How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich

[PoliticAverse]

The nation is still recovering from a crushing recession that sent unemployment hovering above nine percent for two straight years. The president, mindful of soaring deficits, is pushing bold action to shore up the nation's balance sheet. Cloaking himself in the language of class warfare, he calls on a hostile Congress to end wasteful tax breaks for the rich. "We're going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share," he thunders to a crowd in Georgia. Such tax loopholes, he adds, "sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary – and that's crazy."

Preacherlike, the president draws the crowd into a call-and-response. "Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver," he demands, "or less?"

The crowd, sounding every bit like the protesters from Occupy Wall Street, roars back: "MORE!"

The year was 1985. The president was Ronald Wilson Reagan. Today's Republican Party may revere Reagan as the patron saint of low taxation. But the party of Reagan – which understood that higher taxes on the rich are sometimes required to cure ruinous deficits – is dead and gone. Instead, the modern GOP has undergone a radical transformation, reorganizing itself around a grotesque proposition: that the wealthy should grow wealthier still, whatever the consequences for the rest of us.

Read the rest: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-gop-became-the-party-of-the-rich-20111109

[Skink]

1. they are more about Feudalism now than ever.

[baldguy]

2. It's not about wealth; it's about power.

Being obscenely wealthy is just a perk.

[libinnyandia]

3. Republicans are ignorant of history.

You would think there would be some republicans who remember the old days when taxes on the rich were higher and that the higher taxes didn't slow job growth and in fact made possible government programs that helped the economy and helped the average person. You never hear any Republicans saying maybe we should raise rates on those who can pay more.

[certainot]

4. the important question is how... the talk radio monopoly made the difference

democracy was made to keep greed and money at bay but reagan killed the fairness doctrine and americans allowed those forces a monopoly of 1000 of the loudest radio stations in the country. they are fed by think tanks and used to message over and attack anything liberal and democratic with no challenge or correction from the left- that coordinated unchallenged repetition is unique in media and allows them to short circuit the normal democratic feed back mechanisms and create made to order constituencies in days. now it's gone off the deep end, with the country following and a major party incapable of even recognizing global warming because their king limbaugh will not allow it- the party of lincoln became the party of limbaugh.

[SheilaT]

5. It goes back at least to the late 1960's. I can recall

my older brother in the election of 1968 making some comment acknowledging that he was not as rich as he ought to be to be voting Republican, but he was voting Republican nonetheless. He clearly had upper mobility aspirations, and although over the years he's done reasonably well in terms of job and income, he is no where near the top 1%, and I suspect not even in the top 10%. He's still something of a conservative jerk, and we almost never discuss politics.

[jwirr]

6. I think it goes further back than that - Hoover.

[CatWoman]

7. kick

:kick: