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U.S. Republican Party

Discussion in 'Chit Chat' started by Techno Kid, Dec 29, 2013.

  1. Techno Kid

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    Why are they even called the "Republican Party" and not the Conservative Party or something like that? Does not every U.S. party believe in a country not run by a monarch?
     
  2. AwesomGaytheist

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    The United States is a Democratic Republic, with the government based on the idea known as Federalism, where we have 50 individual states that have their own governments, while we also vote for people to represent us in the Federal Government. Some powers are shared by both the states and the federal government, some powers are directly reserved to the states, and some powers are directly reserved to the federal government.

    The Republican Party is called "Republican" because they (in theory and not practice, IMO) believe in a smaller and weaker federal government, where the individual states get to make more of the decisions for themselves.

    The Democratic Party believes in a stronger federal government with more uniform policies across the country. Obviously, there are other differences in views on different issues, but that is the most basic explanation.

    In the early days, there was the Federalist Party, which supported the idea of Federalism, and there was the Democratic-Republican Party which was founded by Thomas Jefferson as the main opposition. In the 19th Century, the Federalists went the way of the Dodo, and in came the Whig Party. The Whigs believed in universal education, supported public roads and nationwide road systems, and also pushed prohibition.

    During the Civil War, the Democratic-Republicans split in two, and we now had Democrats and Republicans, and in 1854 in Jackson, Michigan, just a 90-minute drive from my hometown, was officially formed the Republican Party. The Republicans in those days were the liberals, as they opposed slavery, and a uniform, nationwide ban on slavery, while the Democrats took advantage of Southern support of slavery and claimed "States' Rights" on the slavery issue.

    After the Civil War ended, Democrats had complete control over the American South, and old Southern Democrats such as Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter, and 1988 Vice Presidential Candidate Lloyd Bentsen are commonly known today as Dixiecrats. They held conservative views, but identified as Democrats. When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he later stated that he thought, "We have handed the South to the Republicans for decades to come." In the 1964 Presidential Election, Republican Barry Goldwater carried 5 states, four of them in the original Confederacy.

    In 1968, Richard Nixon won the Presidency on his Southern Strategy, which exploited racism against African Americans in order to get the Southern White vote to switch from Democratic to Republican. After 1968, most of the South went Republican every Presidential election except 1976, when Jimmy Carter of Georgia was swept into the White House by all but one original Confederate state. While the South was supporting Republicans for President, they were still electing Dixiecrats to Congress and in state governments.

    This led to a deep divide among Democrats in Congress. You had the Northern Democrats, who were the more liberal Democrats, and the Southern Democrats, who were more conservative. In 1984, Ronald Reagan knew that Republicans couldn't take over the House of Representatives (they had controlled the Senate since 1981), but said his political strategy for his re-election year was to get enough Republicans elected that would caucus with conservative Southern Democrats to get his agenda passed in the House.

    Things began to change after the Republican tsunami of 1994, in which Republicans won both houses of Congress for the first time since 1952. After the '94 elections, many Dixiecrats, including current Georgia governor Nathan Deal, switched parties and became Republicans. This meant that the Democrats were no longer tied to the center on a national scale, and moved further to the left, while some Dixiecrats still remained in the South.

    The Republican wave of 2010 absolutely decimated the Democratic Party all across the South. Dixiecrats had still controlled the legislatures of many Southern states, including Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, Georgia, and Arkansas, however in 2010, Republicans won each and every one of the aforementioned State Legislatures, and in 2012, while Democrats made gains everywhere else, Republicans continued gaining seats across Southern state legislatures and governorships.

    The point is, if they were called like they are in Canada with the Liberals and the Conservatives, the Liberals would be the far-right extremists, and the Conservatives would be the Liberals.
     
  3. Rakkaus

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    U.S. political parties aren't real political parties. Republicans have nothing to do with republics and Democrats have nothing to do with democracy. They're just loose coalitions made necessary by the way the U.S. political system forces a two-"party" system upon us.

    The two parties have changed platforms and identities so much over the years, there's no consistency to their ideologies at all, both of them just adapt and change in order to appeal to broad enough swaths of the electorate to build a winning coalition.

    In 1864, the Republican Party was the party of Civil Rights, the party of the North, the party of African-Americans. In 1964, the Democratic Party was the party of Civil Rights, the party of the North, the party of African-Americans. The Republican Party had become the party of the "Southern Strategy", the party of white Southern resentment. Today the party that freed the slaves gets about 4% of the black vote nationally. There's no consistent ideology to be found within either party.
     
  4. Mike92

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    As previous posters have noted, U.S. political party names really don't matter. They're pretty much just coalitions of like-minded politicians trying to accomplish their own electoral goals, though the Republican Party is pretty divided right now.
     
  5. An Gentleman

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  6. Argentwing

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    It used to be that Democrats were conservative and Republicans were liberal, but that changed somewhere along the line hehe. BTW, great history lesson Gaytheist. :slight_smile:
     
  7. Mike92

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    That's true, but nothing quite compares to the stupidity of the Tea Party right now.
     
  8. An Gentleman

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    Yeah, we went from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Rick Santorum. What happened?
    Rick Santorum does not know what he's doing. Frankly, he makes me a little bit ashamed to be a conservative.
     
  9. I agree that people like Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, Paul Ryan, and Michelle Bachmann just taint the image of the conservatives. Most of the Conservatives that people talk shit about are the tea-party Conservatives, which are pretty much the scum of the nation. Not only I think this (because I'm a liberal person), but independents and moderate Conservatives agree. Among those people are John Boehner and John McCain.

    Conservatives have helped build this nation to where we stand now. Eisenhower gave the idea of stimulus spending and Teddy Roosevelt had the idea of market regulation. I have to give credit to them. But now, the tea-party conservatives are pretty much making the Republican party suffer.
     
  10. Mike92

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    As a Republican, I love John McCain as a person.

    But I think I would like him a little more as a politician if he didn't believe (which he still does) someone as uninformed as Sarah Palin was qualified to be president, and if his foreign policy views weren't so ... bat shit.

    Seriously, I can't even begin to imagine what would happen to this country if Sarah Palin were president. Russ...I mean Iran having nuclear weapons?! You betcha I'm against that! I can see Iran's nuclear bombs from the White House!
     
    #10 Mike92, Dec 29, 2013
    Last edited: Dec 29, 2013
  11. AwesomGaytheist

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    I used to like Chris Christie until he showed just how bad a temper he has. If you _dare_ call him out on the $1 billion he wanted cut from schools in New Jersey, or that he likes to brag about how New Jersey schools are supposedly failing, you get a 500 pound behemoth screaming at you and shoving his finger in your face.

    [​IMG]
     
    #11 AwesomGaytheist, Dec 29, 2013
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  12. Hexagon

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    I'm more of a european republican, me.
     
  13. Aussie792

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    If it's moral for America, Israel and Britain to have them, then I don't have much of a problem with Iran and Russia having them.

    That's a big problem with American conservatism; American exceptionalism. Always above international law, always able to twist any rules they want, always the leader of everything no matter how much the US really lags behind etc. It's a pretty toxic idea, and it's more accurately described as "white American exceptionalism".

    Not to mention the conservative obsession with the Constitution to disguise the lack of any ideas but reducing taxes on the rich and aggressive foreign policy that leaves every sane person horrified.

    And just something that's getting on my nerves with this topic. Economic conservatism goes with the left, and economic liberalism goes to the right. The Republicans are socially conservative, but economically liberal, a laissez-faire economy being the most prominent Republican belief. That's what classical liberalism is based on (which is the basis of modern conservatism). Economic liberalism means that the rich can get extraordinarily rich, and that undermines social liberalism. The Republicans have an attitude of liberalism for the rich and conservatism for the poor; the poorer you are, the less freedoms you deserve.

    Pure conservatism is tolerable. It entrenches social positions, but it gives protections to the less powerful (usually to prevent demands for reform), but combining economic liberalism with social conservatism is a free-for-all where the powerful are given even more help.

    The Democrats are economically and socially liberal, which only makes them a little better, because economic liberalism erodes social liberalism anyway. Given how entrenched it is, the Democrats are also conservatives.
     
  14. Mike92

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    I'm pretty uneasy with the thought of Iran having a nuclear weapon, but that's a topic for another thread.

    As for the part I bolded, that is not entirely true. You're confusing traditional American conservatives with neoconservatives. There's a big difference between the two in foreign policy views, and Robert Nisbet's The Present Age illustrates the difference. Neocons tend to believe in American exceptionalism, while traditional conservatives often do not.

    George W. Bush and McCain are perfect examples of neocons.
     
    #14 Mike92, Dec 29, 2013
    Last edited: Dec 29, 2013
  15. I asked my newspaper adviser on how she feels about Sarah Palin being a president one day and she said "I hope she won't become president one day, she's dangerous!" In fact, a tea party conservative becoming president just makes me want to scream. I think John McCain would have gotten more votes in the 2008 election if he didn't have such a crazy person as his running-mate. As a liberal, I'm starting to like John McCain because he doesn't seem to be all that crazy like tea-party conservatives.
     
  16. Aussie792

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    However, when the neocons are in power, then it's still a problem with conservatives who continue to support them. If neocons don't represent the larger part of the Congressional Republicans, then the traditional conservatives are still guilty for partaking in Iraq and other atrocities. Would you say Nixon was a traditional conservative? His policies were pretty disgusting, too.

    As for the nuclear weapons, I'm very uneasy about the potential of Iran's nuclear programme, but given that Iran and Russia have a better track record than the US concerning nuclear weapons, I think it's best they're just acknowledged as ridiculously dangerous, selfish, and evil no matter whose hands they're in.
     
  17. Mike92

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    That's the thing, there are a lot of neocons and Tea Partiers in Congress on the Republican side. Neocons are more liberal in domestic policy (see Bush's prescription drug program, and No Child Left Behind), and far more idealistic in foreign policy. There's not too many traditional conservatives anymore.

    As for traditional conservatives supporting neocons in Congress, they're obviously more like-minded in overall policy preferences than they are with liberals, so that's why they support them over Democrats.
     
  18. Yossarian

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    Because the name "Republican" is one of the two licensed brands that are allowed to actually collect a significant number of votes thanks to the inertia and money built into our election system, and because it sounds better than "Assholes", which is what their policies have effectively begun to represent. No more Eisenhowers or Fords for them, only rich arrogant assholes to carry their flag. And one look at the Bush years, turning a surplus into a Trillion dollar deficit and wrecking the economy, would obviate a notion of "conservative" as their banner; perhaps "reactionary", but definitely not fiscal conservatives.

    Most of my friends now refer to the two parties combined as the PIP (Permanently Incumbent Party), which ping-pongs control back and forth, trading roles as good-cop, bad-cop, but never really addressing the changes that need to be made to join the 21st century the rest of the civilized world is living in. With approval rates around 14%, yet re-election rates close to 90% for the bickering members of Congress whom people send back again and again, to accomplish nothing in semi-permanent stalemate. The parties' names are now as meaningful as " Acura" or "Scion", not referring to any established principles or persons, nor do they have any, other than perpetually collecting campaign funds (bribes) from lobbyists to get re-elected and represent the positions they have been paid to stand for. Best government money can buy, and it does.
     
  19. Rakkaus

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    I don't think that's an accurate description of liberalism, classical or otherwise. Classical liberalism was very concerned about protecting the rights and freedoms of the individual, and that included a concern about the accumulation of wealth by the rich allowing them to infringe upon the freedoms of the working class and of society as a whole. (If you look up the word "liberalis" in your Latin dictionary, you will find as it's definition: "relating to freedom".)

    Adam Smith, who in his later years served as Scottish Commissioner of Customs and Salt Duties, was hardly as "laissez-faire" as he is portrayed today.

    Even wealthy American Founding Fathers like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, quintessential classical liberals often cited as heroes by American conservatives today, were concerned about economic inequality and the harm to society it brings, and favored things like property redistribution and progressive taxation.

    Most significantly, classical liberalism developed in a society that was pre-industrial capitalism, which is why liberalism had to evolve and why things like socialism and 'classical' libertarianism developed in the 19th century. Prior to the development of industrial capitalism, in feudal society, the greatest threats to individual freedom were indeed coming from the 'state' as it then existed, from the king down to the local manor lord, along with the church, which was part of the state. Classical liberalism was reacting to this situation, and recognized the church and state as threats to human freedom (which they both are). The classical liberals still deserve credit for the tremendous advances in human freedom they achieved by limiting the powers of the state and getting the church out of the state.

    But you can't directly apply classical liberalism to 19th century industrial capitalist society, and you certainly can't apply it to today's modern capitalism. I think it does classical liberalism, and liberalism in general, a great disservice to say that the modern American Tea Party "conservative" has anything to do with the classical liberal tradition. There is really no precedent for them, their 'ideology' is just a mess of reactionary and bigoted beliefs, there is no great thinker out there who would ever have come up with the Tea Party worldview. They like to dress up as America's Founding Fathers, complete with tricorner hats, to protest against taxes, when they would probably call Jefferson, Madison, Franklin "socialists" if they actually heard what such men believed. (And most of the Tea Party crowd are not rich, most are just silly old white people who are living off government money through Social Security and Medicare and other taxpayer-funded programs, but who have fallen for the ruse put forth by the propaganda campaign of the rich)
     
  20. Mike92

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    This is a pretty accurate depiction.

    I know because I have to deal with them every day where I work.