My parents were lifelong Democrats.
Historically, I have usually voted for Democrats, but there
HAVE been times when I voted for Republican candidates – including the time in
2000 when I voted for George W. Bush instead of Al Gore.
If you read the 1956 platform for the Republican Party, you’ll
realize that the political party that Ike belonged to was almost exactly the
same as today’s Democratic Party:
https://www.scribd.com/document/45561520/1956-Republican-Party-Platform#
Today, the Republican Party is virtually the exact
opposite. Although the link below will allow you to read the entire program, an
article in the Huff Post provides a good summary:
CLEVELAND
― After a week of wrangling, Republican
delegates officially voted on Monday to adopt their 2016
platform, a policy blueprint that manages to take ultraconservative positions
on same-sex marriage, religion, pornography, and even national parks.
The document, which was adopted
at the GOP convention by a voice vote, was the product of vigorous
debate among the platform committee last week and marks a stark
shift for a party that has already seemed to veer toward extremism.
The
platform openly opposes
marriage for gay and transgender people, states “that
man-made law must be consistent with God-given, natural rights,” and
calls on the U.S. government to transfer
all federally controlled lands to states.
The platform also calls
pornography a “public
health crisis” while making no such
designation for guns, which would allow the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention to study gun violence from a health
policy perspective.
It refers to coal as a “clean”
energy source, affirms Donald
Trump’s plan to build a
wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and finds other ways to ostracize
Latino voters.
While a functionally
meaningless messaging document, the platform is a signal of where Republicans stand
― and how they’ve shifted in the last four years. As Trump’s ascendancy to the
nomination indicates, Republicans are headed in a direction seemingly at odds
with the lessons laid out in an
autopsy of Mitt Romney’s 2012 election loss.
For the 2020 election, the Republican Party did not even attempt
to create a policy platform.
The decline of the Republican Party started with Ronald
Reagan, who stated that government was the problem, not the solution – a stark
contrast to the ideas of the FDR administration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1sGN6J9Tgs
Today’s Republican obsession with tax cuts started with a
Reagan appointee named Grover Norquist, Norquist founded Americans for Tax
Reform in 1985.
Prior to the November 2012 election, 238 of 242 House Republicans and
41 out of 47 Senate Republicans had signed ATR's
"Taxpayer Protection Pledge", in which the pledger promises to
"oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rate for
individuals and business; and to oppose any net reduction or elimination of
deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing
tax rates."
The November 6, 2012 elections resulted in a decline in the number of
Taxpayer Protection Pledge signatories in both the upper and lower houses of
the 113th Congress: from 41 to 39 in the Senate, and from 238 to "fewer
than ... 218" in the House of Representatives. According to
journalist Alex Seitz-Wald, losses in the election by Norquist supporters and
the "fiscal cliff" have emboldened and
made more vocal critics of Norquist.
In November 2011, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV)
blamed Norquist's influence for the Joint Select
Committee on Deficit Reduction's lack of progress, claiming that
Congressional Republicans "are being led like puppets by Grover Norquist.
They're giving speeches that we should compromise on our deficit, but never do
they compromise on Grover Norquist. He is their leader."
Since Norquist's pledge binds signatories to opposing deficit
reduction agreements that include any element of increased tax revenue, some
Republican deficit hawks now retired from office have
stated that Norquist has become an obstacle to deficit reduction. Former
Republican Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY), co-chairman of
the National
Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, has been
particularly critical, describing Norquist's position as "[n]o taxes,
under any situation, even if your country goes to hell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist#:~:text=Grover%20Glenn%20Norquist%20%28born%20October%2019%2C%201956%29%20is,Reform%2C%20an%20organization%20that%20opposes%20all%20tax%20increases.
Due to the two tax cuts passed by the Reagan administration,
the national debt tripled during his term in office, and also created the necessity
of taxing Social Security benefits for the first time.
https://help.taxreliefcenter.org/reagan-tax-cuts/
The decline of the Republican Party got worse in 1994, when
Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt_Gingrich
A professor of history and geography at the University of
West Georgia in the 1970s, Gingrich won election to the U.S.
House of Representatives in November 1978, the first Republican in the
history of Georgia's 6th congressional district to do so.
He served as House Minority Whip from 1989 to 1995. A
co-author and architect of the "Contract with America",
Gingrich was a major leader in the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional election. In 1995, Time named him "Man of the Year"
for "his role in ending the four-decades-long Democratic majority
in the House".
As House Speaker, Gingrich oversaw passage by the House
of welfare reform and a capital gains
tax cut in 1997. Gingrich played a key role in several government shutdowns, and impeached President Bill Clinton on a party-line vote in the
House.
The poor showing by Republicans in the 1998 congressional elections, a reprimand from
the House for Gingrich's ethics violation, and pressure from Republican
colleagues resulted in Gingrich's resignation from the speakership on November
6, 1998.[He resigned altogether from the House
on January 3, 1999.
Political scientists have credited
Gingrich with playing a key role in undermining
democratic norms in the United States and hastening political
polarization and partisanship
Today, it is literally true that the inmates are now running
the asylum, and the article below provides more detail.
https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-inmates-are-taking-over-asylum.html
Today’s Arizona Republican provided further proof of the
insanity in today’s House of Representatives.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2023/01/14/rep-gosar-targets-joint-chiefs-of-staff-chair-as-traitor/69800200007/
U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar is zeroing in on Gen. Mark Milley, calling
the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff a "traitor" and signaling that
an investigation is coming.
On
Twitter, Gosar, R-Ariz., this month wrote that the new Republican-controlled
House of Representatives will conduct "a real investigation" into the
Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot and "the effort to attempt a coup between
traitor Gen. Mark Milley and (then-House Speaker Nancy) Pelosi will be reviewed
and exposed."
It
might not be an idle threat. New House rules passed Jan. 10 may set up a
situation in which Gosar and other members of Congress who came under scrutiny
for their roles in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 riot may get the opportunity to
act as investigators.
(Think about that for a minute. A person guilty of a crime now
wants to investigate the organization investigating his crimes – which makes no
sense at all).
Gosar has been a veteran member of the investigative House
Committee on Oversight and Accountability. His Twitter message about Milley,
the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. military, and Pelosi, D-Calif., was in
response to comedian and broadcaster John Fugelsang's tweet, which said:
"Remember - (new House Speaker) Kevin McCarthy, (and Reps.) Matt Gaetz,
Lauren Boebert & Paul Gosar all share the same pre-existing sedition.
#January6th."
Other
new House rules include: the weakening of the House Ethics Committee, creating
the "weaponization of the federal government" subcommittee and ending
the prior Jan 6. subcommittee created when the Democrats held the House
majority.
Gosar followed up his initial comments with an explanatory post: "Milleys treasonous sell out
to China will be investigated. Pelosi not warning members about intel of
impending violence will be exposed. Soon, we'll know the truth."
Gosar's remarks on Milley stem from revelations first published
in Bob Woodward and Robert Costa's book "Peril" and echo former
President Donald Trump's reaction. As chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
Milley called his Chinese equivalent, called Gen. Li Zuocheng, twice to prevent a possible violent conflict.
Milley's
first phone call to Li took place on Oct. 30, 2020, in which he reassured China
that the U.S. had no intentions of instigating a military strike against the
country. His actions came after receiving intelligence that the Chinese thought the U.S. was planning to initiate an
attack after an uptick of U.S. Armed Forces' operations in the South
China Sea and Trump's rhetoric about the nation.
Milley told Li that he would give him advance notice if the U.S.
ever were to take such actions.
The
second call Milley made was on Jan. 8, 2021, two days after the Capitol riot,
to alleviate Li's concerns about the steadiness of the U.S. government and how that
might impact China's national security.
In
response to the book, Trump released a statement saying that if there was
veracity to the claim, "then I assume (Milley) would be tried for TREASON
in that he would have been dealing with his Chinese counterpart behind the
President's back and telling China that he would be giving them
notification 'of an attack.' Can't do that!"
Regarding Pelosi, the former House speaker, Gosar echoed
Republican sentiments that Pelosi was to blame for the attack, published in
late December in an alternative Jan. 6 report from House Republicans. According
to factcheck.org, which is run by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg
Public Policy Center, this claim is unsubstantiated.
The
Pentagon and Pelosi's office did not respond to requests for comment. Gosar's
office also did not respond to a request for comment.
The new House GOP majority has voted to create the Select
Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government that will investigate President Joe Biden and actions by the
executive branch, which could include looking into the FBI and/or
Justice Department's handling of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.
The
rules package passed Monday also ended the House Select Committee on the
January 6 Attack, established by the prior, Democrat-controlled Congress to
investigate the events of that day. The committee reported on the roles of
Gosar and Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz. Both have denied any part in the planning of
the riot.
Biggs
and Gosar were referred to the House Ethics Committee for ignoring subpoenas to
testify before the Jan 6. committee. Under the new rules in the 118th Congress,
the House Ethics Committee has been weakened. Among other changes, the committee can only bring on new
employees during the first month, and term limits were instituted for members,
effectively kicking out all of the Democrats except one.
Paul Gosar lives in the most conservative district in the
state of Arizona, and usually gets 60% of the vote in his elections. In the
2022 election, he got 97.8 % of the vote, so will be in office for a while – unless
the Department of Justice charges him with a crime.
For now, there are still a few things protecting our country:
1)
The public is fed up with all the nonsense created
by the 2020 election deniers, and the majority of them lost in the 2022 election.
In Arizona, Democrats won the races for Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney
General, and Senate. The only Republican to win was Kimberly Yee, who retained
her office as Treasurer.
2)
Due to the midterm elections, Democrats INCREASED their
majority in the Senate, which will go a long way to stopping the extremists in
the House of Representatives. If George Santos is forced to resign, the governor
of New York can appoint a replacement, which could make the GOP edge in the
House even similar.
3)
All of the investigations The Former Guy will come
to fruition in 2023, which will make it impossible for Trump to run for office
again. The leading GOP candidate, Ron DeSantis is nearly as crazy, and will not
attract enough votes nationwide to beat whoever is the Democratic candidate,
who will likely be Joe Biden, who will be just short of 82 years old when the
2024 election is held.
Can the Republican Party be saved?
It’s possible, but it would require more people like Liz Cheney
and Adam Kinzinger to get elected. On top of that, if Dominion Voting System’s
defamation suit against FOX is successful, a key source of voter misinformation
will lose its hold on the gullible audience it now controls.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/13/rupert-murdoch-deposition-dominion-fox-lawsuit-delayed.html
The Parody Project has written numerous songs about the Republican Party. The most recent one (see below) provides an excellent summary:
https://parodyproject.com/the-real-gop-parody-of-always-a-woman-to-me/
