Posted on 02/14/2013 8:35:10 AM PST by chessplayer
Well, the Republican party, and Democrats, too, have almost nothing to do with what they were in the 1860s. Seems silly to still be thanking them for emancipation and the 13th amendment. What’s inexplicable is that Pubs get no credit for the civil rights movement, even though it was Dems who dragged their feet until the last minute. LBJ gets credit for swooping in and saving the day, and even Kennedy gets reflected glow, though basically he did nothing. People don’t even remember blacks were Republicans for decades until a trickle during FDR, then the sea change of the 60s, only after civil rights legislation.
I’ve heard it explained in terms of civil rights Pubs being the east coast establishment Rockefeller types we now call RINOs. But what does the average person care about how the party was internally split decades ago? Besides, today’s Pubs are like establishment 60s Pubs on civil rights issues. You may have dissenters like Rand Paul, only he’s a dissenter on a lot of issues. I’ve heard it explained that Goldwater was against the Civil Rights Act and Pubs ran him against LBJ, and his ideological type eventually won out in the Reagan era. But who the heck remembers what Goldwater stood for? Not even Goldwater fans, to a degree.
The real explanation is that after the civil rights acts the South switched to the Republican side, the New Left found a home with Dems, and blacks seemingly permanently settled down in the Dem plantation. Not that the Pub platform changed, but we got the guys who everyone thinks of as racists and they got the guys who constantly play the race card. Simple as that.
As for wars, that’s easy. Up until the New Left Dems were the warmongers of the 20th century. Or rather, progressives of both parties were. Which makes sense, as war is the health of the state and from Wilson on Dems were the relative Big Government party. Then came the hippies, and they made a point of being loudly antiwar. Which didn’t stop them from being violent personally and as a movement, but is something everyone can be expected to remember about them. When they took over the Democrat party prowar “liberals” became Pubs. Unlike Dixiecrats, however, they didn’t change. They changed the Republican party. We call them neocons.
Not that Dems stopped waging wars, as is evident with the Obama administration. Pubs were merely marginally more militaristic. Dems wanted to export the Welfare State and back up the UN with force, and we wanted to be World Police. Not all of us, but enough. So I understand regular people’s confusion over Dems’ mysterious past.
As for who amounted more debt an which party is seen as the reckless spender, that is beyond explanation. I don’t know. Maybe it’s that people’s natural instinct is to think war is the most expensive thing a government can do? Maybe it’s just that in the MSM you constantly hear the phrase “unfunded war” and almost never “unfunded Social Security.” Maybe it’s that people never understood supply side economics, and “tax cuts for the rich” hits home.
One thing I can say for certain is Pubs forever sacrificed their claim to fiscal restraint during term after term of deficits and trying to beat Dems at their own game, even if they’ve never matched debt of Democrat proportions.
It would be very cool if a federal court rules that Obama’s recess appointment were unconstitutional and thus all their actions were invalid - and added “by the way, Obama’s alleged inaugurations were also unconstitutional and thus invalid and all his actions and signed bills are also null and void”. I don’t expect it, but a repeal of the spreading socialism and totalitarianism would make me happy for life.
The lefties are still going after Todd Akin? C'mon, the election is over already. War criminal??
Sheesh.
There’s an old book titled something like “It Didn’t Start With Watergate,” and though I don’t like that kind of defense, it’s true. Dems have had scandals to sink ten Pub administrations, especially FDR and LBJ. Only we don’t know about them because no one seems to want to “speak truth to power” to them. Plus, we were stuck with an inconveniently weak one—at least by today’s standards of decency—with Clinton, which reflected poorly back upon Nixon. Even though Clinton’s lying “about sex” was done to weasel out of the sort of civil suit Dems usually care about, while Nixon’s coverup was a burglary in furtherance of an electoral contest that was like the Yankees versus the little league world champs.
Actually, I’m still not sure what Watergate was all about. Not that I believe any conspiracy theory, but I’m open to there having been some ulterior motive.
Both parties let the man who started the Vietnam war slide, both are Orwellian on JFK, but I’m not.
It wasn't a trickle as far as voting, they voted GOP until and including 1932, and then instantly and permanently reversed course in 1936.
It was about a 70% GOP vote in 1932, then about 70% democrat in 1936, and the rest is history.
You are confusing societal dropouts, back to the land, live and let live hippies, with left wing activists, yippies, and hard driven college kids who lived for power, activism, and politics, and anything but moving off into the country to live quietly.
Antiwar = One who believes we are fighting on the wrong side
No I’m not. I’m simply using the word “hippy” to denote the politically significant New Left, which consisted of the activists of whom you speak, plus the older generation who joined in. Which I feel is appropriate usage. Nonpolitical hippies are beside the point.
And, yes, these hippies were “antiwar,” or at least anti-Vietnam. They were also anti-whatever it is neocons are in favor of, which set the stage for Pubs as the war party since Mcgovern. Not to say the New Left were purely antiwar, nor that Dem presidents since then haven’t started or carried on war. Obama, though too young to have been a hippy, is a perfect example of leftist warmongering. And neocons still pretend like he’s “gutting defense” and letting terrorists run wild, or somesuch nonsense.
The major point to remember is that the ascendancy of the New Left in the Democrat party marked the shift in public consciousness of Republicans as the war party, even if leftist activists of the era weren’t the groovy free spirits they were made out to be. Even if not all Pubs were neocons, either, though enough of them were to influence the foreign policy of future Pub president.
I feel the fact that we also called people who dropped out of society to live on pig farms “hippies” is rather a ln unnecessary point to make, and a mere distraction from my larger argument.
You must admit Dems haven’t started wars as big as Pubs since the 70s, and that alone is enough to reward them with the “antiwar” badge in the public’s mind. And even if the wars they start are real wars with real consequences, that hasn’t stopped neocons from pretending like they’re traitorous, malingering peaceniks. They usually jump the gun and accuse the other side of calling them unpatriotic before they get around to it, but that’s not to say our side doesn’t go overboard in giving them antiwar credit they don’t deserve.
Watergate was still in court a couple of years ago. I haven’t been following it lately.
The Dems kept pictures of the “escort girls” they used for big donors at their offices in the Watergate Hotel. Somehow, they acquired an inappropriate picture of one of Nixon’s staff and the staff member wanted it. So he put together a team to steal it back. These were the men who were caught breaking into the hotel.
Eventually the radical left (or as they were known at the time, the new left, including a young lawyer named Hillary Rodham) that ran the Dem party thought they could turn this into something that would give them a political advantage. Nixon could’ve given his staff up and let them take the fall, but it seemed like such a trivial thing he thought he could just stall until it went away.
The Dems broke the impasse by illegally accessing phone records. This eventually led them to enough information to make Congressional Republicans believe that they could be in trouble. So they were willing to give Nixon up and put this behind them, especially after Agnew’s, Tim Geithner-like tax problems.
Not sure what Gerald Ford’s role was, but Ford wanted to be president.
The other “crimes” the Dems were trying to pin on Nixon were nothing that LBJ, Kennedy or Ike didn’t do nearly every day. And they were all Boy Scouts compared to FDR.
Anyhow that’s my take on it.
Nixon was targeting the Khmer Rouge with cross border bombing, Obama targets US citizens. Nixon was correct, Obama not so much.
You are confusing yippies and political activists with hippies.
I guess in modern America it just doesn’t matter.
You are crazy if you think that Obama could have ever been a hippie, hippies were drop-outs, they did not become lawyers and professors and bankers and CEOs and Senators and presidents.
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