This post by Heather Cox Richardson aims to explain the bizarre transformation of the Republican Party. To those of us old enough to remember Republicans such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, Earl Warren, Howard Baker, George Romney, Nelson Rockefeller, and Jacob Javits, today’s GOP is incomprehensible. Long ago, the GOP was the party of fiscal conservatism. Today it is the party of Trump and the religious right. An odd combination. Please open the link to see the notes at the end of the post.
She writes:
The modern Republican Party rose to power in 1980 promising to slash government intervention in the economy. But that was never a terribly popular stance, and in order to win elections, party leaders wedded themselves to the religious right. For decades, party leaders managed to deliver economic liberties to business leaders by tossing increasingly extreme rhetoric and occasional victories to the religious right. Now, though, that radicalized minority is driving the party. It has thrown overboard the idea of smaller government to drive economic growth and embraced the idea that a strong government must enforce the religious and social beliefs of their base on the rest of the country.
This religiously based government wants to control not just individuals, but also businesses. We are seeing not only the apparent overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, but also the criminalization of contraception, attacks on gay and trans rights, laws giving the state the power to design school curricula, fury at immigrants, book banning, and a reordering of the nation around evangelical Christianity.
Today, when the Senate voted on the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill protecting the constitutional right to abortion as originally recognized in Roe v. Wade, all of the Republicans voted against it, along with Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Manchin said the bill was too broad, although he did not say in what way.
Modern Republicans are not limiting this strong state to the policing of individuals. They are using it to determine the actions of businesses. Even two years ago, it was unthinkable that Florida governor Ron DeSantis would try to strip its longstanding governing power from the Walt Disney Company to force the company to shut up about gay rights, and yet, just last month, that is precisely what happened.
Similarly, in his quest to weaponize the issue of immigration, Texas governor Greg Abbott drastically slowed the trade routes between Texas and Mexico between April 6 and April 15, costing the country $9 billion in gross national product and prompting Mexico to change the route of a railway connection worth billions of dollars from Texas to New Mexico. And now Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) is proposing to use the government to strip Disney of its copyrights, a plan Professor Paul Goldstein of Stanford Law School, who specializes in intellectual property, calls “blatantly unconstitutional.”
This is no longer your mother’s Republican Party, or your grandfather’s… or his grandfather’s.
Today’s Republican Party is not about equal rights and opportunity, as Lincoln’s party was. It is not about using the government to protect ordinary people, as Theodore Roosevelt’s party was. It is not even about advancing the ability of businesses to do as they deem best, as Ronald Reagan’s party was.
The modern Republican Party is about using the power of the government to enforce the beliefs of a radical minority on the majority of Americans.
After more than a year of emphasizing that he could work with Republicans, President Joe Biden yesterday went on the offensive against what he called “the Ultra-MAGA Agenda.”
He focused on Florida senator Rick Scott’s “11-Point Plan to Rescue America,” which offers a blueprint for creating the modern Republican vision, beginning with its statement that “[t]he nuclear family is crucial to civilization, it is God’s design for humanity, and it must be protected and celebrated.” To protect that family, Scott not only wants to end abortion rights, but also proposes requiring all Americans, no matter how little money they make, to pay income taxes, and to make all laws—including, presumably, Social Security, the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, and so on—expire every five years. Congress can then just repass the ones it likes, he says.
Yesterday, Biden laid out the difference between his economic plan and Scott’s. He pointed out that his policies of using the government to support ordinary Americans have produced 8.3 million jobs in 15 months, the strongest job creation in modern history. Unemployment is at 3.6%, and 5.4 million small businesses have applied to start up this year—20% more than in any other year recorded.
Now, he says, the global inflation that is hurting Americans so badly is his top priority. To combat that inflation by taking on the price of oil, he has released 240 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to boost supplies, and increased domestic oil production. To lower prices, he has untangled supply chains, and now he wants to reduce our dependence on oil by investing in renewables, to restore competition in key industries (like baby formula) now dominated by a few companies, and to take on price gouging. And he has asked the wealthiest Americans “to pay their fair share in taxes,” since “[i]n recent years, the average billionaire has paid about 8% in federal taxes.”
Biden wants to take on household finances quickly by letting Medicare negotiate prices for prescription drugs to lower prices—as other developed nations do—and cap the price of insulin.
In contrast, he said, Republicans are proposing to raise taxes on 75 million American families, more than 95% of whom make less than $100,000 a year. “Their plan would also raise taxes on 82% of small-business owners making less than $50,000 a year,” he said, but would do nothing to hold corporations accountable, even as they are recording record profits. The plan to sunset laws every five years would give Republicans leverage to get anything they want: “Give us another tax cut for billionaires, or Social Security gets it.”
Biden pointed out that while Republicans attack Biden’s plans as irresponsible spending, in fact the deficit rose every year under Trump, while Biden is on track to cut the deficit by $1.5 trillion this year. Reducing government borrowing will ease inflationary pressures.
Republicans responded to the president with fury, recognizing just how unpopular Scott’s plan would be if people were aware of it. They suggested that it is a fringe idea; host Dana Perino of the Fox News Channel tried to argue that Scott “is eating alone at the lunch table.” Scott promptly called Biden “unwell,” “unfit for office,” and “incoherent, incapacitated and confused,” and said he should resign.
While Republicans have not championed Scott’s program, they have let it stand alone to represent them. White House press secretary Jen Psaki pointed out that Scott’s plan is the only one the Republicans have produced, since Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has said he will not release any plans before the 2022 midterm elections, preferring simply to attack Democrats. Until he does, Scott is speaking for the party. And Scott is hardly a fringe character: as chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he is in charge of electing Republicans to the Senate. Psaki went on to read a list of Republicans who supported Scott’s plan, including the chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, who applauded Scott’s “real solutions to put us back on track.”.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) also called out Republican far-right extremism yesterday in her defense of abortion rights, hitting again and again on how their stripping away of a right established almost 50 years ago is dangerous and radical. Polls show that a majority of Americans want the court to uphold Roe v. Wade, while a Monmouth poll published today shows that only about 8% of Americans want abortion to be illegal in all cases, as new trigger laws are establishing.
The unpopularity of the probable overturning of Roe v. Wade also has Republicans backpedaling, trying to argue that losing the recognition of a constitutional right that has been protected for fifty years will not actually change abortion access. Ignoring both the move toward a national abortion ban and the voting restrictions newly in place in 19 states that cement Republican control, they say that voters in states can simply choose to protect abortion rights if they wish. Wisconsin Republican senator Ron Johnson said, “It might be a little messy for some people,” but Wisconsin women could obtain an abortion by driving to Illinois. “[I]t’s not going to be that big a change,” he told the Wall Street Journal.
If overturning Roe v. Wade is such a nothingburger, why has the radical right fought for it as a key issue since the 1980s? In any case, Republicans are no longer able to argue that their extremists are anything other than the center of the party. As Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the third officer in Republican leadership in the House, said after Biden spoke: “I am ultra MAGA. And I’m proud of it.”
Thank you for this well-reasoned article that analyzes today’s Republican Party. It is shocking how quickly the Republicans flipped from being the party of small government to a hypocritical right wing authoritarian government that wages cultures wars and undermines democracy.
Instead of the party of limited government, the Republicans are now the party that wants government to snoop in your bedroom, censor what you read and think and say.
“The
RMadicalization of the Republican Party”Fixed.
(Vladicalization also works)
The Republican Party was willing to go to any length to grab power 22 years ago with Election 2000 hanging chadicalization.
Yes. I wish Democratic Party leaders and communicators would read this–and find ways to communicate with folks all over the country–not just the seaboard areas. I would add to this excellent analysis that the old (1960’s, etc.) Republican Party also had, on the positive side, the philosophy of state responsibility and the sharing of effort in meeting the nation’s real needs. Governors such as Romney, Rockefeller, Scranton, and others stood for civil rights, pro-union labor laws, etc.
But, going back to the ’40’s (a time I remember as a boy in Michigan) Trump’s old lawyer was the attorney working for Sen. Joe McCarthy, helping to create “Mc McCarthyism,” a precursor to Trumpism, in which liberals were treated as communists, etc. Then of course we had Nixon, an ally of McCarthy and no stranger to guilt-by-association tactics, who used the government and hired thugs to attack the opposition, Democratic, Party. Nixon’s dirty-trick-politics was succeeded by Newt Gingrich’s scorched-earth politics which featured the impeachment of President Clinton for his private behavior–a standard never applied to any other president.
Reagan did indeed turn the philosophy of government as an ally of society on its head, by claiming–what right-wing Republicans had said for decades–that government was mostly an evil. He also illegally sold weapons to Iran to fund an illegal war against socialist rebels in Central America. His Vice President–GHW Bush–used dirty politics to defeat Dukakis in ’88. And his son used dirty tricks to steal the election from Gore in 2000.
Trump is, basically, just a ruder Reagan. But modern, conservative Republicans have learned, from these campaigns and ill-gotten successes that they can win by obscuring the issues and offering the people popular figures from the military, business, or entertainment. Indeed, it’s the only way they can win, because if they told the voters their real plans, to strip government of its powers to help ordinary folks and to equalize opportunity, they’d always lose.
Can you imagine an honest Republican campaign: Vote for us and we’ll abolish government–except for police powers–and you’ll be totally on your own in competition with the millionaires and billionaires?
These are great postings, Diane. Thank you for providing the forum!
The Trumpification of the GOP, a radical far right wing/libertarian death cult. The GOP has wanted to gut and kill off Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for decades. It was Reagan who campaigned against Medicare, saying that it would lead to socialism and a loss of freedom. The GOP also fought FDR’s plans for Social Security with fear mongering such as claiming it would lead to totalitarianism and other blarney. However…………today’s GOP is multiple times worse than it was 50 years ago. Ike strengthened Social Security while the GOP wombats of today want to blow up all the social programs that help most Americans. Ike had to deal with that maniac Joe McCarthy.
It is not a coincidence that this happened after the end of the fairness doctrine.
It is not a coincidence that not just the Republican party, but the NYT, the Washington Post, and every so-called liberal mainstream media outlet has moved the goalposts so that they have LEGITIMIZED and NORMALIZED this.
This could not have happened without the so-called liberal media acting like all of the grown ups in “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. Cowardly so-called liberal reporters bending over backward NOT to say what it right in front of their faces for fear of being attacked for saying what is true. Instead, they legitimize the lie.
The so-called “liberal” media did what Fox News and the right wing alone could not do. The right wing media could lie, but they could not LEGITIMIZE lies. They needed the so-called “liberal” media to frame every story to make sure their lies were legitimized. They needed the so-called “liberal” media to report everything from the right wing narrative and call that “true”.
If the NYT reporters were at the scene of the Emperor’s New Clothes, the story would have been written this way:
“AUDIENCE AWES IN ADMIRATION AS EMPEROR PRESENTS HIS NEW CLOTHES”
An audience of thousands oohed and awed when Emperor Trump appeared in what his spokesperson explained what the most expensive suit of clothes ever made.
“I have never seen anything like it” said Joe MAGA, who traveled 300 miles to be among the first to witness what Mr. MAGA described as “the most wondrous clothes ever made.”
As Emperor Trump modeled before the awe-struck crowd, he told them “Some people say this is the most magnificent outfit ever created, and those lying Democrats would give this to illegal immigrants and make you wear rags.”
Susie MAGA, a real American from the midwest who is upset that Democrats have forced CRT in public schools, agreed with Emperor Trump. “Those lying Democrats want us to wear torn and ratty clothes, while they give lazy welfare recipients amazing new outfits that we pay for.”
John MAGA, a police officer, said that Emperor Trump was wearing the most beautiful clothes he had ever seen.
A little boy whose parents are both union teachers disagreed.
Emperor Trump’s personal tailor will be making the suit available for purchase for what he says is a special below market price of $5,000. Some partisan Democrats questioned that.
END of NYT front page story about the Emperor’s New Clothes.
FYI — In the context of the story, every sentence I wrote above is true. it is the FRAMING and what is amplified and what is left out that makes the entire story a very dangerous lie that a reader who didn’t know what was left out would believe is true. Nearly all NYT reporting is like this.
And when Democrats criticize that NYT reporting, the NYT journalist/stenographer whiny defense would sound like this:
“Everything I wrote is true, and I included the other side, I’m a greatly respected NYT journalist and how dare you criticize my fair and balanced reporting. I know it’s fair and balanced because Fox News criticized me for putting in that boy’s comment. When Fox News criticizes me and you Democrats criticize me, I know I’m doing a great job!”
And then the NYT writes a big “think piece” about how the Democrats are so bad at messaging. “Why do these middle class real Americans still believe Emperor Trump has a fabulous new outfit. We at the NYT have absolutely no clue! It’s the Democrats’ fault for having a lousy message.”
The Republicans could not be this brazen without the so-called liberal media normalizing it and writing every story in which the Republicans can say any brazen thing and the NYT will bend over backward to write a “true and accurate” story to legitimize it.
The more the so-called liberal media normalizes it, the more radical the Republicans become. Until our country is like Putin’s “democracy” and there is no so-called liberal media left.
The liberal MSM also enjoys hippie-punching candidates deemed too “progressive” for the DNC Poobahs. The NYTimes’ Sidney Ember did quite a number on Bernie Sanders, dissing him until he was no longer a threat to the corporatists running the DNC. (I think they actually treated GOP candidates kinder) Only after Bernie was safely cut out of the running did the Times run the article entitled “Bernie Sanders was right.” Only then.
The DNC leadership decided 40 years ago to move to the center, while the center itself has kept moving rightward. Perhaps if the DNC had embraced FDR’s Second Bill of Rights (instead of veering rightwards and servicing the donor class in the process), we might not be in this predicament today.
The DNC has chosen to sever their connections to working class folks in flyover states, the ones who were left behind by trade policies which exported 4 million jobs out of the US. Can’t have single-payer, can’t have a robust social safety net, can’t have a living minimum wage. Before blaming this all on the Manchinema duo, remember that Democrats had decades to address these issues and could have strengthened their numbers by doing so, but they didn’t.
The result was a disillusioned working class, watching their jobs and standard of living decline, looked elsewhere. Sad that they ended up giving their votes to the GOP, which is planning to turn them into serfs for the corporate class.
Author Thomas Frank does a good job ‘”splainin'” al this in his book, Listen Liberal.
Eleanor,
The problem with you is that you think that the NYT was “anti-Sanders”. It wasn’t. It just did its usual reporting to demonize Democrats (and while Sanders wasn’t a Democrat, he was in the Democrat primary). And the progressives who had ignored the extreme anti-Democrat bias suddenly noticed the bias when it blew back on Bernie. The NYT treatment of “she who must not be named” was equally negative.
This is exactly what would happen if the police started treating white teens the way they do Black teens. Lots of white parents would suddenly whine that the police had an anti-white bias because the extreme bias that they didn’t notice (because deep down, their own implicit biases made them feel that those other folks deserved their treatment) suddenly affects them. So they scream “bias”.
Bernie voters saw how the NYT always treats Dems and they thought it was about them. I suspect that they never noticed the decades of anti-Democrat coverage in the NYT because their implicit biases made them feel that those other folks deserved their treatment.
Start noticing. Stop scapegoating. Unless you are a Republican troll, as that is what they do.
Reblogged this on Lloyd Lofthouse and commented:
Beware of today’s Republican Party. It’s apparent that its rabid MAGA leaders want to take away many of OUR freedoms including the end of OUR public schools, freedom of speech and religion.
Great article. Thanks for sharing it, Diane.
I have some suggestions for tweaking its thesis. Bear with me on this.
I am a big fan of something that isn’t yet much of a thing: academic pop cultural studies. This is more a concept, right now, than it is a reality, but here’s the rationale for such studies: On the Official Media Stage (OMS), people tend to moderate their views. Trump doesn’t stand in front of a crowd and say, “I’m a white supremacist. I’m afraid of and dislike people of color.” No, he says that “Mexico is sending us rapists and murderers,” that the Central Park 5 are guilty, that Obama was born in Kenya, that there were “good people on both sides, ” and so on. But anyone with a fraction of a working brain knows the unspoken part, and anyone who denies the unspoken part is an idiot. It’s soooooo obvious.
Well, pop culture doesn’t do that. People are attracted to stuff in pop culture that reflects their actual beliefs, their actual anxieties. It doesn’t take a genius (stable or otherwise, lol) to figure out why the Japanese of the 1950s were producing movies about enormous “radiation monsters” that go around stomping on cities (e.g., Godzilla, 1954). If one looks at popular culture today, what does one see?
Films about extremely dystopian, authoritarian futures in which there is a tiny group of extremely wealthy people leaving extraordinary lives and in which everyone else lives in extreme poverty and subjugation
Television programs and songs, popular with teens, that celebrate biracial friendships and love relationships, LGBTQX identities, and the sexiness of lots of different body types
And these facts–what appears in our pop culture media–reflect what’s REALLY going on among young people, what they are really thinking, and because the young are the future, they reflect what the future is likely to look like or what the young fear that it will look like.
And the right wingers are hip to this. They know that they have lost the young. They look on a pop culture phenomenon popular with teens like the HBO show Euphoria, and they are utterly horrified. They see everything they hate exemplified and celebrated. OMG. The central character is a drug-using black lesbian dating and trans woman, and their relationship is the primary romantic storyline. And everyone on the show is having all kinds of sex, virtual and not, with all kinds of other partners.
And that being horrified pushes them farther to the right and makes them nostalgic for “old-fashioned values,” most clearly exemplified by the fundamentalist Christian wing of their party, which doesn’t do tolerance. Their intolerance generates more pop culture pushback, which generates more intolerance, and so on. It becomes a negative feedback loop, escalatory.
So, that’s part of the explanation of why the Repugnican Party of today has become a caricature. Here’s the second part: IT ALWAYS WAS THIS BAD, BUT THE WORST OF IT USUALLY WASN’T SPOKEN. Sorry, but Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon were hardcore white supremacist racist, sexist, homophobes. Anyone who has seriously studied these folks knows these things. It’s just that in those days, they were even less likely to say it outloud on the OMS, and even if they did, the whole culture leaned, back then, in those directions.
So, what we are seeing here is a negative feedback loop coming from reactions to a major cultural shift.
The Republican leaders of today have no clue, no clue whatsoever, how backward they are, how behind the times. They think that they represent what’s normal and that the pop culture stuff is aberration. LOL. These people are clueless idiots. And, I have a message for them: You can’t keep ’em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Pahr–ee.
I’m an old man, but because I have progressive views, my circle of friends includes mostly people who live in the Northeast and on the West Coast and are in their 20s and 30s. And several of the women have had abortions and are very angry about the Dobbs decision. One couple is in a long-term polyamorous relationship. Another is in a lesbian marriage. Three are in biracial marriages. One of these is an open marriage. They all lean toward what they call Socialis, and what I call Socialism. They all support things like parental leave and Medicare for all. None of them are conventionally religious at all at all. In fact, they think of conventional religion as just, well, stupid AF. And these people are the NORM among young people in America. Things are changing, and the Repugnicans don’t like this. They want it stopped. Good luck with that. They remind me of the stories told of ancient kings (Canute, Cuchulain) drawing their swords on the waves of the sea.
THESE PEOPLE LIVE IN DIFFERENT WORLDS THAN DO THE MEMBERS OF THE CURRENT REPUBLICAN PARTY. Utterly different.
And lest you think I’m exaggerating about their representing the norm among young people, see this:
cx: They all lean toward what they call Socialism, and what I call Social Democracy.
Bob, I agree with your very good points. But that is exactly why I think it is very, very important to call out right wing propaganda when it looks totally different. When it is directed to those YOUNG people, and does not look like the “radicalization” of the Republicans because that would turn them off.
All of these statistics about the young don’t matter when the OTHER right wing propaganda is amplified.
That propaganda is “The dems are the same”. “The dems will also screw you” “The Dems aren’t to be trusted.”
The Democrats have moved so far to left from the days when Carter and Clinton and Obama started the rightward swing.
The Dems are now having “debates” between supporting Medicare for All or Medicare for All who want it!!! They aren’t debating having universal healthcare as they were when I was angry at Jimmy Carter for opposing that.
But that doesn’t matter. Because the right wing propaganda which is designed to empower the right wing only is NOT properly identified. It is not properly called out the way the right wing rhetoric that is designed to appeal to white MAGA types is.
That right wing propaganda won the Republicans 3 far right seats on the Supreme Court. That right wing propaganda almost overturned an election and has still put our democracy in real danger.
It doesn’t matter if the Republicans become the far right neo-fascist party if the young people are propagandized into believing that they should just let it happen because “it doesn’t matter” which party wins.
It does matter. AOC and Jamaal Bowman and Bernie and the squad know it matters. But the media only amplies their voices when they are criticizing Democrats for policy differences and it silences their voices when it comes to explaining — as AOC does so well — what Democrats unite to stand far that has nothing to do with whether those Dems support Medicare for All or Medicare for All who want it or just keeping the ACA with some changes to make it better.
The media helps the right wing push their favorite narrative, that Democrats can’t be trusted. They will never say that the Republicans are lying, but they will definitely write stories that focus on the untrustworthy Dems designed to make sure the young turn away.
nycpsp, my circle of younger people is limited to friends of my millennial sons, but this doesn’t strike me right: “…if the young people are propagandized into believing that they should just let it happen because ‘it doesn’t matter’ which party wins.” Yes, political inertia/ disinterest/ alienation occurs among many of them. But it isn’t about propaganda suggesting both parties are the same. It’s a self-protective shell against their life-long experience that politics reflects, and creates for them, a world that ignores their interests and outlooks and needs, and is vastly alien to their beliefs, and yet nothing seems to be able to be done about it– they look around and see that voting, activism seems to accomplish nothing. It is cynicism.
Well observed, Ginny!
bethree5,
I was young once. And I was also propagandized by the very thing you say today’s young people feel. That’s why I refused to vote for Jimmy Carter in 1980 (and I can still recall my so much wiser classmate giving me grief for it while I continued to lecture him about how there was no difference, and Carter and Dems weren’t doing anything for me.)
And all it took was Reagan winning the White House and the Republicans taking over the Senate to see how wrong I was.
It took 12 long years before I got to see another Democrat in office. Twelve years of watching this country get more and more conservative before I got to see a Democrat win in 1992.
And I didn’t get the universal health care I thought I would. So what? I got RBG and increased taxes on the rich and I didn’t blame the Dems because they were victimized by a right wing propaganda campaign that convinced more gullible voters that voting Republican would save us for the evil of socialized medicine. (Remember Harry and Louise?)
That’s what I mean by propaganda. If your son’s friends are only looking at what they DON’T have and not looking at what is better because of the Dems, then they are propagandized.
Can you imagine if – for the last 30 years – right wing voters punished the Republicans because they didn’t get abortion criminalized or forced prayer in school or vouchers for their religious schools?
That’s because they weren’t propagandized to believe “you got nothing from the Republicans, turn away from them and punish them by empowering the Democrats.”
If the right had been propagandized the way it seems your son’s millennial friends are, this country would already be more socialist than Denmark.
Right wing voters never get propagandized to believe that they should turn away from Republicans. They say, we need to elect even MORE Republicans. And they won. This country has moved so far to the right that very likely abortion will be illegal, prayer in school will be normalized, and voting rights will be about making sure conservative white voters get to have disproportionate power.
I wish during all that time when the far right voters got very little – but as much as was possible – from the Republicans, they had been like millennials and believed they got nothing. Instead, they just kept electing more and more Republicans.
You were way ahead of me on Carter, nycpsp (at a younger age, too!). I just voted for him cuz he was not the Republican… (& of course, I lived in my NYC bubble & didn’t even know anyone who voted Rep.) Boy was I disappointed when he started with the dereg. And, anecdote: especially disappointed in his dereg czar Alfred E Kahn. When a prof he would solo with the Gilbert & Sullivan group (I was in chorus) & what a lovely guy, plus I knew & admired his [extremely liberal] daughters. Grrrr!!
Happy to say my kids are regular voters, & round up others to vote, too, and go to demonstrations, so less cynical than their friends. [Chips off the flaming-lib blocks.]
Bob, this makes several immediate connections for me:
(1)the family I was raised in could never have been that way because my parents always, adult-life-long, had friends younger than themselves. They were very different from each other in culture and class/SES of upbringing [as were my grandparents; probably all part of the same phenomenon], but this they shared—always interested in the lives and viewpoints of those 10, 20yrs younger. Also a number of close friends the next generation older than themselves. Also a wild mix of class/SES due to their own differences/ experiences. The people who stopped in the house and gathered were of all ages, class/SES, outlook. City-raised and rural-raised. Many ‘foreigners’ over the years. It made for a kind of energy they enjoyed. They were both curious people who were willing to consider many sides of an issue—fairly opinionated themselves, but not rigid, always evolving.
(2)Many many boomers had kids at 35-40 yrs old, so are linked to a markedly- different generation.
(3)This can never be teachers, who associate with those younger and younger than themselves, adult-life-long.
People like the ones I have described are rarely (ever?) reactionary. People who isolate themselves into same-age, same-SES, same-outlook bubbles can and are likely to become so.
“And the right wingers are hip to this. They know that they have lost the young.”
Although when has the right wing ever had the young?
I was in the middle of a crowd of tens of thousands of college students cheering and applauding Reagan’s live appearance at a rally at a huge flagship state university in the midwest in 1984.
The right may not have had all the young, but there was a time when they had more of the young.
FLERP, during the period of the Vietnam War, most young people supported it; most elderly people opposed it. Before that, in the 1940s and 1950s, young people were for the most part very conservative.
People think that the young people of the 1960s were all freedom riders and Black Panthers and Weathermen and bra and draft card burners and hippies, but those were fringe elements. As I said, most young people in the U.S. supported the Vietnam War, for example, and so it really shouldn’t have been surprising that they grew up to vote for Ronald Reagan.
Many young Americans served in Viet Nam. Some lost their lives. Others have suffered from PTSD, depression and Agent Orange. Viet Nam vets were not particularly well received upon their return to the US.
There aren’t daily stories about the Republicans’ actual plans and whether those actual plans are ones that the “real Americans” that the NYT says are never heard from actually want those plans enacted. And that is because the so-called liberal media now follows the far right in their definition of what is “newsworthy”.
Newsworthy is talking to “regular Americans” expressing how upset they are about CRT in their schools.
It is NEVER asking those “regular Americans” if they support the plans the Republicans are offering.
Exactly. And NB that during the last Repugnican Convention, they didn’t even bother to draft a platform. The platform was simply whatever Glorious Leader Who Shines More Orange Than the Sun happens to be saying today. This is when you know that you’ve gone over into cult-of-personality fascism.
Scott made the mistake of actually saying what most Repugnican Party politicos, now, actually think and want.
Bob,
Do you know that I have read at least 4 or 5 huge fawning stories that NYT journalists wrote about J D Vance.
Not a single one included any amplification of Trump’s narrative that candidates might have benefited from voter fraud, nor asked why J D Vance wasn’t demanding a recount. That’s because that narrative would hurt J D Vance.
It’s like the NYT reporters have an agreement not to write about any subject that might hurt a Republican.
Why wasn’t J D Vance asked to demand a careful recount to prove to suspicious Republican voters who didn’t think he really won the primary?
That is because the NYT only accepts the right wing framing of voter fraud — that the Democrats commit it. Oh, reporters will deny that they do this and say that they were just being fair and balanced to never write any stories that question the legitimacy of a Republican primary candidate because of voter fraud.
The media will write endless stories about voter fraud without ever asking the “real American” MAGA Republicans they constantly interview why they trust the results of the Republican primary?
Our media is profit-centered. Even our “public” radio/ TV had its govt subsidy slashed to smithers under Reagan– that’s when we started seeing ‘ads’ from Exxon et al, and great long lists of corporate donors. Or, these days, great long lists of philanthropist donors. So, sadly, despite many wonderful non-political shows, political/ DC reportorial coverage/ discussion on PBS features only the palatable central-left-leaning talking heads we already know from MSM outlets [although NPR news is still worth listening to].
I have for a very long time depended only on BBC-generated news coverage, and CSPAN viewing of what they’re actually doing in Congress/ SCOTUS—without commentary. The topical CSPAN daily call-in show Washington Journal is helpful too, as they feature news articles by both liberal & conservative newspapers, as well as the bizarre but informative phenomenon of listening to JQPublic’s reactions.
I also get a lot out of my google newsfeed: I have filtered it to exclude anything from Fox/ OAN etc (as well as sports/ celebrity ‘news’). Here’s where you can see not only ‘what happened,’ but the varied ways in which different news outlets cover the same story.
The days of being able to trust in a single comprehensive news source such as NYT are long-gone, because of the teeny profit-margin caused by internet competition, forcing all to do all the counterintuitive framing you describe. That’s not a political thing, even though it has political ramifications. It’s just about clickbait, and the way you get it is by leading with “OMG here’s what the other side says/ is doing.”
bethree5,
I also frequently read the news on the BBC website, but I have often been shocked at the reporting being even more of the right wing narrative than even the NYT.
It’s not the BBC I remembered. Like the NYT, it can have some very good reporting, but seems far too often to report on American political issues from the right wing narrative.
Republicans think that they can turn back the clock by passing voting restrictions and Don’t Say Gay bills and CRT legislation and making antiabortion rulings and the like. They blame what they don’t like on stuff like teachers recruiting kids to be gay or to “hate America.” What they don’t get is that what they are actually seeing is a profound, seismic cultural shift and that the resulting tsunamis will EVENTUALLY, after much trouble and strife, sweep them away.
“EVENTUALLY…sweep them away” ? I’ll believe in that possibility when I see that cultural shift produce actual voters, and when I no longer hear the refrains in the news that “Republican voters are more dedicated” and “Democrats are struggling to get out the vote.”
A very good point, Mark!
There is a parody of this wonderful poem waiting to be written–about those working to propagandize, corrupt, dope, by off, and enslave the young in all the ways we know so well, plus new ways we cannot see or predict.
“buy off”
Alas, I can see that all too well, Mark.
Here’s what I am saying, in a nutshell: In order to get what they want, Republicans will HAVE to use extreme authoritarian measures, including extremist legislation and state violence. And there will be pushback against these. And because they are old and outnumbered, they will, eventually, after much horror, lose.
I hope you are correct, but I see the Republican extremists spawning a new generation from foot soldiers on the streets to politicians like Hawley, Green, etc ad nauseam. As Kevin Costner’s character says in “Dancing with Wolves,” when asked how many white men will come: “They will come like the stars.” And like the followers of Genghis Kan, Alexander, Shaka, Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pukin, XiPingPong and KimJongWacko, they come on and on and on…til the last syllable of recorded time.
See the stats in my piece “News from the Near Future,” above. I think that they will improve your mood, Mark.
I think we liberals could do a little something to hasten that process: activate around “get the money out of politics.” Campaign reform, overturn or legislative work-around to address Citizens’-United. Although it’s true our Dem Congress ’21 started out of the box on a doomed bill of that nature, in general I see little news coverage or opinion pieces on this central issue that affects every other issue. Obviously it’s David against Goliath to even get it into print. Nevertheless, Dem voters should be in there punching for it, swamping their legislators with calls/ emails on the topic.
Smart thinking, Ginny!
Ginny and Jennifer have the same thought.
What are people really worried about now? Well, look at the popular culture: the coming of extreme authoritarianism (Elysium, Bladerunner, The Handmaid’s Tale), environmental destruction (Don’t Look Up), being replaced by machines (Terminator, Westworld, Ex Machina).
I am not confident that the mass hypnosis of the screen will actually change worriers to voters.
Au contraire, Mark. Entertainment media tells the little guy that there are lots of folks over there in Hollywood, who reflect the nationwide culture back to them, that there are lots of people who think just as they do, with whom they can form bonds and activate for change.
And the latest from Arizona:
https://kjzz.org/content/1781524/az-teacher-shortage-raises-concerns-over-staffing-fall-classes
From CNN
Polling about Congressional races- Men favor GOP candidates by 13 points compared with women backing Dems by 7 points. The gender gap is narrowing. Republicans are doing 4 points better among men than at his point than in 2018, they’re doing 13 points better among women.
Three Trump- backed female governor candidates (in addition to GOP incumbents) have a good chance of winning, Kari Lake in AZ -she says that abortion is the ultimate sin,
Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Ark., and Kleefisch in Wis.-she says, no exceptions for incest, rape.
Those at this blog and others will be under Christian theocracy before they are willing to take a stand against it. Right wing religion’s integral role in the rise of fascism is described in Raw Story’s article (12th paragraph from the bottom, it’s in bold print), “Republicans learn fascism at the feet of the master.”
“Men favor GOP candidates by 13 points compared with women backing Dems by 7 points.”
Ah yes, the ever-pervasive influence of toxic masculinity.
Hopefully these stats motivate liberal voters to vote their consciences, and abandon any leftover-‘70s feminist ideas they may cling to that female candidates are going to automatically be more humane, vote against war & for family-friendly legislation etc. [Do you think there are really many libs out there that still believe that?]
Forget stats: just watch CSPAN coverage, and observe how GQP women in Congress speak on a daily basis.
Mark-
Understood, if I present gender based info. about voting patterns, it is logically, anti-men, male bashing, etc.
Been down this road before, present info. about a religion’s political influence and I am tarred for being anti-that sect, bashing it, etc.
“(1) whites over blacks (2) men over women (3) Christians over non-Christians and
(4) straights over gays”
A lot of people subscribe to one or more of the 4 bigoted preferences.
Those four are quite common but don’t encompass every bigoted preference by any means.
“One group over another” is what they all have in common.
The latter includes West over East, one country over another and one religious group over another (regardless of denomination) and also includes religious groups over atheists and vice versa, which are all widescale prejudices.
And particularly North over South in the Americas.
It’s all a variation of the High school cheer “we’re number 1”.
Unfortunately, lots of people never got past high school in their development, which is why Facebook and Twitter are so popular.
I have a funny story related to the latter.
I once visited Peru and the very first time people asked me where I was from and I answered “I’m an American”, they smiled and said “So are we!”
The reality, of course, is that Mexicans , Central Americans, South Americans and even Canadians are all “Americans”.
But we are so un-selfaware (stupid?) that we believe that only we are Americans.
Isn’t that really because of our country’s awkward name? We call ourselves “Americans” because “USers” or “United Staters” never quite caught on. I sometimes try to use a different word, but haven’t come up with a good alternative. I blame the founders!
Meanwhile, it’s much easier to say Canadians or Mexicans or Peruvians. And notwithstanding your experience, it seems like most people in “America” outside of the US think of themselves as North Americans or Central Americans or South Americans, rather than plan old “Americans”, which is really just an abbreviation for “United States of Americans”.
I really don’t think it has to do with us believing “only we are Americans”. But if there is a different word to refer specifically to “the people of the USA”, that would be better. I guess we could always say “the people of the USA” But I do think that “Americans” is just the last part of “United States of Americans” and not some statement that we are the only people in the Americas.
But the original question was actually “where are you from?”
So, it would be perfectly logical and not the least bit clumsy to answer “The United States”.
And it’s only a secret to us that we have a superiority complex. It’s obvious to pretty much everyone else, particularly people in Mexico, Central and South America.
Yes- arrogance is the reputation that our nation’s citizens have around the world.