Jess Phoenix, Democratic candidate for California House district 25, last week tweeted a series of points from the 1956 Republican platform. It’s easy to see how the two parties could, back then, come together over a number of issues. I’m going to put the tweets into something that looks more like text. The tweetstream is available here.
I went & read the actual 1956 Republican platform thanks to this tweet. Holy crap. Pro-unions, pro-equal pay, pro-“progressive programs,” pro-expanding Federal minimum wage & Social Security, free vaccines, more facilities to train scientists, pro-affordable housing, & then this gem really stood out: “We promise unwavering vigilance against corruption and waste, and shall continue so to manage the public business as to warrant our people’s full confidence in the integrity of their Government.” Wow.
And here’s some about the
#ERA, which has been trending as#ratifyERA today. “We recommend to Congress the submission of a constitutional amendment providing equal rights for men and women.”This part is salient: “The Republican Party supports an immigration policy which is in keeping with the traditions of America in providing a haven for oppressed peoples, and which is based on equality of treatment, freedom from implications of discrimination between racial nationality and religious groups, and flexible enough to conform to changing needs and conditions.” It gets better.
“We will overlook no opportunity that, with prudence, can be taken to bring about a progressive elimination of the barriers that interfere with the free flow of news, information and ideas, and the exchange of persons between the free peoples & the captive peoples of the world.”
My favorite may be this: “We fully appreciate the importance of scientific knowledge and its application particularly in the military field.” Would be nice if the current admin listened to DOD re: climate.
The last bit I’ll quote is this: “We recognize the need for maintaining isolated wilderness areas to provide opportunity for future generations to experience some of the wilderness living through which the traditional American spirit of hardihood was developed.”
She then goes on to speculate why things (i.e. the Republican Party) have changed so much. She mentions the end of the Fairness Doctrine and says there’s more. I like this summing up, in which I have combined parts of two of her tweets, although I don’t know how we get there.
We need to define our shared ideals again, & then we must lift them up as high as we can. There are no perfect candidates, because we’re all human. Our job as voters is to find candidates with whom we agree on our ideals. It doesn’t have to be 100% agreement, either. Remember, we create the system. That means we can change it. That much, I believe.
Here’s a link to the 1956 Republican platform.
And open thread!
Marcelo Teson
I’m surprised she doesn’t immediately notice that this platform predates the Civil Rights Act which led to the Southern Strategy. This shit was changing long before the Fairness Doctrine stuff.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
Fairly old news, but anyone want to hear what Douchebag Luke Skywalker has to say about #MeToo?
JPL
Now they made it clear that they don’t want immigrants from those shit hole countries.
waspuppet
There was a lot of contention over that platform at the time, though. The Confederate/let ’em starve wing had been in full effect since the New Deal.
Cf. “Before the Storm,” by Rick Perlstein, a book I haven’t gotten through yet because I have to stop for frequent blood-pressure breaks, given that it lays out (without comment) how the conservative movement was based on nothing but smoke, mirrors and racism from the get-go.
JDM
But that’s not “the good ol’ days”. When is is never clear, but that’s obviously not the era the modern Republicans are aiming for.
Another Scott
Donnie’s off his meds again…
:-/
Eyes on the prize, folks. Let him rant and rave. What matters is the legislation and fighting his horrible policies.
And voting him and his minions out of office ASAP.
Cheers,
Scott.
JR
The 1793 constitution of France looked pretty good, too.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: I’m surprised he didn’t include Puerto Rico as one of the shithold countries, seeing as he didn’t seem to know they are actually part of the US.
Every day her is in office does an amazing amount of damage.
Brachiator
Trump would wipe his ass with this document.
So much irony. From 1956:
Today, Trump is slowly, but deliberately constructing American Apartheid 2.0. And no one, not even liberals, would dare to suggest that we take in more refugees, even from horrors that we have had a part in.
Major Major Major Major
inb4 some jagoff comments about how they were more progressive than modern democrats
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: I am sure I watched his ugly mug declare on video, just yesterday, that he would sign whatever they put in front of him.
Mike in DC
@Another Scott:
He’s a few bad news days removed from unleashing a tirade about “w-tb-cks”.
Major Major Major Major
@Mike in DC: Also in the 1956 Republican platform: Operation Wetback!
WaterGirl
@Major Major Major Major: When my nice was 7 years old, she came home from school and asked what a jaguar was. When we asked why, she said that someone at school had called another kid a jaguar. So now in my family, we use regularly jaguar in place of jagoff.
Tuna
Mercy, they still want to take us back to the 50’s. This is the beginning of the 21st century.
schrodingers_cat
To find good Rs now we have to time travel back to the 50s. Sad.
lapassionara
@WaterGirl: Didn’t he want a bill “of love”? “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free” from nice places like Norway. What a travesty!
Spider-Dan
Let’s keep in mind that the 1956 Republican Party was trying to re-elect their first Republican President since 1928. It turns out that losing 5 elections in 6 tries has a significant impact on the direction of a party!
What’s that, you say? The Democrats have won the popular vote 6 out of the last 7 Presidential elections, and could have won the Electoral College (with a 7-2 SCOTUS) if not for well-placed purity squads on the left that threw 2 elections to the GOP? Hardly seems relevant to the state of today’s Republican Party.
WaterGirl
@lapassionara: Yeah, some days it’s really hard to believe that this is reality. I would have thought the planet would have belched him back out, kind of like our bodies do when we get food poisoning.
Brachiator
Didn’t realize that this was part of the 1956 GOP Platform
schrodingers_cat
John Tanton’s groups are writing the immigration policy. The President didn’t just dream it up himself.
Mary G
Modern Republicans are indistinguishable from sheep or lemmings:
Orwell was right, just got the year a bit early.
cokane
the fairness doctrine would never apply to cable news though. nor should it.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
The “shithole” is hitting the fan.
Brachiator
@Spider-Dan:
Ike was a shoo-in, and won 457 electoral votes to 73.
Still, the election was notable in a number of ways.
Baud
@Spider-Dan: This is why I always emphasize that the Dems have controlled the government for 2 non-consecutive 2-year periods since 1980. Fix that and you fix the country.
bemused
@schrodingers_cat:
Tanton is delusional as well as a racist pig if he thinks this country will ever have European-white majority again.
B.B.A.
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Today is the day he truly became president.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: Sounds to me like the problem is an insufficient number of years for Republicans!
schrodingers_cat
@bemused: The minions from his think tanks are at many pivotal positions in the administration overseeing immigration policy.
lapassionara
@WaterGirl: Don’t I wish. This cannot go on like this for three more years.
Another Scott
TheHill: Latest Quinnipiac University numbers:
Good, good.
30 x 17 / 8 = 63 seats in the House, if it’s linear. We can do better than that.
But we can’t get complacent. We have to work every day for the future we want.
Cheers,
Scott.
Just the Facts
The problem with “Grab ’em by the pussy” was the GRAB, not the pussy.
The problem with “shithole countries” is not the profanity. It’s that Trump used it to contrast those countries immigrants with Norway’s.
It’s the racism. Not the pottymouth.
Major Major Major Major
@Another Scott: It’s not linear, and they’re gerrymandered in now.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Another Scott
@cokane: I think one can argue that Cable uses the public airwaves, too (via microwave transmitters, satellites, etc.). I don’t think one should automatically accept the framing that only TV and AM/FM Radio should be reasonably regulated to operate in the Public Interest.
But I don’t expect it to change anytime soon.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
bemused
@schrodingers_cat:
Remember when Lindsey Graham had an honest moment in 2012 when he said demographics were killing the Republican party. “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in power.” They can’t change that even if they stopped all future immigration.
B.B.A.
@lapassionara: Oh yes it can. Qaddafi lasted four decades.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@B.B.A.: Pivot!
Jay S
It would be interesting to see the parties platform evolution from the 50’s to date, and the legislation correlating to the platforms. Although I doubt there is much correlation between platforms, proposed legislation and actual votes on legislation.
Dolly Llama
Just waiting on a dedicated “shithole countries” thread. God almighty damn, what a fucking mess.
Another Scott
@Major Major Major Major: Gerrymandering helps in close elections. It’s not so beneficial in wave election. (No time to find a cite.)
Incumbency is a huge advantage (something like 95% of incumbents are re-elected). Them deciding to “retire” makes the seats much more competitive, also too.
Cheers,
Scott.
Major Major Major Major
@Another Scott: These are both true! But a 7-to-8-point advantage in the generic ballot doesn’t go as far as it did during those elections.
Gin & Tonic
FYI, “captive nations” was the then-current term for the Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact countries: Latvia, Estonia, Hungary, Ukraine, etc. The Republican Party was then resolutely anti-Soviet and anti-Russian. Weird, I know, but that was actually the case.
Another Scott
@Major Major Major Major: Right. But 17 points for Team Blue might be worth quite a bit. :-)
Yeah, it’s early. But we can make this a huge wave if we keep our eyes on the prize.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@bemused:
Sadly, it seems like they found enough angry white men and women (with a little dishonest help) to get into power. Now the trick is to stay there.
True, but demographics does not guarantee future Democratic Party victory. And we see that the GOP is going to fight to the end to stay in power.
Gin & Tonic
@Another Scott:
True. Because gerrymandering works to get, say, one D+20 district for five R+4 districts. But if you’re in a D+7 wave, then that doesn’t work for you.
eclare
@lapassionara: If I lived in Norway, no way would I come to this country.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCOONOD3!
If only someone had warned us!
Major Major Major Major
@Another Scott: I’m certainly not trying to be a doomsayer!
WaterGirl
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: So 95% have an opinion about the president, but only 87% are going to vote in the election? Is that 8% who are disgusted and won’t vote?
John Revolta
@schrodingers_cat: I am the very model of a modern politisheon
The minions from my think tanks are in pivotal posisheons
eclare
@Gin & Tonic: Are you still at the ER?
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
Early polls and generic ballots are meaningless.
This is not to say that I don’t want a Democratic Party victory. But let’s see what happens in the real battles with real candidates.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator:
That’s… not true. In this case, it’s a good indicator of the general population’s sentiment and how it compares to other years at the same point.
ETA: They say exactly what they measure.
WaterGirl
@eclare: @Gin & Tonic: I am wondering that, too. I spent 12 hours at the ER with a friend whose sister was mentally ill. The waiting seemed endless. We’ll know more in an hour. And then another hour, and another hour. It felt like an eternity. You’re exhausted, but you can’t sleep, It was fucking freezing but I had given my sweater to my friend because at least I had the sense to wear long pants and her legs were bare.
Hoping things are better than that for you guys, G & T!
trollhattan
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
BRINKS TRUCKS!
WereBear
Yes, they are delightful books, but soon another factoid will make you take a break lest rage overtake.
Gin & Tonic
@eclare: @WaterGirl: Thanks for asking. I’m home, my wife was admitted for observation. She’s on IV antibiotics, and there wasn’t much more I could do there. They’re still trying to figure out what else is wrong, and were waiting on more blood work.
efgoldman
@Another Scott:
Not that there’s any real possibility of anything like the fairness doctrine coming back, but SCOTUS made a very clear distinction between over the air broadcasters, which require a federal license for use of the (supposedly limited) spectrum, and cable/internet broadcasting, which is theoretically unlimited to whoever can build out infrastructure.
If congress and the FCC ever re-define cable as a common carrier (right now not a starter) maybe a new court case works. But probably not.
eclare
@Gin & Tonic: Hopefully you can both get some rest, thanks for the update.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major: RE: Early polls and generic ballots are meaningless
Let’s see. The polls attempt to extrapolate from Trump’s unpopularity to potential dissatisfaction with theoretical Congressional candidates. OK. If it makes you feel good.
An easy counter example were the polls indicating that UK prime minister Theresa May would wallop any opposition, and which led her to call for a snap election:
She is now looking at a 61% disapproval rating. Got loser taint all over her. Still it would be foolish to crown Corbyn as the presumptive prime minister.
Which is nothing of any political significance.
Patricia Kayden
@Another Scott:
Wow. I know I shouldn’t be shocked at anything that Trump says but this is shocking. We literally have a White Supremacist in the White House.
geg6
@Brachiator:
This is not true. There is a high correlation between the generic ballot within a year of an off-year election. It is especially visible in wave elections. There are numerous polling entities and political scientists that have found this to be true. It’s not a guarantee and the advantage for the winning party may not match the numbers exactly, but more often than not, the generic ballot tells you what will happen as long as it’s within that year. We’re at ten months.
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
The thing about gerrymandering, though, is it tends to exaggerate the nonlinearity. Gerrymandering tends to cluster the margin of victory in the gerrymandering party’s districts. Instead of a natural distribution, where the one party share might be 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, and 70% in a neutral year, they design it so they get 20%, 55%, 57%, 58%, and 60% in a neutral year. That gives them a big advantage in normal years and even in bad years, but means they get completely overwhelmed in a really disastrous year.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator:
They do?
I thought they tried to measure the answer to the question “would you rather vote for a generic republican or a generic democrat”. The rest, as they say, is commentary.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: Well, being admitted has to beat the hell out of the emergency room, but can’t be much fun, either. Hopefully they will figure it out soon. I assume there’s a test to distinguish between viral pneumonia and one caused by bacteria?
Steeplejack (phone)
Holy shnikeys! Ari Melber has Joe Arpaio on The Beat starting right now on MSNBC.
geg6
@Major Major Major Major:
Exactly. It’s a simple, straightforward question of which party you would vote for if the election was held today, a Republican or a Democrat? No mention of the Dolt.
Major Major Major Major
@geg6: To be fair, they may be asked as part of the same slate of questions, I don’t know and obviously it will vary between pollster (and the order of the questions is often randomized too).
But “these are not a helpful proxy by which to judge X” is a different statement than “these are meaningless”.
ETA: I also don’t see how Brachiator can say that a poll asking a question about politics can say “nothing of any political significance”, perhaps he needs a nap.
trollhattan
@Steeplejack (phone):
Did they frisk him?
Brachiator
@geg6:
Really? Citations? If this makes you and others enthusiastic, I think this is good. But I really doubt the predictive value.
@geg6:
But the election is not being held today, nor will an election feature generic candidates. So, the Phantom Menace would win today. How does this relate to the actual election in November?
WaterGirl
@Brachiator: It sure beats the hell out of the being the party that is 17 points DOWN.
Sebastian
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
WTF? That’s a RT article without byline
bemused
@Brachiator:
Yes, they will as they have been showing us how low they will go with their Russian coverups. Two motivations that overlap, making this country all white culture and maintaining power.
WaterGirl
@Sebastian: Thank you! I foolishly clicked on his link earlier today and also thought WTF?
bit cool. Now i know never to click on anything of his again: @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
People often assume that just because you can measure something, what you have measured must be significant. That’s how we got pseudo-science like phrenology.
Asking a question, even about politics, does not necessarily tell you anything meaningful or significant. Again, the UK election is a case in point. Even a day before the June election, everyone was certain, based on polling and the wisdom of political commentators, that the Labour Party would suffer a catastrophic defeat. This was certainly borne out by practically every “if the election were held today” poll.
Reality had other plans.
So, tomorrow, will you still be talking about the results of the phantom election held yesterday in which ghost Democrats won by a huge margin? To what purpose?
Uncle Cosmo
@Another Scott: Remember that the idea of gerrymandering is to maximize the number of representatives from your party. The theory is to jam as many of your opponents’ votes into as few districts as possible while leaving your own party a comfortable advantage in the rest.*,
The gerrymander bites the hand that feeds it in a wave election, when that “comfortable advantage in the rest” of the districts gets swamped by a trend in the other direction.**
—-
* The math: For example, with a 50-50 D-R split among 10 CDs in a state, a creative gerrymander would set up 2 districts 80% D, removing 2/10 x 8% = 16% of Ds and 2/10 x 2% = 4% of Rs, leaving a 15% R advantage in the remaining 8 districts [46/80 = 57.5% R to 34/80 = 42.5% D]; then distribute Rs & Ds equally among remaining districts & you have 8 out of 10 districts with R representatives even though the statewide split is 50-50.
** So in the above note, if the Rs have a 15% registration advantage but the Ds outperform their registration numbers by (say) an average of 17%, it is probable that the resulting delegation will be majority D, and a real chance it will be 10-0 D. Look at the VA HoD results.
Bill Arnold
@eclare:
It’s just one indicator of quality of life (and the US does have other charms, and FWIW many corporations offer paid leave), from Maternity Leaves Around The World: Worst And Best Countries For Paid Maternity Leave (PHOTOS) (2012, may have changed since then[1]):
But yeah, the main point is the clear-cut racism, though his supporters will of course deny it. And will deny US immigration history, implicitly.
[1] Yup, has improved since 2012: Best Maternity Leave: 4 Best Countries In The World For New Mamas
Brachiator
@WaterGirl:
The party in power is the party in power, no matter what polls say.
Where we agree, I think, is that it’s time to do all we can to get the Republicans out of power.
JaneE
This platform is what I think of when I say “Eisenhower Republican”.
J R in WV
@cokane:
Why on earth would anyone say this? Cable news should be as fair as any other news. Ownership of newspapers – the mechanism noted in the First Amendment – has been regulated, with no one allowed to take over ownership of all newspapers in a single town, in the recent past.
If newspapers can be regulated, why would cable news networks not be required to provide honest reporting, with opportunities for all sides of an issue to present their case to the public!?!?!
Cable systems use either wires strung on right-of-ways provided to utilities OR dish based systems using the public airwaves to reach their customers.
cokane must not be familiar with American news media over the past 50 years or so. Ownership and management of news outlets have been strictly regulated in my lifetime. cokane is an idiot. But don’t quote me.
Spider-Dan
@J R in WV:
Then why limit the application to cable news? Why not also apply the Fairness Doctrine to the internet, which comes over the exact same wires for 99% of households?
There is a significant historical precedent of regulation applied to free over-the-air transmissions that does not apply to non-free transmissions. Proposing to change that precedent is an enormous lift that has no discernible constituency.
AnneWith
I know this thread’s been long abandoned, but having seen the 1956 Republican platform mentioned around the Twitters, I got curious about the 1956 Democratic platform. We weren’t too shabby in 1956, either (although there is pointed language about the importance of state & local governments).