The Intercept and our partners at AJ+ produced the video above documenting the GOP’s 60-year devolution.
The Republican Party is poised to nominate a presidential candidate who has built his platform on promises to ban a billion people from entering the United States based on their religious faith and to build a gigantic wall south of the border.
But Donald J. Trump is not an accident. The GOP has in the last 40 years relentlessly devolved away from addressing the needs of ordinary people, catering instead to extreme ideologies and the wealthiest donors.
Rather than addressing pressing problems like income inequality and climate change, the modern GOP focuses instead on cutting taxes for the super-wealthy, expanding earth-killing carbon extraction, and endless war.
But it wasn’t always this way. Sixty years ago, the Republican Party was advocating for civil rights and gender equality, a stronger welfare state, and environmental protection. This is the story of the Republican Party that once was.
A More Social Democratic Republican Party — in 1956
In August 1956, the Republican Party gathered in San Francisco to re-nominate President Dwight D. Eisenhower as its candidate in the upcoming presidential election.
The party that year adopted a platform that emphasized that the GOP was “proud of and shall continue our far-reaching and sound advances in matters of basic human needs.”
This included boasting that Eisenhower had overseen a hike in the federal minimum wage that raised incomes for 2 million Americans while expanding Social Security to 10 million more people and increasing benefits for 6.5 million others.
Today’s Republican Party has made weakening labor unions a priority, but the 1956 platform noted that under Eisenhower, “workers have gained and unions have grown in strength and responsibility, and have increased their membership by 2 millions.”
A Labor Day flyer used by the Republican Party in 1956.
It also touted an increase in federal funding for hospital construction and expanded federal aid for health care for the poor and public housing. The platform also pointed out that Eisenhower had asked for “the largest increase in research funds ever sought in one year” to tackle ailments like cancer and heart disease.
Rather than opposing self-governance for Washington, D.C., 1956’s Republicans encouraged it, saying they “favor self-government national suffrage and representation in the Congress of the United States” for those living there. The platform also asked Congress to submit a constitutional amendment establishing “equal rights for men and women.”
The platform boasted proudly of the African-Americans who had been appointed to positions in Eisenhower’s administration, and of ending racial discrimination in federal employment. At no point did the document call for any restrictions on immigration; rather, by contrast, it asked Congress to consider an extension of the 1953 Refugee Act, which brought tens of thousands of war-weary European refugees to American shores.
Dwight D. Eisenhower was the face of the Republican Party in the 1950s. He had served as the supreme commander of the Allied forces as they retook Europe from fascist militaries in the decade before. Experiencing two global wars shaped Eisenhower’s worldview, turning him into an advocate of peace.
Eisenhower cut the military budget by 27 percent following the Korean War, and used his bully pulpit to highlight the trade-offs of military spending. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,” he said in a 1953 speech.
In his farewell address on January 17, 1961, he highlighted the rise of what he called a “military-industrial complex” — a war industry that he cautioned could exert “undue influence” on the government.
Four decades later, when President George W. Bush submitted his defense spending request in 2002, he bragged to Congress, “My budget includes the largest increase in defense spending in two decades — because while the price of freedom and security is high, it is never too high. Whatever it costs to defend our country, we will pay.”
Nixon Confronts Hunger, Protects the Environment
Richard Nixon is hardly remembered as a progressive, but he was much more aggressive in tackling issues like hunger and environmental protection than the Republicans in power today.
Nixon, acting under pressure from antipoverty activists, asked Congress to improve and expand the food stamp program, saying that the fact that “hunger and malnutrition should persist in a land such as ours is embarrassing and intolerable.” His administration sponsored the first and only White House conference on hunger. He increased funding for both food stamps and school lunch programs.
The Environmental Protection Agency was a Nixon creation. Nixon used his 1970 State of the Union address to present the country with a choice: “The great question of the ’70s is, ‘Shall we surrender to our surroundings or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our water.’”
Three decades later, George W. Bush began his presidency by sitting out the landmark Kyoto climate treaty and opening up millions of acres of land and sea to carbon extraction. Faced with opposition over nominating a former mining executive as head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, he used a recess appointment to get around Senate accountability.
Meanwhile, humiliating America’s hungry has become a sport for the GOP. Lawmakers regularly propose onerous and offensive restrictions on public assistance, such as drug testing recipients, something that has proven to be little more than a waste of money.
Reagan’s Amnesty
When Ronald Reagan signed the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act into law, he did something none of the 18 Republican presidential candidates who ran this year endorsed: He granted amnesty to 2.9 million undocumented immigrants.
Speaking at one of the 1984 presidential debates, Reagan explained that he believes “in the idea of amnesty for those who have lived here for some time and put down roots even though sometime back they may have entered illegally”:
Under Trump, demagoguery about immigration has risen to new heights, but it was a path laid out for the real estate mogul by years of politically opportunistic nativism. Whether it was 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s plan to encourage “self-deportation” or Ben Carson’s comparison between Syrian refugees and rabid dogs, the party has scapegoated vulnerable migrants and refugees for political points.
What Happened to the Republican Party?
None of this is to argue that Republicans of the past were progress peaceniks. Eisenhower overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran; Nixon began the drug war and prosecuted an unnecessary war in Cambodia; Ronald Reagan helped dismantle America’s labor movement and bloodied Central America.
But the Republican Party of the past at least showed itself capable of responding to domestic and global issues, offering and implementing successful policies to deal with pressing problems like poverty, environmental degradation, and a refugee crisis.
So what happened?
There is no easy explanation, but there are a few key catalysts for the party’s slide into extremism.
One is the role that labor organizing and public activism played in pushing the Republican Party of the past to endorse progressive policy.
Eisenhower’s more social democratic Republican Party did not exist in a vacuum. In 1954, 28.3 percent of employed workers were in labor unions, the highest in American history (today the number is just over 11 percent).
The 1950s are often portrayed as an idyllic and stable period in American history, but they were also a time of raucous labor actions. The first year of Eisenhower’s presidency saw 437 work stoppages involving 1,000 or more workers; altogether, 1.6 million workers took part in strikes aimed at increasing wages and reducing inequality. By comparison, 2015 saw a paltry dozen strikes of the same size, involving only 47,000 workers.
Richard Nixon’s establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency was preceded by an explosion of environmental activism. Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Gaylord Nelson went around the country in 1970 urging activists to engage in a massive environmental demonstration that would match the energy of antiwar and civil rights protests during the prior decade. During the nation’s first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, an estimated 20 million Americans took part in protests, teach-ins, and other educational events aimed at building political will to push the government to protect the environment.
The outpouring of support changed public dialogue in the country. “Conservatives were for it. Liberals were for it. Democrats, Republicans and Independents were for it,” the New York Times noted after the protests. “So were the ins, the outs, the executive and legislative branches of the government. It was Earth Day, and, like Mother Nature’s Day, no man in public office could be against it.”
Alongside the decline of these populist forces that in the past helped shape the Republican Party’s agenda, the country has seen an explosion of capital into the nation’s public elections — funds Republican Party officials have chased as they seek higher office.
Writing to his brother in 1954, President Eisenhower said that the factions in the Republican Party who would seek to eliminate Social Security and other New Deal reforms are comprised of “a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”
Decades later, Eisenhower’s “negligible” oligarchs emerged in the visage of David and Charles Koch, right-wing oil and gas billionaires. The former actually ran for the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential ticket in 1980 on a platform of completely eliminating the Social Security and Medicare programs.
The election in 2012 was America’s most expensive ever, with $6 billion spent in federal elections. The Kochs spent over $400 million backing GOP candidates, more than the top 10 labor unions combined. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson spent over $100 million during the year, dragging Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney far to the right.
Just 18 percent of Romney’s funding came from small donors — those giving $200 or less. And that doesn’t count various outside groups making independent expenditures, which exploded that year. A Demos report on the election’s spending found that “just 61 large donors to Super PACs giving an average of $4.7 million each matched the $285.2 million in grassroots contributions from more than 1,425,500 small donors to the major party presidential candidates.”
This system of political financing from a handful of millionaires and billionaires has corrupted both major parties, but its influence is almost total in the Republican Party. Of the 161 co-sponsors of legislation in the House of Representatives to create a public financing system for congressional candidates, only one, North Carolina’s Walter Jones, is a Republican.
This leaves the party out of step with even the more progressive instincts of its own partisans. For example, a majority of self-identified Republicans in America want to see an increase in the minimum wage. No congressional Republicans have signed onto the current bill in Congress to raise the wage to $12 an hour over a period of time.
Eisenhower’s Party of the Future
In his address to delegates at the 1956 Republican National Convention, Eisenhower boasted of a political party that “attracted minority groups, scholars and writers, not to mention reformers of all kinds, Free-Soilers, Independent Democrats, Conscience Whigs, Barnburners, ‘soft Hunkers,’ teetotalers, vegetarians, and transcendentalists!”
He laid out the vision of a political party that “detests the technique of pitting group against group for cheap political advantage,” calling the Republicans the “Party of the Future.”
Today, the GOP may be facing its worst demographic threat in its modern iteration. Among Latino voters, for instance, the party saw a decline from winning 40 percent of that demographic in the 2004 presidential election to 27 percent with Mitt Romney in 2012. A Univision poll released in mid-July estimated that current presidential nominee Donald Trump is netting just 19 percent of the registered Latino vote.
Ultimately, the Republican Party’s drift away from inclusion and the public interest and toward a coterie of extreme donors and ideologies does have an electoral cost, one that could force reformation or perhaps the birth of a new political party — just ask the Whigs.
Top photo: President Dwight Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon in 1952.
emma goldman said, ‘if voting changed anything it would be banned.’
we have a two party system in the u.s. neither one is of, by, and for the people. a duopoly rules and voting is a waste of time.
how many in congress are rich? how many enrich themselves while there? and after?
how many of the middle class and so-called lower classes serve in congress?
how did the clintons amass a 1/4 billion dollar fortune?
how much money will obama accrue?
if money is the root of all evil, why do we let money rule the government? and by extension rule us?
the people of the united states fight among each other. democrats vs republicans. conservatives vs liberals. we are divided. a divide and conquer strategy? when we are pit against each other, anger isn’t directed where it belongs. the government – which deserts average americans for the shine of gold – gets a free pass.
work a 40 hour week for minimum wage and not even be able to afford a decent place to live?
obama freezes cost-of-living raises to social security 3 times in his eight years to upload money to the banks and empire and wars and war profiteers? he takes from the elderly, the disabled, and the poor to give to the rich? expanding social security and raising the minimum wage to at least 15 dollars an hour would put more money into the economy aiding small business and the people alike. but stimulating the economy is not on the agenda. quantitative easing and deflation enrich the banks, so the policy continues. the people be damned.
power never concedes anything except by demand.
ben franklin said, ‘ if we don’t hang together, we will surely hang separately.’
edward r. morrow said, ‘we are not descended from fearful men.’
the first quote is a warning the second is hope.
what we do with the wisdom in each is up to us.
And don’t tell me how JFK was going to get us out of Vietnam, that is the most pernicious liberal bullshit in existence
My oh my how the revisionistic bullcrap is flowing today!
Negative, sonny, JFK’s memos to State detailing the full withdrawal of all US military advisors in Vietnam to commence beginning the end of November 1963, to be completed before his second term says it all!
It was LBJ who overturned that and upped the troop levels dramatically — kindly don’t fabricate the truth!
Are you kidding – or just flogging some Peter Dale Scott nonsense?
To believe that, you’d have to believe that Kennedy changed his whole plan, approach, belief system, etc. essentially overnight. Bullshit. Kennedy’s plan was to engineer a coup to remove Diem from power, which would “win the support of the Vietnamese people,” and thus allow Kennedy to avoid a larger military commitment while keeping a U.S.-friendly government in power in the South; he was committed to a Korea-style resolution.
http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1961.html
Rather similiar to the Clinton-Obama plan for a post-Qaddafi Libya, I think.
However, the real question is how Kennedy would have responded to events in 1964 – any differently than how Johnson did? The Vietcong vastly increased in strength and were regularly defeating the South Vietnamese army. Each new South Vietnam general that seized power was overthrown in turn.
Without U.S. military intervention, the Vietcong – well-supplied from the North – would have overrun Saigon that year. It begs belief to think that Kennedy would not have responded to this course of events any differently than Johnson did.
It’s just historical revisionism to think otherwise; but the Vietnam War became so unpopular, such a bitter topic in the 1970s, that political strategists did everything possible to dissociate their political parties from it, and revising the Kennedy role in the Vietnam disaster was part of that effort.
Kennedy worship was and is deeply pernicious. On this one phtosymbiosis has the right of it.
JFK’s opposition to Vietnam and meddling with Dutch mining ventures in Indonesia certainly got him killed by Dulles and Co.
Esteban Fernandez falsely claims:
– John Kennedy continued the move to the right through his war on communism which included many covert and overt military attacks in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
You are spouting revisionism, sonny!
Strongly suggest you read Andrew Cohen’s highly accurate and outstanding book:
Two Days in June
Also, the fantastic book by Donald Gibson:
Battling Wall Street: the Kennedy presidency
Patrice Lumumba of the Congo was assassinated before JFK was ever inaugurated, and Kennedy’s people warned State that nothing had better happen to him before they took office!
JFK proposed the radical Alliance For Progress, land reform similar to what Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala was planning before he was overthrown by Ike!
JFK was a stalwart supporter of independence for all African nations — suggest you go back and closely read history, all his executive orders and legislative proposals and legislation signed.
JFK was murdered because he wouldn’t kowtow to the banksters (Interest Equalization Tax, Executive Order 11110, etc.).
Oh please, what about Kennedy’s obsession with assassinating Castro? What about him campaiging against Nixon on a non-existent “missile gap”? What about his ardent flogging of “domino theory” as a justification for increased covert action all around the world?
The only ones doing historical revision are all the hero-worshipping Kennedy apologists. Every indication is that Kennedy would have done exactly what Johnson did – for example, on Vietnam:
“But I don’t agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a grave mistake” – Kennedy, Sept 2, 1963
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vSjTNpyJMUo
He engineered a coup against Diem, too, but that was just so a more pliable leader willing to take U.S. dictation on policy could be put in place.
As far as why Kennedy was killed? Most likely a personal grudge from a handful of Bay of Pigs operatives in the CIA would wanted revenge for their failed operation; after all Kennedy was the best friend the military-industrial complex had at the time, he had presided over a big boost in their budget with no end in sight.
Hmmmm. . . Let’s see now . . . remember that State of Union Address in 2012, when President Obama promised us a task force to go after the banksters and their fraudclosures?
Not surprised, since that task force never came about!
Remember that high-speed rail the president promised in an even earlier SOFU address?
Whatever became of that? (Oh yeah, really just political payoffs to those who swung the votes for him!)
Yup, that darn faux crat party, look at their devolution!
The Green Party is a Go!
Yup, Ike! What a duder!
Let’s see now, overthrew democratically elected presidents in Iran, Guatemala, Congo, attempted to in Indonesia (only got hundreds to thousands of innocents murdered, there, including quite a number of Christians, severely shrinking that population there), and years prior, had been involved in the slaughter of over 100 women, children and men at the Bonus Marchers’ Village in Anacostia.
What a duder!
Ordered that coup in Guatemala as the number stock investor in United Fruit, Floyd Odlum, also just happened to have bankrolled Eisenhower’s presidential campaign!
What a duder!
Yup, and Ike appointed Nelson Rockefeller to “organize” the Department of Defense (just the way the Rockefellers wanted it to be) as well as later appointing him to reorganize the Ex-Im Bank, where Nelson did away with oversight positions to insure easier corruption on behalf of the banksters!
What a duder!
what an ahistorical article. sad! read any sociology/urban studies/history book on conservatism and you’ll realize you don’t have the knowledge to write such an article. the 50s was a ‘STABLE’ period of history? when millions of people are routinely denied the right to vote and have essentially no social rights? oh okay. keep going back.
Trump is pro labor,is anti globalization,pro border control,anti stupid wars that don’t benefit US in any way shape or form,better relations with Russia,anti regime change,anti trade steals,and America First.
All traditional republican values from the 50’s and Ike.
This is all poppycock,as FDR,that great Democratic POTUS,also practiced border control,in fact he imprisoned alleged adherents of foreign govts for the duration,a totally unheard of position for modern neolibcons with Israels agents throughout our govt,with political approval.
A comedy of BS,much as this article from a person who had absolutely no life experience re Ike and traditional republicans.
Another echo chamber of false characterization,all because Trump is for America First,a most disconcerting position for an American candidate for POTUS.
Me and the missus loved a series on the Crime & Investigation Channel called “American Greed”, and the funniest thing was not the greed of the criminals – they are criminals after all – but the gullible and self-seeking greed of the people they con. We laugh our arses off most episodes, with people handing over millions of dollars of savings when promised 25% returns in stagnant markets only to lose the lot in some crumbling Ponzi scheme. It’s like “YOU HAD A MILLION DOLLARS IN THE BANK TO JUST PLAY WITH?!?!?!?!?”. How can anyone like that get any sympathy? Because sometimes it is just sooooooooooooooo obviously a con that you know the first people on the Ponzi scheme know it, and know they will likely win whilst the scheme runs its initial stages. The American mindset seems to be “If you are not a shark at the feeding frenzy, you are the chum”.
All of it is bullshit. The US Military wants tax dollars for doing nothing. The Big Corporations want big profits and low taxes. The Banks want fat interest rates and life-ending security. The Hospitals and Big Pharma want insane profits that leave the sick financially crippled and the healthy playing Russian Roulette with crazy insurance premiums.
Everyone wants to own your Soul so that you think the right thoughts, vote the right votes, buy the right products, never complain, never think of alternatives, never challenge the Powers-that-Be. The President tells you that you are Exceptional whilst murdering foreigners and you sleep better at night knowing your children are not in Iraq, or Afghanistan or Yemen or Southern Sudan or eastern Turkey or Iran or the barrios of Brazil or the Congo or the border towns of Mexico or in Nigeria or North Korea or in bankrupted Greece or jobless Andalucia or some refugee camp in any number of places around Europe.
I dropped my wife into East St Louis a while back on Google Streetview. She thought it was some derelict part of the former Soviet bloc, like Chernobyl.
That’s where these moneymaking geniuses lead the gullible and greedy – fucking nowhere. Look at the world without the constraining nuclear-age rivalry of the Soviet bloc. Look at the world where the unions have been broken. Look at the world where corporate monopolies have been allowed to grow unchecked.
Look at it and tell me these people are geniuses and that the safety and surety of all our futures lie only with them and their great and glorious know-how. It’s bullshit, all of it.
You know, this can be respun with ease into a tirade against the Democratic Party:
The Long Sad Devolution of the Democratic Party, from FDR to Barak Hoover Obama. . .
The DP has in the past 30 years relentlessly devolved away from addressing the needs of ordinary people, instead catering to neoliberal ideologies and the wealthiest interests. . .
Under the cover of promoting the interests of poor and minority citizens, the Democratic Party from 1992 onwards has devoted itself to promoting the agenda of Wall Street interests. It has betrayed its base of labor by helping corporations cut labor costs via outsourcing jobs to Mexico and China under the guise of ‘free trade agreements’. It has betrayed the middle class by removing restrictions on Wall Street fraud games that target middle class homeowners. It has cut educational funding and put entire generations of young adults in permanent debtor status via student loan games. Recall Bill Clinton’s ardent support for “globalization” and “Glass-Steagall reform”? Recall the explosion of college costs throughout the 1990s?
The DP has turned its back on the nation’s poor and instead waged a war against the bottom tier of our society. It has cut off aid to poor families via “welfare reform”. It has taken over from Nixon-era “War on Drugs” criminal enforcement and filled the nation’s prisons with poor people of all colors, as well as promoting the rise of the private prison complex. Recall Hillary Clinton’s “superpredators . . . that must be brought to heel” line?
Instead of promoting world peace in the post-Cold War era, the DP has pursued an aggressive military foreign policy in cooperation with Republican neoconservatives that has created a global disaster and helped spread radical Islamic terrorism around the world. Recall Hillary Clinton’s vote for the Iraq War? Bill Clinton’s reckless bombing of Yugoslavia (that only increased the ethnic cleansing)? Obama’s continuation of regime change policies in Libya and Syria and continuation of the Afghanistan occupation?
The Democratic Party, in the past 30 years, has utterly betrayed its traditional base in the name of increased corporate donations, and its leaders have personally enriched themselves via their relationships with Wall Street. They have out-Republicaned the Republicans, and have covered it all with a shallow transparent layer of “social liberalism”.
As a further example, the policies of the most recent Democratic President, Barak Obama, are almost diametrically opposed to the policies of the best Democratic President of the 20th century, FDR, who was perfectly happy to put the interests of the American public over those of Wall Street, who, lest we forget, was at the time a top foreign investor in Nazi Germany. Barak Obama, in contrast, is just another Wall Street tool who is far more similar to Herbert Hoover and GW Bush that to FDR.
See how easy that was to do? Of course, it doesn’t really make the Republicans look good, either.
However, there is still one political candidate calling for a Green New Deal. . . Jill Stein.
Your expose of the Democratic Parties total betrayal of their core supporters is why BLM should be at their convention,not the Republican,as they promised nothing to those minorities,and didn’t receive their vote.
The Founding Fathers never designed political parties into the American system, they designed a “bi-cameral” system (Senate and House of Representatives).
Having said that, most constitutional scholars agree that the Framers would have supported more “checks & balances” – as long as political parties created HEALTHY competition in serving their employers – the American people.
The Framers probably would never support today’s two-party model that destroys checks & balances on power, creates unhealthy competition and divides Americans against themselves making the nation weaker.
Oh, Gee, Golly Miss Molly – a comparison….valueless A moment in History? A date – time – place – event…..
George W. Bush has been Convicted of WAR CRIMES and CRIMES against HUMANITY. BUT it’s nothing to worry about the party is covering for him. Congress changed the law / first limiting protection for retired presidents to twenty-years…..OOPS Then re-instating it to life for George
comparison?? or our SS protecting him and the NAZI SS protecting another??
comparison of GESTAPO and cop killings?.? SERPICO?? Captain Burge CPD ( torture / extraction of confessions)…..
VALUELESS
“BUT it’s nothing to worry about the party is covering for him”
Which political party has done the most work to cover for the War Crimes of the GW Bush Administration, then?
Lest we forget, it was Barak Obama in the White House with Democratic control of Congress from 2008-2010. Britain managed to launch the Chilcott inquiry into the war crimes of Tony Blair; where was Obama and the Democratic Congress on these issues? Curiously silent, as I recall. Following the orders of their plutocratic masters, right?
And now many of the Bush-era neocons have associated themselves with Clinton, who promises to be aggressively loyal to their agenda, right?
The decline probably reflects the decline in the media. Bill Clinton’s recent obstruction of justice and the media’s acceptance thereof shows a new low in what Americans will accept.
Ike was good in a lot of ways. Although he did some things Zaid might not like. I didn’t see a reference to Operation Wetback. Also, Jimmy Carter banned Iranians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback
Stroll down memory lane with Hunter Thompson . . .
http://rense.com/general63/nix.htm
Ike disappointed me when he gave in to the K of C and McCarthyites, allowing ” one nation, under god” to be added to the Pledge of Allegiance. The author’s family was incensed, and insisted that he was adamant that there should be no such reference.
Ike did quite a few disappointing things — and some even worse ones. But, as Zaid says, comparing him with, e.g., a Trump or Cruz is like comparing night and day.
One of the dumbest things the American government did in the post-WWII era was to support the French re-colonization of Vietnam. This was Truman, but Eisenhower continued that policy.
If we’d instead supported Vietnamese independence, as we did in the Philippines?
Eisenhower actually had a hard time deciding between running a Republican or a Democrat, he was actually largely non-partisan as Allied Commander in the military during World War Two.
According to historians and his own family members, Eisenhower chose the Republican Party because the Democrats opposed NATO.
In his later presidential years, Eisenhower actually supported the ACLU and hated Republican Joe McCarthy’s witch-hunts of innocent Americans. Not your typical Republican.
Zaid,
Thank you very much for this impressive work.
I am, however, concerned with the use of fear of Republicans and the ‘lesser evil’ paradigm pushed by the Democrat establishment to push for the election of Democrats. Election after election, establishment Democrats push the ‘Lesser Evil’ philosophy. I could agree with this if elected Democrats would push for policies that economic equity & justice, environmental sustainability, domestic and international social justice, and non-hawkish/peaceful approaches to resolving foreign policy conflicts. They haven’t done so. On the contrary, as Republicans push for far right policies, Democrats, taking progressives for granted, have been embracing many of these right leaning policies:
To wit:
– Harry Truman moved the US to the far right by promoting the notion that the US was entitled to carry out human rights violations on a massive scale as exemplified by his targeting civilian populations and dropping atomic bombs on them. Truman bombed, arrested, and brutally imposed colonialism on Puerto Ricans fighting for independence. Truman moved the US far to the right with respect to espionage and violation of human rights with his founding of the CIA and NSA.
– John Kennedy continued the move to the right through his war on communism which included many covert and overt military attacks in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
– Lyndon Johnson embraced an anti-union sentiment voting for the Taft-Hartley Act, when in congress, and giving only lukewarm ineffective efforts to repeal parts of the act when President. While he deserves credit for civil rights and anti-poverty legislation he simultaneously began the domestic espionage program know as CHAOS. This included the COINTELPRO program notorious for its state sponsored efforts to infiltrate and eliminate (kill) leaders of the Black Panthers, Puerto Rican independence, Young Lords, and American Indian movements. Through the wars he promoted in Southeast Asian, African, and Latin America, Johnson’s promoted the notion that the US is entitled to launch brutal wars and employ weapons of mass destruction such as Napalm and Agent Orange.
– Jimmy Carter began the move to right wing economics by rescinding New Deal regulations in trucking, railroads, and airlines and promoted market-oriented economics.
– Bill Clinton accelerated the move to right wing economics through ‘welfare reform’, repeal of the Glass-Steagall act, and corporate friendly international trade treaties. Bill also brought us the notion of ‘super-predators’ and the need for right leaning ‘crime reform’ and, of course, he brought us the notion that ‘the price is worth it’ regarding US inflicting mass suffering and death of the children of our ‘enemy’.
– Barack Obama has moved US economics to the right through the embrace of using public wealth for the benefit of private corporations. President Obama has moved domestic policy to the right with his promotion of universal surveillance and his war on whistle-blowers. Internationally, President Obama has promoted a far right-wing embrace of the notion that the US is entitled to target and murder people in any part of the world through drone murder, crowd killing, and sociopathic Special Operations massacres. In the latest move to the right, the Obama administration is pushing for acceptance of the notion that congressional approval of war, as stipulated in the the War Powers Act, is obtained any time congress approves a budget which contains funds used for wars (See: https://www.documentcloud.org/… )
A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote to perpetuate this right-wing spiral. On the contrary, a large scale vote for the Green Party, and sustained community organizing, will set the stage for Green Party and other progressive victories in local elections and will at least force Democrat strategists to encourage future candidates to embrace more progressive policies.
Your perception of “to the right” is terribly skewed. But you are not alone. This is propagated by many in order to further their fear mongering of “the other side”.
The further to the “right”, the further away the people are from any form of centralized government, up to and including the most extreme: no government – full anarchy. The further left you go, the more centralized the government, up to and including the most extreme: a single appointed leader that makes all laws for all the people all of the time.
This is not to argue certain points made by you or others. However, the misuse of the term “far right” is demeaning to libertarians (who do not wish for anarchy — a task that is admittedly very difficult to balance).
Your version of left/right is taught by most so called professors in the post-modern socialist university curriculum. By twisting the “right/left” political scale in this manner, it is easier for educators to further their agenda to their captured audience. An audience that are required to learn the agenda in order to pass or get their degree. The grad or hopeful grad must then continue to celebrate the agenda or face being ostracized. Welcome to the our perfect solution.
The GOP was also quite corrupt before Eisenhower. In the 1940’s the GOP was scapegoating liberals portraying them as pinkos and communists – which forced Truman’s attorney general to blacklist innocent Americans – in response to GOP fear monger ing and scapegoating. Many of these blacklistees died prematurely after being tortured by this CoinTelPro-like program.
The National Archives had a great article years ago titled “The Making of a Blacklist” by Robert Goldstein comparing today’s corrupt GOP leaders to those of the 1940’s and 1950’s. Great piece of writing by a non-partisan historian for a government agency.
Zaid: Informative article, sir. Are you saying or implying Republican Party is no longer interested in suffrage, free speech, or equality — but it was in 1956? Was there ever a time when the American people could believe what political parties and politicians said?
II Duce: brilliant.
Dems were party of the KKK. They found out through buying people (commanding they rely on them), they could get minority votes/poor. The two parties flip flopped essentially. There is nothing at all which indicates it will not happen again. One of the biggest problems with politics is cry baby adults who point fingers when the other party does it and dances like a whore with a lollipop when their party does it. I think the video suggested DEMS are not “corporate”. LOL both parties have been owned your entire life. It would have been much cooler if you had shown us how both parties changed from the 1900s or on. I dunno.
MSNBC is reporting that Trumps wife’s speech tonight was partially plagiarized. Sections of it were undoubtedly lifted from Michelle Obama’ s2008 speech when you hear it.
My best guess is that Chris Mathews may be correct when he says this was sabotage indicating that this was not a mistake.
Republicans have tried everything they can to derail the Trump campaign. I suspect the speechwriter will turn out to have close ties either to the Bush’s or some other high ranking member of the Republican party that has an axe to grind with Trump candidacy.
A total non story as how can one plagiarize platitudes?
No one is voting for his wife,although some feel her nice window dressing,they are voting for Trump.
This new hooplah is just more zioprop from career serial liars.Trademark.
I’ve been telling this story for a couple of years, about Eisenhower and including his quotes. It’s important to me because I graduated from high school in 1959 in the midst of the boom of the time, partly the outcome of Eisenhower policy. I was an upstate NY moderate conservative, and only a single event changed me to a liberal Democrat, Nixon. All my friends remained Republican, which means that they allowed themselves to be corrupted to the dreck they believe in today, without ever realizing the changes they have undergone.
What happened? The pardoning of Richard Nixon by Gerald Ford, which signalled conservatives from all allied countries that they were above the law.
Follow that with the collapse of the USSR. Every brownshirt in the West crawled out from under their rocks, shouting “We won!”
In Europe, during the 1st half of the 20th Century, Western corporate yahoos, gleefully cheered on by the Vatican, got stooge governments…Mussolini, Franco, and Hitler…installed, because of teir hysterical fear of communism. They then made huge profits from WW2, and the Red Scare later.
You will find that in no encyclopedia…it doesn’t fit the narrative of The Meritocracy.
Nixon’s crimes? were political in nature,cost no one a life,and were irrelevant to the election as he won in a landslide,and those tapes and illegal break in had nothing to do with that,plus or minus.
Yeah he was a warmonger,but so was just about everyone on American politics,even Humphrey was on board Vietnam,as a peacenik in 72 lost big time,as not enough saw Vietnam’s total stupidity yet.
Domestically though,he was to the left of Obomba,allegedly a liberal superhero.
Another fall guy for Zion,Nixon.
This entire article is nothing more than a plea to make America great again. This doesn’t address the root cause of the GOP decline – which is the decline of the Democratic party.
In the fifties, the Democratic party was not in thrall to Wall Street. Therefore the Republicans had to offer an attractive alternative. This is the market theory of competition leading to improvement in the alternatives offered to the voter.
But gradually the political parties realized that there wasn’t an open market of political choices. There was only a two party duopoly. Rather than a damaging competition to woo the voter, both parties found it easier to lower their standards, confident the other party would respond by lowering its standards in turn. The political parties had discovered the advantages of rigging the political market.
The decline of the GOP is therefore an opportunity for the Democrats to take the next step down the spiral staircase. They have proved themselves up to the challenge by nominating Mrs. Clinton as their candidate, the most unpopular nominee in their history. Mr. Trump responded by nominating Mr. Pence as his running mate, taking yet another step downwards. Mrs. Clinton will respond shortly by naming an even more unqualified running mate. And so it continues.
Well that explains hearing Colorado’s governor, Frackenlooper, is on her short list for VP. Having previously engineered in the fossil fuel industry he’s not popular with one green crowd, and coming from an alcohol industry family he’s also publicly been against this state’s marijuana legalization – generally pissing off the other “green crowd.”
Molto bene, Benny, your insight is as always impeccable.
Indeed, Nixon’s Clean Air Act is as perfect an example as one could hope to find of free(ish)-market politics. It was a response to Muskie’s green-ness, just as the New Deal was a response to communism/socialism. Now that the Democrats have stopped pushing—and in fact are pulling in the crucial areas—the GOP has no purpose except craziness.
I suppose we could thank Bill Clinton for this, but I’d prefer not to.
My wife suggested earlier Hillary just might pick Bill as her VP.
That way she wouldn’t have to live in the same house with him.
Very well done, indeed, Zaid.
It’s nice that some younger writers understand our modern political history.
Nice piece. How about a follow-up on the equally long, sad corruption of the Democrats especially under the Clintons?
Did anyone notice that the Republican platform contains a calling to break up the big banks?
Donald Trump Wants To Break Up Big Banks
Now, the platform (of either of the Democrats or the GOP) is non-binding, so it means nothing really outside the telegraphing of who is being appealed to. But it is still incredible to see, as the establishment puts on its charade of “opposing” parties – making the Clinton supporters have to now defend their less anti-corporatist stance! It’s almost as if the elite is laughing at the contortions it imposes on the duopoly’s defenders, toying cynically with the establishment theater and the populace as corruption continues to advance in every last hall of power.
It shouldn’t take Donald Trump too long, once he decides to “repeal and replace Obamacare” to realize that a Medicare for All health care system would be the most affordable way to deliver quality of care to ALL Americans.
Wouldn’t that be a hoot if President Trump invited Physicians for a National Health Care Program to The White House for a luncheon and afternoon discussion and he decided that they are right?!
http://www.pnhp.org/
Imagine that. Obama and his Democrat supporters in Congress had these doctors thrown out of a committee hearing and Obama dis-invited his own personal physician from the ABC television discussion on health care because he was going to be speaking for a Single Payer program.
Wouldn’t that be revealing? A Trump administration trying to pass Conyers 26 page “Medicare for All” legislation and Democrats refusing to support it because all their insurance lobbyist contributors were against it?
Ha!
(I can dream, can’t I?)
Funny you should say that, but Trump actually came out in favor of single payer once, as he admits in this video, in which he explicitly states that it works well in other countries! He says *now* as a Republican candidate that the system should be open to the free market, pointing out (correctly, it must be said) that Big Insurance has a monopoly they simply wouldn’t without the crony-capitalism enabled by the state.
(The brief video is interesting as it delves into believable accusations that Trump is actually left-leaning, which is ironic as Clinton is simultaneously facing believable accusations of being right-wing!)
Personally I think both Trump and Clinton are currently accomplished liars who represent ultimately the same establishment, and neither one would challenge the status quo one iota. They assist with dividing and ruling the people very effectively, however, and that’s their real purpose.
So, yeah, that’s a dream about single payer – but for real visionary thinking I reckon we should stick with Jill Stein!
Test
Sir, you fail to address a very important component in your sophomoric analysis – FOLLOW THE MONEY.
p.s. there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between republicans and democrats so stop trying to make one.
“This system of political financing from a handful of millionaires and billionaires has corrupted both major parties, but its influence is almost total in the Republican Party. Of the 161 co-sponsors of legislation in the House of Representatives to create a public financing system for Congressional candidates, only one, North Carolina’s Walter Jones, is a Republican.”
This has already been addressed – this is why campaign finance reform in BOTH parties has been brought up as a major issue, as of late
Actually there is a difference, and long has been. Abortion, gay rights, creationism in the schools, anti-porn crusades & various other hot-button, social/religious issues.
Foreign policy — and to a great extent fiscal as well — not so much difference.
Please don’t forget voter suppression. That’s at the top of the list for me.
Sad to see how far off the rails they are. Both parties, at the Federal level, have become absolutely corrupted. Makes me think of that study which showed we’re in an Oligarchy dressed in paint of Democratic branding:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/apr/21/americas-oligarchy-not-democracy-or-republic-unive/
I am so sick and tired of cowardly reporting, how can you write about the downfall of the republicans party, or politics in general without attributing much of this decent to ZIONISM!
No mention of AIPAC, Sheldon Adleson (the man who bank rolled the 2012 republican convention), I mean come on!
Until you start being honest about the horrible destructive influence of Zionism on American politics, its control over media, Hollywood/entertainment, Wall Street, yet not a peep from so many writers, just sad.
OH, PLEASE! The reason that greedy pols snivel to Israel is that they are sucked in by their own mindless predjudices and beliefs, ie. that the Joos got money. Plus, a lot of them are “Christians” who have an overweening guilt over The Holocaust.
If somehow, Jews lost some of their wealth, the pols wouldn’t give them the time of day. The welfare state of Israel would dry up and blow away.
Sorry to say your dead wrong, its not about money, its about organization, its about controlling the message.
Yes the Jews have money, and they do indeed use that money to manipulate American politics, but Jewish power is not limited to money, that’s just idiocy, if it was just about money, Saudi Arabia would be running the US.
I live and work in DC, and you can say Saudi Arabia did 9/11, you can say France or England are corrupt, but if you speak ill of Israel, or Zionists, be prepared to be fired.
You know very little about “soft power”, the power of the media, who are mostly owned or controlled by Zionist Jews.
Zionism rules DC, and the fact that YOU and web sites such as this don’t know it or more likely speak of it, shows the power of those institutions. Everyone knows AIPAC owns Congress, the Senate, this is never in question, the question IS why are people so scared to comment on it. Answer is, the Zionists WILL come after you, one way or another.
I am not republicans, but as a democrat, in my lifetime, the democrats have fallen further than even the republicans.
JFK to Hitlery Clinton, could there be a greater fall, I don’t think so.
The “fall” of the democrats goes back
at least
as far as Truman and the eviction of Henry Wallace.
FDR was trying to save the religion of capitalist domination
and Henry Wallace was trying to save humanity.
The democrats and the republicans decided that
the religion of capitalism was more important.
FDR refused to prosecute the capitalists who tried to get Gen. Smedley Butler to lead a coup against him, and now here we are:
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/12/145472726/when-the-bankers-plotted-to-overthrow-fdr
Just cruising by but, without checking the details, I want to point out that the honorable and remarkable Gen. Butler not only told them where to go, he also ratted them out.
I am sure that is all true, but I was referring to in MY lifetime, not your’s.
“his platform on promises to ban a billion people from entering the United States based on their religious faith and build a gigantic wall south of the border.”
Hallelujah!!!
I know it is just a politician’s talk, but there simply are no other choices.
You shouldn’t forget that your colonial ancesters were the first illegal immigrants and that there are many American Indians who would love nothing more than to pack all of you up on boats and deport you back to Europe/England. For those Indians, there simply are no other choices. Many of those Latinos trying to come across the border are of American Indian ancestry. They’ve been here longer than your recently erected colonial government. They have more right to be here than you- paleface!
Democrats and republicans are such sad, sad, co-dependent,
dysfunctional, lovers of delusions and money.
The only thing worse than being one of these
ever-more-rightward desperate and delusional exceptionalists
is to be one of their victims.
The slow coup of militarism which the democrats and
republicans have embraced since the plan to build the Pentagon
and the institutionalized militarism was hatched during
the FDR years
in their “bipartisan” (not) lust for imperial capitalist domination
is going to leave us all burning in Hell.
Madison decided the slaves were 3/5ths of a human when
the faking U$A’s imperialism was hatched and now
we are all much less human than that.
Trump and Hillary.
They are a reflection of the de-volution.
Money is god in the faking U$A.
I completely agree with everything stated here however I think the democrats fall from Kennedy to Obomber and Killary is much worse!
Big omission: The so-called social issues.
I’ve long maintained that Roe v. Wade was a huge mistake, and not just because it’s jurisprudentially a total reach. Abortion laws were liberalizing throughout the nation anyway, but that decision changed them all overnight, and galvanized what would become the religious right.
Reagan won in ’80 and brought ten GOP senators along with him –that was largely the result of people like my mother getting out the anti-abortion vote, and a lot of people took that position then. (Including her mother, an FDR-Democrat who voted Republican for the first time in her life as many would do over the abortion issue.)
In addition to abortion, gay rights, pornography, and also the creation/evolution debate all made the GOP. The Republicans took the positions on those issues that most people then favored and became the party of gross intolerance and Rush Limbaugh.
Surveys clearly show that more than an 80% combination of republicans and democrats feel money has a corrupting influence in politics. It does not matter as their wishes are completely ignored as now a very small business plutocracy gains more chocking control of the political process.
With this control they do not serve peace or human betterment. They serve only the fulfillment of their greed and psychopathic desires resulting in inequality, poverty, endless demonic war throughout the planet, oppressive debt, taxes for the masses, and the destruction of Mother Earth.
Only a fool could think the answer to both the people’s oppression and the tragic disasters lying ahead for them can be found coming out of the likes a RNC or DNC propaganda triumph.
This is a decent analysis, but there are some key things that I believe is missing from it, in particular the Democratic Party’s parallel move to the right.
At the same time that Republicans were shifting towards embracing corporate America and the evangelical right (with the two forces ultimately uniting behind Reagan), Democrats made strides to break from their New Deal legacy, embracing the politics of the professional liberal class to the detriment of labor unions. There were plenty of good intentions behind this move–there was a desire to break away from the machine politics of the past that defined men like Humphrey, and the anti-war hippies certainly didn’t see eye-to-eye with many of the old leaders–but the result is that the party moved away from its progressive economic agenda.
Really, the story of the Republican Party’s move to the right is just a part of an overall move rightward across the entire political establishment. The Democrats of today sound the Republicans of yesteryear, while the Democrats of yesterday sound like socialists to our current political sensibilities.
Agreed. There’s also a bit of chicken-or-egg. It’s a two-party system so each has to distinguish itself from the other. If the Democrats move right first, the GOP has to move as well. I imagine it’s a combination of that and the GOP naturally moving right. The sad part is that if the GOP moves right first, of course the Democrats don’t have to travel that way too, but they do anyway. Maybe over a perceived or real notion that they’ll get more votes by going to the center. Or maybe because they prefer being more right because they’re assholes, but were held back.
When congresspersons could go to DC and, on a $150k salary, leave as millionaires, we ordinary Americans could guarantee that the slimy filth we send to DC would never again take care of us or worry about our concerns. When money and re-election became the most important goals, taking care of voters, not cronies, was completely lost on GOPers. Now they are in bed with progs for open borders, unlimited spending, growing government, cheap labor and unlimited illegal immigration. We don’t have GOPers and progs any more; we have the Unity Party, all about Govt. Inc.
> Ultimately, the Republican Party’s drift away from inclusion and the public interest and towards a coterie of extreme donors and ideologies does have an electoral cost
one of the first speakers at the RNC noted that republicans now control an all-time high 69 of 99 state assemblies. that’s in addition to both houses of congress. so maybe “devolution” is a winning strategy. maybe democrats need your advice more than republicans