A brief, 90-year history of Republicans calling Democrats 'socialists'

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A brief, 90-year history of Republicans calling Democrats ‘socialists’This isn't a new phenomenon.

IAN MILLHISER at Think Progress

https://thinkprogress.org/a-history-of-republicans-calling-democrats-socialists-777bcd2b7a6d/

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This is not the first time, and it won’t be the last, that the Republican Party tried to associate its opponents with socialism — the belief that the government should take control of the means of production. President Donald Trump used his recent State of the Union address to claim that “here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country.” Vice President Mike Pence told the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend that “America will never be a socialist country.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in an opinion piece that could win Pulitzer Prize for its outstanding contribution to the field of false choices, writes that America “needs strong borders — not socialism.”

To be fair, the lines between “socialism” and other forms of government are often blurred. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), for example, sometimes describes himself as a “socialist,” despite the fact that he does not advocate public ownership of the entire productive sector.

Nevertheless, the GOP has a long history of making facile comparisons between ordinary Democratic policy proposals and “socialism” — a history that predates Sanders by generations. Indeed, the socialism smear even predates our modern-day political coalitions, with the Republican Party commonly understood as the economically conservative party and the Democrats as economic moderates and liberals.

The socialism smear shaped the modern GOP. The idea built its coalition, defined many of its objections to the Democratic alternative, and helped form the partisan divide that is so familiar today. The socialism smear targeted the New Deal. It was Ronald Reagan’s weapon against Medicare, Newt Gingrich’s weapon against “Hillarycare,” and the entire GOP’s weapon against Obamacare.


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