re: #172 ObserverArt

If everyone remembers, Big Bill Clinton was one of the first Centrist Democrats and supported Big Business a lot more than Democrats previously. There was a reason for that.

After the crash and burn times of Carter not holding for a second term and Mondale and Dukakis the Democrat party came to realize that being far left was no longer going to work for the Presidency. Also, Ron Reagan started to take the Republican party a bit more far right than before and that worked for them for two cycles. By the time Bush 1 came around it seemed the Republicans could run a guy off the street and beat the Democrats. Also during Bush 1 times, Rush Limbaugh went national and became a force for carrying Republican water.

So as the Republicans became more and more far right driven by people like Rush being a day-to-day campaigner and creating “ditto heads” the Democrats realized that as they moved from the left, the middle was more open. Big Bill came in and filled that middle and at the point it seemed the Democrats would be very successful occupying the middle and actually speaking for more and more of the country.

Then came 2000 and Bush 2 came along and for a bit it seemed he would shift back to the middle a bit more with his “compassionate conservative” spiel and everyone knows what happened. Gore and Bush 2 literally tied.

But Rush never stopped and along came even more Republican far right media with FOX News, Glen Beck and a whole host of Little Limbaughs and of course Bush 2 snuck by Kerry with a huge slime campaign driven by that new crazy conservative media.

But that may have been where the Republicans became too punch drunk on crazy far right thinking it would be easy using their new media and a host of slime specialists like the Swift Boaters.

What seemed to have happened though is they abandoned the real middle centrists people (like me and I suspect many here at LGF) and stayed drunk on crazy and the centrists folks just got sick and tired of their crap.

Then an African American guy with a good deal of speaking ability and a visage of being the future new America of color came along and out-Clinton-ed a Clinton and swept an election by again taking a middle stance and bringing the new America of color with him.

And it appeared to scare the bejeebers out of the right which lost out with their own flawed middle-man McCain who was stupid enough to try to appease the far right loons and the now very political Christians with Sister Sarah Palin.

So what did the Republicans do when Obama won? They went nuts. They tried to go back centrist and appease the nuts who now were concerned about not being far right enough with McCain. The wanted their cake and tried to eat it too. They invited in the new Tea Party by astro-turfing them with big bucks and played to them to the point they created a far right monster. No one in the middle likes the monsters.

As the most recent election proved, a flawed centrist Romney who was never going to meet the needs of the crazy right Tea Party sent signals to America that the Republicans were out of control and off the rails. Clueless to it all, they still seem to think they can still have their cake and eat it too and now they are fractured badly and it appears have no clue how to bring it all back to the center which now also has more females with power and people of color too.

Can the Republican come back to attract what they used to have made-in-the-shade during the 80s? Who the hell knows, but if they do not do some major purging and signal they will try to be reasonable and realize women and people of color now strengthen the middle and they need to attract them they will be in the same position as the Dems were in the 80s antionally…no one really giving them the time of the day.

So, here we are. How do most of the LGF members (centrist pretty much) see the Grand Old Party? Every here probably knows the general tone.

The Republicans have big problems. And as long as they keep tweeting with the twits, trying to back away and still keep Rush, FOX and the Tea Party happy they appear to be broken in many pieces as last night showed us all too well.

As many here seem to feel (not all, but they too better read the Tea leafs) the only hope is to purge, purge and purge some more. But can they?

Not with a bumbling director like RNC PR BS and a still yapping FOX and Limbaugh. They really (to me and I suspect others) need to start the purge with Rush, Roger Ailes and Priebus. It would be a shock to the system and it might still keep them off the rails for a bit, but maybe in an other two or so cycles they might be able to come back and fight for the new more female and full of people of color middle or just flat give it all up.

And if they lose the house in 2014, as difficult as that may be, but not out of reason, they can put paid to the party for a long time.

It is all there in History! And we all know what happens when you forget history.

I think we have to be careful here.

I don’t think the Democratic Party itself has ever been “far left” unless you think civil rights, the safety net and support of unions is “far left” and I don’t. Carter was definitely no “far leftist”; he simply wasn’t a very good president and the country suffered through oil shortages and awful inflation during his tenure, resulting in higher than normal unemployment. That is what really set the stage for Reagan.

The fact is, that after 2 Reagan terms (staged managed by his advisers to a large degree), the Republican Party started going even more right, esp after the older Bush proved not to be as far to the right as the party wished. After Clinton’s 2 terms, and in spite of his more centrist positions on many issues, the Republican Party went even further to the right and we got George Bush, another figurehead (IMHO) who did the will of the Neocons like Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc, giving us Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11 and setting up privatization of many, many govt services. This privatization had really started under Reagan and stalled a bit, but Bush brought the idea into full flower.

At any rate, the disgust and anti-war attitudes that came during that period set us up for Barack Obama, who seemed like a breath of fresh air in the squalid stink of DC and its warmongering and profiteering. That he turned out to be more of a centrist Democrat on some issues, given the problems he inherited isn’t much of a surprise, really. It was important to keep institutions in place and this is what he was able to accomplish, to his credit.

The fact is, the GOP has gone so far right in many areas because of Obama’s election that it has smeared its own name for decades. I don’t think there is much to fear from them unless World War III erupts any time soon. It’s the Democrats who seem “moderate” and “centrist”, even though their programs are pretty much in the same vein as they’ve always been.