Yes.
I may have mentioned in previous articles
some of this information. Currently the most left leaning Republican in
Congress is to the right of the most right leaning Democrat. In the past it was
the moderates in each party that have been able to broker compromise so
congress could get some work done for the good of the citizenry.
I don’t believe that the Democrats have
moved further to the left, but I do believe that the Republicans have moved
significantly, even radically to the right. And most of this is due to the Tea
Party and its factions and their inability to compromise on anything. The
religious right has played a similar role in the past and continues to do so.
The Tea Party is viewed as those folk who
are conservative and libertarian and has been protesting since 2009. They want
reduced government spending, are opposed to taxes in general, they want the
national and federal debt reduced. There are members in congress who carry the
Tea Party label but there is no central leadership of this group; though of the
best known are: Ron Paul, Sarah Palin, Dick Armey, Eric Cantor and Michele Bachmann.
87% don’t even like the mainstream Republican leadership. And there is the rub.
They are exerting so much pressure on presidential candidates; those candidates
feel they must cater to the group to get elected. Thus moderate leadership is
in real danger, and the country faces continuing congressional gridlock.
Mitt Romney, in my opinion is the only
centrist candidate on the scene with the possible exception of Jon Huntsman,
but both of them are Mormon which Americans see as the third most hated
religion in the country. The rest of the field is just plain too radical.
The Tea Party bears little resemblance to
their historical name sakes of the Boston Tea Party whose cry was, “taxation
without representation.” All the while they support a system that has not
worked for 35 years, supply side economics, which has caused the great
imbalance of wealth in this country. Their agenda would make things all the
worse. Given their druthers, I believe we would return to the chaos of the 1800’s
where the economy was simply out of control before governmental safeguards were
put in place to stabilize free enterprise. I sympathize with their anger but
find it totally misplaced.
The problem the GOP now has is well represented in their presidential lineup: the GOP primary voters seem to hate the one candidate (Romney) that in polls seems to have any chance of beating Obama. The GOP has moved far enough to the right that they're in danger of falling off the edge of the world.
ReplyDeleteThe democrats have, if anything, moved to the right along with the republicans. GOP is a far-right party while the democrats are a center-right party. 3 years into a democratic administration, virtually all conservative economic policies remain firmly in place. Bush tax cuts extended. Nothing measurably progressive got passed. Healthcare reform that finally got past was a predictably watered-down version that was a near-copy of a republican healthcare plan offered a decade earlier. Financial reform also heavily de-fanged and watered down. At the debt-ceiling crisis, Obama was offering fiscal concessions to the GOP that were well to the right of the mainstream population.
Which begs the question, how much does it matter who wins? It looks like whichever party is in the white house, you get conservative policies either way. Just to different degrees, I guess.