Yet then, as now, the Democratic Party represented the best hope for common people suffering the losses of the Depression, calamity, and exploitation by the wealthy. Ironically, people today have better access to education, and to information in general, yet they seem to be less aware of who best represents their interests. They still harbor a lot of the same racial prejudices which would have made Roosevelt's election impossible if he'd had Obama's ethnic background. They are subjected to a propaganda machine, closely tied to the evangelical Christians, which has been able to take advantage of their religiosity and self-serving version of patriotism, and their disinterest in learning about government and public policy, filling the void with disinformation. They are several generations removed from forebears who benefited from Alphabet Agencies created under the New Deal, which stimulated the economy, created jobs and built utilities and the interstate highway system, growing the infrastructure that all of modern society sprang from. Furthermore, that era marked the growth of government involvement in science, preserving the environment, developing soil conservation measures and building up the national parks and wildlife preserves. And of course the modernization and protection of banking and investments, the evolution of economics as a science, and the development of strategies to curb inflation and recession, were also born under that infrastructure. Having forgotten all of this, having forgotten their family lore, and/or having slept through history class--while enjoying the public education not so widely available in 1932--they are prone to identify these successes of the New Deal as Big Government, a euphemism for oppression. Crucial among these errors in thinking is their antagonism of the Fed for its application of lessons learned from the crash of '29, and the many advances in the field of economics since, preferring to call these the failed policies of an incompetent elite, rather than to expend the effort to actually take a course in economics, or to download the data from government sites and study the trends and statistics for themselves, or else to rely on experts, the same way they trust the plumber of mechanic to fix what they can't understand. Thus, Big Government is a fabrication of Right Wing pundits, spoon fed to a child-like constituency that needs a good bedtime story to coddle them out of their tantrums and put them to sleep. Big Government becomes a transference of all their anger and frustration for their own personal shortcomings, which probably began with a lousy early educational experience, broken dreams of Easy Street, and the sense of asylum among others similarly situated--crying in their beer about how they haven't put away as much, or lived better than, their parents. In short, this generation of Republicans represents a failed experiment in citizenship. They are, and will likely continue to be, the voice of anger and obstruction to the very programs designed to help them help themselves. They will likely continue to appeal to ignorance, to exploit primal fears (xenophobia/racism, misogyny and the decline of the WASP) and to pander to the evangelicals, cynics and conspiracy theorists with the same lies and hyperbole that will go down in history as one of the worst campaign strategies in recent memory. And this is the back story, in brief, of how the map turns from blue to red. No doubt there will be tomes and dissertations on it for years to come, which will certainly give the salient points better justice than I can.
Yeah, I bet she did. An indication of what the US conservatives value (and Oz conservatives alike). Honesty and fairness not being high on their supposed 'religious piety' list. Thanks, Tiassa!
Apparently Republicans have been beating up on Romney for failing to win the election. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/15/mitt-romney-republicans_n_2135967.html Will Romney run again in 2016? I think he will. I think Romney has the arrogance and a deep lust for power and the office. Romney has spent 8 years running for the office and millions trying to get it. I don’t think he is going to walk away from the quest so easily. And I think the man feels entitled to the office. The question is if he runs, will he get the Republican nomination again? If Romney faces the same or a similar brigade of Republican clowns in the primary, I wouldn’t be surprised if Romney walked away with the Republican nomination again in 2016.
The greatest sin is to admit it Yes, yes they are. It's kind of sad, because so much of it is hypocritical. Like Jindal, taking after the Party in general, and is nobody supposed to notice that he is anti-abortion with no exceptions? The common theme is that Republicans criticizing Romney's talk of gifts, or the forty-seven percent, or the makers and takers, or whatever it is, are hoping people overlook the fact that much of the conservative marketplace looks at American society that way. Romney's sin, much like the Rape Nuts, was to say it out loud. Meanwhile, it's worth noting here that while Michael Steel oversaw the GOP's success in the 2010 midterm, he was dumped afterward in the next chair election. Reince Priebus, however, oversaw a presidential loss, a widening of the Democratic Senate majority, and a slight erosion of the Republican House majority, but is likely to get another term at the Party helm. But in all the sound and fury on the right in the wake of their electoral failure, Mitt Romney ended up losing for a simple reason. George F. Will said, over the weekend, “You have a political problem when voters don't like you. You have a real problem when voters think you don't like them.” And that is pretty much how Romney lost. Or, as Susan Milligan put it: “You cannot personally insult people and expect them to vote for you.” ____________________ Notes: Milligan, Susan. “Hey, Mitt, It's the Thought That Counts”. U. S. News & World Report. November 16, 2012. USNews.com. November 19, 2012. http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs...s-mitt-romney-lost-because-he-insulted-voters
The people with the best access to the internet in the US are upper class white men. They voted for Romney, throughout the country. The internet only shows you what you want to see.
A few days ago the Republicans who are now publically critical of Romney wanted Romney to be POTUS and were singing the praises of Romney - funny how that works, what a difference an election makes. If the Republican entertainment establishment doesn't change, I expect another round of the clowns in 2016. We might even see a Sarah Palin run.
One of the interesting aspects of this is that for the Tea Party base of the party and their financial backers, the reason for their multiple failures is never their ideology or philosophy; it is that they, their candidates, just weren't conservative enough. So they double down and become more extreme. That is probably a major reason for the clown brigades we witnessed this election cycle. There was one very serious and very conservative candidate on the POTUS list this year, Ambassador Huntsman, and he failed the primaries. Why? Huntsman didn’t do the crazy talk or the crazy dance required by what David Frum (Republican Activist & Former Presidential Speech Writer) has called the Republican/conservative entertainment complex. Unfortunately I don’t see that entertainment complex changing its stripes any time soon. I don’t see Limbaugh changing his success formula; it has worked so well for him and his fellow talking heads. And I don’t see Limbaugh’s ditto heads leaving his daily rants of fantasy, hate and lies either. The arrangement works for Limbaugh and his ditto heads, each receives what they want from their relationship. The Republican entertainment complex couldn’t exist if it had to constrain itself to honesty. Mark Levin, along with every other conservative/Republican radio and TV, show would be nothing but blank air time if they had to constrain themselves by the bonds of honesty. If the Republican entertainment complex doesn’t change, the Republican Party will not change. Without change the Republican Party will be doomed to continual defeats and more extremism unless and until the Republican entertainment complex changes and that won’t change until the American demographic changes dwindling the number of ditto heads demanding the kind of biased hate filled programing provided to them by the likes of Limbaugh, Fox News and company. http://www.politico.com/blogs/media...-to-by-conservative-entertainment-149120.html
Hi iceaura. Just popped by to read-check something and leave. I saw this on the way out so I am just logging in for a minute to answer your comment. Briefly... It's not 'best access', it's 'access' per se at any level of user friendliness. Everyone has a friend who would facilitate access. And besides, the talk shows and standup comedian/satirist/news shows will re-broadcast any juicy bits with glee! It's all a big mix of 'access' of what has already been cached via the internet as video/text. That is the important thing. The actual content can be rebroadcast on the net or tv or cable or radio etc. Or just shared around via the cheapest mobile phones with minimal video capability! No longer are the people limited to the papers/channels which the repubs/conserves/religious bigots monopolized in the past with their money and scaremongering/profit motives for gulling people for party political/mercenary ends. Because of the internet and cached content, no political figure of any 'party' will lie with impunity and get away with it without some form of immediate reference to 'the record' cached on the internet archives and political libraries on 'opposition' antics, especially over the last four years. Even 'dial-up' internet will get you to the 'juicy bits' about political lies and antics. Nowhere to run and hide from now on. The 'party machine' that comes across as the most ridiculously mendacious and crazy will suffer the consequences now more than ever because it's all there on the net for everyone to see with minimal effort and without even having to leave home or even seek out...it'll come to you wherever you are! Gotta go! Cheers.
I've been watching an entire political Party and a dominating body of pundits and public intellectuals and important media figures lie, lie again, tell lies that contradict the earlier ones, rerun the earlier ones, repeat every six months for years, organize the lies into entire fictional narratives, all this in public, get paid handsomely and rewarded with political power and treated with deference, for years now. For as long as the internet has been around. They suffer no visible consequences from the internet whatsoever. Again: those with the best access to the internet have proven the most vulnerable to propaganda, the most gullible, the least accurately informed, in matters of political action and ideology as well as physical event. That's an observation. That pattern continuing, is the way to bet.
Until now, much of what you have observed is true. The operative phrase being: "until now". The president's re-election DESPITE all the republican's lies etc has put the whole thing into a new perspective: the internet and its use by the Democrats was pivotal in beginning the turning of the tide of lying campaigns. Even Karl Roves superpac 1/2 billion dollars didn't avail him much against the internet scrutiny and ridicule which they attracted on the net. Sure, the old days while the internet and its USES by parties was minimal/uncoordinated allowed 'business as usual' like you observed, but that has suddenly changed because of the CRITICAL MASS which the Democratic campaign and the internet have suddenly achieved. Not to mention that only in the last few years have the PRINT MEDIA moved 'on line' and must compete with other crowd sourced and crowd consumed 'news' and 'content' to the point that they cannot operate as 'organs of propaganda' anymore because of the immediate ALTERNATIVE VIEWS/FACTS which the internet is awash with that will make the usual propaganda sources the butt of jokes about its one-eyed and ridiculous propaganda/lies which can be immediately rebutted on-line by all and sundry. This election was the 'tipping point' for political accountability BEFORE the vote. It proved that the internet has matured and achieved critical mass in amny ways (including its role in the "Arab Spring" coverage and propaganda-busting, for eg, Syrian Regime's lies and barbarity are there for all to see via people's mobile phone reports IMMEDIATELY and not delayed for the months which such news/information was in the days before internet communications bypassing media organizations). The 'old days' are gone. The mature internet rules. Access is now ubiquitous one way or another. Propaganda machines are vulnerable to immediate ridicule/correction. Each person can determine the facts via comparing propaganda to public access information all over the net not under the control of the old party machines anymore. Best thing for future democracy and common good ever, the internet! More power to it! Cheers, mate.
Yes your internet theory is interesting, but is there evidence? We would expect if it was from the polls that people who have more internet access to be more anti-republican, right? Instead from the polls we see only a growing racial and sexual divide which leads to a more basil theory that republicans have become increasingly insular, hateful white racists and that the information age is not directly responsible.
