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and the other 2 would be?
Yes, they do, but unfortunately it has led to the "Bat Shirt Crazy Division" of the once Grand Ole Party. What a shame since the Left side of the aisle is full of weak sticks with no conviction . . . both sides saddled to big money and big money interests.
Buchanan & Hoover. Barack is moving into the top 10.
Do you think the country was as divided under Reagan as it is under Obama? I honestly can't remember because I was very young when Reagan was president, but from everything I've learned, read and heard about him, he was a pretty good president who accomplished quite a bit with bipartisan support.
I too was very young when Reagan was president but I don't remember such division. I seme to recall it getting bad toward the end of the Clinton years. While Bill Clinton is obviously morally deficient, let's face it he's a lying scumbag, sexual predator, he did not damage the nation the way Bush and Obama have so he gets a pass from me.
As a conservative/libertarian i am saying Clinton was a better president than Bush.
Ronnie was as polarizing as they come. He introduced the religious right to mainstream politics when he invited the moral majority into governance. Arguably, he was the catalyst that created the divisions we now see today. My opinion only. He did some good things too. GWB is in the top-3 as it relates to bad presidents . . . again, just my opinion.
No, RR wasn't the catalyst - it was the Civil Rights Act and the subsequent Southern Strategy of Nixon. The Civil Rights Act could not have been passed without Republican liberals in Congress. When LBJ signed the CRA into law, he is supposed to have said, "we have lost the South for a generation" (because until then, the quite-racist South had been a Democratic stronghold - the "Solid South"). When Nixon was running, his campaign manager popularized (though did not originate) the Southern Strategy:
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.
The "negrophobe whites" were the key to winning the Southern states, so the GOP had to adopt policies to attract those voters...and that's precisely what the GOP did, according to Reagan advisor Lee Atwater:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Ni***r, ni***r, ni***r.” By 1968 you can’t say “ni***r”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Ni***r, ni***r.”
This is how the Deep South - which had once been the Democratic "Solid South" - became the electoral base of the Republican party. But that's not all: the Deep South is known by another name, too - the "Bible Belt". An atheist has close to zero chance of getting elected in the South...and because the new base of the GOP is deeply religious, the requirement to be religious became part and parcel of GOP politics. If someone wasn't religious or - horrors! - was against things like prayer in school or posting the Ten Commandments in the courtroom, well, obviously that someone wasn't a conservative, and therefore wasn't a Real American. And as the GOP became the party of the Religious Right, opposition to all things liberal became not a matter of politics...but a matter of religious conviction.
That is how the GOP came to hate liberals. Reagan wasn't the catalyst - even Bob Dole says that Reagan, Bush 41, or himself would have a "very hard time" getting elected in today's GOP. Reagan was just one part of a truly tectonic sociopolitical shift.
I have to agree with you that it seems the republican party adopting "religion" is going to be it's downfall eventually. I don't know if another party will rise to take it's place or what will happen to them, but it seems to me that ostracizing those who aren't necessarily "religious" but may believe in other conservative values is a really BAD idea.
I have to agree with you that it seems the republican party adopting "religion" is going to be it's downfall eventually. I don't know if another party will rise to take it's place or what will happen to them, but it seems to me that ostracizing those who aren't necessarily "religious" but may believe in other conservative values is a really BAD idea.
I get you point, but I have come to the conclusion a long time ago it does no good to replace a Republican with a Democrat or a Democrat with a Republican. You still end up with business as usual elected officials. The Rhetoric is polar opposite, but the governing is the same. Both owe their moneyed people, the corporations, Wall Street, the lobbyists, special interest groups for their elections and neither party is willing to buck them. If they did, all those millions, tens of millions of campaign dollars would just flow into the other parties coffers.
This is what most people do not realize. I do not think it makes a bit of difference if we replace an R with a D or a D with an R. what is that old saying, the more things change, the more things stay the same.
I totally agree.
What we need to do is replace the incumbents, regardless of their party affiliation. But, that's just pie in the sky. So many people just vote for "their" party that nothing is likely to change.
Do you think the country was as divided under Reagan as it is under Obama? I honestly can't remember because I was very young when Reagan was president, but from everything I've learned, read and heard about him, he was a pretty good president who accomplished quite a bit with bipartisan support.
Right. Replacing one purchased politician with another purchased politician isn't going to change anything.That wasn't my point, it makes no difference what incumbent we replace as long as the one replacing the incumbent is still beholding to those same special interests, lobbyist, corporations, Wall Street etc. Big deal, we get a new face, but that face still has an R or a D behind his name which translate to being bought by the moneyed folks I just mentioned. They owe the moneyed folks for their election to what ever office.
But with Citizens United ruling by the supreme court, it just give cart blank authority to those folks who buy our elected leaders through multi million dollar campaign donations.
It's not like the Democrats have not adopted religion. Their god is the state and they ostracize anyone who does not bow down at the feet of the federal government. up until now they've had good luck with it because they've been able to abuse the producer class enough to provide for the dependent class but sooner or later that will no longer be possible and the it's really going to hit the fan.
Religion really didn't play a huge roll in politics until the Roe v Wade decision which lead to the advent of the Religious Right. At least that how I saw it in the 50's and 60's. Then came all these religious political organizations, the moral majority, the christian coalition, etc. They basically came together to fight Roe v Wade and abortion. The idea was to support the Republican Party so enough Supreme Court Justices who were against abortion could be appointed to the bench and overturn the original SCOTUS decision which legalized it.
Right. Replacing one purchased politician with another purchased politician isn't going to change anything.
I'm not against any group wanting to have their views represented, however, I think that political parties who take hard social/religious platforms are really only hurting themselves.
Perhaps, but that is part of the GOP base. A reliable voting group much like blacks are with the Democratic Party. The problem for Republicans is that they have been the smaller party ever since the beginnings of the Great depression. Sometimes by as much as 2-1. I am not defending the Republican Party for having them, but can the Republican Party cast a huge portion of their base aside and still be viable? Could the Democratic Party cast away the black vote and still be viable? Apples to oranges I know, but each makes up a sizable amount of each parties base. Its a catch 22 situation, dang if they do and dang if they don't. The Republicans can't attract the pure fiscal conservatives who dislike their stance on social issue and they can't afford to throw the social conservatives under the bus.
So this nation and voters are in the catch 22 situation. Dang if you do, danged if you don't.
I'm not sure just when I alleged that Bush wanted revenge. Perhaps you should link back to my post asserting such a thing.
As for the second paragraph, yes that's right. He did rely on them, and they steered him and the country into an unholy mess,this despite their great experience.
It sure is. The same hot button topics polarize voters to the lesser of two evils, every time, without fail. Still, before we get away from this two party system, we need runoff elections. Without them, there will from time to time be a Perot that some of the electorate thinks took the winning votes away from their candidate.If we could only get people to ignore the ads and think for themselves, we could pull off a bloodless coup at the ballto box, but I suppose that is asking too much.
I suppose, but I still think they could attract more people to their party if they would stop with the "self righteous" bull crap. We all KNOW they aren't righteous anyways. :lol: Obviously some of them can't be taking these issues TOO seriously.[/QUOTER
No, most just give it lip service.
It sure is. The same hot button topics polarize voters to the lesser of two evils, every time, without fail. Still, before we get away from this two party system, we need runoff elections. Without them, there will from time to time be a Perot that some of the electorate thinks took the winning votes away from their candidate.
It's not like the Democrats have not adopted religion. Their god is the state and they ostracize anyone who does not bow down at the feet of the federal government. up until now they've had good luck with it because they've been able to abuse the producer class enough to provide for the dependent class but sooner or later that will no longer be possible and the it's really going to hit the fan.
Perhaps, but that is part of the GOP base. A reliable voting group much like blacks are with the Democratic Party. The problem for Republicans is that they have been the smaller party ever since the beginnings of the Great depression. Sometimes by as much as 2-1. I am not defending the Republican Party for having them, but can the Republican Party cast a huge portion of their base aside and still be viable? Could the Democratic Party cast away the black vote and still be viable? Apples to oranges I know, but each makes up a sizable amount of each parties base. Its a catch 22 situation, dang if they do and dang if they don't. The Republicans can't attract the pure fiscal conservatives who dislike their stance on social issue and they can't afford to throw the social conservatives under the bus.
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