Tuesday, May 05, 2009

GOP Of Reactionaries

GOP Tries to Dig Out of Its Hole - WSJ.com: "If you're trying to figure how bad things are for Republicans, consider this: More Americans say they are conservatives than say they are part of the Republican Party -- which is supposed to be, after all, the party of conservatives..."

Since I'm a moderate, that makes me either a liberal conservative or conservative liberal, a label that fits neither Republican nor Democratic preferences. The GOP is a not a conservative political party. That left that mantle when the influence of Nelson Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater began to wane. Reagan was not a conservative, either. Like his descendants, he was a reactionary-- longing for a return to the Really Good Old Days-- you know, kinda like the antebellum South. If the GOP hitches their banner to that wagon train, they will remain encircled and irrelevant for a generation. A move away from the nuttier aspects of social conservatives toward a conservative fiscal policy would help recruit new members, but I'm not holding my breath. Oh, btw, reverse everything I've said and substitute "Democrats" and you have the same mess from a different direction (though I think the Democrats think they're going to fast-forward into some pseudo-Orwellian utopia- see Farmer's New Riders of the Purple Wage).

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