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Former GOP strategist is disillusioned to find out all of GOP's "core values" were not its real values after all; it's this....

ataraxia

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The GOP has been telling us it's the party of "family values", "freedom", "American Democracy", "rights of citizens", "law and order", and other such euphemisms. Those were supposed to be its "core values"- the things it steadfastly stood for. It was not supposed to be about charismatic leaders and people, it was supposed to be about the ideas.

But Donald Trump has clearly shown that the party is, and never has been, any of those things. He boldly ripped away that skimpy little veil and revealed what is, and has always been, at the core of the party, since Barry Goldwater's campaign:

Racism.

Trump "said it like it is", and that's why he was so beloved by so many millions.

This is not liberal propaganda. It turns out there were a few Republican party members who naively and innocently really thought those values were what the party was all about. Now, in the Trump era, with that skimpy little veil stripped away, they are finding themselves out in the open with nothing to cover them. They are outcasts of the party.

Here is a former GOP political strategist explaining the disillusionment that came after he realized what the party had always been really about.

" Once upon a time, Republican legislators and party leaders claimed they cared deeply about certain foundational issues—the deficit, family values, free trade, hawkish foreign policy. Now they were cheering a twice-divorced adulterer who had run up the federal debt, sloppily imposed tariffs, and embraced the anti-American autocrats leading Russia and North Korea—a man devoid of serious thought and guiding policy principles, a self-fixated candidate who presented no intellectual framework for his presidency. Had the GOP become the party of no ideas?...

He (GOP political Strategist Stevens) huffed that the Republican Party had not merely drifted away from its core positions, as sometimes occurs with political parties: “Fair trade, balanced budgets, character, family values, standing up to foreign adversaries like Russia—we’re all against that now. You have to ask, ‘Does someone abandon deeply held beliefs in three or four years?’ No. It means you didn’t ever hold them.” He added: “I feel like a guy who was working for Bernie Madoff.”...

In our conversation, Stevens exploded with loathing for the party he once faithfully (and lucratively) served. He rejected the common view that Trump had hijacked the GOP. No, he explained, the triumph of know-nothing Trumpism marked the culmination of an internal conflict that had existed for decades between the party’s “dark side” and its professed ideals. Even William F. Buckley Jr., often hailed as a grand public intellectual and the founding father of the modern conservative movement, was “a stone-cold racist” in the 1950s, Stevens pointed out. (Buckley at that time considered white people more “advanced” and more fit to govern.)...

“A lot of us in the party liked to believe the dark side was a recessive gene, but it’s a dominant theme,” Stevens, a seventh-generation Mississippian who was named for Confederate Gen. Jeb Stuart, told me. “And it’s all about race... But we’re talking about the Confederacy—literally,” Stevens said."
 
It's a party devoted to protecting the upper crust at cost to the rest of society, which in turn necessitates endless fake culture wars and those necessarily rely on isms of one kind or another. Just give the people you're screwing someone to punch down at and they love you for it.

(You may recognize the last sentence as another version of a certain racist strategy mentioned by a president from the last century....)
 
The GOP has been telling us it's the party of "family values", "freedom", "American Democracy", "rights of citizens", "law and order", and other such euphemisms. Those were supposed to be its "core values"- the things it steadfastly stood for. It was not supposed to be about charismatic leaders and people, it was supposed to be about the ideas.

But Donald Trump has clearly shown that the party is, and never has been, any of those things. He boldly ripped away that skimpy little veil and revealed what is, and has always been, at the core of the party, since Barry Goldwater's campaign:

Racism.

Trump "said it like it is", and that's why he was so beloved by so many millions.

This is not liberal propaganda. It turns out there were a few Republican party members who naively and innocently really thought those values were what the party was all about. Now, in the Trump era, with that skimpy little veil stripped away, they are finding themselves out in the open with nothing to cover them. They are outcasts of the party.

Here is a former GOP political strategist explaining the disillusionment that came after he realized what the party had always been really about.

" Once upon a time, Republican legislators and party leaders claimed they cared deeply about certain foundational issues—the deficit, family values, free trade, hawkish foreign policy. Now they were cheering a twice-divorced adulterer who had run up the federal debt, sloppily imposed tariffs, and embraced the anti-American autocrats leading Russia and North Korea—a man devoid of serious thought and guiding policy principles, a self-fixated candidate who presented no intellectual framework for his presidency. Had the GOP become the party of no ideas?...

He (GOP political Strategist Stevens) huffed that the Republican Party had not merely drifted away from its core positions, as sometimes occurs with political parties: “Fair trade, balanced budgets, character, family values, standing up to foreign adversaries like Russia—we’re all against that now. You have to ask, ‘Does someone abandon deeply held beliefs in three or four years?’ No. It means you didn’t ever hold them.” He added: “I feel like a guy who was working for Bernie Madoff.”...

In our conversation, Stevens exploded with loathing for the party he once faithfully (and lucratively) served. He rejected the common view that Trump had hijacked the GOP. No, he explained, the triumph of know-nothing Trumpism marked the culmination of an internal conflict that had existed for decades between the party’s “dark side” and its professed ideals. Even William F. Buckley Jr., often hailed as a grand public intellectual and the founding father of the modern conservative movement, was “a stone-cold racist” in the 1950s, Stevens pointed out. (Buckley at that time considered white people more “advanced” and more fit to govern.)...

“A lot of us in the party liked to believe the dark side was a recessive gene, but it’s a dominant theme,” Stevens, a seventh-generation Mississippian who was named for Confederate Gen. Jeb Stuart, told me. “And it’s all about race... But we’re talking about the Confederacy—literally,” Stevens said."
And, he's believable because . . .? Because he'll talk to MotherJones? :eek:
 
And, he's believable because . . .? Because he'll talk to MotherJones? :eek:

No, because that is what all the senior GOP political strategists have said the party is all about, when caught off mike. They just exploit the latent racism to cut taxes to their handful of sponsors, often on the very backs of the poor saps they are exploiting. It's a great gig. It's just some were the architects of this strategy, and others came to realize what it really is only after some time. But it's all consistent with all the seeming hypocrisy that we see from the party.

After Donald Trump, are you really going to tell us the GOP is about "family values", or "rights", or "protecting American democracy", or "free press", or "character and integrity"? LOL.

Kevin Phillips, chief campaign advisor to Richard Nixon and senior Republican Party strategist, way back in 1970 (one of the chief architects of the Southern Strategy, because, after all, the GOP would have been nothing today without it):

"From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."

Or how about Lee Atwater, chief campaign advisor to Ronald Reagan and Republican Party strategist, in this 1981 interview:

Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [Reagan] doesn't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964 [...] and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster...

Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?

Atwater: Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."
__________________

Haha. And I bet you thought the Republican Party was always really about " fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, states' rights", etc... you know, "the whole cluster".

Then Donald came along and... well, your slip is showing.
 
No, because that is what all the senior GOP political strategists have said the party is all about, when caught off mike. They just exploit the latent racism to cut taxes to their handful of sponsors, often on the very backs of the poor saps they are exploiting. It's a great gig. It's just some were the architects of this strategy, and others came to realize what it really is only after some time. But it's all consistent with all the seeming hypocrisy that we see from the party.

After Donald Trump, are you really going to tell us the GOP is about "family values", or "rights", or "protecting American democracy", or "free press", or "character and integrity"? LOL.

Kevin Phillips, chief campaign advisor to Richard Nixon and senior Republican Party strategist, way back in 1970 (one of the chief architects of the Southern Strategy, because, after all, the GOP would have been nothing today without it):

"From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."

Or how about Lee Atwater, chief campaign advisor to Ronald Reagan and Republican Party strategist, in this 1981 interview:

Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [Reagan] doesn't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964 [...] and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster...

Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?

Atwater: Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."
__________________

Haha. And I bet you thought the Republican Party was always really about " fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, states' rights", etc... you know, "the whole cluster".

Then Donald came along and... well, your slip is showing.
Even Rush admitted as much on air. The fiscal responsibility tag line was only that, a line.

As it was a core tenant of the modern GOP since Goldwater, what's left? Small goverment 😂
 
And, he's believable because . . .? Because he'll talk to MotherJones? :eek:
No, because the lack of soul and direction of the Republican party is quite obvious. They did not even have a party platform to run on in 2020 other than '''... whatever Trump says...."


Much as been written about this. You apparently are not paying attention and thus have very little to contribute to the discussion, eh?

 
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itNo, because the lack of soul and direction of the Republican party is quite obvious. They did not even have a party platform to run on in 2020 other than '''... whatever Trump says...."


Much as been written about this. You apparently are not paying attention and thus have very little to contribute to the discussion, eh?

If you got something to say say it; posting laundry lists of other people's words is a copout
 
If you got something to say say it; posting laundry lists of other people's words is a copout
You obviously did not comprehend what I posted. I stated that the "lack of soul and direction of the Republican party was quite obvious" as evidenced by the fact they would not even develop a party platform. That is a statement. I then backed up my statement with competent evidential matter, a concept that seems foreign to you. It seems you lack a retort to my statement. Can you actually show evidence that the Republican party has direction and soul? We all doubt it.
 
You obviously did not comprehend what I posted. I stated that the "lack of soul and direction of the Republican party was quite obvious" as evidenced by the fact they would not even develop a party platform. That is a statement. I then backed up my statement with competent evidential matter, a concept that seems foreign to you. It seems you lack a retort to my statement. Can you actually show evidence that the Republican party has direction and soul? We all doubt it.
So, you think repeating the "laundry list" clears things up?
 
When your poster child is Ted Cruz not much else need be said.
 
They are what we thought they are. They are now saying out loud the stuff that they think.

And it is pretty deplorable.
 
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