The Forty-Year Hissy Fit (Why “Republicanism” is doomed)

[riqster]

http://bluntandcranky.wordpress.com/2014/10/07/the-forty-year-hissy-fit-why-republicanism-is-doomed/

Source info at link.

When your Cranky Correspondent was a wee lad, there were Republicans (without quotes) with a sane, sensible platform that mentioned equality, living wages, economic sanity, and lots of reasonable ideals like that. And had the Republican Party remained sane, this writer might still be one (he was raised to be, after all). But then came Kent State and Watergate, and the GOP got spanked. Hard. So the Elephants got angry. Really angry.

That anger is the core of the modern “Republican” party, and once you understand that, everything about their behavior makes sense:

“Why do Repubs seem irrational?” Angry people aren’t rational.

“Why are so many Repubs trying to steal elections?” Because in their irrational anger, they see themselves as victims who are trying to take back what they think is rightfully theirs, never mind the law.

“Why do so many Repubs steal?”
See previous answer.

“Why do Repubs hate minorities, gays, foreigners, and other non-Repubs?” Because they see themselves as a uniquely and horribly wronged people, and if you aren’t one of them, you are the enemy.

“Why do Repubs want to destroy the Constitution as we know it?” Because that Constitution is what Nixon and the Republicans tried to subvert, and it was what was used to thwart their crime spree. Show me a crook who likes the rule of law. Good luck finding one: crooks hate laws.

The problem is, anger by itself is pretty limiting. Repubs have no agenda, only a raging, vindictive, spiteful urge to lash out at the rest of the nation (note: that “rest of” is in fact the majority). And no matter how much damage they inflict, how much wealth they amass, how much power they grasp, it will never be enough. Because all they have is anger. All they can do with that anger is attack.

And eventually, that pathological hatred and rage will be turned upon themselves (indeed, that has already started), eventually destroying the party and perhaps the country as a whole.

It’s too bad that Ford ruled out further spankings of Nixon and his cronies: perhaps that punishment would have taught the Repubs a lesson, but that ship has long since sailed. No, we are stuck with a petulant, spoiled, perpetually angry party that hates us all and is bent on punishing US in return for the slap on the wrist it got.

A forty- year Hissy Fit. A four-decade temper tantrum. And it doesn’t look like ending soon.

[hifiguy]

1. Right wingers have always followed the Buckley maxim:

"A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it."

The problem with this is a simple one - ultimately the march of progress, both moral and scientific, is unstoppable. Change and evolution cannot be stopped. Progress can be temporarily thwarted, but only temporarily. As Dr King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Right wingers have never been able to get this through their heads.

[BrotherIvan]

3. A great response

I have a feeling that "conservatives" were never the benign, equality-loving party as described in the OP.

[hifiguy]

7. I am old enough to tell you that it was once true.

There were Eisenhower-style middle-of-the-road ("Rockefeller&quot Republicans well into the 1980s. Centrist-to-slightly conservative on fiscal issues, moderate-to-slightly liberal on social issues. Senators like Chuck Percy, Jacob Javits, Edward Brooke, Dave Durenberger, Howard Baker, Margaret Chase Smith, Nancy Kassebaum, representatives like Bill Frenzel of Minnesota, John Anderson of Illinois, and plenty of governors. And there were many more than these. IOW rational, sensible grown-ups.

We had a lot of them here in Minnesota and there were even a couple of prominent ones - including Governor Arne Carlson - until the late 1990s but they were all eventually purged by the batshit-crazy Jesus-wheezers and the greedhead libertarians. The modern Republican party is where the Birchers and organized paranoids were in the 1960s and 1970s and the Democrats are where moderate Republicans were at that time.

See: http://crooksandliars.com/cliff-schecter/no-longer-rock-party

[BrotherIvan]

8. Thanks for the link

Interesting reading.

[daleanime]

9. +1

[NewJeffCT]

12. There were Republicans that were actually fairly liberal

Lowell Weicker of Connecticut was a long-time liberal Republican senator who rose to fame due to his tough questioning of Nixon's cronies during the Watergate hearings. Weicker finally lost in 1988 when Joe Lieberman - Yes, that Joe Lieberman - ran to Weicker's right during the race, attracting enough disaffected conservatives and Democrats that voted party line that Lieberman won.

Weicker, and a few other moderate/liberal Republicans, were dubbed the Gang of Six, in their early days, and then became the Gang of Four and then just no gang at all as they got purged out of the party.

[Thirties Child]

13. You nailed it.

That's exactly the way I remember it, and I'm old enough to remember it well. I was 21 in 1956 and cast my first vote for Eisenhower. I once laughed at the absurdity of the Birchers. Who would have guessed they'd someday be the soul of the Republican party? I sure didn't.

[hifiguy]

15. I was BORN in '56.

Ike thought the Birchers were too crazy to even bother denouncing because their insanity was so obvious.

[Hortensis]

44. Exactly. Of course, there were yesterday's Southern Democrats, most of today's "tea partiers"...

"I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat." Will Rogers

BOY, do times change! I confess, bad as these rebranded Birchers down-right dragging the GOP with their demographic is, I'm SO glad they've vacated the Democrat tent. Then, again, I'm positively sadly nostalgic when I think of all the sensible, competent Republicans they've purged from office...

[BlindTiresias]

28. May want to revise your progressivist optmism there

If modern dems are where republicans were in the 50's (disagree with you on this, actually, many dems are farther right than 1950's repubs) and the republicans are where the fringe right was in that same period, what does that tell you about the overall direction of the country? It tells me the country has been on a rightward trajectory for some time with no indicators of it stopping.

[hifiguy]

30. i am not terribly optimistic in the short run,

but I do believe if there is no peaceful change, that some catastrophic event in the next 100 years - climate change, a limited nuclear war or some other horrifying occurrence, may will cause humanity to re-evaluate how to live on this planet. And that will be the end of capitalistic society as we have known it. I like to believe in a future more like that posited by Gene Roddenberry than that of Orwell. But I sure won't be around to see it.

[SomethingFishy]

43. +1

I was going to comment on your earlier Dr. King quote that we are about as far bent away from the "justice" part of the arc as we have been in a long time, but I see you are already on that...

I agree with everything you have written in this thread, well said, and I think quite accurate. I do fear it may be too late for the "peaceful change".. I think you are right, it's going to take an "event" to instigate the type of change we need.

Alien Visitation is what I'm hoping for. Nothing could get the people of earth together like an new common enemy. Global Warming doesn't seem to be doing it, I think we need something with a face. Some green people to hate or some shit like that..

[FSogol]

2. K & R. n/t

[IDemo]

4. Disagree with one central point

Anger does not automatically signify irrationality. Failing to deal with anger and address its causes may have negative impacts on a person or political party, true. But anger can be the natural result of a genuinely threatening situation, such as the ones we are currently facing with climate change deniers and run-away income inequality, for instance.

[MisterP]

11. yesssss: it's *unmoored* anger that they've been cultivating for so long (that also helps explain

how they drop the last issue and never bring it up again): a good chunk of them don't *really* believe Celestial Seasonings lets Satan into your home through the star on the packaging, that HSR is there to take us to the FEMA guillotine camps, that Iraq has WMDs, that Moscow runs all the churches and universities, or that "Frozen" is gay propaganda (if anything, it's mostly about accepting cryomancers if they're in the royal house): that makes them *more* dangerous than the millions who swallow each contradictory talking point in succession

[LondonReign2]

22. Hold on. Frozen is gay propaganda??

How did they come up with that one?

[riqster]

26. Hell, if a Teletubbie was gay....

These people are cray-cray.

[MisterP]

27. the queen sings "let it go": literally that's it

it's because they're both stupid *and* deliberately crap-stirring
there's a word for that, at least

[byronius]

40. I just learned something there. Thanks.

[Efilroft Sul]

35. Republicans should just let it go.

[Dustlawyer]

21. Republican anger has been amped up by RW talkers and Fox News.

Fox I am convinced uses Psychologists to program their shows to manipulate their viewers. They keep them angry and afraid. People are taking from them is a recurrent theme, it's just that they shunt that crime onto the poor and minorities instead of the real cause of their problems, the wealthy and corporations. This displaced anger is dangerous and keeps them from even considering other rational explain atoms and facts. This is why it does no good to try to debate them, they are unshakable in their beliefs.

[Hortensis]

45. For sure! FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) tend to make us react more conservatively, protectively.

Fox's constantly-hit "be afraid of the big bad world" meme trains old advertising techniques extremely effectively on a particularly vulnerable demographic.

[strawberries]

5. you have generalized too much

but I suspect they like it that way.

[riqster]

33. It's a blog post, not a dissertation.

[merrily]

6. Things in the rear view mirror may look better than they are/were.

[freshwest]

10. K&R

[starroute]

14. But it wasn't a post-Watergate reaction

Watergate was already part of the pattern of irrationality and election-stealing. That 1972 campaign was also where Karl Rove got his start.

Anger may explain the Tea Party types. It doesn't explain the cool calculators, the top-level operatives, the people who looked at the Democratic Party's long post-New Deal hold on American politics and dreamed of their own thousand-year Reich. Only the lure of power can explain them.

[riqster]

17. True. There are those who use emotion to manipulate.

But they are a minority, albeit a malignant one.

[Rex]

16. You forgot fear, they are motivated by fear as well as anger.

The GOP PTB know they can use both anger and fear to keep their voters so outraged/scared, that they never actually pay attention to what is going on. And over the decades, this constant abuse of the brain has left permanent-harmful side effects. Irrationality being just one. The lack of critical thinking. Lack of good judgement.

[riqster]

18. Fear and anger are synergistic. Good point.

[zentrum]

19. Not quite buying this.

Because FDR way back in the 30's, saw Republicans as against every social and economic program he wanted to undertake to get us out of Depression. Everyone was mad then, because of the depression, but Republicans still just wanted to help rich white guys.

Yes, they used to be more reasonable and have aspects to their ideology that didn't totally screw the majority (Nixon's Clean Air Act, for example), but mostly it's a case of class warfare and un-self-reflective racism.

It's like saying, well because I'm angry, I get to abuse everyone. If I can't own the house, I'll burn it down.

If it's a hissy fit, it's been here since Hoover brought us the first Great Depression.

[hifiguy]

23. Nixon was an anomaly, and strange even for that.

Nixon didn't really have a huge agenda other than "not losing" in Vietnam and doing everything possible to advance the interests of one Richard M. Nixon, the law and the costs be damned. If this required he be seen as a "statesman", fine. If it required stealing an election he would have won anyway, fine. Whatever he was, and that question could be debated for years, Nixon was not an ideologue. He was a congenitally cheap, crooked ward-heeling pig raised to a high exponential power by way of the presidential office.

He did invent the modern slash-and-burn, scorched earth Repuke political campaign style, however, and they have been in use, refined to an even higher degree by Rove and company, ever since.

[zentrum]

24. Well Said!! n/t

[MBS]

41. exactly right. n/t

[hifiguy]

42. Nixon's vendettas were personal, not systemic.

He was a paranoid or suffered from a persecution complex and wanted to punish those he saw as his personal foes - hence the enemies list, Watergate, etc., etc.. As rotten as he was, Nixon would have never considered tearing down the New Deal. I doubt the thought ever crossed his mind even for a moment.

ETA - I grew up hating Nixon, partly because my dad was an old union man who hated Nixon, and turned 18 the month after he resigned. I'd followed Watergate on TV and in Rolling Stone and have been a student of Nixon ever since. He was certainly the strangest man to ever hold the presidency and therefore a fascinating case.

[riqster]

46. It's more the post-Nixon phenomenon I wrote about here,

The Cheney/Powell memo/ Neocon agenda was based on anger against, well, us.

[zentrum]

47. Really agree with this.

It was personal and corrupt with Nixon, but not anti-New Deal. Like Reagan was.

My dad hated Nixon and was an old union guy too!

[zentrum]

48. Thom Hartmann coincidentally just said.....

...that Obama-care used to be called Nixon-care! It was originally Nixon's plan.

(And later became Romney-care. The one Ted Kennedy blew up and later regretted.)

[hifiguy]

50. Thom Hartmann has

Forgotten more history than most of us will ever know. The man is a walking encyclopedia of real US history.

[riqster]

32. Perhaps it is just more overt these past years.

It does seem worse.

[EileenFB]

20. This reminded me of what President Clinton said

at the DNC in 2012 about today's republicans,

Now, there’s something I’ve noticed lately. You probably have too. And it’s this. Maybe just because I grew up in a different time, but though I often disagree with Republicans, I actually never learned to hate them the way the far right that now controls their party seems to hate our president and a lot of other Democrats.

I've noticed this hateful attitude within my own family. Most of my family are poor or working class and as much as I try to educate them on the fact that the republican party is not what it was when they were growing up, they refuse to accept that fact, even when faced with data that supports my argument. Hell,several of them have either blocked or unfriended me over this.

[riqster]

25. He also said something that stayed with me.

When asked why Repubs hated him so much, he said something to effect of "I took an office they thought was theirs by divine right". Same thing with Obama. These crazy goat-fuckers think they deserve to have power, because... Well, that is in the OP.

[zentrum]

49. I think this is because...

...of years of rightwing radio and FOX news and Limbaugh. Hours and hours of lies and demonization and polarization and carefully crafted narratives that justify their "victimized" feelings.

These guys really know how to play on people's fears and adrenalin rushes.

Ironically enough, they have the dominance they do because of Clinton's Media Consolidation.

[Kablooie]

29. But conservatism will never go away and will always be a political force.

And even though some of us have the impression that Republicans used to be more reasonable, I don't think that it so.

The following was written in 1936 by H.P. Lovecraft.

“As for the Republicans -- how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd."

This is the same image we have of Republicans today. They aren't going anywhere.
They may be reorganized at some point but the conservative world view is deeply ingrained in a large portion of the human race and will never be eliminated.

[riqster]

31. Quibble: the use of "conservative" is inaccurate and plays into their hands.

They are not conservatives. They are revolutionaries.

[MBS]

37. yes, you're right

Revolutionaries in the worst possible sense of the word.

[hifiguy]

39. Ultra-reactionaries, actually.

Now it's the divine right of the wealthy rather than of kings. Not that it makes much of a difference apart from the semantics.

[vlyons]

34. excellent article

and my sentiments exactly. Anger is an afflictive emotion that creates suffering and keeps it in place. I don't think there are any Republicans left, at least not my Daddy's brand of Reps. I call today's Reps, "crazy talkers." The other thing that I've noticed about them is that they don't respect boundaries, but they expect you to respect theirs.

[riqster]

36. Some things predate the recent period.

As Kennedy said, it's hard to negotiate with someone who says "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is negotiable". He was referring to the Birchers IIRC.

[MBS]

38. spot-on summary of a frustrating, hideous and shameful period in our history

Thanks for this

[Manifestor_of_Light]

51. My parents were yellow dog Democrats.

Active in Democratic politics. Dad was in a blue-collar union.

They had friends who were Republicans. In one couple, the dad was a stockbroker and his eldest daughter became a stockbroker.
And they weren't bat-shit crazy in the 1960s.

[Centrist1984]

52. Disagree with much of this

When your Cranky Correspondent was a wee lad, there were Republicans (without quotes) with a sane, sensible platform that mentioned equality, living wages, economic sanity, and lots of reasonable ideals like that. And had the Republican Party remained sane, this writer might still be one (he was raised to be, after all). But then came Kent State and Watergate, and the GOP got spanked. Hard. So the Elephants got angry. Really angry.

What kind of equality? The modern GOP does not support the concept of equality of outcome in the way the Democratic party does because that essentially, to them, means theft of property. It also creates a society where everyone becomes equally poorer. The GOP does believe much in equality under the law, although unfortunately there are the exceptions such as with regards to their being against same-sex marriage.

The modern GOP does not believe in any kind of "living wages" because that is a completely arbitrary term and wages and incomes are the price of labor. The only entity that should be setting prices is the market. If you have the government start dictating such a thing, you get market distortions, usually an increasing of the unemployment rate, because if you artificially and excessively raise the price of something, the buyers of it will buy less. No different than putting a large tax on gasoline.

I do not think either party adheres to economic sanity right now. Both have their own ideas about economics which include some sensible points and some insane ideas.

That anger is the core of the modern “Republican” party, and once you understand that, everything about their behavior makes sense:

“Why do Repubs seem irrational?” Angry people aren’t rational.

I have seen plenty of angry people on the Democratic party side too. In fact, that is how many in the GOP see them, so that really is arbitrary.

“Why are so many Repubs trying to steal elections?” Because in their irrational anger, they see themselves as victims who are trying to take back what they think is rightfully theirs, never mind the law.

“Why do so many Repubs steal?”
See previous answer.

Not sure how this is limited to the GOP and not to both parties.

“Why do Repubs hate minorities, gays, foreigners, and other non-Repubs?” Because they see themselves as a uniquely and horribly wronged people, and if you aren’t one of them, you are the enemy.

The GOP does not hate minorities, foreigners, and non-Republicans. There is bigotry amongst a portion of the GOP, primarily the Evangelicals, for gays, but that is due to religion moreso than conservatism as a political philosophy.

“Why do Repubs want to destroy the Constitution as we know it?” Because that Constitution is what Nixon and the Republicans tried to subvert, and it was what was used to thwart their crime spree. Show me a crook who likes the rule of law. Good luck finding one: crooks hate laws.

How do the GOP seek to "destroy the Constitution?"

[littlemissmartypants]

53. The same way lurkers seek to destroy ...

Civil discourse.

[riqster]

54. You blew it in your first paragraph.

I referred to the OLD Repubs with that section, not the modern, post-70's ones.


Not much point in refuting the rest of your post, after a reading comprehension fail like that as an opener.