The Republican Party Then and Now

As noted at Politifact, a popular meme has been sweeping the Internet and social media that notes positions once supported by the Republican Party in the 1950's which are now anathema to the party faithful.  So what happened and when did the GOP change?  In my view, one of the main catalysts was the rise of the Christofascists in the GOP.  Since the Tea Party has a 85% overlap of "conservative Christians," I view the Tea Party crowd as simply disingenuously disguised Christofascists. The irony is that while these people claim to support "Christian values" they policies they have brought to the GOP are the antithesis of Christian values.  Other than trying to police other people's bedrooms to enforce their neurotic sexual mores and force public religious displays on all citizens, they have no moral agenda.   Of course, with the rise of the Christofascists, sane and decent people fled the GOP.  The combined result is today's ugly political party where greed, racism, and religious extremism are the norm. Here are highlights from Politifact that make it clear that the change in the GOP - for the worse - is real:

Liberals are getting nostalgic about the 1950s Republican agenda -- at least judging by the social media meme several readers recently sent us.

The meme, created by the group Occupy Democrats, summarized a few planks from the 1956 Republican Party platform, followed by the wistful comment, "Share if you miss the good old days!"

Here are the seven planks listed in the meme, which to today’s ear sound more like Democratic talking points:

1. Provide federal assistance to low-income communities;
2. Protect Social Security;
3. Provide asylum for refugees;
4. Extend minimum wage;
5. Improve unemployment benefit system so it covers more people;
6. Strengthen labor laws so workers can more easily join a union;
7. Assure equal pay for equal work regardless of sex.

We wondered whether the meme accurately describes these elements of the 1956 platform, and if so, whether the 1956 document contrasts sharply with the most recent party platform in 2012. So we took a closer look.

We located a copy of the official party platform from 1956, when Dwight D. Eisenhower was running (successfully, as it turned out) for his second term as president.  All told, the meme is generally accurate in portraying these seven elements of the 1956 platform . . .

The bottom line, then, is that on most of these issues, the GOP moved to the right between 1956 and 2012, though the degree of that shift has varied somewhat issue by issue.

We asked scholars whether the contrast between the two platforms is noteworthy, and they generally agreed that it was.

Delton noted that the Republican Party in the 1950s was divided between moderates (including Eisenhower) and conservatives. She said the moderates controlled the process of platform-writing in 1956, but they threw a few bones to conservatives in certain portions of the document. For instance, the platform said the government wouldn’t sign a treaty or enter into an international agreement in violation of individual rights -- an issue that continues to energize conservatives decades later -- and there’s a plank about a balanced budget, which was seen as a conservative position.

The seven items listed in the meme were supported by moderates, Delton said. At the time, she said, "conservatives would have focused, with horror, on the very items the meme highlights."

Eisenhower was facing a Democratic Congress in 1956 and didn’t want to try to reverse the New Deal, Anderson said. "If the point is that Eisenhower was not as extreme as Republicans today, it is accurate."

The meme says the 1956 Republican Party platform supported equal pay, the minimum wage, asylum for refugees, protections for unions and more.

That’s generally correct. . . . The claim is accurate but needs clarification or additional information, so we rate it Mostly True.

The 1956 platform describes the GOP I grew up in and that generations of my family supported.  That party is dead and perhaps beyond saving unless and until the Christofascists are driven out and treated as the foul individuals that they are notwithstanding their feigned piety and religiosity. 

Ronald Reagan Adviser: Barack Obama is a Conservative

While the Christofascists/Tea Party base of the Republican Party continues to suffer from a virulent form of swamp fever that makes rational though impossible and makes those afflicted unable to grasp objective reality, there remain a few sane Republicans - they are a dying species - who remain in touch with reality and can see for themselves that the policies favored by Barack Obama are actual conservative policies.  Or at least they were before the Christofascists/Tea Party crowd infected the GOP with the equivalent of mad cow disease.  Among those still able to see reality is former Reagan administration domestic policy aide Bruce Bartlett, who maintains that Barack Obama is in reality a conservative.  A piece in Salon looks at Bartlett's comments.  Here are highlights:

President Barack Obama “has governed as a moderate conservative,” former Reagan administration domestic policy aide Bruce Bartlett writes in a new essay for the eclectic American Conservative magazine.

Bartlett, an economic policy expert who left the Republican Party amid disgust with President George W. Bush’s fiscal policies and backed Obama in 2008, contends that a look at Obama’s track record reveals a president who’s basically a liberal Republican of yore. From the beginning of his administration, Bartlett argues, Obama has charted a center-right course on both foreign and domestic policy issues.

Populating his administration with hawks like Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama has presided over new military engagements abroad while overseeing a draconian crackdown on national security leaks at home, Bartlett notes.

Meanwhile, Obama has pursued “very conservative” fiscal policies, Bartlett writes, signing a stimulus package that was far smaller than what experts and advisers like Christina Romer found would be necessary to really prime the nation’s economic pump. Moreover, Obama has conducted himself like a deficit hawk, “proposing much deeper cuts in spending and the deficit than did the Republicans during the 2011 budget negotiations,” when a deal eluded the two parties. And don’t buy into the the GOP “harping” that Obama hates business, Bartlett cautions. The president, he says, “has bent over backward to protect corporate profits.”

What about the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement? That, too, is evidence of Obama’s conservatism, Bartlett writes. Observing that Obamacare’s market-based approach drew on a model put forth by the right-wing Heritage Foundation and by Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney . . 

While Bartlett doesn’t see viscerally anti-Obama conservatives as likely to acknowledge the president’s conservatism, he concludes that philosopher and activist Cornel West “nailed it” when he recently declared  to Salon that Obama has given the country “a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national security presidency.”

Read Barlett’s full essay here.  It would be nice if the GOP could return to what it once was.  Sadly, unless and until the Christofascists/Tea Party elements are driven from the GOP base, it is foolish to think that the party can regain sanity or be reformed from within.