GOP has changed - but into what?

[signalmankenneth]

Link

The House passage of Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget, with its steep cuts in the tax rates on the wealthy
and sweeping reductions in programs for the poor, is an enormous step rightward from the budget
policies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Faced with growing deficits, Reagan and Bush
both supported substantial tax increases.

A small hint of how this push to the right moves moderates away from moderation came in an effort
last week to use an amendment on the House floor to force a vote on the deficit-reduction proposals
offered by the Simpson-Bowles Commission.

Note how many deficit hawks regularly trash Obama for not endorsing Simpson-Bowles while they
continue to praise Ryan — even though Ryan voted to kill the initiative when he was on the commission.
Here again is the double standard that benefits conservatives, proving that Obama was absolutely right
not to embrace the Simpson-Bowles framework. If he had, a moderately conservative proposal would
suddenly have defined the “left wing” of the debate, just because Obama endorsed it.

This is nuts. Yet mainstream journalism and mainstream moderates play right along.

​

 

[Mott the Hoople]

Ehhh I've been yelling "The Emperor has no clothes" about the GOP since 2000. Fat lot of good it's done. The sheep just keep on believin and we keep drifting fruther ot the right with the consequence of inept government and gross income inequities.

 

[gui1tars]

Ehhh I've been yelling "The Emperor has no clothes" about the GOP since 2000. Fat lot of good it's done. The sheep just keep on believin and we keep drifting fruther ot the right with the consequence of inept government and gross income inequities.

Ain't that the truth!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[sedan]

 

[Granule]

Ehhh I've been yelling "The Emperor has no clothes" about the GOP since 2000. Fat lot of good it's done. The sheep just keep on believin and we keep drifting fruther ot the right with the consequence of inept government and gross income inequities.

How do we "keep drifting to the right", Lerp Lerp? I see zero evidence of that.

 

[Rune]

How do we "keep drifting to the right", Lerp Lerp? I see zero evidence of that.

Open your eyes.

 

[cawacko]

Ehhh I've been yelling "The Emperor has no clothes" about the GOP since 2000. Fat lot of good it's done. The sheep just keep on believin and we keep drifting fruther ot the right with the consequence of inept government and gross income inequities.

So what's Obama doing about income inequality Mott?


""The top 1 percent got 45 percent of Clinton-era economic growth and 65 percent of the economic growth during the Bush era.

According to an analysis of tax returns by Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, the top 1 percent pocketed 93 percent of the gains in 2010. Thirty-seven percent of the gains went to the top one-tenth of 1 percent. No one below the richest 10 percent saw any gain at all.

In fact, most in the bottom 90 percent lost ground. Their average income was $29,840 in 2010. That's down $127 from 2009, and down $4,843 from 2000 (all adjusted for inflation).""


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/06/IN721NU4S6.DTL

 

[gui1tars]

How do we "keep drifting to the right", Lerp Lerp? I see zero evidence of that.

1. gwb could only appear appealing by claiming to be a compassionate conservative. Not today.

2. 10 years ago there could not be a Teabagger Party.

3. 10 years ago Citizens United would have been considered anathema to American political well being and responsible campaign finance.

4. D. D. Eisenhower, Richard Millhouse Nixon, Ronald Reagan or even either of the George Bush's could not possibly be even considered in any Republican primary for a candidacy for POTUS at this time.

5. Republicans are a lot more stupid today than before.

 

[Guns Guns Guns]

Given the well-known Republican antipathy to evolution, it should be clearly recognized that “social Darwinism” has very little to do with the ideas developed by Charles Darwin in “On the Origin of Species.”


Social Darwinism emerged as a movement in the late 19th-century, and has had waves of popularity ever since, but its central ideas owe more to the thought of a luminary of that time, Herbert Spencer, whose writings are (to understate) no longer widely read.


Spencer, who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest,” thought about natural selection on a grand scale. Conceiving selection in pre-Darwinian terms — as a ruthless process, “red in tooth and claw” — he viewed human culture and human societies as progressing through fierce competition.


Provided that policymakers do not take foolish steps to protect the weak, those people and those human achievements that are fittest — most beautiful, noble, wise, creative, virtuous, and so forth — will succeed in a fierce competition, so that, over time, humanity and its accomplishments will continually improve.


Late 19th-century dynastic capitalists, especially the American “robber barons,” found this vision profoundly congenial.


Their contemporary successors like it for much the same reasons, just as some adolescents discover an inspiring reinforcement of their self-image in the writings of Ayn Rand.


Social Darwinism has often been closely connected with ideas in eugenics (pampering the weak will lead to the “decline of the race”) and with theories of racial superiority (the economic and political dominance of people of North European extraction is a sign that some racial groups are intrinsically better than others).


The heart of social Darwinism is a pair of theses: first, people have intrinsic abilities and talents (and, correspondingly, intrinsic weaknesses), which will be expressed in their actions and achievements, independently of the social, economic and cultural environments in which they develop; second, intensifying competition enables the most talented to develop their potential to the full, and thereby to provide resources for a society that make life better for all.


It is not entirely implausible to think that doctrines like these stand behind a vast swath of Republican proposals, including the recent budget, with its emphasis on providing greater economic benefits to the rich, transferring the burden to the middle-classes and poor, and especially in its proposals for reducing public services.


Fuzzier versions of the theses have pervaded Republican rhetoric for the past decade (and even longer).






http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/the-taint-of-social-darwinism/

 

[Mott the Hoople]

So what's Obama doing about income inequality Mott?


""The top 1 percent got 45 percent of Clinton-era economic growth and 65 percent of the economic growth during the Bush era.

According to an analysis of tax returns by Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, the top 1 percent pocketed 93 percent of the gains in 2010. Thirty-seven percent of the gains went to the top one-tenth of 1 percent. No one below the richest 10 percent saw any gain at all.

In fact, most in the bottom 90 percent lost ground. Their average income was $29,840 in 2010. That's down $127 from 2009, and down $4,843 from 2000 (all adjusted for inflation).""


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/06/IN721NU4S6.DTL

To be honest, he hasn't done a hell of a lot.

 

[SmarterthanYou]

Ehhh I've been yelling "The Emperor has no clothes" about the GOP since 2000. Fat lot of good it's done. The sheep just keep on believin and we keep drifting fruther ot the right with the consequence of inept government and gross income inequities.

guess you should have stayed in your dark ops position as a gop usurper then. maybe they'd be something different.

 

[Mott the Hoople]

guess you should have stayed in your dark ops position as a gop usurper then. maybe they'd be something different.

In a manner of speaking I used to think that. I thought that the moderates in the party had the ascendency and that though I did not and do not agree with the right wing of the party I figured I, and persons like me, could affect more change from inside the party. I changed my mind. So now I'm pretty much a blue dog.

 

[SmarterthanYou]

well, you know what trying to be moderate gets you, right?