The GOP Is No Longer A Conservative Party

[applegrove]

Katherine Pickering Antonova On Assignment For HuffPost.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/republicans-no-longer-conservative-party_us_59767dd6e4b0e201d5776f8c

"SNIP.............


From a European perspective, however, both U.S. parties have been conservative since World War II (that is, both are on the right end of the spectrum of most modern parliamentary democracies), and at the same time, both parties have always been liberal, as inheritors of Enlightenment notions of citizens’ rights, individual liberty and representative government.

But gradual shifts in the GOP over the last two or three decades that culminated in Donald Trump’s election in 2016 have changed all that. The GOP is no longer a conservative party in any meaningful way. It is instead something else, and it needs a more accurate description.

Why should we care what European political philosophy has to say about U.S. politics? Because our politics arose out of that philosophy, and going back to those roots brings clarity.

Most knowledgeable philosophical conservatives today will tell you how unhappy they are with how far the Republican Party has drifted. Some prominent conservatives leaned toward Democrats in the 2000s, such as Catholic conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan, and more have become never-Trumpers, including former Republican strategist Ana Navarro. This is because the GOP of Trump, House leader Paul Ryan and Senate leader Mitch McConnell has become a radical right. That may sound like a contradiction, since “radical” is usually shorthand for the far left, but the seeming contradiction demonstrates how restrictive our notion of the right-left political spectrum really is, and that’s perhaps the most important thing we can learn from looking to our European roots.


..............SNIP"

[MountCleaners]

1. Racist right is more like it

I'm not even listening to the Trump defenders I'm acquainted with. It's clear to me that they're motivated by racism, just from listening to them. They don't use any racial slurs so they think they're not, but they all have this idea that Democrats give "freebies" to everyone who isn't white.

[applegrove]

2. That is just the way to coral their white base into being for tax cuts

for the rich. I'm sure the big thinkers in the party are racist. But it is more important to republicans as a tool. Why they sabotaged Obama domestically and for the first time a president internationally: they could not let their racist base have any positive transactions with a great guy who happens to be black. Or his family. I'm sure that was one reason why they so attacked Obama care too. The GOP need to cultivate racism to have any chance of winning elections and not paying taxes.

[gratuitous]

3. Ah, no true conservatives have run the Republican party into the ditch

Conservatism can never fail; it can only be failed.

What a load of manure. Trump and this unamerican shitshow in the White House and in Congress are the normal and natural outcome of the policies and platform the Republicans have pursued for 40 years. This isn't some accident or "Who could have foreseen" happenstance. This is exactly what Republicans and conservatives have worked toward relentlessly. Now it's here, and all the "responsible" Republicans would like to sprint away from the horrible smell of their own farts.

It doesn't work that way, boys. You bought it, you own it. Grow up and take some responsibility for your reckless actions. You were all so happy on election night in 2016, and you were all so condescending toward people who saw what was coming. Now you've finally gotten a good look at it, and you want to pretend all this suckage just fell out of the sky or something. You control Congress, in case you've forgotten. You could end all this starting tomorrow. But you won't.

[applegrove]

5. I still think it needs a name. Then maybe it can have its own party,

splitting the right.

[Turbineguy]

4. The name used to be:

Lunatic Fringe.

[Dawson Leery]

6. They are Classical Conservatives, Tories.

[dembotoz]

7. only cause things are going bad

if things were going good they would announce him as king of the conservatives

[mwooldri]

8. Colour me unsurprised by this.

If I had to map UK political parties to US ones:

Republican - the hard right of the Conservative Party plus the UKIP wing. With a whole lot of 'Britain First' influence

Democratic Party - the Liberal Democrats, but stretched a bit more left and right than the Lib Dems to encompass more like Tory 'Wet' thinking on the right, to traditional Social Democratic Party (ex Labour) values on the left. Maybe throw in a bit of Blairite Labour in there too.

Green Party - Green Party. Now that's a political movement whose ideology doesn't really change much where in the world you go. You know what you get when you vote Green.

the US Libertarian Party - I can't map this to know UK parties. I don't know any that are in favour of abolishing government... well.. the Libertarian Party might find themselves at home with UKIP to a certain extent.

Mapping UK Labour... the Corbyn wing I can't map to any US party I know of. I could map to Bernie Sanders, but he's not a party and Corbyn's views are to the left of Sanders' views.

I think the simple explanation is that the GOP have abandoned traditional conservative thinking and have lumped themselves in with the Radical Right - the Paleocons, the Tea Party, the Alt-Right, and Nationalistic movements. Don the Con though, is in his own category.

Joe Manchin, the Senator for West Virginia, is probably a classical Conservative and fits in the mould of the UK Conservative Party fine when it comes to social issues and fiscal issues. The problem is, he wouldn't find a home in the Republican Party at all. I guess that's why he's a Democrat. May he long continue to be one

[applegrove]

9. How about 'the maniacal right?

[CousinIT]

10. Stop Calling Them Conservatives; They Are Radicals

Stop Calling Them Conservatives; They Are Radicals

by Claire Conner

We have to stop playing nice with the radical right starting with calling them who they are. They are NOT conservatives. These people are radicals; and they are bent on changing America.

Let's be clear about who these people are: the radical right is a coalition of Koch Brothers and their corporate pals, the old religious right with even more tendency toward repressive religious rule, libertarians who never met a central government they didn't want to get rid of and the John Birch Society.

These people envision an America that looks like this:

1. The New Deal dismantled.
2. All safety net programs eliminated.
3. The federal government shrunk by 75%.
4. Federal programs gutted and whole departments erased
5. Labor unions, labor protections and even child labor laws severely limited.
6. Taxes on the wealthy reduced to nothing.
7. Minimum wage laws repealed.
8. Voting so restricted that the radical right always wins.

In the new America -- a right wing dystopia -- business and the uber rich will be free to do anything unrestrained by rules or taxes.

This is where we are headed if we don't rise up -- in the activist political sense . . .now.

https://clairecooner.quora.com/Stop-Calling-Them-Conservatives-They-Are-Radicals