AHC: Prevent U.S. Republican near-split between conservatives and super conservatives.

You might have to go back to the early days of the Ford Administration. He didn't place a courtesy call to Ronnie Reagan regarding VP selection. Yes, really! And I think to some extent conservatives did blame him for the disastrous '74 mid-terms.

Bonus points if you can do this more recently.
 
Have Reagan beat Ford in the primaries and become president. His presidency is as much of a disaster ( if not more so) as Carter's and he loses in a landslide in 1980. His ideology is discredited and some young liberal Republican leads them to victory in the 90's.
 
He might actually do a little bit better, since Reagan's instincts are Keynesian. And in my universe that's more the prescription the doctor ordered for stagflation (note: this is a minority view, but I still think I'm correct). The Reagan luck and/or teflon coating may even hold up for Iran!

But in general, I agree. The problems of the late '70s are enough to swamp any presidency. Conservatism is "discredited," and the country including the Republicans move in a liberal direction.
 
What about if Reagan is assassinated in 1981, and HW Bush governs as a successful moderate-conservative two-term President? Then in 1988 or 1992 a conservative wins but is not able to execute a 'revolution', and then later on Jeb Bush is elected President. Would that work at keeping things more balanced?

Or Jimmy Carter somehow wins in 1980 and a moderate wins in 1984?

No Newt Gingrich and the 1994 Republican Revolution(Dick Cheney stays in Congress or Bob Michel doesn't retire) could keep things running more smoothly and being more bipartisan in Washington.
 
You might have to go back to the early days of the Ford Administration. He didn't place a courtesy call to Ronnie Reagan regarding VP selection. Yes, really! And I think to some extent conservatives did blame him for the disastrous '74 mid-terms.

Bonus points if you can do this more recently.

I'm a little bit confused about what is being asked here. Are you referring to the fight between Reagan and Ford around the onset of Reagan's Revolution, or the current discord within the Republican Party?
 
Both.

Reagan challenging a sitting president was the beginning. And it does continue to our time in various ways.

Pretty much unavoidable then. Due to the two party system, both parties are Big Tent which results in tensions between the various factions as a result. You can trace such infighting back all the way to the 19th Century, with the Bourbon and Silver Democrats as an example.
 
It doesn't strike me so much as a question of the Republican party evolving all on its own, but rather why the US public rewards an ongoing movement rightward which is the basis of the current party--conservative and conservativerer. That would not be the case if electorates did not keep voting in politicians who try to top the conservativeness of their predecessors.

In another GeographyDude thread that everyone else seems to be ignoring, I argue that what calls itself "conservative" in the post-Reagan era in this country is inherently in bad faith, newspeak for rule by a privileged oligarchy. But so it could be argued is modern "liberalism" which in fact tries to avoid even that milquetoast label and call themselves "moderates" instead. Basically what I see is that the rational self-interest of the vast majority of Americans lies far to the left of what they seem willing to vote for.

Now I also think that the modern electoral battlefield is effectively rigged, by gerrymandering and most inherently, by the winner-take all electoral system. But even with a corrupt and winner-take-all system an insurgent leftist program should be able to get into power if enough Americans support it.

Well then I might just be nuts and crazy to think things should be moving in the opposite direction or anyway should stop moving any farther right, but I meet just enough people who agree with me on many points that I think, no, it is not that we Americans really all want this right wing craziness, it is that the majority is effectively immobilized, voiceless, and brainwashed and above all discouraged from effective action. We can't think straight because we are lobotomized, I suspect.

The notion that maybe I'm just some over propagandized outlier has been glumly with me most of my adult life, but then along came the Sanders primary campaign of this year to demonstrate that these same "crazy" left wing notions I have are in fact shared by millions of small business owners and military veterans across the nation.

So the question is not, "why are Republicans so far to the Right," but how come the United States as a whole is?

Nor is it "why aren't the Republicans all unified in some consensus on just how far right they want to be?" Obviously there is going to be a spectrum. The question is, why is the spectrum centered so far to the right, and getting more so in rhetoric every decade?

Related to this, probably much more germane than "why do the Republicans do as they do?" is "how come Democrats can't shift the center back leftward again?"

If we accept the Republican world view that all the countries of the world, even the USA, have been too far to the left all along and things would be better the more we get rid of what Americans call "liberalism," then it is only rational that the Republicans would be deployed as they are--but then the question is, why didn't they accomplish their goals back when George W. Bush presided over a House and Senate all controlled by his own party? Which he had for six years after all. I think the answer is clearly "every step we take to the right is disastrous and obviously so, so Bush tiptoed." Enacting any of the major platform planks would erode their support very rapidly, unless democracy were openly done away with. Which I suppose is always a possibility, but it has costs. What I regard as the true driving force behind modern American "conservatism," plutocracy, is well served by the current quagmire where Democrats and Republicans are entrenched on current terms and at loggerheads, jamming any grand policy and causing changing policy to happen in little uncoordinated increments, while private power continues to grow more and more entrenched and normal-seeming.

It would not do for the Democratic party to drift leftward without let or hindrance because in that direction, more or less, lies a viable program for populist democracy that is prosperous. But since the reaction to that is not reality based, it can spin its alternate rhetoric in ever more hyperbolic terms all it wants to; the programs will be enacted only to a limited and selected degree, and will do little harm to the tiny fraction of the population that has enough wealth to "matter." The rest of us are expendable.
 
Prevent the repeal of the fariness doctrine.
That was needed a bad thing and a step on the road downward, but it was hardly the first step. This happened in the late 1980s and Reagan had already been re-elected. Clearly this is a symptom and not the cause--although of course people often die of particular "symptoms" of a disease. Arguably if this doctrine alone had stood, the political process would eventually veer left again due to more careful discussion of public issues.

But I doubt this very much really. It is on the right track because the fundamental issue here is ideological, with world views and how things are perceived, I am convinced. Even that's not really fundamental though; the distorted perceptions come from power and how most people lack it.

Fundamentally, I think the ruling classes no longer fear revolution. And they have a point; I for one am conscious that an all out revolution in a country like the USA would be a nuclear civil war. I think though that one can advocate revolution if it is necessary and thus get some "bulge" in a negotiation. Then the violent revolution never has to happen, if everyone negotiates in good faith and at bottom there is a belief that everyone's welfare is essential for everyone else's.

New Deal society, I believe, was based on a balance of power between the masses whom the ruling classes could see, during the Depression, were quite desperate and perhaps desperate enough to do something drastic about it, and intelligent, visionary members of those classes who could see the possibility of win-win solutions. For a time, it seemed reasonable to suppose that the ruling classes had learned a deep and eternal lesson and could now be trusted...although there remained plenty of reasons to doubt that. But one could hope.

Nowadays, more and more, though, it seems apparent that revolution is an empty threat. Leftists cannot agree on a program, and cannot get critical masses to support one if they did. So there is no longer much basis for a social balance of power. Or anyway it is the old-fashioned one; even slaves have the ability to affect their living conditions by withholding their theoretical potential capabilities to varying degrees. But the concept that if the ruling classes do not take due heed of the condition of the majority the masses might rise up and clean their clocks no longer haunts them very much. This process of increasing contempt for the welfare of anyone who is not in an immediate position to demand it has been coming back in an authoritarian direction since the end of World War II I think, but it really picked up speed after the 1970s.

Meanwhile other trends seem to represent tremendous progress, and to my eyes this progress is real--but not in the matter of essential power. That appears to be slipping out of the hands of the majority, and so more and more politics is a shell game for the public and a debate among elites for real policy, with certain broad categories of solutions completely off the table and discussion limited to whatever does not seem to affect or threaten these elites.
 
Pretty much unavoidable then. Due to the two party system, both parties are Big Tent which results in tensions between the various factions as a result. You can trace such infighting back all the way to the 19th Century, with the Bourbon and Silver Democrats as an example.
Yes, that's walking outside on a cold, blustery day and thanks for reminding us that there's plenty of other examples from our history.

And also on the Democratic side, Kennedy challenged Carter in 1980, and may have had significantly more traction had it not been for the Iranian hostages crisis.

But now, the Republicans have significant intra-party fighting. The AHC is to prevent that.
 
The problem is that in any coalition (even on the other side of the spectrum) there is always going to be a near-split because that's how you influence the policies and politics of your coalition. We saw it in the way that Jesse Jackson slammed Bill Clinton's DLC as Democrats for the Leisure Class just as much in Pat Buchanan's accusation that George Bush's free-trade policy made him a "trade wimp." The threat of bolting the coalition is always a strong kind of leverage against the other members, one that I don't think you can just do away with.

Further, I don't know that the question is clear enough in its definitions of "conservative" and "super-conservative" to answer effectively. Is the Religious Right, which is concerned about abortion and family values but otherwise in favor of compassionate conservatism, in the former or the latter? What about the libertarian wing that tends to be more moderate on social issues but is extreme on spending? The paleoconservatives are another mixed bag, as well, supporting trade protectionism and a return to a social order that is long-since dead. Once we clarify what constituencies fall where, we can start figuring out how to bond them more closely even if we can't prevent the threat of a split entirely.
 
Basically what I see is that the rational self-interest of the vast majority of Americans lies far to the left of what they seem willing to vote for.
The Left talks down to people. The average person cares that young people have a hard time getting a job, and when they hear the figures for minority youth unemployment, most people care about that, too.

And yet, progressives typically talk about job rights or minimum wage. Neither of which will help people without a job.

And these days, mainly just about the minimum wage. We have foreclosed on one particular remedy.
 
Basically what I see is that the rational self-interest of the vast majority of Americans lies far to the left of what they seem willing to vote for.
The Left talks down to people. The average person cares that young people have a hard time getting a job, and when they hear the figures for minority youth unemployment, most people care about that, too.

And yet, progressives typically talk about job rights or minimum wage. Neither of which will help people without a job.

And these days, mainly just about the minimum wage. We have foreclosed on one particular remedy.
 
The Left talks down to people. The average person cares that young people have a hard time getting a job, and when they hear the figures for minority youth unemployment, most people care about that, too.

And yet, progressives typically talk about job rights or minimum wage. Neither of which will help people without a job.

And these days, mainly just about the minimum wage. We have foreclosed on one particular remedy.

The whole "They don't vote for their interest" meme quite frankly sounds like the political equivalent of fedora-wearing neckbeard complaining about why girls don't date "Nice Guys" instead of that mean jock after berating her for stupid and evil she is for "not dating someone who would look out for her best interest."

As for preventing the split, the 70's basically destroyed the old economic and political system. Prevent the Oil Embargo somehow and the mainstream wing of the GOP might rough it out, but would still be on life-support after Watergate. Quite frankly, you'd probably have to prevent the rise of talk radio, cable TV and the Internet to stop the fracturing completely and considering the Democrats are about to face the same issue pretty soon, I think the issue isn't exactly unique to the GOP so much as it is people giving the elites the middle finger what with how Bernie Sanders resonated.
 
Last edited:
The whole "They don't vote for their interest" meme quite frankly sounds like the political equivalent of fedora-wearing neckbeard complaining about why girls don't date "Nice Guys" instead of that mean jock after berating her for stupid and evil she is for "not dating someone who would look out for her best interest."
Great analogy! :p

Actually, I think both are true. The American middle class doesn't vote it's economic interests, and the Left/Liberal/Progressive haven't really come up with the next step. For example, Bern Sanders is not a bend-the-path-guy on trade. Think he's really missing the boat on that one.

And weirdly, bizarrely, progressives don't really promote job creation. Least not anywhere like they could.
 
Great analogy! :p

Actually, I think both are true. The American middle class doesn't vote it's economic interests, and the Left/Liberal/Progressive haven't really come up with the next step. For example, Bern Sanders is not a bend-the-path-guy on trade. Think he's really missing the boat on that one.

And weirdly, bizarrely, progressives don't really promote job creation. Least not anywhere like they could.

The problem with the whole "best interests" thing is that it's subjective and varies from person to person. It's why you don't see people actually voting for their best interests because no one in the group can agree on what they actually are. The idea is paternalistic at best and extremely condescending at worst with the implication that "those people" don't know how to vote.
 
Honestly, I think you'd need to avoid the Cold War somehow, because it forced us to define ourselves as a society, and we did so in a lot of ways that were ultimately fatal to the New Deal consensus, since we were determined to be everything the USSR wasn't. The USSR was atheistic - America is Christian, screw E Pluribus Unum, we're the country of In God We Trust. The USSR was communistic - America is the nation of capitalism, and Adam Smith didn't say nothin' about Social Security. We built up (or rather resuscitated) an entire Horatio Alger mythology around our country, and, well, the problem with propaganda is that even if you only see it as a means to an end, you can bet that your children will come to accept it at face value. This myth structure came to being in the 40's and 50's, reinforced by pliant mass media, and the emerging Baby Boomers bought it all hook, line and sinker. Once they came of age, they'd demand politics in line with the religious and capitalistic nation they'd been taught represented ideal freedom.
 
Honestly, I think you'd need to avoid the Cold War somehow, because it forced us to define ourselves as a society, and we did so in a lot of ways that were ultimately fatal to the New Deal consensus, since we were determined to be everything the USSR wasn't. The USSR was atheistic - America is Christian, screw E Pluribus Unum, we're the country of In God We Trust. The USSR was communistic - America is the nation of capitalism, and Adam Smith didn't say nothin' about Social Security. We built up (or rather resuscitated) an entire Horatio Alger mythology around our country, and, well, the problem with propaganda is that even if you only see it as a means to an end, you can bet that your children will come to accept it at face value. This myth structure came to being in the 40's and 50's, reinforced by pliant mass media, and the emerging Baby Boomers bought it all hook, line and sinker. Once they came of age, they'd demand politics in line with the religious and capitalistic nation they'd been taught represented ideal freedom.

Or rather, maybe have the socialist movement survive WWI?
 
Top