The Way We Are Now—Republicans
"If only Longstreet had . . . "
—O. Henry
There have been Republicans who were conservatives, but the Republican Party is not and never has been a force for conservatism in American life. Except for those who, in Russell Kirk’s words, “mistake the acquisitive instinct for a conservative disposition.”
From its very beginning the Republican Party was the vehicle of state capitalists. It flourished by persuading a large part of the middle class that it represented their values—patriotism, progress, and Protestant virtues. It long marketed itself as the party against reactionary "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion," as the party of Progress under decent and safe control.
The South, which learned the hard way, for a long time did not fall for this delusion. Being killed and exploited concentrates the mind wonderfully. But as the South has been mainstreamed, as the War and Reconstruction have receded in memory and the Southern churches have collapsed into the Americanist heresy, more and more Southerners have enlisted in the Army of the Lord to trample out the Grapes of Wrath.
In the 1960s the Republican con game showed signs of losing its power. It was saved by an influx of despised Southerners and by cynically changing its marketing strategy to pretend to represent the issues raised and made popular by George Wallace. In a way, Southerners can hardly be blamed, since we were literally whipped with scorpions out of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is now the party of state capitalists (mostly former Republican types) AGAINST Protestant virtues, the Northern ruling classes having morally disintegrated during the 1960s and 1970s.
The Republican state capitalists, meanwhile, would never have even pretended to be "conservative" if Wallace had not forced them to, but would have continued to present themselves as the competent, decent, safe version of Progress. Indeed, with "compassionate conservatism" and the current presidential competition, they have have almost totally reverted to their old stance, which served them well for a long, long time—keeping the state capitalist regime in power by deluding the middle class with an image of progressive competence and respectability. As if Goldwater and Reagan never existed, they are all Rockefeller Republicans now. (After all, ain't that where the money is?)
Every bit of leftist legislation that has passed the U.S. Congress in the last half century has had substantial Republican support. It was the old Southern Democrats who braked radical legislation, not the Republicans. Now that the Southern Democrats have disappeared, the only obstacle to radical legislation is an extraordinary outpouring of grassroots effort, as in stopping (temporarily) the recent illegal alien amnesty bill.
The Republicanization of the South has been a catastrophic net loss to conservatism.
Entries(RSS)
Someone said "Republicans are for everything the Dimmykrats are for, charging 80 cents to the Dimmykrats' dollar." Not quite true, but with some truth.
Dr. Wilson,
"...as the War and Reconstruction have receded in memory and the Southern churches have collapsed into the Americanist heresy, more and more Southerners have enlisted in the Army of the Lord to trample out the Grapes of Wrath."
My goodness, nothing could be more true than that statement. The South has been so demonized, along with white men, that there appears little hope on the horizon to turn back the leviathan. It amazes me how successful this project has been. Demonize your opponent as a racist/sexist and you're on your way. It's incredible how many Southern men have joined up to fight the battle to extinguish themselves; however, pay and benefits in service to leviathan are pretty good these days. It's a Faustian bargain at best.
Ultimately, I fear, it will end in demographic collapse and ecconomic collapse brought on by the bloated bureaucracy and ever expanding central planning of the modern state. The West is fading fast.
George Wallace was right and look what happened to him. Keep up the good work.
All the best,
Perfect (in re my erstwhile objection to ignoring carbetbaggers & blaming it all on Lincoln). Thanks.
"It was the old Southern Democrats who braked radical legislation..." Really?
Wasn't Sen. Theodore Bilbo (D., Miss.) the first member of the U.S. Senate to endorse FDR for a third term? See Chester M. Morgan's
"Redneck Liberal: Theodore G. Bilbo and the New Deal" (Louisiana State University Press: 1985). Didn't Sen. Huey P. Long (D., La.) advocate a socialism even more radical than FDR's New Deal?
While there may have been a few truly conservative Southern Democrats, representatives of the old planter class (e.g. Harry F. Byrd, Sr.), there were also many others who, though they supported racial segregation (a necessity for getting elected at the time) were otherwise thoroughgoing adherents of the left (e.g., J. William Fulbright). But for the "solid South," FDR would never have been able to get the New Deal passed into law.
"The Republicanization of the South has been a catastrophic net loss to conservatism."
I absolutely agree, although where to go from here is a difficult question.
Michael,
That's true. The Dixiecrats were torn between their opposition to various civil rights measures and their addiction to federal pork. Federal pork usually won the battle, and so they lined up in favor of Democratic presidential nominees. Bob Novak has an interesting few pages on this in his memoirs. He quoted a Southern Democract and LBJ supporter in 1964 from an old column: "These bright young Republican boys think they can shout nigger, nigger, nigger and run all over us. Well, they're going to learn there are other things the South cares about." Those other things, of course, were pork.
It is true Southerners, so impoverished and so long exploited by the Republicans, at first welcomed the return of the Democracy to power and the early stages of the New Deal. But note how many of the New Dealers were actually former Progressive Republicans. By the second Roosevelt administration the bulk of Southern congressmen were having reservations about the New Deal and not just because of the race question. It was Southerners who were mainly responsible for blocking FDR's court-packing plan. After all, the Southerners were traditional Democrats while the Northern Democrats had, fairly suddenly, started to look like radical Republicans. I don't see how anyone can doubt that it was the Democratic Southern committee chairmen in Congress who managed to block much leftist legislation. (Howard Smith of Virginia, chairman of House Rules, killed more bad bills than the whole Republican party put together. 1) Obviously, it was these Southern Democrats that leftists regarded as the greatest obstacle and worked hard in many different ways to get rid of. 2) Obviously, their removal from power beginning in the 60s has led to unbridled leftist legislation.
Yes, it is true Southern Congressmen collect pork. Why shouldn't they. If all you Yankee Democrats and Republicans keep voting these big spending bills, we would be foolish not to get our share.
BTW, Fulbright was not all that liberal, and his courageous and
wise opposition to the insane Indochina imperial venture reflected not leftism but old Jeffersonian values.
Mr. Oliver, I catch a hint of typical Yankee-centric slander in your remarks. Southerners are always evilly motivated---what they do must be explained by either racism or greed. We are not allowed to have any decent motives. And it is never mentioned that we are bad compared to what. With all our sins, we are not as bad as those other folks. Quit blaming us for sharing a degree of your sins, which we can't help, having had your regime imposed upon us by bloody and ruthlkess conquest.
Dr. Wilson,
Actually, I'm quite a Southern sympathizer, and I'm from Maryland, not precisely the South but certainly not Yankee either. My friends would be quite surprised to hear that I was accused of "Yankee-centric slander." I'm also essentially a fourth generation American with only a small slice of English blood going back to colonial days, so my family had no part in the Civil War.
No, my premise was more that politicians are seldom virtuous, even in the south. The promise of disproportionate amounts of pork from a Democratic administration outweighed, for many Dixiecrats, their opposition to various civil rights measures that a Republican nominee (Goldwater) opposed also. I'm quite certain that these politicans' constituents were often more concerned about their livelihood than whether civil rights legislation would be passed. My point was that there was a little more nuance to the situation than simply brave Dixiecrats opposing civil rights legislation at every turn.
I'm at a bit of a loss at how I struck such a chord with you.
"Dimmykrats." That's infantile, FreeRepublic style banter and not worthy of adult discussion, even in quotation marks.
See James Patterson's wonderful book Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal for potent examples of how effective the Southern Democrats were in opposing FDR's legislative overreaches. Carter Glass (D-VA) is an especially memorable hero in that narrative. Even relative Southern moderates and FDR supporters such as Richard Russell (D-GA) eventually had serious doubts about the scope of the New Deal.
The point to be made is that in the solidly Democratic South, all those partisan differences that in the antebellum period had divided Democrats from Whigs - and which, after the war, in the North divided Democrats from Republicans - were fought out inside the Democratic party, and the Democrats' primary amounted to the real election. Some Southern Democrats were real conservatives, whereas others were populists or liberals. It is only their unanimity in favor of racial segregation, which, as I noted, was a necessity for political survival at the time, that confuses many modern commentators.
We shouldn't forget that there were moderate/conservative Democrats in the North. Burton K. Wheeler of Montana, who had begun political life on the left, drifted rightward, broke with Roosevelt over the court-packing scheme, and became a supporter of the America First Committee. He certainly deserves inclusion with Richard Russell of Georgia as one "who eventually had serious doubts about the scope of the New Deal."
A central conflict within the Democratic party from the late nineteenth century through the onset of the New Deal was that between the "gold Democrats" who favored sound money, and the followers of William Jennings Bryan who advocated free coinage of silver at a ratio of 16:1 with gold. This was a deliberately inflationary policy because it monetized silver at $1.29/oz. even though its market value was approximately $0.35/oz.
Grover Cleveland was the leader of the gold Democrats and seems to me to have followed an admirable set of policies as President. Among other things he did, small though it was among them, was to restore the citizenship rights of a great-great grandfather of mine who had served in the Virginia secession convention.
New Dealers were effectively the successors of the Bryan faction, and the enabling legislation of the New Deal included a provision for Bryan-style bimetallism. Roosevelt did not choose to employ this authority, instead devaluing the dollar relative to gold.
Mr. Ivey, I believe the "Dimmykrats" quote is attributable to the Chicago newspaperman Finley Peter Dunne's creation Mister Dooley, ostensibly the bartender in a South Side Irish pub. Mister Dooley's aphorisms, spelled so as to imitate a thick Irish brogue, were collected in a series of books published between 1898 and 1919 and were once quite well known. They include the famous observations that "the Supreme Court follows th'illiction returns" and "politics ain't beanbag."
It is a shame that an American literary figure once so well known has been so forgotten, even amongst Chronicles readers, that a quotation of his work can be dismissed unrecognized, as "infantile" and "not worth adult discussion."
Thanks, Michael.
In the 20th C the party of Jefferson split between Southerners and Northerners -- really two parties that got together once every 4 years. . I remember well in my youth when this was still acknowledged. In those days, give Southerners a political inkblot test and they didn't turn up socialist.
We in NC are particularly proud of Claude Kitchen, majority leader of the House, who opposed the biggest American foreign policy mistake ever: the declaration of war against Germany, 1917. The other members of his party told him that he was right, but that they and the US were too indebted to the House of Morgan, itself having made loans to the British.
Today's Southerner is a pitiful imitation of his ancestors. Most of us still maintain the rhythms of speech which were so prevalent up until the ending decade of the 20th century, but that's where the resemblance to earlier generations ends. The mainstream working class Southerner still has his violent temper, but that temper is more likely to be set off by criticism of that pretend Texan, W , than by any criticism of one's ancestors.
You'll see trucks with a Confederate naval jack flag sticker alongside an NRA sticker and a "W '04" sticker. Our famous willingness to serve as warriors has been subverted to the service of an empire which two different generations of our ancestors took arms against. What is most distasteful to me is the wholesale conversion of conservative Southerners to the Godless socialism of the radical republicans. The only Southerners who remember the treachery of the republicans are black Southerners, who are descendants of the emancipated slaves who were used and discarded by the carpetbaggers.
Given the decades of indoctrination in public schools and the daily assault on the ears by modern culture through the entertainment media, I hold out no hope at all for the survival of the Southern people as an ethnicity in this new modern empire. I still love living in the South but it has become necessary for me to withdraw from the scalawag mainstream and go my own way.
I can't play the Southern glass bead game (although God bless y'all), but I'd like to remind you that Bryan's finest hour was his resignation as Secretary of State over Woodrow Wilson's march into World War I. He was no interventionist.
That declaration of war was in many ways the deadliest sin of modern American history. Dr. Fleming's "The Illusion of Victory," which I just finished, is a good start in understanding how nefarious Wilson was and how futile were the deaths and maiming of brave and innocent young Americans in that conflict.
From that intervention sprang the national security state, federal control of almost everything, messianic democratism as foreign policy, Bolshevism, fascism, and the seeds of World War II and the Cold War.
The choice went by forever, twixt the darkness and the light, and we made the wrong choice.
Why differentiate between Republicans and the broader "conservative" movement - most people who call themselves conservative today are really liberals who will go along with just about anything the establishment does as long as they can keep their personal poke. Political correctness is viable only because conservatives make it so with their constant obsequious lies in its support. They are the first line of defense of the liberal establishment.
" Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to." - Theodore Dalrymple
Mr. Smith, your quotation gets PC just right. Solzhenitsyn said that the worst thing about the Soviet regime was not prisons and starvation---it was lies, having to live constantly in an atmosphere of lies. Such is PC
"Grumpy Old Man" (I thought for a moment that was me) you have the wrong Fleming.
Mr. Wilson: I had no idea we are blessed with two Flemings. If apologies are in order, here they are.
Be that as it may, Fleming II wrote a pretty good book about World War I and St. Woodrow, and Bryan's resignation was his finest hour.
Amen, Grumpy, to your whole post. We badly need a iconoclastic biography that does to Woodrow what DiLorenzo had done to Dishonest Abe. _The Illusion_ and Jim Powell's work are a start.
Mr Cundiff and Grumpy: has anyone done an iconoclastic biography of FDR? Though I'm not so sure Churchill was as bad, I think someone should do one of him as well.
Dr Wilson, I wonder why in the world the South didn't succeed at establishing it's own viable, effective party when Southerners were kicked out of the Democratic party by the leftists? Also, why was there not more secessionism in the South during the 60's than there was? Was it because of the Cold War and fear of destablising the West, and therefore bringing on a Soviet victory in Europe? If so, we should have went ahead and seceded. I dont think Western Europe would have been worse off under Soviet rule than it has been under it's current destroyers.
Why don't you Ivy League whiners get off your middle-class fat asses and start preaching some revolution against these Zionists and there black barbarian allies!!
It could be said that the Republican Revolution of 1995 was sacrificed on the altar of TVA....
....or cotton and peanut subsidies
....or NASA
....or military bases
....or water projects
....or any number of pork barrell projects.
The bottom line is that most Southern Republicans are just Democrats with R's after their name. Once a Democrat, always a Democrat.
Dr. Wilson,
In your August 4 piece, you wrote:
"Fred Dalton Thompson for President? He could turn out to be the Republicans' strongest candidate. But the Republican Party has never in its entire existence nominated a Southerner for President or Vice President. It is not likely to do so when it has available a prominent New York politician (remember Dewey? Rockefeller?) a governor of Massachusetts (remember Calvin Coolidge?), and any number of plausible Midwestern wannabes (remember Harding? Quayle? Ford? Landon? Dole?)."
Under the present rules, a Southerner could win the GOP Presidential nomination if he swept the primaries. I am from Lawrence County, Tennessee. This is Fred Thompson's home county, although he pretty much left it a long time ago. You might be interested to know that Thomspson's father (a used car dealer) was in charge of George Wallace's campaign in Lawrence County in 1968.
Dear Sean, If Southerner Republicans are really Democrats then what are Northern Republicans?
Surely you are not claiming that the "Republican Revolution of 1995" failed because of Southerners?
Democrats are clones of the Republicans and vice versa. Remember when you have a clone... yes there's two, then... it doesn't mean they're 'different.' That's why they haven't impeached Bush...and why they're letting him get away with now making the same bogus case for attacking iran, as he did for iraq.
Unreal city - Kingdom absent.
(next 'logical' conclusion... i accept and admit, yes i am your long lost king of the better times...for t'is only I who can pull the sword from the stone, the heart of stone.) genuflect, rise...genuflect, genuflect, one more for good measure, rise...be seated, stand, be seated.
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What are northern Republicans? Republicans more or less as you describe them Dr. Wilson. Either they are crazed moralists, neocons, Rockerfellerians or people actively looking to help big business as Republicans have always been since 1856 with a few Goldwater/Reagan types hanging on for dear life.
As for what happened in 1995, all I can say is that that it's hard to cut budgets and ax whole federal departments unless everyone is on the same page. And yet how did Tennessee and Kentucky Republicans react when some suggested axing the Tennessee Valley Authority? Did any Florida or Alabama or Texas Republicans willingly ask for NASA's elimination? Did Trent Lott suggest that Litton Shipyards in his home state didn't need to build any more ships? Did any South Carolina Republicans suggest that any of military bases in around Charelston be closed to save money? Did any Georgia Republicans ask that peanut subsides be eliminated?
Many of the early 1960s Southern Republicans were faithful followers of Goldwater and were willing to reduce the reliance of the South on the Federal Government the New Deal Democrats placed upon the South.
Then Strom Thurmond joined the GOP in 1964.
When he did so and was continually re-elected, it sent a signal that Southern Democrats could become Republicans and not be punished for it as attitudes towards the GOP changed in the South. Many like Trent Lott (who was William Colmer's former legislative assistant) did so, especially in the wake of McGovernite take-over of the Democrats in 1972. But in so doing, they did not change their ideological stripes at all and they were the ones who took over the party.
There's an old saying: "New Yorkers gave to the Federal Government. Texans took." As these Southern Democrats became Republicans to save their own electoral necks, did they change their stripes when it came to federal spending? No. Ronald Reagan never repudiated the New Deal, so why should they? In fact, it made it all the easier. And along the way, farmers became the welfare queens, more Southerners joined the military, and the region's dependence of government grew and grew and grew. Hypocrites do not make good revolutionaries. It's hard to cut one area of government when another area totally resists it and its even harder to lead an ideological "revolution" when some its leaders, like Tom DeLay and Phil Gramm, were the biggest hypocrites of all, demanding sacrfices from everyone while their home state continued to take home federal pork.
As you yourself said Dr. Wilson, "the Republicanization of the South has been a catastrophic net loss to conservatism." You are exactly right.
Dr. Wilson:
I hope this does not sound too pedantic, but it seems to me that the "Republican Revolution" of 1995 wasn't really a revolution. I don't recall any real attempt to alter the fundamental basis of the American Empire's power: its ability to buy off support from commoners with entitlement spending and the corporate/bureaucratic elite with tailored legislation and favors. Even the most significant of the measures of the Contract With America---the over-ballyhooed "welfare reform" of the mid-90s --wasn't all that extensive; most of its recipients simply arranged to get the same benefits under other program-names.
It also strikes me that the Democratic and Republican "parties" are simply two branches of the same statist ideology that I refer to as "American bureaucratic National Socialism". Any difference between Northern and Southern members of either branch of AmNatSoc is more a matter of rhetoric and target constituencies than of substance. Take a look at the various Presidential candidates of both branches: all of them (with the possible outlier/exception of Ron Paul) support foreign adventurism; all of them support the domestic Provider state, especially in the area of old-age entitlements; all of them (with the possible exceptions of Tancredo and Paul) are de facto supporters of open borders.
In 2008 the subjects of the Empire are faced with a choice between various clones of Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
I may be wrong--and if I am, do correct me !--but I (sadly) doubt it. Under such circumstances, isn't it likely that we are simply making much ado about not much ?
Your servant,
Lord Karth
ditto, My Lord.
Your humble servant,
the 'bill'
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#20: Allen Wilson: Jim Powell's _FDR's Folly_ picks up where Murray Rothbart's _American's Great Depression_ left off. With respect to forming political parties, Americans aren't as good at this as Europeans, at least not anymore, the Americans preferring the politics of personality -- perhaps because the visual image dominates the media. The local Ron Paul group is asking "What are we to do when his campaign fails, maybe as early as March?"
Did the "Republican Revolution" of 1994 happened because of the assault ban law of 1993?
The Republican Party is in a sorry state and the Democrats are even worse. That sums up the dilemma we voters find ourselves in when we are faced with a choice between the stupid and the evil, as the late Sam Francis put it. As an antidote to the Republicans' current malaise, they would do well to return to their roots as a nationalist party on the side of the white working man. This would mean stopping the exportation of our industrial base to China and an aggressive effort to send aliens back home. It would be wildly popular everywhere but Democratic Party HQ and Wall Street; perhaps even Prof. Wilson might approve.
The Republican party may have been nationalist but it was never, ever the party of the white working man, though it fooled many of them into thinking that state capitalism was good for labour. The Democratic party was the party of the white working man until it was taken over by Republican progressives beginning in the 1930s.
"As an antidote to the Republicans’ current malaise, they would do well to return to their roots as a nationalist party on the side of the white working man. This would mean stopping the exportation of our industrial base to China and an aggressive effort to send aliens back home. It would be wildly popular everywhere but Democratic Party HQ and Wall Street; perhaps even Prof. Wilson might approve." -Theodore M. Van Oosbree
Although I agree with your sentiment, and with another poster who actually explained how that could happen via ExIm Bank, the Export-Import Bank of American currently financing and insuring the off-shoring of american industry and so american jobs. And doing it WITH american taxpayer dollars via POLICY... And how this could hairpin turn 180 degrees also as a function of policy if the powers that be decided to do so...With the benefits ALSO going to them here at 'home' rather to them for off-shoring... Even tweedle dee and dumber's ears perk up to that jive...since they can serve the same masters and still get money & power! Good. I'm down with it too...dopey bastards... wuv'ya. a ho'is'a'ho'is'a'ho ok, cool.
Much as i hate to admit it sid has pointed out 'republicans' are the same as democrats except the republican 'non-revolution' ... was simply about guns. funny, almost - because as important as guns are...funny only because the people don't understand any of this except at the instinctual level and so since they are 'cognizant' at least therein and understandably FRIGHTENED, they WANT guns. Amen. This entire constitution is absurd as it stands today in contradistinction with the Articles of Confederation... in my opinion....Except in realizing once you ALSO disarm the citizenry after all of your sick, twisted chicanery to get the almighty dollar...via government, that's when they're Actually finished. So i'm with them and their correct instinct which i admire ... keep your guns, baby!!!!!!!! At least keep that - which the 2nd Amendment allows. Right on NRA!!!!!!!!
In the meantime sadly, as T. French pointed out - looks like as a sick, political matter - might be a long time before the american (decent, my heart is with them) actually Working-folks catch a break under this 'constitution' as decent working people, other than their 2nd Amendment...or they'd be in Actual chains without that. Maybe even on the menu...sadly. that's the other-side of human nature.
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The Republicans were objectively the party of the white working man in that they were opposed to the spread of black slave labor and to the importation of cheap manufactured goods into the USA. The Democrats supported the spread of slavery and their "free trade" ideology undercut the ability of white working men to compete with foreign labor. The Republicans have since adopted the Democrats' free trade ideology with predictable results. We now have the spread of semi-slave brown labor and the impoverishment of both black and white workers by the alienation of the American manufacturing base. Chronicles magazine rightfully deplores the effect of the free trade ideology on the American working classes but ignores the source: the Jeffersonian tradition of slave-based agrarianism and its hostility to cities and the people who live and work in them.
Michael, thank you for the reference. I guess I do not read as many 19th century Chicago newspapermen as I should. In any case I would probably consult the wisdom of Tennessean Sut Lovingood in matters of politics, the clergy, etc., before I would Mister Dooley.
Best,
R. Ivey
Mr. Van O., The Republicans of the 1850s and 60s claimed to be for "Free Labour." If you read the insider correspondence of the Republican leaders, you see that they wanted to do away with slavery so as to depress wages. The slaves had a lifetime private welfare system. They did not depress but rather kept up the wages of Northern workers (as well as providing cheap raw materials for factories). Freeing this pool of labour to survive by wages would depress the value of labour for the benefit of the Northern capitalists. The intelligent Northern labour leaders understood this and were very anti-Republican and always sided with the Southern Democrats. (They held mass meetings in NYC and Detroit to back John C. Calhoun and free trade. I refer you to the draft riots in NYC and other places against Republican exploitation of labour.) The same Republicans also, of course, pushed the tariff, which raised the prices of all goods for workers and everybody else, and the national bank system which allowed a private banking cartel to manipulate the currency to its own advantage by, among other things, reducing the value of the workers' money
Further, you ought to look into this: The Republicans during the War passed a contract labour law which facilitated bringing in gangs of immigrant workers---the obvious purpose being to keep wages down (as they said privately).
It is sad to see someone still believing in the old fraudulent, cynical propaganda of the Republican party. Your dislike of the South and your misunderstanding of the economic and social role
of slavery in American history has led you astray.
Although I am not a Southerner, I have no particular dislike for the South (nor am I particularly fond of Yankees). Neither do I have any unqualified political commitment to any political party. Political parties are pure instruments in my view and are owed no loyalty beyond what they earn by serving the public interest. In truth, the political system between 1865 and the 1960s achieved an equilibrium generally beneficial to the working man. The Republicans supported economic development while the Democrats made sure that working people were not left out in the cold. The two party system ensured that each party tended to cancel out the vices of the other. The Republican tendency to cater to capitalists and the wealthy was countered by the Democrats. The Democrats taste for demagoguery, war and economic nostrums (free silver, free trade) that would have damaged the economy was countered by the Republicans.
This healthy dialectic has long since broken down. The Republicans now support free trade, funny money, anti-white affirmative action policies, mass immigration and endless interventionism. The Democrats support all these too (in fact, they practically invented them). Their vices are now unchecked and have become the received political system of the ruling class. The only question for them is: who's going to run the show?
Sid Cundiff is correct that the Gingrich Revolution was largely a counter reaction to the so-called "Assault Rifle Ban" and to a lesser extent the Clinton Crime bill. I was involved on the periphery of this when it happened. It started out as an effort up in Washington state to kick the then speaker, Tom Foley, out of office. A motley group of software engineers, a retired naval officer and a screen writer/movie actor got together, and set up a PAC on the internet. They raised more than $25,000, and proceeded to support Foley's opponent Nethercutt. It took them 6 months or so of hard work, but they bounced the first sitting (or lying as the case may be) SPeaker of the House. WHen Gingrich became speaker, this group called the De-Foleyate Coalition, or DF8, contacted him, and told him what they had done. They expressed their concerns about the assault on the Second AMendment under the Clintonoids, and said they would prefer to work with him, but if he did not work to repeal this crap, they would start to work to unseat him, too. GIngrich met with them, and some senior NRA officials and agreed that the laws should be repealed. Things were progressing until the Reichstag Fire event at the Murrah Federal Building, when everything came to a speedy halt. One of the main players in this group,which changed its name to Noban, was a gent named Jim Bohan, AKA Lobo Azul, or the Old Blue Howler. He was instrumental also in getting a new governor elected in Louisiana, and in getting concealed carry put in place in that state. He also was getting death threats, and also threats to his family there in Yoakum, Texas. He died of a heart attack at his computer keyboard. Scott RIchert should be proud to know that it was a Macintosh. My impression is that the so-called Republican Revolution was an intentional farce. Any modest reforms introduced by Gingrich and pushed through the House, would be killed in the Senate by Bob Dole. A lot of sound and fury, but nothing of significance. The "Assault Rifle Ban" finally lapsed due to a sunset provision, but it will undoubtedly be re-installed under the upcoming Clinton co-presidency.
Mr. Van Oosbree, you really should refrain from huffing glue before posting.
Civility please, Mr. Roberts! Personal abuse is a symptom of a weak mind.
I agree, sir. Mine was a civil response and was offered as a sincere suggestion.
Thanks, Dr. Wilson, for that excellent explanation in #35.
Thanks, Ed Roberts for #38!
I have mentioned this on another post, but I grew up supporting the GOP as the "conservative party." The realities of the current regime slapped me squarely in the face and made me ask some uncomfortable questions. Is the GOP conservative, or was it ever? Depends on your definition I suppose. Certainly it is doing its best to conserve power and wealth in the hands of those who really are the foundation of the party (and always have been). We used to call them Rockefeller Republicans. Yes, southern Democrats liked their "pork" Did northern Republicans not like theirs? I have always wondered why, while voting and supporting Republicans over the years, the political leaders I have most admired in my life were conservative Democrats. I have dipped a little more into the history of the parties recently and done some old fashioned mental cogitation to understand why I felt this way. Anyone is free to correct me if I have missed it, but it seems to me the reason (in Dr. Wilson's words) why conservative Democrats have been better than Republicans even in the area of "pork" is that the Dems were tied to traditionalism and localism. The Democratic pork tended to benefit the "home folks:" locally owned businesses and farms, and rural and small town people. GOP pork on the other hand seemed to flow to railroads, steel companies, and international banking and financial interests who have no sense of local pride, tradition or loyalty. The old Democrats were party men, no doubt, but only so long as the party line didn't hurt the locals. It seems that Republicans now follow the "party line" no matter where it leads. The Trent Lott affair was pretty illustrative. When Bush and his lackies began screeching for Lott to apologize for his remarks about Strom Thurmond, the proper response by Lott and other republican senators and congressmen should have been, "Mind your own damned business." Instead, the machinery went into action and across the board the GOP slobbered out its insistence that it wasn't racist and didn't associate itself with such racist stuff (Surely there wasn't an anti-Southern bias here was there?). So much for the "southern strategy." I can't imagine the same thing happening to, say Richard Russell, if he had done the same thing years ago. Yes the national dems might have squawked some, but I think there would have been enough of Russell's supporters in the party to shut them up or marginalize them. When FDR tried to purge the conservative Democrats he was usually unsuccessful.
I find it interesting that anyone would complain about our interventionist state, whether at home or abroad. It has been found in our nation's history that when everything is left alone, chaos ensues. Recall WWI, WWII, The Great Depression, the Civil-Rights movement; when the government and its people take no course of action things tend to go downhill. We have to remain actively involved in geo-politics and have a government concerned about the well being of the citizens it serves or we shall slip into depression and it will be our eventual downfall.