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xchrom

(108,903 posts)
Mon Apr 15, 2013, 07:16 AM Apr 2013

How Right-Wingers in Congress Came to Represent a Whole Different Country

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/how-right-wingers-congress-came-represent-whole-different-country



With an assist from some long-term demographic trends, House Republicans have redistricted, propagandized and policed themselves into another country.

As a result, they have become unmoored from the political incentives that typically drive law-makers' decision-making process. Public opinion no longer sways them, and that is creating a potentially insurmountable problem for the party establishment's efforts to broaden the GOP's appeal beyond angry old white people.

House Republicans may care about the GOP's national fortunes in the abstract, but too many are impervious to what the public at large wants because of the nature of the districts they represent. At the same time, a steady stream of spin from the conservative media provides insulation from the realities of American politics, and deep-pocketed outside groups punish Republicans for any deviation from right-wing orthodoxy.

This isn't just a serious problem for establishment Republicans. It's ground our government to a halt, as Congress is virtually incapable of action, even on issues where there is something approaching a consensus among the public at large -- like universal background checks for firearm purchases, for example. They're supported by 80-90 percent of voters, but face a steep uphill climb in the House.
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How Right-Wingers in Congress Came to Represent a Whole Different Country (Original Post) xchrom Apr 2013 OP
Well said... Buffalo Bull Apr 2013 #1
There are a few things that stand out... JHB Apr 2013 #2
good reply Buffalo Bull Apr 2013 #3

Buffalo Bull

(138 posts)
1. Well said...
Mon Apr 15, 2013, 07:33 AM
Apr 2013


I am not sure when it happened but the GOP jumped through Alice's looking class and are lost in a logic-less land that hold up as down and in as out. A strange world were a modestly left President can become a Kenyan born Communist, who is conspiring with the UN to build a FEMA army that will enslave us and bring about a monarchy.
You are correct in observing that this shift has crippled the country's ability to do even the most basic Gov't functions.

JHB

(37,128 posts)
2. There are a few things that stand out...
Mon Apr 15, 2013, 08:05 AM
Apr 2013

In the 1970s, the hard-liner anti-Soviets vs. detente. There were plenty of "hawk" Democrats in that camp (the "Scoop Jackson wing", including many budding neoconservatives), but it was Reagan Republicans who embraced it fully and opened up the throttle on it. Reality eventually revealed that the Reaganites' estimates and projections wildly overestimated Soviet capabilities, and in a number of places careened into outright paranoid fantasy.

In other words, a group that declared that they knew what was really going on, and are still undeterred (and still comfortably compensated) despite being fundamentally wrong.


Then turn to the tag team of newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh. The current form of weaponized vitriol as a standard operating procedure in Republican politics can be directly traced to these two (Newt among politicians, Rush among the electorate). They normalized the current standard of treating Democrats as traitors that had to be resisted at every turn.

Buffalo Bull

(138 posts)
3. good reply
Mon Apr 15, 2013, 10:10 AM
Apr 2013


I first voted in 1975, back when the ideological lines between the parties were not so sharply drawn.
Wallace and Jackson as Democrats, Jacob Javits as GOP.
In western New York those line were further muddled by the fact that there were and still are virtually no Republicans in Buffalo, and yet Buffalo is hardly a Progressive stronghold. In the late 70's we elected James Griffin as our mayor who was a Democrat, who was proud to welcome Randall Terry to town and who sucker punched a county official as the two were entering our minor league ball park, later that year Griffin won reelection unopposed.
The sharpening of the partisan divide was forced by the GOP, as apolitical tactic was brilliant and effective. It marginalized their moderates and took the Democrats conservatives.
It seems to me that now they have overplayed their hand and are too far ahead (behind?) the curve with the electorate.
The challenge to our party is to welcome back the moderates( GOP can keep the James Griffins) without losing our purpose. That makes me feel a center-left approach could yield the best results
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