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NationofChange / Op-Ed
Published: Tuesday 28 February 2012
“As we’re seeing, a loony fringe can take over an entire party — and that party will inevitably take over some part of our federal, state, and local governments.”
As Santorum and Romney Battle for the Loony Right, the Rest of Us Should Not Gloat
My father was a Republican for the first 78 years of his life. For the last twenty, he’s been a Democrat (he just celebrated his 98th.) What happened? “They lost me,” he says.
They’re losing even more Americans now, as the four remaining GOP candidates seek to out-do one another in their race for the votes of the loony right that’s taken over the Grand Old Party.
But the rest of us have reason to worry.
A party of birthers, creationists, theocrats, climate-change deniers, nativists, gay-bashers, anti-abortionists, media paranoids, anti-intellectuals, and out-of-touch country clubbers cannot govern America.
Yet even if they lose the presidency on Election Day they’re still likely to be in charge of at least one house of Congress as well as several state legislators and governorships. That’s a problem for the nation.
The GOP’s drift toward loopyness started in 1993 when Bill Clinton became the first Democrat in the White House in a dozen years – and promptly allowed gays in the military, pushed through the Brady handgun act, had the audacity to staff his administration with strong women and African-Americans, and gave Hillary the task of crafting a national health bill. Bill and Hillary were secular boomers with Ivy League credentials who thought government had a positive role to play in peoples’ lives.
This was enough to stir right-wing evangelicals in the South, social conservatives in the Midwest and on the Great Plains, and stop-at-nothing extremists in Washington and the media who hounded Bill Clinton for eight years, then stole the 2000 election from Al Gore, and Swift-boated John Kerry in 2004.
They were not pleased to have a Democrat back in the White House in 2008, let alone a black one. They rose up in the 2010 election cycle as “tea partiers” and have by now pushed the GOP further right than it has been in more than eighty years. Even formerly sensible senators like Olympia Snowe, Orrin Hatch, and Dick Lugar are moving to the extreme right in order to keep their seats.
At this rate the GOP will end up on the dust heap of history. Young Americans are more tolerant, cosmopolitan, better educated, and more socially liberal than their parents. And relative to the typical middle-aged America, they are also more Hispanic and more shades of brown. Today’s Republican Party is as relevant to what America is becoming as an ice pick in New Orleans.
In the meantime, though, we are in trouble. America is a winner-take-all election system in which a party needs only 51 percent (or, in a three-way race, a plurality) in order to gain control.
In parliamentary systems of government, small groups representing loony fringes can be absorbed relatively harmlessly into adult governing coalitions.
But here, as we’re seeing, a loony fringe can take over an entire party — and that party will inevitably take over some part of our federal, state, and local governments.
As such, the loony right is a clear and present danger.
This article was originally posted on Robert Reich's blog.
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ABOUT Robert Reich
ROBERT B. REICH, one of the nation’s leading experts on work and the economy, is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. Time Magazine has named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including his latest best-seller, “Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future;” “The Work of Nations,” which has been translated into 22 languages; and his newest, an e-book, “Beyond Outrage.” His syndicated columns, television appearances, and public radio commentaries reach millions of people each week. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, and Chairman of the citizen’s group Common Cause. His widely-read blog can be found at www.robertreich.org.
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32 comments on "As Santorum and Romney Battle for the Loony Right, the Rest of Us Should Not Gloat"
March 01, 2012 11:08am
That we even need to have this discussion while the WH is occupied by another "conservative", is incredulous. But, that is how far out into the right-field weeds the far-right has charged. They have met the Taliban.
2 Major Corrections to Dr Reich's otherwise excellent piece:
1) Kerry wasn't just "swift boated" in 2004. That election was "stolen", too. Ohio's Secy of State turned over much of the vote counting to a Far Right-wingnut corporation operating (to good to be fiction) out of a cave in VA. Not surprisingly, the master-mind of the heist, while enroute to "come clean" in a federal court in Northern Ohio had his plane fall out of the sky. How many times have "they" used that stunt?
2) Barack Obama is NOT a Black! He's far worse to neo-Confederates and other assorted Racists and Nativists. He's Tan or mulatto. "Mixing of the races" is far scarier to those already very scared.
Barack needs to lead much more in 2012 with his Irish-American upper-cut. A start by visiting his Irish family's homesteads in OH, IN & KS, would greatly diffuse the influence of the whackos. Who knows, some may even come back to Reality?
February 29, 2012 4:06am
What frustrates me is that no writers seem prepared to talk about the systemic power that is at the heart of all the political idiocy that we are seeing. The GOP has always been the PR arm of the controlling elite and so what we are seeing happening within it reflects what is going on out of sight at the top. It would be fascinating to read about this rather than the symptoms that Robert Reich writes about.
February 29, 2012 1:00am
Professor Reich's essay is a jewel of composition ... precise, concise, and accurate.
Authentic democracy is a rare and fragile specimen in this hard world. For me, democracy represents a radical break with the jungle brutishness of elemental Nature, a break paradoxically made possible by the only endowments uniquely vouchsafed to human beings by that same Nature, namely, intellect and reason. Our bestial heritage is not banished by these special faculties, but we are given the chance to accelerate the evolution of the human animal by claiming these gifts as our own, and putting them to work in the interests of the polity.
Democracy's enemies instinctively know that stoking the passions of our common brutishness may deliver the polity into their hands, especially if times are harsh. Thus Barry Goldwater in 1964: "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." Only ... extremism is the antimatter particle to liberty. And thereby, an instance of "mutual assured destruction."
Professor Reich alludes to other instances of MAD. Southern revanchism over the Civil War and Civil Rights. Fundamentalist religiosity that transmogrifies the Gentle Shepherd into a storm trooper (Heil, Jesus). The insistence that a nation of 310 million people and using nine time zones be governed by the equivalent of a jerkwater school board, meeting once a year for a dollar a year. Amoral plutocrats whose loyalties are bound up with whatever bank on whatever continent their money is stashed in. I'll add another: Pusillanimous Democrats who clammed up rather than point out that the Republiconfederate Generalissimo, Dubya Bush, was succeeded by a Democrat, Feldmarschall Obama, who decreed that our sordid wars of aggression should continue.
Disagreement becomes rage becomes imbecility becomes atavistic bestiality becomes Mutual Assured Destruction.
Der Führer supposedly said of our country, "On the whole, no such thing as an American people exists." His chauffeur in the early days, noting the hauteur that the thuggish "old fighters" of the Nazi Party had acquired with their rise to power, remarked, "People are proud ... forget where they come from." Wouldn't you just know that contemporary America might just make these two jamokes the preeminent political scientists of our time?
February 28, 2012 7:30pm
Mr. Reich embarrasses himself and his party by calling Republicans "loony." He goes on to broad brush republicans as racists (that's the one that gets me), non-intellectuals, creationists, theocrats, etc... He then closes his article by pining for a different form of government that would ensure his party always controls the government, even though an opposing party may have the majority of citizen support. Mr. Reich is on really shaky ground here!
While the Republican party may be moving further to the right, I believe the Democratic party has gone way too far to the left. The take away is that those who consider themselves centrists have a real dilemma as to how to cast their votes in the elections ahead.
March 01, 2012 7:43am
"I believe the Democratic party has gone way too far to the left."
You probably also think that Obama is very "liberal", or close to "socialist"?
Newsflash: This President is a "conservative", almost as "conservative" as his predecessor, more so than Daddy Bush. He can just speak intelligibly.
There is no "far-left" left in America. The large majority of the population is center-left. There is virtually no moderate wing of "conservatives" still extant. No Ikes. No Dirksens. No Rockefellars. No Lindsays. Not even any Goldwaters!
Rachel Madow claims that she is "so liberal" that she finds herself in almost total agreement with the Eisenhower platform! That's how far into the weeds the GOP has lurched.
February 29, 2012 5:11pm
"Mr. Reich embarrasses himself and his party by calling Republicans "loony." He goes on to broad brush republicans as racists (that's the one that gets me), non-intellectuals, creationists, theocrats, etc..."
I don't know quite how to tell you this, but they are an embarrassment to America on the world stage. They are nothing but wealthy, good ol' white boys trying to regain the same status they had pre-Civil War. The only difference now is that the 'N' word has been replaced by 'Spics' and other derogatory terms, illegal aliens, and welfare bums whom they judge as all having their hands out with their feelings of 'entitlement'.
They have their collective noses so far up wealthy corporate anuses, that they no longer (if they ever did) have the decency to be ashamed at what they've done to their own country which they profess to love.
February 29, 2012 1:02am
"I believe the Democratic party has gone way too far to the left."
Which is exactly what we'd expect someone to say who is unaware of how far to the right their own political posture has become. This also fits well with studies showing conservatives to be particularly poor on measures of self-awareness/self-knowledge.
For example, when filling out a personality scale used to measure one's self-righteousness, but are also designed to make it very difficult for the person to know which trait is being measured and so try to manipulate the results, it's conservatives who onsistently score the highest for having a self-righteous attitude.
However, when asked directly how they thought they would score on measures of S-R, conservatives then reported that they believed they would score the lowest of any group tested.
Which is exactly what you'd expect a self-righteous person to say, isn't it? Much like the notion that the Dems who are moving further left instead of realizing how their own politics have moved so far to the right that it must /seem/ like they are moving left.
Mr. Reich summed it up very well. With the GOP's war on women and their obstructionist position have shifted so far right. Many of my friends that are Republican will be voting for President Obama. I don't think the Republicans will lose control of the House and seats in the Senate. Sen. Olympia Snowe will not run for reelection because of the extreme partisanship. This is a big blow to the Republicans but another sign of the deep trouble the Republican party is in.
Mr. Reich summed it up very well. With the GOP's war on women and their obstructionist position have shifted so far right. Many of my friends that are Republican will be voting for President Obama. I don't think the Republicans will lose control of the House and seats in the Senate. Sen. Olympia Snowe will not run for reelection because of the extreme partisanship. This is a big blow to the Republicans but another sign of the deep trouble the Republican party is in.
February 28, 2012 5:33pm
Orin Hatch was never sensible!
February 28, 2012 5:19pm
This is the culture war from the 60's and they have been winning for 50 years or so.. a concerted effort to turn back everything from the make love not war era... and most likely a covert CIA effort to weaponize religion and reinvigorate the war-based society of make war and get love in all those places around the world where you will be fighting... in other word war and love of a kind anyway... that is still a war-based system for sexual dominance and submission and war as a rape of one country by another... a love based system, it never even got a start, that would be a system western civilization could not conceive and no on in the 60's had a clue anyway... but the religious return has been brutal, imagine generations started off with an ethos of caring and then thrown into middle and high schools of religious and jock based bullying and then released to a future that only allows going to war for a job and going over and over again knowing it is a ridiculous mission but it is better than nothing. So PTSD paradise for our wargods and promises of heaven if you don't return... not too much different than what is spellbinding the other side... nothing else to do and this way at least has sweet dreams...
Meanwhile with privatization and faith based initiatives we are being thrown for social programs to the religious dogma wolves... and a great patronage program relying on non-professional volunterism and a prayer to help vulnerable people with nowhere else to turn... and it is part of the national strategic mono-party long term plan from Carter again on ...
February 28, 2012 4:55pm
Mr. Reich: Thank you for your eloquent and succinct spin on the madness we cannot believe we are witnessing from up here, a stone's throw from your border. As I can see the USA - a scattering of islands from my front window, I fully expect to meet more Americans jumping ship in the next few years as I have in the past few. They are ashamed and frightened and hey, who wouldn't be? Hatred, bigotism, and fear mongering are nowhere to be found in the teachings of Christ, Buddah or the Ten Commandments. Ignorance breeds zealouts. Unfortunately they all have guns, or bombs. That brave little Congresswoman took a bullet to the head - has Sarah Palin removed the crosshairs from her website? She/it/them are as shocking to me as 9/11. I do not have the stomach to look. Please keep up the good fight.
February 28, 2012 3:40pm
CHET, Me too...ROTFLMAO at old(tin-foil)hat. Good one.
February 28, 2012 5:34pm
a second freeloader
February 28, 2012 3:18pm
Just look at all the money they are spending (Campaigns or SUPER-PACS) as they vie for Theocrat & Chief or Plutocrat & Chief!
SHEEZE!
February 28, 2012 2:38pm
You forgot to mention the key to loony power: greed.
February 28, 2012 2:05pm
They already ARE in charge of a great number of (low population) states...
Alas!
February 28, 2012 2:04pm
You know, my greatest fear is that we ACTUALLY live in a democracy and that abominations like ray-gun, bush I, Clinton, bush II, Obama and the occupants of the clown car republican fantasy that's going on now ARE what the people want...
February 28, 2012 1:32pm
Birthers? Creationists? Homophobes? Climate change deniers? Anti-intellectuals? Oh my!
So where does these weak sisters get their hair brained ideas? Someone is using their various resources to gin these inanities up and spoon feed them to the tea baggers and the crypto-racists out there. I know this because, by and large, the one's I've had the opportunity to talk to could not dream this kind of crap up on their own steam. They are simply not equipped.
I don't think I'm over analysing to say that it is the think tanks such as Heritage, Cato, Federalist Society, et al, that are the source for what is essentially a mythological spin on who WE are, (like WE who are going to take our country back), what actually constitutes the history of this country, ("WE are a Christian nation") or what constraints we are compelled to observe based on our economic model ("WE don't want end up with European socialism"). And it is being bought wholesale by vast swathes of our fellow countryman, enough to make rick "please google my name" santorum a viable, if not the leading candidate on the republican ticket. Even willard has gained traction with some of the most mind numbingly stupid BS I've heard on the campaign trail since......... well, last Tuesday. (Mitt was the one who claimed that Obama was turning our nation into a place that "we wouldn't recognize" , apparently oblivious to the fact most of us wouldn't recognize this nation in say 1829. Or of the fact that having him saying such a thing in connection with the election of 2012, given our present economic status, is just about as alien. God damn that mitt is a phony!) But my point is that someone is funding "research" that is geared towards producing this kind of half truths, BS and outright lies that have become the cornerstone of the tea bagger world view. There is something larger than a civil national discourse that is producing voters that will willfully vote against their own self interest, that will vote for a Scott Walker or a Mitch Snyder, or a rick "please google my name" santorum or even a mitt romney. I have to take some measure of it as an indictment of the school system, (and I'd be interested to see how many tea baggers actually went to public schools vs. private or home schooled), but I think it's more a product of our "hey! What's on the tube tonight" culture that actually wish the whole "election" thing would simply go away and quit interrupting CSI-Des Moines or whatever.
If we really do get the politicians we deserve, I am wondering what horrific thing we did to deserve to earn these pin headed bigots. Occupy Wall St. showed that there are means to wrest control of the conversation from the think tankers, (read the Kochs and there friends), and steer it toward a more sensible sense of who WE are.
February 28, 2012 12:47pm
With respect, Dr. Reich errs in supposing "[The Republicans] were not pleased to have a Democrat back in the White House in 2008, let alone a black one." It makes much more sense to suppose Republican kingmakers decided to throw the 2008 election to the Democrats so they would have to take the heat for the mess Bush bequeathed us, leaving the Republicans free to gloat and carp about the "failures" of Keynesian economics and Democrat efforts to contain the damage.
It was within the kingmakers' power to throw the 2008 election by nominating a couple of goofballs to head the Republican ticket. Moreover, I wouldn't be surprised if they contributed to Obama's campaign, inasmuch as, being black, inexperienced, liberal, with foreign roots, suspect religious ties and a Muslim name, Obama was seen as the candidate most likely to unite conservatives in opposition in 2010 and 2012.
(See www.cassandra-chronicles.blogspot.com)
February 28, 2012 4:19pm
You are saying that these people in the shadow government are thinking several steps ahead. That would imply that they are not Republicans, but rather Machiavellians. Interesting theory! Are these the folks that President Eisenhower warned us about?
Obama has surely united "conservatives" -- but he has also united the rest of us and let the homegrown ayatollahs stand out so we can see them clearly. Possibly we are not as dumb as they think we are.
February 28, 2012 3:23pm
Since that failed - (meaning Obama got elected ) why isn't anyone from the (Kingmakers) Establishment REP. Party running?(Jeb Bush Chris Christy) Could they be waiting on the sidelines and "keeping their powder dry" until the next PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION in 2016?
Or, they just don't want to lose to OBAMA in 2012!
March 01, 2012 7:48am
Your 1st guess is correct. "Saner" RepugliCons are waiting for 2016.
Hillary, I hope you're still feeling 39 in 4 years.
February 28, 2012 12:27pm
the looney left took over democrat party so us in the middle are now left out
March 06, 2012 8:40pm
What nonsense, OLDHAT.
The Democrats of today are far to the right of, say Humphrey, Johnson, Kennedy, Stevenson, or for that matter, even Eisenhower and (god help us) Nixon.
Both parties have shifted sharply rightward, and todays "centrist" would have been called a right-winger a generation ago. (And rightly so.)
March 01, 2012 11:07am
*
March 01, 2012 7:51am
How do you figure? Because Democrats fairly much united enough behind a Republican idea to pass the same Health Care Reform measures that Republicans have been parading about since Nixon?
The problem with Democrats is still as it was in Will Rogers' day. The real "left" has died out, just as we hope for with the crazy "right".
February 28, 2012 4:21pm
Yes, but you will have health insurance eventually. And other rights that the looney right would like to take away from you. Possibly your rich neighbors will have to pay taxes just as you do! We on the looney left are the only ones in the room trying to get things done.
February 28, 2012 2:06pm
Yeah, right -- old(tin-foil)hat... ROFLMAO
February 28, 2012 5:33pm
cheapdude maybe if you actually had to work for aliving and not live off my tax dollars you would feel diff
February 28, 2012 12:01pm
They're all nuts!
February 28, 2012 12:03pm
Ricky is absolutely wacky.