WHY Dems need ideas-not gov't programs-to rise from the dead...

Discussion in 'Political Discussions' started by Orson, Jan 27, 2005.

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  1. Orson

    Orson New Member

    In the 1960s, Dems claimed 52% of all voting American's fealty; the Republicans only 25%. Today (exit polls in Nov 2004), it's dead even at 37%. Recently, Republicans control the House, Senate, the Presidency, most governorships and most state houses.

    So, beyond whinning and lying, what's a Democrat to do? New ideas - not government programs!

    The rise from the dead Republicans provide a model. The nadir of Republican influence was 1964. Some count the rise from then, others cite the impact of Reagan.

    But in a new account of the period, Craig Shirley argues that the new beginning came with Reagan's bold challenge to a sitting Republican (Pres. Ford), in 1976. Prior to then, Republicans kept attempting to lean left - Nixon's spending, economic controls, regulation (the EPA eventually became the largest federal department in terms of economic impact), and embrace of detente in foreign policy are representative. Reagan began to change this and redefine Republicanism as conservative; remember, Ford's Veep was Rockefeller, an Eastern Republican who was the very definition of a limosine liberal.
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0785260498/qid=1106255048/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/102-6630257-5213766?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

    As interviewer Joe Trippi relates:
    "In 1976, Ronald Reagan challenged the establishment elitist orthodoxy of the Republican Party. Reagan disagreed vehemently with what he viewed as a leftward drift by the Nixon and Ford administrations on foreign policy. Détente, the idea that the U.S. and Soviet Union should seek 'peaceful co-existence,' smacked of appeasement to Ronald Reagan.

    "Reagan did the unthinkable: He entered the race for President in 1976 to challenge a sitting president from his own party. The establishment in the Republican Party went to work branding him as an extremist and out of mainstream American politics. Republicans in power (at the time) said that Reagan could only appeal to the far right of his party, and would be a general election disaster for the GOP.

    "What is remarkable about Shirley’s stirring account of the start of the revolution is his description of the state of the GOP in 1976._ The party establishment had been practicing a move to the left strategy for years, unhappy conservatives were beginning to talk about forming a third party, and open talk about a 'brain dead' Republican party devoid of ideas was commonplace. [The Libertarian Party, founded in the early 70s, first rose to prominance then to when, in a sign of things to come, elector and former Republican Virginia legislator Roger MacBride, who voted for the LP candidate John Hospers instead of Nixon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_MacBride]

    "As I read [Shirley's] book, I felt I was reading the description of the Democratic Party of today.

    "The change in the direction of the Republican Party and our nation, and indeed the world, did not start with rearranging the deck chairs of the Republican National Committee-it started with that failed 1976 campaign for the presidency based on ideas: Ronald Reagan's ideas and the ideas of the conservative grassroots.

    "In 1976 as the campaign season rolled into Florida, the campaign of President Gerald Ford attacked Ronald Reagan for one of his 'radical' and out of the mainstream ideas. Reagan had mused that Social Security should be voluntary, not mandatory, and had gone on to suggest that Social Security funds should be invested in the stock market." Deja vu?
    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6849035/

    Ford attacked this idea, and despite having Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in his fold, went on to loose the election.

    Conservative's won in the long-run by adopting minority ideas, ideas in the eventual vanguard.

    Today, there is no such leftist vanguard. The best model in the West is Blair's New Labor, which co-opted ideas from the right.

    So-why must Dems whine about the demise of New Deal-Great Society ideas? Why have the progressives become anti-progressive? Why indeed have the Democrats become anti-democratic (eg, Iraq)?
     
  2. Orson

    Orson New Member

    re MacBride: it was VERMONT not Virginia;
    re Joe Trippi: he apparently served as a campaign manager to Howard Dean's 2004 campaign and Ted Kennedy in the 80s - will that have any weight?
     

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