http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/153014/compassionate_conservatism_4_popular_safety-net_programs_tea_party_republicans_have_turned_against_in_the_age_of_obamaImagine how much harder the last three years would have been without the safeguards erected over the past 80 years, in many cases with bipartisan support. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance are the broadest, but there are also the programs specifically targeted toward low-income Americans: the earned income tax credit, community health centers, school lunch programs, and food stamps, to name a few.
These policies have two things in common. They’ve historically enjoyed high levels of support, not just from the Democratic Party, but from Republicans as well. And today’s GOP plans to dismantle or seriously weaken all of them, setting back almost a century of progress.
This isn’t a sudden lurch to the right, but the continuation of a process that has been in motion for decades. After Democratic president Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights laws of the 1960s, conservative southern whites began breaking towards the Republicans. With these energetically reactionary voters added to their base, Republican elites could rely on more consistently hardline support for a platform consisting largely of tax breaks for the wealthy and attacking social programs.
“We have a new breed of Republican that is much more radical,” says Peter Edleman, expert on social insurance programs and an assistant secretary of health and human services in the Clinton administration. “Every time the Republicans come to power, they are more conservative. Reagan was very negative about a whole series of programs that helped low-income people, Gingrich was worse than Reagan and now the Tea Party is the worst we’ve seen.”
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