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You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2011 / There’s only one Republican Party

There’s only one Republican Party

by Kay|  November 10, 20119:20 am| 41 Comments

This post is in: Election 2011

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Just wanted to clear something up:

These policies, and similar ones in other states, were passed in an arrogant frenzy by a Tea Party-tide of Republicans elected in 2010. Many of them decided that they had a mandate to dismantle some of the basic protections and restrictions of government. They went too far, and weary voters had to drag them back toward the center. As a result, Tuesday brought an overdue return of common sense to government policy in many states. Many voters are tired of legislation driven more by ideology than practicality, of measures that impoverish the middle class or deprive people of basic rights in order to prove some discredited economic theory or cultural belief.

This is misleading. It wasn’t the Tea Party that pushed the anti-union agenda in Ohio. It was moneyed interests that are absolutely central to the national GOP, and it was state legislators who did not arrive in any “Tea Party” wave, but are (supposedly) mainstream Republicans. Governor Kasich was in the US House from 1993 to 2001. He’s about as plugged in and mainstream as a Republican can be. This was his law. Further, each and every GOP candidate for President endorsed Kasich’s law. The Tea Party actually pushed the ridiculous constitutional amendment on health care. The union-busting law wasn’t their issue.

I don’t know if this nonsense is sentimentality or nostalgia or what, but can we please stop pretending there’s something called “The Republican Party”, a theory, that is different than the actual Republican Party that exists?

There’s one Republican Party, just like there’s one Democratic Party. I don’t run around pretending there’s another, alternate Democratic Party that is much, much better than the group that currently exists. I’d sometimes like to do that, but I don’t, because that’s purely aspirational on my part. It’s not reality.

Like all organizations, the GOP is a group of people. It’s a sum of parts. This fantasy mainstream “Republican Party” exists only in the memories of newspaper editorial writers. There are no activist members or leaders of the imaginary GOP. An organization like that no longer exists. This is what they are. Deal with it.

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Reader Interactions

41Comments

  1. 1.

    Cat Lady

    November 10, 2011 at 9:26 am

    And now you’ve given Tom Brokaw a sad.

  2. 2.

    kay

    November 10, 2011 at 9:31 am

    @Cat Lady:

    The union busting law was just the law that went through. The GOP also tried to sell Lake Erie and Ohio public schools. Not even to the highest bidder, either!

    The Republican Party did that. The GOP that exists.

  3. 3.

    Yevgraf

    November 10, 2011 at 9:35 am

    Today’s “mainstream Republicans” are the common, ordinary, everyday Germans of 1935-1945, playing along to get along, and will accept just about anything they disagree with in order to keep them evil leftists out of power and to preserve positions for themselves.

  4. 4.

    scav

    November 10, 2011 at 9:36 am

    @kay: I think we’re all chipping in to give Tom Brokaw a sad. I’ll spring for the curly ribbon.

  5. 5.

    Comrade Javamanphil

    November 10, 2011 at 9:37 am

    Facts are stupid things and we cannot expect the press corps to learn the truth. They are very busy waiting for the next career ending gaffe.

  6. 6.

    artem1s

    November 10, 2011 at 9:38 am

    thank you. i have been trying to get this through my relatives and friends heads for a couple of years now. like the fantasy of 1950s Americana.did.not.exist.

  7. 7.

    moonbat

    November 10, 2011 at 9:38 am

    Thanks for this. That is precisely what has happened: The Republican Party has been having it’s fantasy government/legislation on the state and national levels over the past year and it is INSANE, unworkable and not what Americans want. What we are seeing is a major party so certain that the echo chamber it has built for itself is reality that it is practically self-immolating.

    The old “reasonable” Republican Party headed out the door with Reagan. At least Nixon had the decency to resign after dancing all over the Constitution.

  8. 8.

    Misterpuff

    November 10, 2011 at 9:39 am

    There is only one true church Republican Party, it just happens to be a Koch financed radical RW think tank party now. They have bathed in this mindset for thirty years now and have finally revealed themselves to the public.

  9. 9.

    David Hunt

    November 10, 2011 at 9:39 am

    @Kay

    If newspaper editors admitted that was the real and only GOP, they’d have to say something equally twice as bad about Democrats. Unfortunately for them, the public isn’t ready to believe that the Democrats want to render the them into Soylent Green and export it to feed Islamic terrorists, so they can’t very well say that about the GOP, now can they? Of course, most of them are branded as liberal operators anyway…

  10. 10.

    rikryah

    November 10, 2011 at 9:42 am

    thanks for pointing out this obvious, Kay. tell it

  11. 11.

    peach flavored shampoo

    November 10, 2011 at 9:42 am

    I just want to join the Tit-Tea Party.

  12. 12.

    JGabriel

    November 10, 2011 at 9:44 am

    NY Times:

    Tuesday brought an overdue return of common sense to government policy in many states.

    Are Republicans still creationist, climate change denying, Rand-loving, anti-Keynes, anti-science, xenophobic, anti-woman, authoritarian, fascist-leaning freaks? Yes?

    Then there’s no return to common sense here.

    What are they smoking in the NY Times Editorial Boardroom?

    .

  13. 13.

    pkdz

    November 10, 2011 at 9:46 am

    This is clear to see here in Wisconsin. Voter ID bill. Union busting bill. Drastic changes in Medical Assistance. Walker, as County Executive, bidding out public sector jobs. Those jobs, security guards, going to a for profit company. This is not the Tea Party. This is the mainstream Republican Party of Wisconsin.

  14. 14.

    gbear

    November 10, 2011 at 9:46 am

    Can someone please hack this posting onto the front page of the NYT? Thank you.

  15. 15.

    Downpuppy

    November 10, 2011 at 9:47 am

    To be fair to the Times, they were pretty clear that all the crap they talked about was pure Republican, no pretending that it was just the wingnuts.

  16. 16.

    PurpleGirl

    November 10, 2011 at 9:49 am

    I grew up with the Republican Party of Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits, and Louie Lefkowitz. (There are probably others but these spring to mind first.) Not perfect men but men who thought about helping the population at large. Nelson Rockefeller especially worked with unions to support them and their members. No way these men would be counted as Rethuglicans today.

  17. 17.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    November 10, 2011 at 9:49 am

    Like all organizations, the GOP is a group of people. It’s a sum of parts.

    And more than occasionally, it manages to be less than the sum of its parts…

  18. 18.

    Chris

    November 10, 2011 at 10:00 am

    @Misterpuff:

    They have bathed in this mindset for thirty years now and have finally revealed themselves to the public.

    I don’t agree with that last. They KEEP revealing themselves to the public, and the public KEEPS forgetting, in a matter of a year or two, what was revealed and why they said “no thanks” to it.

    Just on the national level and just off the top of my head, Social Security privatization was proposed by Reagan in the eighties, then again by Bush in 2005, and then there was Gingrich’s Congress attempting to strangle Medicare in 1995 and forcing a government shutdown on the issue.

    The fanatic, ideological, anti-welfare anti-union anti-middle-class shenanigans we’re seeing now, like the Ryan Plan, are nothing new, it’s the same thing Republicans immediately push for the second they feel that they’re in enough of a position of strength to do so. I don’t imagine things are too different at the state level.

  19. 19.

    Poopyman

    November 10, 2011 at 10:09 am

    I don’t know if this nonsense is sentimentality or nostalgia or what

    It’s misdirection, but I think you already knew that.

    What is the purpose of the NYT? It is not to inform the people, that’s for sure. If it can produce more money by covering for the PTB, then that’s what they (and of course any media) will do.

  20. 20.

    SiubhanDuinne

    November 10, 2011 at 10:11 am

    Kay, I hope you’re planning to put this in a comment or letter to the editor of the NYT if you haven’t already.

    Edit: I like gbear’s suggestion @14 better.

  21. 21.

    Wally

    November 10, 2011 at 10:20 am

    It’s not pointing out the obvious. To most people, the “obvious” is the NYT’s slant. Like you say rikryah, Kay is spot on.

  22. 22.

    Villago Delenda Est

    November 10, 2011 at 10:22 am

    @moonbat:

    At least Nixon had the decency to resign after dancing all over the Constitution.

    Nixon only resigned after he was informed by Barry Goldwater, no less, that if he were impeached, he would be convicted. He had perhaps 10 votes, tops, for acquittal in the Senate.

    Decency had nothing to do with it. Until he was told this, he was going to tough it out. His goose was precooked.

  23. 23.

    Trinity

    November 10, 2011 at 10:26 am

    THIS.

    Thank you Kay.

  24. 24.

    drkrick

    November 10, 2011 at 10:28 am

    @PurpleGirl: Rockefeller was barely accepted as a Republican by most of the GOP even in his day. I’m not sure LBJ would have gotten a more hostile reception than he did at the ’64 convention.

    As Jon Stewart pointed out the other night, most of this wasn’t overreach by the Republicans – it was the platform they ran and won on in 2010. There were exceptions (a lot of Scott Walker’s legislative agenda wasn’t in his campaign platform), but for the most part this was what they said they were going to try to do. If the voters didn’t like it, they should have been paying more attention.

    You know who else surprised people by doing exactly the nutty things he said he’d do before he was elected once he got in power?

  25. 25.

    Chris

    November 10, 2011 at 10:29 am

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Nixon only resigned after he was informed by Barry Goldwater, no less, that if he were impeached, he would be convicted. He had perhaps 10 votes, tops, for acquittal in the Senate.

    IMO, the reason for that was that he wasn’t a “real” conservative: Nixon was still a Keynesian, who expanded government, increased welfare spending, proposed a universal health care plan and did all sorts of other things anathema to true movement conservatives. If he’d actually been One Of Them, IMO, they’d either have fought harder for him or at least tried to rehabilitate him in later years like they did Reagan and Goldwater.

    When you think about it, Nixon wasn’t really One Of anyone: mainstream Democrats, Southern Democrats, moderate Republicans and conservative Republicans all had their own reasons for distrusting him. Which also helps explain why he had 10 votes tops for acquittal.

  26. 26.

    Villago Delenda Est

    November 10, 2011 at 10:31 am

    You know who else surprised people by doing exactly the nutty things he said he’d do before he was elected once he got in power?

    You mean by laying it all out in a book published 10 years earlier? A best seller?

  27. 27.

    PurpleGirl

    November 10, 2011 at 10:39 am

    @drkrick: I’ve always lived in NYS… Rockefeller was the main Republican person at the time here. My real political coming-of-age was the administration of JFK and his assassination.

  28. 28.

    Poopyman

    November 10, 2011 at 10:40 am

    @Chris: BTW, Charlie Pierce links to this piece by Josh Gerstein in Politico about the Nixon Grand Jury transcripts coming out November 10. Hey! That’s today!

  29. 29.

    Villago Delenda Est

    November 10, 2011 at 11:34 am

    @Poopyman:

    As I recall, Leon Jaworski (the new special prosecutor after the Saturday Night Massacre of Archibald Cox) had to persuade the Grand Jury NOT to indict Nixon himself. They wanted to. So they settled on “unindicted co-conspirator) with his minions who were indicted.

  30. 30.

    Less Popular Tim

    November 10, 2011 at 12:36 pm

    Kay, you’ve got it all wrong. The real Aristotelian essence of the GOP is the ghost of Barry Goldwater, regardless of whatever imperfect instantiation of same exists here on earth.

  31. 31.

    Cris (without an H)

    November 10, 2011 at 12:37 pm

    @drkrick: You know who else surprised people by doing exactly the nutty things he said he’d do before he was elected once he got in power?

    Barack Obama!

  32. 32.

    priscianusjr

    November 10, 2011 at 1:26 pm

    Thanks, I’m glad you brought this up, but I still find it confusing. It certainly would seem that there is one Republican Party, but it also seems that Karl Rove really hates the Tea Party candidates and therefore that his huge money-laundering operation aka American Crossroads is distinct from the Koch Bros. money machine. Can someone explain this? Then there’s the anti-Mormon issue. How does that make for unity if Mittens is the nominee?
    I suspect the truth is that on just about any issue of concern to Democrats, the whole GOP agree (with the exception, in some cases, of Ron Paul), but that they are bitterly divided on disputes so far to the right that Democrats are barely aware of them. And that there are a lot of bitter divisions not even about issues, but about egos, power blocs, and who’s actually going to be running this racket after November.

  33. 33.

    El Cid

    November 10, 2011 at 1:58 pm

    __

    Governor Kasich was in the US House from 1993 to 2001.

    I’m shocked that someone recalls that John Kasich was a longstanding member of Congress and a shock-trooper in the Newt Revolution and premier budget hawk fetishist.

    It’s extremely rare that it’s mentioned and he’s usually referred to by his role on FoxNOOZ.

    And, yes, people would very much like to excuse the (so-far) culmination of Republican Bircher / Jesse Helms etc craziness as “Tea Party”.

    My god, the mass Tea Party actions were organized by former Republican House majority leader, Dick Armey.

    Is it now the thing that former Republican high officials and current GOP and conservative lobbyists taking money from pro-Republican billionaires are grassroots revolutionaries?

  34. 34.

    Sasha

    November 10, 2011 at 2:13 pm

    Stewart and THE DAILY SHOW nailed this last night as well.

  35. 35.

    DE

    November 10, 2011 at 3:44 pm

    You’re wrong, there is another Democratic Party, and it exists within the Republican mind. I believe it is called the Democrat Party.

  36. 36.

    here4tehbeer

    November 10, 2011 at 4:03 pm

    There were a few sane Republican state senators who were against SB5 – two of whom (Oelslager and Seitz) were booted off their respective committees by the senate majority leader so that the bill could actually get to the floor for a vote.

    They were, and it did, and it finally — barely — passed the senate 17-16.

    And we all know what thankfully happened after that.

  37. 37.

    A Farmer

    November 10, 2011 at 4:23 pm

    Well Kay, to try to prove the NYT right, there’s this. I guess the Tea Pary/Liberty Council can’t get enough of trying to destroy all unions, public and private.

  38. 38.

    Colleen

    November 10, 2011 at 5:16 pm

    Extremely well written post. Thank you and I’ll be sharing this one.

  39. 39.

    iriedc

    November 10, 2011 at 6:59 pm

    Kay, you’re absolutely right. I’ll lament the loss of the sane – but often wrong – upstate NY republicans of my youth (Sherwood Boehlert comes to mind).
    But they are long gone. And probably not returning in my lifetime. The Teaparty is just the ID of the mainstream GOP, saying things out loud that today’s polite GOP whisper in the backroom.

  40. 40.

    James E. Powell

    November 10, 2011 at 8:00 pm

    I have not seen anything on it recently, but isn’t Kasich still trying to sell the Ohio Turnpike?

Comments are closed.

Trackbacks

  1. The Mahablog » What Is the GOP? says:
    November 10, 2011 at 1:19 pm

    […] “movement conservatism” a long time ago; it’s all about their own wallets now. Kay wrote, It wasn’t the Tea Party that pushed the anti-union agenda in Ohio. It was moneyed interests that […]

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