neocons did not "hijack" the repuke party.

[leftofthedial]

I've read post after post here trying to excuse the "real" conservatives and the "real" republicans. After all, it's not their fault that a criminal gang of traitors sneakily took over their party while they weren't looking. Progressives should "reach out" to them. We should even make our own principles more centrist in order to appeal to them.

I call bullshit.

The authoritarian, freedom-hating, greed-driven, might-makes right fascism that IS the neocon movement is the very beating heart of conservative philosophy. At its core, the repuke party has always hated democracy, has always fought to achieve individual wealth and power for their own sakes and everyone else be damned, has always viewed society and civilization as evils and has always hated the common people of America. The neocons are just more honest about their true ambitions than most repukes are. And don't forget that the repuke mainstream LOVED king george and his gang more than Nicole Ritchie loves puking up cheeseburgers.

repukes are the enemies of America, the enemies of freedom and the enemies of humankind.

[Rex]

1. Ironically it was a Republican that warned us about all this.

Even the father of conservatism, Edmund Burke was totally against England in it's rule over America.

I think it started with Nixon and really went wrong in the 1980s when 'everyone' was running around yelling "greed is good" after seeing the movie Wall Street. Reagan really fucked things up.

[leftofthedial]

2. Ike was the last Republican worthy of an ounce of respect

They LOVED raygun and both king georges (until the georges screwed up)

they never learn from their mistakes

they keep spouting the same kneejerk nonsense in place of principles

they constitutionally (pun intended) hate the constitution

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. The republican party was against Social Security, Medicare,

Child Labor laws, Unions, you name it. They have been shit ever since the industrial revolution.

[hfojvt]

5. the party of Lincoln was at least the anti-slavery party

and Teddy Roosevelt and Taft presided over some progressive legislation. Not to mention that Progressives like Wisconsin's LaFollette were Republicans.

[bluedogyellowdog]

13. LaFollette

The old progressive Republicans like Lafollette, Lemke, Teddy Roosevelt, George Norris and so on came from an era when what party you belonged to hinged on geography and family tradition more than anything. They were from states where the Repubs were the only functioning party, or from Republican families. So there was a situation where the local Republican party had competing progressive and conservative wings. There were some states like Minnesota and Wisconsin where the party you belonged to depended on what part of the state you lived in or what synod of the Lutheran Church you were raised in, and some states like North Dakota where there was no Democratic party to speak of, just the Republicans, the Non Partisan League and a few smaller parties. We had the same thing in the South in the 1950s and 60s in the Democratic party. A progressive wing at odds with the larger conservative wing.

The Eisenhower and Taft Republicans, and even Nixon and Ford, were from a later era still very much removed from today. They governed in an era when the New Deal was considered settled national consensus. So we got some progressive legislation out of them (Eisenhower: Interstate Highway System and desegregating the high schools; Nixon: the EPA and Consumer Product Safety Commission and so on.) But they weren't progressives at heart, just biding their time while the conservative wing of the party was in ferment.

Times have changed - the idea of a progressive Republican is long past and I doubt there will ever be such a thing again. What is going on today is many conservatives trying to save their own political hides by distancing themselves from the Bush administration and the neocons. Case in point, John McCain. That doesn't make them progressives, not by a longshot.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

20. but so were the southern democrats

face it, our nation's history is riddled with crappy decisions and worse. But all of those issues seem passe and naive compare to these assholes.

[LaPera]

4. Exactly. It's always been republican ideology & philosophy....Now

with the republicans in control of a one party system...the republicans are simply implementing their longtime agenda...Corporate fascism, world imperialism and destroying Unions/workers and citizens civil rights.

The republicans are still lying about the obvious and pretending to have democratic ideals and sympathy...Anyone with any perception and a brain long ago would of recognized the republican "think tanks" fascist intent.

Fear and "never-ending war" makes it easy for them to accomplish this.

[hfojvt]

6. I remember being at the University of Minnesota in the early 1980s

Most of my friends in the dorm were born again Christians. One was going to law school and he was telling a story of how he went to a Republican caucus and the born-agains took over because they had more numbers and he was laughing at how pi$$ed off the old guard was when they kept being out-voted. At least at that grass roots level, they did take over, and I think the born-agains are big fans of PNAC. There used to be many pre-Gingrich Republicans who had alot more class and honor, they were not total jack-booted Nazis. There was no Limbaugh, Coulter, Falwell, O'Reilly, Hannity. Nixon did not have a Fox news to catapault his propaganda. He had Dan Rather in his face and Woodward too, who now has his head so far up Bush's a$$ that he can clean the back of his teeth.
"Cox's refusal to drop his subpoena led to the "Saturday night massacre" on October 20, 1973, when Nixon compelled the resignations of Richardson and then his deputy William Ruckelshaus in a search for someone in the Justice Department willing to fire Cox. This search ended with Solicitor General Robert Bork, and the new acting department head dismissed the special prosecutor. Public reaction was immediate and intense, with protestors standing along the sidewalks outside the White House holding signs saying "HONK TO IMPEACH," and hundreds of cars driving by honking their horns."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal
A bunch of Republicans voted to impeach Nixon. Today's Republicans would not.

[leftofthedial]

22. Since WWII, the repukes weren't "jack-booted Nazis"

They wore Florsheims.



They were more than enthusiastic about the fascist policies that the neocons embody.

[IChing]

7. Eisenhower was liberal compared to Goldwater a man who loved

the military industrial complex
much more
as compared to Ike.............................Goldwater admitted he was wrong on some of his beliefs later in life.

However,
compared to Truman or Stevenson,
who ran against Ike (john Kennedy as VP)

These were Democracts.
and Ike was a Republican

[Marr]

8. Neocons *are* a faction of the Republican Party- they're different

from the more traditional conservatives- but only in one way: The Neocons embrace all the things that traditional conservatives used to hide, and instead just call them virtues.

The conservatives meddled in foreign affairs at the behest of big business just as the Neocons do, but they had to use proxy armies like the Contras. They hid it.

The conservatives hated the working person just like the Neocons do, but they buried their policies in lots of "trickle down" talk. They jigged the tax laws this way and that, constantly screwing the middle class and the poor, but an inch at a time. Neocons just say "outsourcing is good for us", and it's very clear who they mean by "us". They come out in the open and hand tax dollars to the wealthy while putting the screws to the poor, and just "what you gonna do about it?".

Neocons are just conservatives with the pretty tablecloth removed.

[midnight]

11. They call them virtues when they ought to be called vices.

[leftofthedial]

23. yup.

rabid hyenas in wolves' clothing

[Dover]

9. I think BOTH parties have been infiltrated by the global corp. mafia

and we need to realize that we are now under their control. They have basically destroyed, looted and dismantled THIS country, it's laws and government like they have Iraq. Just without bloodshed because there has been no real resistance.

Better stop looking for the White Knight and think seriously about what WE can and must do.

[leftofthedial]

24. through the institutionalized bribery that is lobbying

and the absurd escalation of the costs and time required to campaign, corporations now own our government. The DLC is every bit as pro-corporate as the repukes. The differences are slight and revolve primarily around style and which corporations benefit most directly.

[marions ghost]

10. it's true

there are no "real" Republicans. They supported the Neocons without question until their mutual agenda got a little too exposed. Anyone who thinks that the Repugs 'balance' the Dems is dreaming. We need some new political organizations. The old paradigms are dysfunctional.

There are only "real" people left --ie. those who still have a few brain cells to work with. Some of them are Democrats. But not many people with any intelligence would be a Repug these days.

[sweetheart]

12. A failed system

No voter is able to vote honestly, as parties do not represent the politics of
actual people, but to keep the whole thing from breaking down, we are coerced by
a constant propaganda barrage of identity pledges where we re-affirm our consensus
to being 'american', over and over, and by this sucker pitch, inherit the corporate
mass we have no control over as 'ours' and are willing to send our babies to die
for its latest blunders.

No neocons did not hyjak it, it has been degenerating for some time now, and as the
thugs have risen, intelligence has left for the 4 winds, and all that is left is the
small greedy hearts of the evilest men who outstayed people who don't have any
consensus with thuggery, and sadly were they not indoctrinated, they would rebel,
but instead moan to the breakdown in systems they have never and will never have any power in.

Such is the common persons' life that the empire will at worst kill them, or curse them
to a life of slavery, but that has been the american way of racist servitude since its
formation, and it is not one nation with liberty and justice for all, but the very
antithesis of that, a nation of repression and enslavement for all.

[canetoad]

14. Got that out of your system?

You can tell me to swivel or not. Makes no difference to me. Across the globe I'm looking at a country tearing itself apart. Instead of cultivating the moderate republicans, you are intent on painting all with one huge swipey brush.

That's all fine if you desire war. Get off your arse and lead a revolution, but remember, the foot soldiers of any revolution are the thugs.

I understand the frustration felt by good hearted, liberal Americans, but this kind of thinking is wrong, divisive, inflammatory. Acch, nothing I say makes any difference, Ima smoke a J and contemplate the end of western society.

[Irreverend IX]

15. Neocons are quite different from traditional Repubs.

Whatever other characteristics they had, Republicans of decades past had a fairly coherent ideology. Neocons really don't believe in anything apart from their personal empowerment, and they'll freely mix and match whatever belief systems suit them at any given time. For instance, traditional Republicans were fairly steadfast in their opposition to big government, while neocons spout small-government rhetoric while creating the most unwieldy bureaucracy in US history (the DHS). The Republicans weren't hijacked so much as they gave their party to the neocon movement. After the dust of the Nixon era settled, they had no ideas or principles left to offer voters and so decided to embrace the pursuit of power for its own sake and pushed the "greed is good" idea to the public.

[canetoad]

17. Good points

Although I belive it is naive to assert that a group of policians pushed any idea onto the populace that was not already brewing.

A good politician reads the mood of the electorate and responds. I'm not saying that's good, but it's what happens. They break their necks trying to lick the backsides of the people who keep them in continued employment.

In the age of quick vids and sound bites, there is a percentage of the audience who will take at face value anything they are told. Thats just human nature, not fancy stats. It's all in how they package the message - the one who plays the most mind games gets the reaction. You can't blame people for reacting like Pavlov's dogs if they have been conditioned for their whole lives.

[Irreverend IX]

25. Politicians manipulate people by using their potential opinions.

I think that in the early 80s, when the baby boomers were moving into middle management positions and buying their first "real" houses, they could have gone a few different ways. Reagan convinced them that greed is good and there's no principle higher than the law of the jungle. But if there had been a few different headlines and a Democratic president, the boomers could have just as easily been convinced that it was their generation's turn to join together and build a better nation as the "greatest generation" before them did. The boomers had the potential to go either way, and Reagan's gang steered them onto the self-centered path once they took power.

[JHB]

16. Yes, and the notion that "Bush Hijacked the Reagan Legacy" is equally...

...full of it.

Bush is the "Reagan Legacy". He's just following in the footsteps Reagan really made: increasing the president's own "big government" powers, big-money givaways to rich supporters, and sticking the working stiffs with the bill.

[marions ghost]

21. yes

the turning point was Reagan.

How naive people were then.

[leesa]

18. I agree. I think it's nonsense when people refer to those "true

Republicans" This is their philosophy...they have finally done what they have always wanted to do and it is as ugly as everyone predicted. This is unregulated out-of-control capitalism, a massively bloated corporate and military welfare system while social services have been drowned in the bathtub. It's a return to a monarchy with fascist overtones.

It's their wetdream come true.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

19. I can name some fine repukes, starting with Abe.

Yours is too broad a brush.

We have been blessed with enlightened leaders and pols on both sides of the aisle; just as we have been cursed with cheats, frauds, liars, war-mongers, neocons, and bullshit artists. Also from both sides of the aisle. Today's conservatives would scare the pants off of GOP conservatives from just 15 years ago. Today's democrats would dishearten and depress liberals and moderates from that same period, not because of their stances, but because of their spineless behavior in times of danger. Don't forget, the Democratic Party's history can be considered sordid, as well. Think of Jim Crow in the South and you will get my point.

I agree with some of what you say, but even a despicable guy like Nixon passed social welfare legislation, he signed the EPA into law, he directed SALT talks, he fixed social security, he expanded medical benefits, - hell, in some ways, he was more liberal and democratic than some of today's spineless yellow bellies hiding until November's election who fearfully sport a D after their name. When we have a DLC pounding the pro-Iraq war drum and promoting centralism that got us into this mess to begin with, it is no surprise that this GOP has moved even further towards fascism.

The GOP has been hijacked by neo-Conmen and bigots. Frankly, our (DU's) love of democracy, freedom, and constitutional rights are no different than the conservatives from a generation ago.

I'll tell you, if ANY democrat voted in favor of the torture bill, I will do my best to have that person lose his/her office in the next election. The same goes for GOPers, too, by the way.