President Gerald Ford trying to run as a Centrist in 1976 even though he had a pretty conservative in Congress as a Representative from Grand Rapids, Michigan and as House Minority Leader. And then had a pretty conservative record as President especially when it came to fiscal policy and taxes. But also as it related to foreign policy and national security. But Ronald Reagan saw President Ford as not tough enough when it came to Russia and foreign policy in general and was a basis for running against him in 1976.
I don’t have the exact date on this, but I believe this is early 1975. The year I’m sure of and it was just after Ronald Reagan left the California Governor’s Mansion as a two-term Governor of California. 1975 representing a new Congress with the next major national election being the 1976 presidential election. With the speculation in Washington being who was going to run for president. President Gerald Ford who inherited the job from President Richard Nixon in 1974 when President Nixon resigned. And would Ron Reagan run against the President or not in the Republican presidential primaries.
Barack Obama- The do nothing Republican House of Representatives.
I agree with the President when he says that House Republicans rather sue the President and try to go back in time and repeal legislation then do their jobs and address the issues of the country. Like fixing the Highway Trust Fund and that is just one example. But addressing the long-term infrastructure deficit in the country would be another one. That in the time they could’ve spent doing real things and making real contributions for their constituents, they’ve spent that time investigating things that are already known or currently already under investigation. Suing the President and going on recess and vacationing.
“In my late 50s, at a time of life when most people are supposed to be drifting into a cautious conservatism, I am surprised to find myself moving steadily leftward.
This is unexpected. It comes even as I am financially comfortable and enjoying my work. (I’m writing this from my summer home in Maine.) I’m not a natural progressive—I spent the last quarter century covering the U.S. military, first for the Wall Street Journal and then for the Washington Post, and now for Foreign Policy magazine . I have written five books about the Marines, the Army and our wars.”
So what I think Thomas Ricks is arguing here is that even though he’s spent most of his career covering the U.S. Military and national security state in Washington, the situation in the country is moving left.
Perhaps Ricks sees what’s called growing income inequality (or the wealth and education gaps) are a big problem and that status quo (which is what real Conservatives believe in conserving) is not working and we need to move left from that.
Ricks doesn’t say how we should address these issues and layout any policy proposals to how to deal with the issues that he laid out in his column. Just points out issues that he sees as problems and thinks the status quo to how we deal with these issues is not working.
No Labels even though I respect the goals of their group as far as trying to bring Congress together and get the chambers to work in a bipartisan bicameral fashion, the group has failed at least to this point. As Digby pointed out in her blog now four-years in since John Avalon and others founded this group and if anything Congress is more partisan now. Rabid partisans in the Republican Party if anything hate President Barack Obama even more now. “It was bad enough that someone of his background gets elected President of the United States, but then gets reelected?”
Congressional Republicans and not all of them, but certainly the rabid partisans in the House especially have decided “we aren’t going to work with the President on anything. Instead we are going to stop him whenever possible and try to sue/impeach him on anything that he tries to do without consulting us first. And are going to try to wait out his presidency and wait for the next President”. This is now the attitude of the Tea Party Republicans at least in the House, but in the Senate with people like Ted Cruz. And to a large extent the Congressional Republican Leaderships in the House and Senate are buying into this.
And of course I’m not making the argument that “it’s all the Republicans fault”, but what I’m saying that is neither side is completely innocent and yes I am a Democrat. But I’m right here because Democrats have their own rabid partisan fringe they have to deal with when President Obama just announces any willingness to deal with Congressional Republicans especially in the House on anything. And if anything this environment has gotten worst since No Labels was created in 2010. Because again President Obama has been reelected, Democrats still control the Senate and the Tea Party has taken some losses.
But why has No Labels failed? Their whole notion and strategy was doomed for failure from the beginning. The idea that you take Republicans and Democrats regardless of their backgrounds and put them in a room and expect them to work together. Or somehow having them sit together during joint sessions of Congress when the House and Senate are together like at the State of the Union. That somehow this would bring the sides together and force them to forget that they are Democrats and Republicans and have another election coming up. And that if they work with the other side they’ll get a primary opponent as their reward. Give me a break! That was a fantasy that was never going to work.
Again why has No Labels failed? The country is simply more partisan and divided politically than it was just five-years ago. That by itself is not the fault of No Labels. I blame that both on the political strategists of the Democratic Party and Republican Party at the state levels. And perhaps a certain extent at the national level with the gerrymandering and creating so many partisan House districts. But another problem is American voters themselves voting for the most partisan and ideological candidates possible who do not run for office to govern, but to beat the other side. Instead of voting for mainstream candidates and incumbents in both parties who are there to govern.
I don’t have a solution for the rabid-partisanship of the country other than to say Americans need to wake up and decide do they want their public officials to govern. Or to beat the other side and decide which one is more important. If you vote for people who want to govern and create positive change for the country, we’ll see less partisanship as a result. You vote for the guy or gal who simply is looking to “hold the other side accountable” which is a common phrase with both Republicans and Democrats, the rabid-partisanship will just continue and get worst.
George Bush and Ronald Reagan both essentially arguing for some type of comprehensive immigration reform in the form of what is called a guest worker program. Where workers from lets say Mexico can some into America and work most likely jobs that Americans do not want to do and won’t do. Pay taxes on that income here making probably a lot more than they could make in Mexico. But then need to go home when the season is over for the job they have here.
Just to sort of point out the obvious. There is no one religion of the Left and Dennis Prager doesn’t seem to understand that because his idea of a leftist is essentially a Communist, or other some type of collectivist statist on the Left who sees the role of government to protect and take care of people to look after the general welfare of everyone. Instead of allowing free people the freedom and responsibility to manage their own affairs. That branch of the Left obviously exists and this blog covers that at least once a week now. But that is not the entire Left.
Now where I agree with Dennis Prager and is one example of why I respect the man at least to some degree. Is how he talked about what he calls leftist (again what is that) and differentiating that from liberalism. Instead of saying that “Liberals are collectivists and statists to their core. But who are against the military, law enforcement, religion and private enterprise”. He said that people who he calls leftists are that instead.
And the other point that Prager made about John Kennedy saying that he was “a Liberal who believed in lower taxes, strong defense, individual freedom and opportunity” and so forth. Well guess what all Liberals believe in those things, otherwise we wouldn’t be Liberals and liberal wouldn’t be that beautiful word that Prager describes it as. I’m a Liberal and a Leftist which puts me on the center-left of the American political spectrum. Those collectivists that Prager is always putting down and critiquing are on the far-left in America even though they look mainstream at least in Scandinavia.
I covered most of this yesterday, but John Dickerson’s comment about President Carter’s speech being ‘tone-death’ was spot on. This speech sounded like a President who was out of ideas and that his administration was also out of ideas. That they tried everything they could think of to fix the economy and that nothing was getting through. But that they also wanted to get reelected and had to do something drastic which was to try to put the blame on the American people for the problems with the economy. And telling them they were spending too much money and blaming the bad economy on materialism.
Whatever Andrew Sullivan is calling himself these days, I still consider him to be a Conservative. Conservative Libertarian even if that makes you feel better. Because similar to Barry Goldwater it is not that conservatism has changed, but similar to liberalism it is the people who call themselves Conservatives or Liberals that has changed. Using the old labels and throwing out the classical ideology and putting in something that is more comfortable with their ideological perspective.
Today’s Conservative is someone who’s supposed to believe that the Federal Government should decide who can and can’t marry.
That deficits and debt doesn’t matter except when there is a Democratic administration.
That tax cuts automatically pay for itself.
That America can afford to and must police the world.
Security before liberty.
That expanding government into the economy is a good thing if it is done with private market principles.
The Second Amendment is not only absolute, but the only absolute Constitutional Amendment that we have. Meaning it isn’t subjected to any form of regulation.
That there’s so such thing as waste in the Defense Department. Even though it is a government agency run by bureaucrats. And no limits to what America can spend on defense.
Corporation’s are people.
Andrew Sullivan’s politics hasn’t changed. He believes the same things that he did probably twenty years ago. But what has changed is the Republican Party and the broader American Right. To the point that Sullivan looks moderate to liberal or libertarian by comparison. But conservatism today is what it was when Barry Goldwater put it on the map in 1964. That big government is government that interferes in the economic and personal affairs of Americans. Whether it is taxing a lot of their money from them to spend on their behalf. Or trying to run their personal lives for them.
The modern rightist or Republican or what I call rabid partisans on the right do not resemble what it means to be a Conservative. Because as much as they may talk about how much they love the Constitution they spend as much time trying to change it. Instead of being about conserving individual freedom both economic and personal. Limited government, that government closest to home is the best government. Defend America first with a limited foreign policy. Not try to police the world ourselves. And keeping spending down so we don’t rack up large deficits and debt.
The rabid partisan is against Barack Obama no matter what even if they are actually in favor of it. Instead of fixing problems looking to blame President Obama for everything that has happened since the Earth was created. It is not that conservatism has changed, but the far-right that used to be so small in the Republican Party that they looked like a group of people who want to outlaw eating meat. Where today they have enough power to decide if the Republican Party can win elections or not. Sullivan is still Sullivan, but his party has changed.
First of all just to comment on Joshua Sager’s column in the Salon which is hardly a center-left publication, but still worth reading similar to The Nation. Which should give you an idea of where I’m coming from. Joshua’s Sager’s idea of a center-left America looks like, well Sweden. A country of roughly nine-million people which doesn’t have nearly the amount of diversity across the board that a huge country like America has. That is essentially a country of Social Democrats and other Socialists. Where their center-right party looks like Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson, not Barry Goldwater ideologically.
What is center-left in one country is not necessarily center-left in another country. Especially when you are comparing a small country with a huge country. The amount of what could be called Scandinavian Social Democrats in America including Salon, The Nation, AlterNet and other far-left publications in America might add up to 30-40 million Americans in a country of roughly three-hundred and fifteen-,million people. In Sweden and their population of nine-million people or Scandinavia as a whole of twenty-five million people or so the number of Social Democrats in that entire region might be the entire region. Sweden is sort of divided between Marxist Socialists and Bernie Sanders Social Democrats.
But where I agree with Josh Sager is that America is a center-left country and the idea that we are center-right and that depends on how you define center-right as well, has been proven false over the last 5-10 years. Americans like economic freedom and personal freedom as well. They believe in things like public education and economic opportunity for people who are disadvantage economically. And believe that government has a role to play in seeing that Americans who need it get a hand up so they can make it in America. They believe in things like public infrastructure investment, public education, regulating business, protecting workers and consumers.
And if you look at the issues and a big reason why the Republican Party is in so much trouble today and can’t find enough candidates to win Republican leaning Senate seats to win back the Senate and win back the White House is because the country has moved left as the Republican Party has moved right.But we haven’t gone from a Barry Goldwater center-right country to a Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein social democratic far-left country. Right now we are in the land of Clinton politically this center-left New Democratic era. That says “government isn’t the problem or the solution. But when used effectively in a limited way can play a positive role in most Americans lives”.
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