Conservatives: Are they nuttier than ever? or just more powerful?

[greenman3610]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/why-conservatives-are-still-crazy-after-all-these-years-20120316

You hear a lot about Ronald Reagan from the conservatives-are-nuttier-than-ever-before crowd: They praise him as a compromiser and point out, correctly, that he raised taxes seven of his eight years as president, in stark contrast to today's Republicans, who refuse to raise them at all. Here's the thing, as I wrote amid the hosannas after he died in 2004, during the awful reign of Bush: "It is a quirk of American culture that each generation of nonconservatives sees the right-wingers of its own generation as the scary ones, then chooses to remember the right-wingers of the last generation as sort of cuddly. In 1964, observers horrified by Barry Goldwater pined for the sensible Robert Taft, the conservative leader of the 1950s. When Reagan was president, liberals spoke fondly of sweet old Goldwater."


And so it goes: Reagan is now deemed one of those reality-based conservatives whose disappearance we now lament. Wrong. Deeply informed by the whackadoodle far-right, Reagan at earlier points in his career loved to quote its nostrums: that according to Communists blueprints "by 1970 the world will be all slave or all free"; that, as he said in a 1975 interview – rehabilitating a quote supposedly from Vladimir Lenin but in fact made up by the founder of the John Birch Society – once Lenin and his comrades had organized the "hordes of Asia," then conquered Latin America, "the United States, the last bastion of capitalism, [would] fall into their outstretched hands like overripe fruit." But he was also a good politician, and as such he learned to avoid saying things that disadvantaged him politically. The reason he didn't effectively fight tax increases was because, with a Democratic Congress, he didn't have the power to do so. Every time he actually had to sign one he made his preferences perfectly clear, blaming wicked liberals for forcing his hand and adding that this was why liberalism had to be defeated — so that he wouldn't have to sign one again.



Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/why-conservatives-are-still-crazy-after-all-these-years-20120316#ixzz1pUqezjR1

[XanaDUer]

1. Seems like both to me

Nt

[CrispyQ]

4. I agree - both.

Dumbing down the public by attacking public education has increased their numbers.

The media giving them a microphone without ever questioning their lies, has inflated their egos.

They think they are invincible.

As they lurch ever more rightward into the realm of crazy, people are starting to see that they are not conservative. Not. At. All.

At some point, the dems, who aren't nearly so liberal as the media likes to portray them, must look pretty good to a conservative from the 70s-80s. They will flock to the dem party & the democratic wing of the democratic party will finally be silenced completely.

[FogerRox]

2. 1935: Lets consider the coup plot to overthrow FDR

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. The birchers have taken over.

[Motown_Johnny]

5. More desperate

The demographics are against them and they can't reach out to minorities without driving away portions of their base.

They have lost their advantage on foreign policy and national security. The Iraq war is a stain that can't be removed and "The Bush Doctrine" isn't even a punch line anymore. Without their ability to war monger they are severely crippled.

DADT has been repealed and 8 States plus D.C. allow same sex marriage. Women are hitting back after attacks on their rights. Even medical marijuana now exists in some states. Their social agenda is slowly failing.

Plus their economic policies have failed and progressive economic policies are succeeding. By the end of a second Pres. Obama term the contrast here should be unmistakable even to those who have been kept uneducated by those same Republicans.

They have even gone so far as to try and make voting harder for Democratic leaning groups because they know the time is approaching when they simply can't win.


Death throws, clutching at straws, taking long shots. Call it what you will but the inevitable approaches and even they can see it.

[RobertEarl]

6. More nutty, less powerful

Hard to believe they could be more nutty than Reagan, but they've worked hard to be more nutty. They are a success!!

Less powerful than they were when Reagan was their King because we have the internet now. They can only fool a few people these days, while in Reagan's day they could fool the majority.

Which makes them act even nuttier because they are losing power.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

7. It's more an issue of religion.

the political conservatism is a consequence. It seems the last few years every time
someone I knew twenty, thirty years ago gets in touch, they've become evangelicals.
They are incapable of separating their faith from their politics and if they had it their
way they would gladly see this country become a theocracy. I find them as fanatical
as anything we see in the Islamic countries. Just as racism has been simmering and
hidden for decades, the religious right is poised to take control politically.

[Populist_Prole]

8. Sounds valid to me

It seems everyone who will vote for a conservative no matter what is either due to religion, as you say ( and I've seen ) or the gun issue.

They pretty much try to conceal that fact though: They'll always try to promote their conservatism for ( public consumption ) by first using the economic argument, or the flag-waving patriotism argument, thinking ( or hoping ) that might "sell" conservatism to me or others. It's only when those issues don't resonate with whoever they are trying to convince do they have to fall back on the real reason they support conservatives: "God & Guns".