It's very interesting to see how the Republican party has changed over time. 1. They used to be extremely active and vigilant against America's foreign adversaries like the Soviets. Now they have a favorable opinion of Russia despite Russia having tried to alter our democratic election. 2. America first. They used to speak out against presidents going overseas and saying even the slightest disparaging remark about an American institution. Now they are okay with Trump going overseas and trashing all sorts of American institutions. 3. Party of morality. They used to speak out against actions they believed to be questionable morals. Yet now they have no problem with Donald Trump getting licensing for brothels in China 4. Party of fiscal responsibility. They used to call out loudly about trying to pay off the debt and decreasing the deficit. Even during periods of recession they didn't want to increase deficit spending. Yet now when we are already growing they are fine with a tax bill that adds Billions of dollars of debt and increases our deficit spending. 5. Party of law and order. They were once the party of law and order. Even very recently they were calling out about "Blue Lives Matter". Yet now they delight in eating their own and trashing the Republican-led FBI. https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...a059f168dd2_story.html?utm_term=.dfc1d9c029a0 It's very strange how much the Republican party has changed. I know many Republicans who still hold on to the more traditional values of the party and feel like they don't belong anymore, and wonder how they hold on to those values but some would even call them liberal.
id add that republicans have always marketed themselves as the party of god, family values and morals...while on the flip-side saying that democrats are actually against those those things. but they gave their support to someone who brags about sexually assaulting women, has been married three times and brags about how he cheated on all his wives, paid off a p*rn-star he had an affair with. in the age of trump its pretty obvious that american evangelicals are morally bankrupt and total hypocrites. republicans also market themselves as the party that supports the troops...while on the flip-side saying that democrats are actually anti-troop...but they support someone who said POWs are not heroic b/c they were captured.
Trump is not a Republican. Even Republicans know that. GOP voters only go along with Trumpism because they think it’s a false choice of Trumpism or socialism which they are now told is the same as communism. If you watch FoxNews, are old and stuck in ignorance, or are young, white, and aggrieved ... Trumpism is what you got and you’ll ride or die with any direction Trump takes the party. It’s exactly why Russians stick with Putin. They are led to believe it’s Putin’s way or hell. This is what happens when you have state run propaganda outlets like FoxNews and RT.
Also reg religion and politics- Organized Religions throughout history have always acted in self interest. It’s widely known that the Vatican was responsible for giving New identities to Nazis after WW2 through the Red Cross. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/25/nazis-escaped-on-red-cross-documents Why... because the Nazis never destroyed churches during the war and the church feared communism. There are endless examples throughout history of the church acting in self interest. It’s no different now where the Southern Baptist/Evangelical network has forged an alliance with Trump and the GOP to preserve the church from liberalism. It will allow the church to overturn laws like the Johnson amendment that protects their tax status and gets them more financial power to shape elections.
6. Republicans used to be the party of free markets and capitalism. Now they are pulling out of free trade agreements, setting import tariffs, and making it more expensive for subsidiaries of foreign companies to operate here. And they use regulatory fiat to create competitive advantage for their favored industries (uranium, coal, for examples).
RE: item #5 and that Washington Post piece http://thefederalist.com/2018/02/05/if-you-love-law-enforcement-you-must-criticize-fbi-corruption/
GOP is the party of hypocrites right now, not everyone of course, but a large percentage of the party don't really care about anything but the letter R.
It isn't crap. Just talking about the change. I'm not saying all the changes are good or bad, just that Republicans aren't the same as they used to be. I've been a fan of most Republican positions so I don't mind some changes. I was hoping some Republican voters who post on the board might talk about how they feel about the changes and why.
Good luck with that. If you could revive Refman or Weslinder and that long-gone ilk, you might have a productive exchange. But I sympathize with your thread. The change, from 1990 to now, is breathtaking. It's like the old party doesn't exist. Coincides with the rise of the Fox bubble and the narrative of "the liberal media," driving them further and further to their extreme and away from a lot of solid data.
My biggest issue is the whole CHRISTian mask they wear. It's like they've completely warped the teachings of christ into something maniacal. The being a family man eh, I mean we all want to bang! Samson banged a lot and he was a tremendous man. You can't even blame delilah for wanting to chop it off. She was in her right. Trump's fascination with the glorious zoviets is an odd one. I posted this in another thread but all the countries in the Americas that love Comrade Putin are all LEFTISTS. look at that, main. It's call pizzazz.
They're all bobblehead ninnies for their shithole in chief. Watch them "grow a conscience" a year after they cash in their tax breaks under some astro-turfed movement that undermines the Trump presidency with even more distrust of the government. With that swelling of indies when dub****'s presidency started sinking, you'd have thought there'd be a third party. Nope, just a bunch of self-centered pseudo-libertarian anarchists who's first priority is their wallet over everything else. It was also a great way to forget all the destruction they caused, so they can take another swing at it again this time.
In Illinois, you can run on the GOP Ticket unopposed, as a neo-Nazi Holocaust denier. Vote Arthur Jones, Republican, American First. (No jews)
To me, the Republican Party has always been a marriage of convenience among the libertarians, closet fascists and theocrats, who in theory hold fundamentally irreconcilable principles, but cast them aside in the name of...power. In other countries, they'd be called a coalition government. In ours, we call them hypocrites. I'm not completely sure it's all that well-deserved.
Not a good look for the GOP at all. To be fair, the state GOP in Illinois was successful in getting him off the ballot in '16 by questioning the validity of mailed-in petition signatures. He went door to door this time, and the GOP wanted to boot him again but couldn't find any grounds to. It's one of, if not the most Democratic districts in the state and the GOP regularly doesn't bother to actually run candidates or do any campaigning there.
In a coalition government, you'll have very different behavior. Parties in coalitions have the option of just quitting or bringing down the government. We tend to consider Westminster style governments to be more unstable than our system but in this specific case I'd argue the opposite. So in a coalition you might have multiple parties with multiple leaders. All of whom will try and leverage the instability of the coalition to get their agenda through. So when a coalition consists of members that have irreconcilable differences you end up with the same result. 1. One party doesn't get its way and quits the coalition. Best case they leave the coalition but will still vote against a no confidence motion. Either way, you now have a minority government that will most likely collapse because they can't pass a budget. 2. The coalition stays together but still can't agree on a budget/spending resolution. This is what we have now. Today we end up with short term spending bills that dont' do anything. In a Westminster system, if the government shut down, the government instantly collapses and snap elections are held. 3. Westminster systems can result in fluid coalitions. Today the Republicans and Democrats can't agree on anything. But in a Westminster system, the more "moderate" Republicans can form a coalition government with the Democrats. Lets use Alaska and New York as examples. In Alaska, Democrats formed a coalition with moderate Republicans in the House and forced most of the Republicans to sit as the opposition despite winning more seats than the Democrats. In New York you have the opposite result. The current two party system where one party has been hijacked by fringier elements, doesn't really work very well. The non-fixed nature of elections in a Westminster system along with multi party FPTP elections (where the right wing parties would split the vote and cause the left to win in majority right wing districts) would effectively break these types of hyper right wing coalitions. Until the Republicans return to their natural center right orientation, this won't end. If we look at the 5 eyes countries (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK and US), all of them have two or three party systems (although Australia is a little weird at the moment) despite all of them (except the US) using Westminster systems.
