David Frum lists off 13 ways the Republican party is wrong, and ends with this one (via):
It is wrong above all in its dangerous combination of apocalyptic pessimism about the long-term future of the country with aloof indifference to unemployment.
Whatever you want to say about Ronald Reagan, he wasn’t this kind of pessimist. His outlook was anchored in deeply positive expectations about the future of the country. Compare that to the current crop of Republicans, along with Fox News, who are almost entirely motivated by fear and resentment. They are deeply butthurt about losing the White House and the healthcare reform fight. They fetishize small government to the point that they see little or no government role in fixing any of our current problems. And the social conservatives in the party just emanate a general sourness. All this has led to a crop of Republicans who come off as the polar opposite of the man they venerate.
There’s not a lot to be positive about in the current economic climate, but it’s not unrealistic or naive to be hopeful about the future of America. We have had periods of massive dysfunction before (for example, if you’ve been watching Prohibition this week, it’s hard to see how our current political climate is any worse than what happened then), and we’ve recovered. It’s not Obama’s or the Democrats’ nature to be sunny optimists, but it doesn’t take much to serve as an alternative to the current Republican Party. A few words about some of the success of the past four years (like saving the US auto industry), a set of plans for future success, an occasional smile, and a little bit of good humor is all it takes to outshine Republicans in the optimism department. They are a truly humorless and negative bunch, and when we’re cataloging the ways they’re not like Reagan, it’s worth remembering and mentioning this characteristic.
cleek
this.
arguingwithsignposts
The truly sickening part of it is they actually *do* smile quite often. That smug fucker Eric Cantor practically beams when he’s talking about gutting the social safety net with austerity.
Kd Bart
It’s a party of Livia Sopranos.
wilfred
Optimistic, eh?
“WASHINGTON (Reuters) – American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.
There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.”
I feel better already.
Brandon
This post would only matter if the audience actually
veneratedgave a rats ass about Reagan.When would I do that and why the hell would I ever want to do it? The only occasion where I would ever even bother to do something like this is if I lost my mind and decided to enter the Republican primary.
JGabriel
mistermix:
Have we forgotten the Ronald Reagan who swore Medicare would be the death of the country? His rhetoric in the 80s was that of Hollywood optimism, but I think his outlook was always I Got Mine, Fuck You.
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JPL
Let’s all party like it is 1918! The occupy Wall Street group is leading the way.
Baud
Obama is actually pretty optimistic, IMHO. When have you seen him be otherwise?
Napoleon
The political climate in the country isn’t like it was in the era of Prohibition but in the era leading up to the civil war. Our government is totally broken.
amk
@Baud: Looks like mistermix got out on the wrong side of his bed this morning.
And raygun was optimistic ? Gimme a break.
JGabriel
Mistermix:
The last time things were this bad was in the aftermath of the 1929 stock market crash. It took 18 years, the economic stimulus of a massive war effort that didn’t end until we invented the atomic bomb, and the decimation of most of the world’s other economies, for us to recover.
Maybe I’m just cranky this morning, but I’m not seeing that as an encouraging precedent.
What would be nice is if a majority of the voting population could come to the understanding that we don’t actually need a war to have stimulus — that war and stimulus can be decoupled — and then vote that way.
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Raven (formerly stuckinred)
Fuck Anwar al-Awlaki’s dead ass.
The Republic of Stupidity
And who was in realty never the man they so desperately pretended he was in the first place…
More like a dottering old man playing yet another carefully scripted role in an otherwise undistinguished career…
Omnes Omnibus
@amk: The image he conveyed was that of a sunny optimist. The policies, not so much. The current crop are definitely worse – in both policy and marketing strategy.
WereBear
In a previous thread someone linked to a Harvard blog which explained “metamovements.” Thanks, whoever you are.
The article was good: the comments were so screwed up. One guy comments with an avatar that looks like him holding an infant; he was of the opinion that we “needed a large natural disaster, the system can’t be fixed.”
WTF? I mean really, WTF times eleventy, that’s the best you can do?
Things get screwed up. Things can get unscrewed. I understand the impulse to do a clean wipe & a reboot; but you lose things that way. We’ve spent about 10,000 years getting to here… I think it’s stupid to start over.
This is of pertinence to me because my humble little cat site got hacked yesterday; I can no longer keep up. I’ve had to engage a service (let them be good ones, Lawd) and have effectively doubled my hosting costs because of malware operators; leeches and parasites like the Republican party.
I never thought I’d love “business” but the race to the bottom is driving me insane. We got a new coffee maker for the office that shreds the little pod and drops grounds in your cup. The supermarket has 87 kinds of chocolate chip cookies but very few of a different variety just in case I’m crazy enough to want to buy some. The first time I used my new ice trays I twisted them to free the ice and they cracked and broke. I guess someone didn’t anticipate THEY WOULD BE STUCK IN THE FREEZER.
I’m at the point where I’m going to be rude to the next person who natters on about consumer choice. I’d like to buy a cookie that’s not one of the five “approved” flavors. I’d like to buy meat that I know wasn’t cloned. I’d like to have the real Ben & Jerry’s back.
But I don’t have those choices.
Baud
@amk: I suppose optimism is somewhat relative. Reagan was an optimist compared to the current bunch, and probably compared to the way a lot of people felt by the end of the 70s.
mistermix
@Omnes Omnibus: This. My point is that Reagan was marketed as an optimist and won as an optimist. The current Republicans aren’t even trying to appear as though they hold out any hope. It’s just “stick with us and the future won’t be as shittily shitty as it would be with the Democrats”.
@Brandon: I was referring to the recent videos showing Reagan embracing a tax increase for millionaires, repeated by Obama recently. I added a link.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Gosh, could the fact that the GOP won’t accept candidates who aren’t TalEvangical loons who read The Book of Revelation as wank material have anything to do with this outlook?
Nah.
And even if this were the case it would have NOTHING to do with the fact St. Sunny Ron invited the Moral Majority over for dinner one night and they never left, if you know what I mean.
Honest.
Stop connecting those dots this minute, you heathens.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: Check out the shock from the grifter supporters!
Mark B.
I think this is an argument which might resonate with some of the current Republicans who are catching on to the strain of nihilism which has become the theme of the 2012 Republican campaigns. But it’s a mistake to think there was any good in Reagan. The bastard talked a good game, but his soul was darker than the event horizon of a black hole. He sold the suckers into buying his fake version of ‘Morning in America’ while he stole America’s future and sold it for pennies on the dollar to slice it up and feed it to his dogs. There wasn’t an ounce of good in him.
Anya
Complete OT, but this story angered me so much — 96-Year-Old Black Woman Denied Voter ID in Tennessee. Considering her age, Mrs. Cooper dealt with denial of vote in her early years, and now in her later years, she’s dealing with the same thing. WTF, America?
Mrs. Cooper was probably in her thirties when Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth – who passed away yesterday at age 89, was being bombed, beaten and jailed for fighting for voter rights for African Americans. Now, Mrs. Cooper and others like her are denied the right to vote because Republicans are criminals and Democrats are cowards and a large segment of the American people are ignorant assholes. This makes me so angry that I am fit to do something really stupid.
jayackroyd
This is not true. They only do this when they are not in power. They see plenty of government role when they are doling out the money. They even believe in programs like Medicare Part D when they’re in power. They spend money like drunken sailors.
They fetishize tax cuts, in power and out, which is disastrous public policy, but they are absolutely opposed to actually shrinking the size of government, as you will shortly see, when the trigger date approaches and the House just says “oh, well, never mind.”
No GOP President, no GOP Congress, no GOP Senate has ever proposed a budget smaller than the year before, and, since Nixon, none has reduced a deficit. Even the 100 billion in “cuts” that took place in one of the early round of hostage taking ended up making a small increase.
Boehner’s problem is that he has some freshman members in his caucus who don’t understand that this “small government” thing is a Big Lie–a Great and Powerful Budget Hawk that the media breathlessly covers, while ignoring the man behind the curtain pouring money down crony ratholes.
We shouldn’t help the Republicans, and the complicit centrist media by treating the Big Lie as anything other than what it is.
jayackroyd
@amk:
Reagan was a total optimist. A war hating optimist, FTM. Read Will Bunch’s Tear Down This Myth. Or, in a more detailed policy examination, Frances Fitzgerald’s Way Out There in the Blue. Reagan actually believed we could end the threat of nuclear war through technology, that pro-business policies would life all boats.
The Reagan the current GOP worships bears little resemblance to the actual man, which is the theme of Will’s book.
Now, part of this optimism stemmed from his not being entirely connected to reality. But it was an optimistic (as opposed to Nixon’s paranoid) set of delusions.
PeakVT
@Anya: Denying her right to vote is exactly the kind of outcome the law’s supporters wanted. Good for Mrs. Cooper for refusing to take no for an answer.
Scott
I haven’t seen Prohibition yet but I did read Last Call (the book on which it is based) over the summer. I would recommend it to everyone. It is far more than just about Prohibition. It is about how this country thinks and operates. I am still digesting the swirl of influences, religion, resentments, motivations of the the various peoples and factions of the United States that led to the disaster of Prohibition. The parallels to today are astounding. Just one example: After the 1920 census, the Congress refused for 8 years to adjust the congressional boundaries because that would have given more power and influence to the big, Catholic, immigrant Democratic cities at the expense of rural Protestants. Sound familar? Another concept: Prohibition was the primary result of the actions of faith-based liberals and progressives. We have equal disasters today as the result of faith-based conservatives.
JGabriel
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
Exactly. Any attempt to redraw Reagan as somehow less crazy than today’s GOP falters on the fact that today’s GOP is the child of Reagan’s (and Nixon’s) rhetoric, policies, and campaign choices.
Today’s Republicans aren’t doing anything Ronnie wouldn’t have done if he’d had a majority-wingnut Congress — mostly they’re just following through on his intentions.
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EconWatcher
If you try to put yourself in the shoes of a social conservative for a moment, the source of their bitterness is not hard to see. They have lost, lost badly, and lost amazingly quickly.
Lawrence v. Texas, the case in which the Supreme Court basically ruled that states cannot make it illegal to be gay, was decided in 2003. 2003! Think about how quickly we have moved from there to the repeal of DADT and marriage equality in multiple states. Compared to this, the movement for racial equality moved at a glacial pace (and still does).
If you’re a social conservative, it’s as if the world turned upside down on you over night. I don’t sympathize, but I have no trouble understanding it at all.
Davis X. Machina
It’s hard to be a sunny optimist when it’s so….dark….out.
Reagan was still able to remember personally, like most of his voters, and harken us back to, a country where if it was ever… dark…. it was over there someplace, where it could be ignored. That made it easy to be a cheerful sort. He had seen the future — it looked just like the past, improved in places by GE engineers.
kdaug
@wilfred: Ignorant, or willfully naive?
You think this is new? You think our government hasn’t had a Kill or Capture list since it’s inception?
Fidel’s exploding cigars? Spies during the Cold War? Poncho Villa? Crazy Horse?
Every country has one. Nature of the beast.
PeakVT
Reagan certainly came across as optimistic in the 1984 campaign season, which wasn’t hard given the that the economy was growing strongly (outside the Rust Belt). But is that true for 1980? That was before I became aware of anything political, so I have no idea what he was like during that campaign.
mk3872
Murdoch, Inc and in turn, now the GOP, is led by guys cut from the same cloth as Roger Ailes, which means that they are obsessed with defeating liberals at all costs and are equally enthralled with crazy conspiracy theory notions.
A 50/50 mix of Rush Limbaugh + Glenn Beck = the perfect personification of today’s GOP.
You hit the head squarely here, mm.
Hoodie
@Davis X. Machina: Reagan was a child of the Depression and a lot of folks from that generation were pretty optimistic because of surviving a pretty tumultuous period. Reagan’s followers bought into the optimism because they still believed they controlled events. Reagan was still a reactionary figure, however. It’s just that times have changed and the tribal group he serves as a symbol for has developed an even deeper sense of loss of control because the things that enabled denial, e.g., the Cold War and the financialization of the economy during the “booms” of the 80’s and ’90s, are no longer an option. Hence, they’ve become deeply pessimistic while at the same time engaging in even more bizarre forms of magical thinking. There’s a fine line between optimistic delusions and paranoia. Things are usually never as great as we think or a bad as we fear.
Chris
Reagan sold people a bag of shit by waxing poetic about the radiant future it would open up for the country.
Thirty years later, enough people are finally realizing that it is in fact shit, so Republicans are switching to the “yeah, well, sadly, it HAS to be this way…”
Shlemizel
Funny but I never bought that bullshit he was selling. His sunny optimism always struck me as pert of the act. He never governed in an optimistic way – he was always about how to grab a larger portion of what little was going to be left before it was too late.
The big difference is the huge numbers of have-nots that support the winner take all philosophy that hurts them. My parents and grandparents knew we are all in this together & the benefited from things done to help others.
Mark B.
Gotta agree with the above posters. It wasn’t so much that Reagan was optimistic, it’s that the bag of shit he was selling to the American people was wrapped in optimistic-looking wrapping paper. And he was smiling while he took the suckers’ money.
Barry
@kdaug: “You think this is new? You think our government hasn’t had a Kill or Capture list since it’s inception?”
The whole point is that what might have happened before, and had to be done on the very down low, is now routine business.
kdaug
@Barry:
Nearly by definition, to have a State is to have Enemies of the State.
wilfred
A Star Chamber with the authority – bestowed by whom? by what elected officials? – is revealed to have authorized the murder of an American citizen and this is the best response? It answers to no one.
Roger Penrose once wrote that if you weren’t shocked by quantum mechanics, you didn’t understand it.
This is worse.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Davis X. Machina:
Congratulations, you have won today’s Internet! Where shall we send the cookie?
jayackroyd
@Scott:
I haven’t watched it myself, but I’m told it answers a question that’s been plaguing me for about 6 months–why the US stopped adding seats to the House in response to population growth and states added to the union, after the 1920 census. I’ve asked US historians, and they mostly said “they ran out of room” which struck me as absurd. That the Drys stopped the expansion because it would have led to their losing the House to growing urban populations is the first explanation I’ve heard that makes any actual sense.
Svensker
@wilfred:
Wilfred, you’re not getting it. What’s happening outside the U.S. doesn’t really interest anyone in the States anymore. Things are collapsing so badly within the country that the various wars over there, etc., are just some sort of dark rumble outside somewhere that no one is paying attention to right now. Hard to hear the dark rumble over the roar of the concrete bridge crashing down around our ears.
My friend who lost his stores and has been unemployed for 2 years just took a commission-only job. His last bit of savings will be gone mid-November and he’s scared he won’t be making enough commissions by then to live on. He doesn’t care about al-Awlaki.
Another friend whose store went under has been a nanny for rich folks in NYC for the last two years. Her employers have just informed her they are going to declare bankruptcy and they’re not sure they’ll be able to pay her for the last two weeks. Since she’s living paycheck to paycheck, this is a real problem. She doesn’t care about al-Awlaki.
Another friend worked at a major NYC law firm as a paralegal for years. His job was outsourced and he got laid off 2 years ago. Couldn’t find a real job so he did dog-walking to keep from sleeping on the street. He finally got a legal job in January that paid half of his old work, but he was grateful. He just found out that he’s getting laid off next week and he’ll be back to dog-walking to survive. He doesn’t care about al-Awlaki.
You’re not understanding the new America.
wilfred
It’s not about al-Awlaki. It’s about the slow, unimpeded descent into authoritarianism. But you know that.
It’s about conceding the last vestiges of decency in the name of … what, exactly? I don’t even know.
There was a time when something like this would have revolted Americans. Honestly, I don’t want to understand the new America.
Mnemosyne
@WereBear:
I’ve been reading a book by British film writer Kim Newman called Apocalypse Movies. It’s a pretty good survey of end of the world movies, and he makes some good points about the seductiveness of the end of the world scenario where everyone else is gone but somehow you managed to survive, along with a suitable romantic partner.
Stephen King (who’s quoted in the book) has some interesting points in Danse Macabre (his nonfiction book about horror) where he talks about how fun it was to write The Stand. Just wipe everything out and re-build it the way you want.
BDeevDad
Tea Baggers would be calling Reagan a RINO and he’d never be able to run for the nomination in today’s GOP. Hell, he called for a Buffett rule when he was president.
Paul in KY
@amk: Compared to these wackos, he was.
Mnemosyne
@wilfred:
When was that, exactly?
kindness
Frum really disappoints me. He has so much potential but refuses to take his Republican Party only blinders off.
Here’s a guy who doesn’t buy into all the Obama is a muslim/kenyan/sochulist heathen taking us all to hell. Frum actually recognizes that some of Obama’s policies are relatively progressive/Republican policy points. Yet Frum still will not say Obama is actually better than the neanderthals he claims to protect us from. No, Frum dutifully will say that ‘the neanderthals of the Republican Party are neanderthals, but they are my (Frum’s) neanderthals and I will support them’.
So I can’t really give the guy any credit. He isn’t moving the ball forward but making excuses why his side pushes the ball back and making excuses as to why he still supports neanderthals. Screw him.
wilfred
@46:
In 1975, for instance, when the Church Committee investigated the CIA. You should look it up. Interestingly, it came right on the heels of a disastrous war.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Baud:
This.
You can’t really grasp Reagan’s political success without understanding what a downright dirty, mean and nasty mood the country was in thru most of the 1970s. Not necessarily a “OMG we’re all gonnna dieeeee!” apocalyptic mood like many folks are in today, but rather a mean spirited kicking cats and slamming doors and I’m gonna hide in my room because I hate you all, I hate you teenage dark funk kind of mood. A lot of Reagan’s political capital came not because his policies were popular (many of them were not) but because he happened to be in the right place at the right time to both push back against that trend and to claim credit for it turning around despite the fact that the change came about for reasons that had little to do with him or with the policies of his administration (for example the dramatic drop in energy prices in the mid 1980s as OPEC lost its internal solidarity and new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea and other areas brought new supplies into production).
Svensker
@wilfred:
I don’t disagree, but there it is. The OWS is a response to the Greed is Everything, Fuck Decency mind-set that has taken over the country. I wish them well and hope they can have an affect.
kindness
I can tell that most here are younger than I am. I voted against Reagan twice. I remember Reagan.
Reagan was the first facade elected in the post war era. Reagan was a face, Reagan was a mouthpiece, Reagan controlled nothing. The machine controlled Reagan, just as they later controlled bush43. It was obvious that in Reagan’s second term he had Alzheimer’s. It was obvious to all but the media politely did not dwell on it and the Republicans dutifully would not discuss it. Why should they? They ran the show. It didn’t matter which figurehead they had up there. Same thing with bush43, except by that point the machine had become less concerned with being openly greedy & unconcerned about anything other than itself.
Palin represents this same machine. Perry as well.
tkogrumpy
I’m sorry to have to break this to you, but it is extremely naive to be the least bit optimistic about the future of Amerika.
wilfred
@ Svensker:
Oh, me, too. In fact, I’m going to New York in November to take part.
I wonder what the rank and file of the OWS Movement reckons of the report I cited? Or of Palestine? I think I have and idea.
tkogrumpy
@WereBear: Take a fuckin’ bow that was gorgeous.
catclub
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): Encourage them to get Palin on a third party run!
It will keep them occupied.
ChrisNYC
Neither Frum nor Sullivan understands the GOP. They can’t, I think, because they didn’t grow up here. They superimpose their own “conservative” ideas onto US GOPers and see what they want to see — which is why they get duped. Fascinating and telling that Frum, who has been savagely kicked out of the conservative fold is now being seen as their voice (saw him on CNN the other day, rating the candidates). Actual GOPers are too unhinged so this guy goes on CNN even though his ideas are repugnant to actual GOPers.
Paul in KY
@kindness: Agree totally with your take. Also agree that Reagan was a more generally optimistic fellow than the cretins now in Repub party.
I also voted against him twice (first time by stupidly voting for Anderson).
Frank in midtown
This is the logical end of Reganism. Nothing left to deregulate, the social costs of deregulation have come to exceed the private savings, there is no trickle down, and the deficit does matter. All these Repub’s can’t realize that the whole “we’re broke” argument undermines their own position.
debbie
I think Republicans have convinced themselves that they are so supremely capable at governing that they can push the country right to the edge of the abyss, ride in on their white horses, and snatch us all back into the safety of economic prosperity and peace. We’re already dead.