The Changes in the Republican Party

Note: I write this not to change anything.  Instead as an exercise for me to figure out for myself what happened.

It is hard to believe now, but at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, the Republican Party was the more liberal of the two parties in America.  Heck, the first Democratic President of the that century, Woodrow Wilson, was a racist, something more akin to the modern Republican Party.  This posting is not about how that changed.  It is more about the changes that have happened in my lifetime.  The party was already conservative, but had not lost its way when I was young.  That took some doing and I am detailing here.

Keep in mind that I am trying to separate the actions of nefarious individuals and the “party”.  Why?  Because we can historically detail crooked, nasty, illegal, even childish actions of politicians throughout history.  Not just our history, but history in general.  The difference I am talking about is the acceptance of the people to these actions.  By the people are both other politicians that seemingly gain nothing by accepting these poor actions of these outliers but the supposedly informed public that freely see these issues and accept these actions anyway.

Well, we can see where the government, in my lifetime, still had a level of integrity and conscience.  That was during the presidency of Richard Nixon.  He broke the law.  He authorized others to break the law.  Both parties, Republicans and Democrats, got together and investigated him properly and in a non-partisan manner.  That he was not found guilty of a crime was predicated solely on the simple fact that he resigned prior to the inevitable impeachment and removal from office.  Can you imagine this happening in today’s environment?

Later in that same decade a group of self-appointed marginal religious leaders successfully associated themselves with the Republican Party because it was the most conservative political party, calling themselves the Silent Majority or the Moral Majority.  In both cases, they were neither.  But they were organized and they were successful in coalescing their agenda.  One of the key issues was their anti-abortion stance.  This was not all, but it was a big one.  Their focus was to foster their fundamental religious point of view and to influence the political agenda for their own means despite being in the minority.  Is this the only driving force behind the changes?  No!  But it is probably the driving factor in the change we see with the Republican/ Conservative movement; a sense of moral authority.  My, my, my!   We are in trouble.

Then we come to the Reagan/Bush I era.  This is the start of the moral downfall of the Republican Party.  By moral downfall, once again I do not mean that the nefarious activities were any worse than what came before, but that it was not only accepted but praised by the party and the members of the party.

I am not speaking of Reagan’s failed economic policies that are now considered successes, his “success” at bringing down communism, or the coverup of his Alzheimer’s.  I speak specifically of the Iran/Contra incident.

According to the law of the land at that time, the actions of Oliver North, as directed by John Poindexter (I am purposely not including their military ranks at that time as I do not think they deserved them), and ultimately directed by someone higher in the White House (Ronny or George), committed grievous violations of federal law.  The most egregious crime they could have been charged with could have included TREASON.  North and Poindexter were both convicted for their actions.  That they were reversed was not the issue.  That they committed the crimes at the direction of the White House is.

The real problem with this?  North, Poindexter, Bush I, and Reagan became heroes because of this.  How?  Who knows.  I think this was the first disconnect with reality.  The first time that the Republican Party no longer cared about morality, caring about their agenda instead.  And the members of the Republican Party endorsed it.  How do I know?  I know a person who is generally stable who treated Ollie as a hero because of the fact that he “obeyed orders”.  Keep in mind, other at the end of WWII using that defense did not get away with that.

Not satisfied, movements were afoot to do a little brainwashing.  Not in the general sense of brainwashing.  In this case, there were movements afoot to convince people that their paranoia was true.  That the reason that the world was not going their way was because someone was out to get them.  That there was a big, bad liberal conspiracy out there.  The culprit?  Mainstream news.  Kind of weird when you think of it considering who owned the news agencies, not to mention the background of many of the reporters.  The solution?  Things like Fox News.  Things like Rush Limbaugh.  Organizations and people who seemed to revel in lying and  apologizing on the down-low.  As long as the ratings were there, they went forth with yellow journalism.  The funny part was that every time they were caught lying their ratings seemed to go up.

If there was a common theme, it was supposed Christianity.  The reason I say supposed was that if was a surface reality.  They focused on two issues that had started to make major changes in the 1970’s.  That being homosexuality and availability of abortion.  This was not all, obviously.  There were other things: the “war” on drugs, availability of birth control, AIDS, the breakdown of traditional marriage, influx of “them”.  All of this scared a lot of people and the right-wing conservatives played a blame game, saying that if they stood up to these rotten, terrible people and changes the world of “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” would once again rule the world.  The fact that this was fictional and you can never go back anyway did not help.  The story resonated and attracted a certain type of follower.

Into this paranoid, religious right, climate come the election of Bush II/ Cheney. A review of that administration shows a combination of incompetence at the presidential level and (at least) a conflict of interest at the vice presidential level.
Along this same time frame we get a group of ultra-conservatives that think they are being underrepresented in the Republican Party and splinter it off as the Tea Party Movement (the less said about this the better).

All of this created a climate where the Republican Party became a fragmented party that seems to be representing special interests with no direction.  The worse parts are that the leadership of the party cares not about any moral or legal compass.  Their agenda seem to be about obtaining power and personal agendas, primarily personal aggrandizement.  And the people who still identify themselves as Republicans seem to fall for their rhetoric in mindless lockstep.

We see more and more people who are politically conservative that are fed up.  Then now identify themselves as Independent.  This is an avoidance of the issue in reality.  They do not want to associate with the Democratic Party.  That is understandable, because the Democratic Party does not represent their social values.  With the POS that is in the White House and the actions of the current Republican Party leadership they do not want to associate with the Republican Party either.  This is understandable as well, because the Republican Party does not represent their moral values.

The problem becomes when election time comes.  Where will these “Independent” voters fall.  Will the vote against their social opponents or against their moral opponents or not vote at all.  This is somewhat unpredictable and totally sad.