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The Whig Party ➔ the Republican Party ➔ the Tea Party. 

9/3/2012

 
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    Whig Party ➔ Republican Party ➔ Tea Party.
    “There is no more Republican Party, there’s only a Tea Party now.” That was said to me by my favorite critic.  She’d read my post that the Republican Party is in danger of vanishing, like the Whigs, who split on the issue of slavery and vanished, giving birth to Abraham Lincoln’s Republicans. But I stand corrected; it’s happened already. Come November, a vote for Mitt Romney will be a vote for the Tea Party.
    It didn’t have to be that way. Had Romney been able to stand up for his principles, for babies brought in undocumented and grew up as American in spirit as any documented American, been willing to defend his model Massachusetts health care law, willing to affirm the tenets of his humane and abiding Mormon faith, it could have been different. But he coldly calculated it would wreck him with the Tea Party. Now, with his VP pick of Tea Party darling, Paul Ryan, he’s all in. So he’s theirs. Tea Party fanatics, who use the word “compromise” as a curse, ignorant of the fact that democracy means compromise, people who threaten armed revolt yet call themselves “patriots,” will never let Romney escape.
    Romney’s acts of personal empathy: care provided sick children, bereaved mothers comforted, money donated to worthy causes, cannot prevent Tea Party puppeteers from trying to drag the U.S. back into the 19th Century. Even if Romney, once elected, would want to revert to the pragmatic moderate Republican who governed successfully in Democratic Massachusetts, they won’t let him.
     The U.S. President is neither the U.S. CEO, nor the Vice-President’s boss. The VP’s function is to be first in succession if the President dies. Meanwhile, he presides over the Senate and has his own offices in the West Wing. G.W. Bush routinely passed issues to VP Cheney. VP Paul Ryan, abetted by his Tea Party cohorts, will grab for all the issues, and power, he can get. If candidate Mitt Romney doesn’t have the backbone to stick to principles, why would a President Romney even bother?
    In November, a vote for Mitt Romney is a vote for Paul Ryan, Karl Rove, Sheldon Adelson, the Koch Brothers, Rupert Murdoch, Donald Trump, Grover Norquist, Sarah Palin, Todd Akin, Michele Bachmann, and the whole rancid Tea Party mob.

Martha
9/3/2012 06:47:22 am

Stuart, I agree with all your major points.
Please permit the historian in me to write a more nuanced narrative of the shift from Lincoln's Republican Party to the Republican Party of the 21st century, in order to make clear why present-day Republicans are being disingenous when they claim direct lineage from Lincoln. Read on:
*1850s: The Democratic Party was the party of the white South and the party of the Confederacy during the Civil War era.
*1930s: Many African Americans became Democrats, in response to FDR’s New Deal.
*1948: Many white voters in the Deep South rejected Truman, the Democrat who had integrated the Armed Forces, in favor of Strom Thurmond’s “states’ rights” party.
*1964: President Lyndon Johnson (a Texan) signed the Civil Rights Act, which further alienated white southerners, who voted instead for Republican Barry Goldwater.
*1968: Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy” further attracted white southern voters to the Republican Party -- though parts of the Deep South went instead for segregationist candidate George Wallace.
*1972: Nixon swept the South.
*1976: Jimmy Carter, a liberal and southern evangelical, won the support of many white southerners.
*1980s: With the “Reagan Revolution,” white southerners deserted the Democratic Party, attracted by Reagan’s religious conservatism.
*1992: Southerners Bill Clinton and Al Gore won enough southern states to win the election.
*2000 - 2008: Here is where we see a wholesale shift from the Civil War era: a largely Republican white South, including not just the presidency, but also Congress.
... In short, integration and civil rights eventually turned many white southerners away from the Democratic Party and toward the Republican Party.

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8/1/2013 07:19:26 pm

Mitt Romney is a complete moron and I’am quite happy that he lost the election. I’am not a huge fan of Obama, but he way much better than Mitt. He can’t even stand by what he said. A complete idiot.

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9/30/2013 08:50:28 pm

I am also a huge fan of Obama and I am quite happy that he won the elections... He is indeed a great Leader.

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10/13/2013 04:37:09 am

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    Picture

    Author (Yuma, AZ, 1944)

    Being 90 years in this world,  with great kids,  great grandkids, great wives (two, one at a time) and great memories, I wonder why some people seem to have stopped loving the U.S.A.? I will wonder in print right here. If you wonder too, or can provide some answers, please comment.
                                   Stuart Hodes

    Picture
           With my friend, Nero.
                   April, 2012.
        Photo by Ray Madrigal

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