I enjoy your writing. You are the type of Republican that used to be abundant in my previous political party. Unfortunately, the right has lost their minds and their way. They have veered off the Lincoln highway and ended up in a scene from Deliverance.
I enjoy your writing. You are the type of Republican that used to be abundant in my previous political party. Unfortunately, the right has lost their minds and their way. They have veered off the Lincoln highway and ended up in a scene from Deliverance.
Republicans of old bear no small blame for the current state of the GOP.
Reagan's embrace of the Christian Right incurred a debt to them, and the Christian Right began cashing in that debt in the mid-1980s when it tried putting Creationism into high school biology textbooks as an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution. At the time, Republican politicians only had to STFU even if they believed one theory was science the other nothing remotely like science.
As time went on, silence was no longer sufficient. The Christian Right REQUIRED Republicans to join in the anti-science/anti-intellectual chorus. Eventually this produced Republican politicians who didn't just go along to get reelected, but ones who believed the Enlightenment was humanity's greatest mistake.
Today GOP politicians find themselves unable to win primary elections unless they stridently call for ever more severe abortion restriction, more guns with no restrictions, send all immigrants back where they came from (including anyone all of whose great-grandparents weren't born in the US), heap derision (at best) upon LGBTQ+, and, er, whitewash US history so school textbooks resemble those in use in the 1920s.
Was this foreseeable? Maybe, but many conservative intellectuals believed electoral victory was crucial to winning the Cold War, so coalition-building was necessary with those who weren't squishy about the Soviet Union, e.g., the Christian Right.
The problem may be that following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the conservative movement had no big themes other than lower taxes (without also cutting spending; can't piss off voters) and, following the 1992 presidential election, sanctimonious vilification of Bill Clinton. To be fair, Clinton was no Carter, and not even a Truman, but not as bad (OK, crass) as Jim Wright. Anyway, the leading conservatives of the 1980s and prior effectively surrendered the political right to Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh in the 1990s, and from them on the main ascendant philosophy on the Right has been ever more performative assholery. Sadly, assholery has developed a very deep fan base in the South and Midwest, though I grant that reaction to coastal condescension is another major reason for today's partisan divide.
I enjoy your writing. You are the type of Republican that used to be abundant in my previous political party. Unfortunately, the right has lost their minds and their way. They have veered off the Lincoln highway and ended up in a scene from Deliverance.
Republicans of old bear no small blame for the current state of the GOP.
Reagan's embrace of the Christian Right incurred a debt to them, and the Christian Right began cashing in that debt in the mid-1980s when it tried putting Creationism into high school biology textbooks as an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution. At the time, Republican politicians only had to STFU even if they believed one theory was science the other nothing remotely like science.
As time went on, silence was no longer sufficient. The Christian Right REQUIRED Republicans to join in the anti-science/anti-intellectual chorus. Eventually this produced Republican politicians who didn't just go along to get reelected, but ones who believed the Enlightenment was humanity's greatest mistake.
Today GOP politicians find themselves unable to win primary elections unless they stridently call for ever more severe abortion restriction, more guns with no restrictions, send all immigrants back where they came from (including anyone all of whose great-grandparents weren't born in the US), heap derision (at best) upon LGBTQ+, and, er, whitewash US history so school textbooks resemble those in use in the 1920s.
Was this foreseeable? Maybe, but many conservative intellectuals believed electoral victory was crucial to winning the Cold War, so coalition-building was necessary with those who weren't squishy about the Soviet Union, e.g., the Christian Right.
The problem may be that following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the conservative movement had no big themes other than lower taxes (without also cutting spending; can't piss off voters) and, following the 1992 presidential election, sanctimonious vilification of Bill Clinton. To be fair, Clinton was no Carter, and not even a Truman, but not as bad (OK, crass) as Jim Wright. Anyway, the leading conservatives of the 1980s and prior effectively surrendered the political right to Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh in the 1990s, and from them on the main ascendant philosophy on the Right has been ever more performative assholery. Sadly, assholery has developed a very deep fan base in the South and Midwest, though I grant that reaction to coastal condescension is another major reason for today's partisan divide.
Patrick P,
ItтАЩs the radical right and itтАЩs wack agenda. (Apologies for continuing to repeat myself.)