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What Does the Republican Party Stand For?
January 1, 2020 at 1:03 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 156 Comments
https://politicalwire.com/2020/01/01/what-does-the-republican-party-stand-for/
"SNIP......
Stuart Stevens: In a long-forgotten era say, four years ago such a question would have elicited a very different answer. Though there was disagreement over specific issues, most Republicans would have said the party stood for some basic principles: fiscal sanity, free trade, strong on Russia, and that character and personal responsibility count. Today its not that the Republican Party has forgotten these issues and values; instead, it actively opposes all of them.
Republicans are now officially the character doesnt count party, the personal responsibility just proves you have failed to blame the other guy party, the deficit doesnt matter party, the Russia is our ally party, and the Im-right-and-you-are-human-scum party. Yes, its President Trumps party now, but it stands only for what he has just tweeted.
A party without a governing theory, a higher purpose or a clear moral direction is nothing more than a cartel, a syndicate that exists only to advance itself. There is no organized, coherent purpose other than the acquisition and maintenance of power.
......SNIP"
Cary
(11,746 posts)Generic Brad
(14,275 posts)And when they get the power they sought, they use it to cheat so they can remain in power.
lastlib
(23,286 posts)The answer I came up with was:
1) Wealth for the wealthy;
2) Power for the powerful;
3) Comfort for the comfortable;
4) Poverty for the poor;
5) Affliction for the afflicted.
I can only add, "staying in power."
Pantagruel
(2,580 posts)A party so devoid of a moral compass they throw their full support to a self-admitted sexual predator who deliberately writes border policies he knows will cause children to be caged.Tough to sink any lower in the pursuit of power.
hermetic
(8,310 posts)n/t
dalton99a
(81,570 posts)GoCubsGo
(32,088 posts)And, to hell anyone else who gets in the way of that. It's all "I got mine. Screw you. And, I will never have 'mine' until I own everything."
NRaleighLiberal
(60,019 posts)Takket
(21,625 posts)THIS nails it!!!!!!!!!!! Every time he opens his poison filled mouth the ENTIRE PARTY molds itself around whatever INSANITY he spews
lame54
(35,321 posts)KY_EnviroGuy
(14,494 posts)Everything else is just fluff and distraction for votes........
Pathwalker
(6,598 posts)Racist
Evil
Perverts
Using
Bullshit
Lies
Is
Crazy
And
Nasty
Shit!
TRUMP=
Total
Racists
Under
Master
Putin
pwb
(11,287 posts).
JoeOtterbein
(7,702 posts)Regardless of what our current front runner, and some of his supporters, may think.
applegrove
(118,778 posts)DanieRains
(4,619 posts)Next question?
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,036 posts)BHDem53
(1,061 posts)Atticus
(15,124 posts)with, the ultimate goal of the Republican party can be reduced to two words: cheap labor.
Behind all the racism, bigotry and "concern for the hardworking taxpayer" is a small cadre of the ultra-wealthy and their mega-corporations who demand that the rest of us "lesser beings" serve them. As long as we reproduce in numbers sufficient to provide their every desire, they consider "living wage" an irrelevant concept.
Response to applegrove (Original post)
Atticus This message was self-deleted by its author.
VOX
(22,976 posts)Of course they will try to play those ancient cards, and the slush-brained zombies will let themselves be suckered again.
But to anyone with a few functioning brain cells, Republicans have shot their bolt, and are now engaged in their last-ditch act of a dying beast: lashing out with rage.
Republicans have gone all-in with cruel and lawless behavior that favors mega-corporations and the wealthy, and is backed by the muscle of Putin and impotent low-information white men (Sturmabteilung the new Brownshirts).
And they are head-over-heels in love with a mobbed-up, lawless emperor fomenting fascism, racism, hatred for the other, and whos hand-in-glove with neo-nazi and white nationalist groups.
Republicans have been headed this way for the better part of a century, and now theyre going out like a supernova.
Dennis Donovan
(18,770 posts)By Stuart Stevens
Jan. 1, 2020 at 10:00 a.m. EST
Stuart Stevens is a writer and GOP political consultant who is working with a political action committee that backs Bill Weld for president.
Heres a question: Does anybody have any idea what the Republican Party stands for in 2020?
One way to find out: As you are out and about marking the new year, it is likely you will come across a Republican to whom you can pose the question, preferably after a drink or two, as that tends to work as truth serum: Look, I was just wondering: Whats the Republican Party all about these days? What does it, well, stand for?
Im betting the answer is going to involve a noun, a verb and either socialism or Democrats. Republicans now partly define their party simply as an alternative to that other party, as in, Im a Republican because Im not a Democrat.
In a long-forgotten era say, four years ago such a question would have elicited a very different answer. Though there was disagreement over specific issues, most Republicans would have said the party stood for some basic principles: fiscal sanity, free trade, strong on Russia, and that character and personal responsibility count. Today its not that the Republican Party has forgotten these issues and values; instead, it actively opposes all of them.
Republicans are now officially the character doesnt count party, the personal responsibility just proves you have failed to blame the other guy party, the deficit doesnt matter party, the Russia is our ally party, and the Im-right-and-you-are-human-scum party. Yes, its President Trumps party now, but it stands only for what he has just tweeted.
A party without a governing theory, a higher purpose or a clear moral direction is nothing more than a cartel, a syndicate that exists only to advance itself. There is no organized, coherent purpose other than the acquisition and maintenance of power.
</snip>
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)From The Atlantic: (entire article worth a read)
"The United States has fallen into a state of utter political nihilism, where there is no limit to what one party can say or do in order to achieve and maintain power. Worse, there is no meaning other than political theater behind it. The consequences of this political nihilism will be catastrophic and will reverberate down through the decades of the 21st century. If you doubt this, think of climate change, the global economy, and U.S foreign policy concerning NATO and other strategic alliances. Be afraid, be very afraid!"
[snip]
"To review, there is no concrete, structural, real-world, tangible thing holding our society together. It is a shared consensus on the (slippery) meaning of words, and on the processes by which our institutions operate. Reality check: If humans were instantaneously to disappear from the face of the planet, what would the Constitution really be? A piece of paper with black squiggles on it, functionally indistinguishable from toilet paper. That is the extent of the solid, reliable fundament on which everything inside our borders rests. Everything else is normative, a shared consensus of meaning and consequence.
This is why the there are no facts meme that you have been highlighting is so important. If there are no facts, if there is no observable truth to which we strive to adhere, then there is nothing. We have reached anarchy and nihilism, and whoever has the biggest muscle and the biggest gun prevails: the absolute state of nature. We start all over again.
And everything that keeps our lives stable and predictable absolutely depends on observing those norms. The things which feel solid and concrete that we expect when we wake up in the morningfrom coffee, to warmth, to having a job, to having a retirement account on which to dependall of it is absolutely dependent on the observance of those norms. We take the fragility of our lives and of our society much, much, much too much for granted. And the stability which we have come to expectindeed, to believe is solidis as fragile as a sandcastle approaching high tide when the norms are disturbed.
And the fragility of domestic norms are ironclad compared to the norms that have developed over the centuries internationally. Communication between countries and foreign cultures is based upon far more fragile, and even less definable norms. There is no constitution, no law books, no Supreme Court, not even a shared language. This is what makes the foreign service establishment SOOO essential, and SOOO important to be cultivated and treasured and respected. Something as (domestically) innocuous as a congratulatory phone call can, internationally, be the basis for withdrawing formal consular recognition. In international diplomatic parlance, the mere placement of an eyelash can have profound meaning and devastating consequences. And the normative fragility internationally can have tremendous, lasting, destabilizing consequences.
I reiterate that we take our stability for granted. We fly from coast to coast. We fly internationally. But look at what happened when stability was shattered in Iraq, in Libya, in Syria. At least with the murderous dictators in power in those countries, the consequences were contained. When we shattered the stability by our interventions, the puss has poured all over the world, and it has destabilized cultures to the point that we have Trump.
Yes. I tie the rise of Donald Trump directly to GWBs intervention in Iraq. (Yes, we are the strongest power in the world. But we are not omnipotent. Our strength is in our willingness to exercise self-restraint. We were the strongest power in history of the world on the day before the invasion of Iraq occurred. Once we invaded, our weaknesses and our vulnerabilities became blazingly obvious.)
As a species, we have built an elaborate structure of norms to protect us from the absolute state of nature. The absolute state of nature is the only concrete thing which can, with absolute assurance, stop the fall from the dissolution of norms.
In the last election I have heard many, many seemingly intelligent people say that they voted for Trump because everything is corrupt, and they just wanted to blow things up. I think these people fail realistically to account for how little in their lives they can truly count on. International stability and predictability and normativity rest on a hairs breadth. And the degree to which Trumps ignorant shenanigans can permanently disrupt international stability (not to mention domestic stability) and the normative structures that maintain what stability there is, is deeply, deeply unappreciated in the response to the Taiwan affair, and, indeed, to the election of Trump.
This is a justification, if not for panic, then for deep, deep, deep concern, and extraordinary intervention.
applegrove
(118,778 posts)stuff a bit.
applegrove
(118,778 posts)ooky
(8,929 posts)Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(108,192 posts)and not much more.