR had the rhetorical gifts and personal genius to implement such an agenda; LBJ and Carter tried, but were inept and poor messengers. And now we have a fourth avatar, who, given the current alignment of the planets, has a real chance to complete the FDR mandate — not in the dark days of the Great Depression replete with real want and starvation, but in a recession during the greatest age of affluence in the history of civilization — making both success and failure obsolete, and turning us into a sort of egalitarian polis much like Sweden or France.
I Don’t Owe You Any More
Turn on the radio: ads blare out how to renounce mortgage debt; get out of maxed out credit-cards; short the IRS; be eligible for a subsidized government loan, or new entitlement. Other ‘buy gold’ ads warn: plenty of danger, but no money in passbook accounts, stocks, real estate, as the debtor gains on the creditor, and capital earns little in comparison to protected salaries. To match a $100,000 government salary (as an upper-level bureaucrat), the despised capitalist, at a 2% interest payout on his stash, would need $5 million in accumulated cash: advantage bureaucrat.
Ironies Galore
Obama rather brilliantly counts on two great constituencies (other than the professional Ivy League technocracy whose responsibility is to figure out how to borrow and tax the money, lavish it on constituencies, and do rather well themselves as government overseers). One is the hyper-rich, the Kerrys, the Soroses, the Gateses, and their appendages in universities, government, foundations, and the media. These power players either make enough to be unconcerned with high taxation, or are so well connected politically (cf. the machinations of a Daschle, Dodd, Geithner, Rangel) that the coercive state rules simply do not apply.
Instead the hyper-wealthy receive a sort of psychic gratification in helping the ‘poor’, and romanticizing the underprivileged, thereby alleviating the guilt of being blessed, and at relatively small cost — and so they quite enthusiastically support the equality of result state.
Again, the poor present no challenge, offer no threat to the hyper — wealthy, but are thankful client recipients of ensured government largess. In contrast, the fellow elites have the necessary taste and education to satisfy the demands of aristocratic society.
And The Upper Middle Class?
But those in between, and especially those of the upper-middle class — the hardware store owner, the dentist, the paving contractor, the successful restaurateur, the real estate agent? These grasping who wish and aspire and may reach a mythical $250,000 salary some day (again, the threshold where one becomes the hated “they”), well now, they are not poor, need no government or private help, and offer no psychological alleviation of guilt to the elite. Romanticize a gardener or farm worker, or even clerk or teacher, but how does one mythologize a successful optometrist or insurance agent?
And yet they are not usually sophisticated in the snobbish sense, not opera-goers, not familiar with museums, not symphony buffs. Their children don’t necessarily attend Stanford or Harvard. In other words, they are near-to-wells, wannabes, without requisite culture, deserving of neither cultural awe and acceptance nor noblesse oblige.
A leftist elitist would always prefer the dubious (and now upscale, tax avoiding) huckster Al Sharpton, Tawana Brawley and all, to Sarah Palin, former mayor of Wasilla and Idaho University graduate. Joe the Plumber, the Cuban upper-middle class of Miami, the local talk show host, anyone who wants to get ahead, but shows so visibly the scars of the struggle to do so, lacks the refinement and taste of the more affluent, yet is in the crosshairs of the Obama revolution.
The only impediment to our new polis? There are not simply enough of these entrepreneurial dinosaurs to pay the taxes to feed the new $3.6 trillion annual beast. One can take all the income of the $250,000 “them”, and there won’t be enough to pay down the $9 trillion in new debt.
In short, Bush = lower taxes, more spending, and more debt; Clinton = higher taxes, more spending, and less debt; Obama = more taxes, more spending, and a lot more debt — and the same old dream that we can make everyone equal in the end — or else!
©2009 Victor Davis Hanson
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apogee
climber
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In short, modified:
Bush = lower taxes, more spending, and more debt; + unjustified, pointless war; compromised constitutional rights; low global image, torture=acceptable,
Clinton = higher taxes, more spending, and less debt, no, make that highest surplus in history, embarassing (but otherwise harmless) sexual hijinks
Obama = Cleaning up Shrub's sloppy seconds. Result- Projected: more taxes, unending debt. Stay tuned for reality (if you repubs last that long.)
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Tomcat
Trad climber
Chatham N.H.
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In four or eight years,the average American will realize the fleecing they have taken with the bailout programs.No ones mortgage got remedied,small business got 1/1000th of the money.AIG f*#ked us one and all by insuring that which should never have been insured,and then essentially declaring their own inability to analyze and insure risk.Normally that = fail for an insurance company,but not here.We've bailed out a bunch of mega banks that never should have reached the magnitude they did,while small banks remain solvent and carry on with sound business practices.The only people that have been bailed out are fat cats,and Joe Workingclass is going to be paying for it for decades to come.
For all the bailouts,credit remains tight.Domestic automakers are so far removed from reality the money they are getting might just as well be flushed down the toilet.Chrysler has been dead for a decade already,someone just needs to tell them.
Me,I don't hope for the demise of either party,as neither puts forth a sustainable model for the nation.As far as I am concerned,I wish Congress met for thirty days a year,and went home.The best government we get is when it's deadlocked,as only the matters of obvious merit move forward.
Once the GOP explains to average Americans the fleecing we've had,there'll be plenty of folks hoping for a change.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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I agree, Tomcat. I put a lot of the blame on our Congress. It amazes me that people like Peolsi and Barnet Frank actually get re-elected continuously.
Hopefully that changes.
Hey Fatty, what do you know about Chuck DeVore here in Cali?
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Topic Author's Reply - May 18, 2009 - 07:50pm PT
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GOP LOSSES SPAN NEARLY ALL DEMOGRAPHIC GROUPS
HP,Marcus Baram (5/18/09)
The decline and fall of the Republican Party in recent years has been so widespread that the party has lost support among nearly every major demographic subgroup of likely voters across the country, according to a new Gallup poll.
The party lost support among a broad swath of Americans, from conservative to liberal, low-income to high-income, married to unmarried, and elderly to young.
The only subgroup in which the party saw a slight increase in support from 2001 to 2009 was frequent churchgoers.
The biggest declines, of roughly 10 percent, occurred among the college-educated, 18 to 29-year-olds, and Midwestern voters.
The turning point was 2005, after Hurricane Katrina and Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, when the party's support really started to free-fall, according to Gallup: "By the end of 2008, the party had its worst positioning against the Democrats in nearly two decades."
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Topic Author's Reply - May 19, 2009 - 12:49pm PT
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Gallup: MODERATES, LIBERALS FLEE GOP
by Jed Lewison
Tue May 19, 2009 at 08:02:03 AM PDT
Gallup is out with an interesting new survey showing where the Republican Party has lost the most ground over the past eight years, and conservatives aren't going to like what it reveals.
The narrative spun by the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys and Dick Cheneys of the world is that the GOP's problem is that it hasn't been conservative enough, and that rather than moderate its policies, the GOP should focus its rebuilding efforts on the party's conservative base.
But the Gallup survey tells a completely different story. According to Gallup, only 1 percent of self-described conservatives have left the Republican Party over the past eight years. In fact, the only group more loyal to Republicans were those who attend church weekly. Meanwhile, even as Republicans held their conservative base together, 9% of moderates and 8% of liberals left the party.
What this means is that virtually all of the GOP's losses have come from liberals and moderates fleeing the party, leaving behind a party that is even more conservative than it was before.
It may please them to hear Cheney or Limbaugh say that turning right is the way out of the political wilderness, but sooner or later, they will realize that the only way back into the political mainstream is to jettison the extreme conservatism espoused by growing numbers of Republicans.
For now, however, they are stuck on conservatism, with party leaders like Michael Steele buying into the idea that all Republicans need to do is be more conservative. They need look no further this Gallup survey to realize the foolishness of their approach.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Topic Author's Reply - May 19, 2009 - 12:53pm PT
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Americans do NOT support Republican philosophy or "values"
Gallup: GOP Falls With Nearly Every Group, Down To Conservative, Church-Going Base
By Eric Kleefeld - May 18, 2009, 5:00PM
A new analysis by Gallup, compiled from their national polling done all this year, shows just how extensive the Republican Party's drop in voter self-identification has been, with decreases in nearly every demographic.
Compared to 2001, when George W. Bush first took office as president, GOP self-identification has fallen by ten points among college graduates, nine points among those 18-29 years of age, nine points in the Midwest, six in the East, five in the West, and even four points in the South. Married people identifying as Republicans have decreased by five points, and the difference is eight points among the unmarried. The list goes on and on.
In 2001, voters were 33% Democratic, 32% Republican, and 34% independent, with a Republican edge of 47%-46% after leaners were pushed. But now, it's 36% Democrats, 27% Republicans and 37% independents, with a huge Democratic advantage of 52%-37% with leaners.
The only bright spots for the GOP are three base groups: Frequent churchgoers, with no decrease at all; conservatives, with only a one-point decrease; and voters 65 years of age or older, with a one-point decrease. It should also be noted that they've only gone down one point among non-whites -- but this is because they didn't have much party identification there to begin with.
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apogee
climber
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May 19, 2009 - 12:55pm PT
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"...but sooner or later, they will realize that the only way back into the political mainstream is to jettison the extreme conservatism espoused by growing numbers of Republicans."
Given the permanently brain-injured nature of Hannity/Limbaugh/Cheney/Coulter/and the like, the only way back into the political mainstream will be when these idiots die.
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dirtbag
climber
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May 19, 2009 - 12:57pm PT
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Apogee, DMT has made that point before.
He has argued that for the Republicans to have a chance and shed their strident ways the boomers need to die off.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Topic Author's Reply - May 19, 2009 - 12:59pm PT
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may they have eternal life !
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dirtbag
climber
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May 19, 2009 - 01:05pm PT
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But your rabid base does pay attention to them.
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apogee
climber
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May 19, 2009 - 01:07pm PT
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The 'dying off' theory of the shift of the GOP has been thrown about by a number of political speculators, esp. in regards to the conservative party position on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage. 'Wedge issues' like these once served the political agenda of the GOP very well (when the GOP merged with the religious right), but there are strong suggestions that younger voters who call themselves Republican are more moderate on those issues.
That said, it's a bit of a stretch to say the the GOP is in it's 'death throes', but it appears to be heading for a significant shift in policies and positions.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Topic Author's Reply - May 19, 2009 - 01:11pm PT
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Dirt is right:
You will NOT attract moderates and swing voters sufficiently to again compete in national elections until intelligent and moderate Republicans forcefully and loudly reject the trivial, ignorant, and hateful language of your rabid extreme wing.
The fact that you do NOT do this is great news for keeping the Democrats in power. Your choice, support your extremists and continue to be doomed to irrelevance, or reject them loudly.
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