Jun 21 2007
Liberalism’s Dying Gasp
In a laughable attempt to salvage a dying political movement liberals are trying to make it the law of the land for America to stop turning its back on them and force us to listen to their tired and failed policy views. In the free market of ideas they have realized their last hope is to go Soviet style and force their message on the masses:
The Center for American Progress and Free Press today released the first-of-its-kind statistical analysis of the political make-up of talk radio in the United States. It confirms that talk radio, one of the most widely used media formats in America, is dominated almost exclusively by conservatives.
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Ultimately, these results suggest that increasing ownership diversity, both in terms of the race/ethnicity and gender of owners, as well as the number of independent local owners, will lead to more diverse programming, more choices for listeners, and more owners who are responsive to their local communities and serve the public interest.
The idea is to make it illegal to win the debate of ideas. This will not fly. The reason liberal talk radio fails time and time again is not the ownership. I don’t listen to a radio station based on who owns it. Heck, with shell corporations and subsidiaries and stockholders knowing who ‘owns’ something is impossible. What sells are ideas.
The truth of the matter is conservative ideas were very popular after nearly a half decade of stale, failed policies coming out of an unending line of Democrat run congresses. But the pendulum is swinging back as the GOP has now also run out of gas and has stopped trying to build coalitions but is brow beating their idealogically impure allies. Talk radio will see a change in demographics as the Ingrahams and Hannitys lose their luster. But it will not create a return to liberalism. That is really dead end. It will create a market for moderates who are not wedded to either pole of the political spectrum but who like to bridge the gaps and get things done. “Progressives” are just liberals in costume. But progress through the middle will be the next political wave.
Many of the Republican who were not keen on civil rights were Southern Democrats who switched parties in protest to the national party positions put forth by Kennedy/Johnson.
Johnson attempted to shift the focus of the programs from a racial view to a more economic view with his focus on Appalachia in order to stem the hemorrhage from the party. It wouldn’t look good for Southern white Democrats to abandon the party if the publicity focus was on poor mountain white folk even if the major portion of the benefits were actually going to go to minority populations. It was a fairly brilliant political move and pulled on the same heartstrings as Roosevelt used for the new deal and the pictures of the dust bowl families.
Blacks don’t traditionally vote Democrat for reasons of civil rights legislation, the roots of that go back much further. The Democrats had a stranglehold on Southern politics since before the civil war and if you didn’t vote Democrat, you might disappear or be found hanging from a tree. It eventually became family tradition but it is rooted in coercion. The Republican party was that of the white “carpet baggers” and “yankees”.
In the 1960’s there were Republican liberals. Nelson Rockefeller, for one. Dwight D. Eisenhower, for crying out loud. My aunt was a Republican dlegate at the 1940 convention and proudly cast her vote for Wendell Willkie – a progressive – and the only Republican candidate who would publicly condemn Hitler. Live with it. Eisenhower wouldn’t even be allowed in the Republican Party now – cause he actually fought in a war.
When LBJ signed the Civil Rights bill – he knew the South would be lost to Democrats – he thought for a generation – and the racists from the South for the most part became Republicans – which explains the Rise of Republicanism in the South.
Welcome Racists and Bigots!!! – the G.O.P.
“he knew the South would be lost to Democrats – he thought for a generation – and the racists from the South for the most part became Republicans – which explains the Rise of Republicanism in the South.”
But the problem with that thoery is that isnt really what happen. There was no massive defection for years from the democrat party to the Republican party on the state and local level. That is is important to point out. Also, the myth that racist Republicans started to take over the halls of Congress after LBJ is another tiresome argument we hear. The South still remained largely Democrat. The ole Blue dog democrats as it were. The populism of even the old vanguard Southern Democrats did not equate well with the Republican party. If one goes to Racist and white extremist web site one cannot help but see that populism.
It was only after the exhaustion of the 70’s and then importantly Reagan that the we started to see real gains in the South both on a State and Federal Level. That had little to do with racism but with Economic, national security and looking at conservative ideas afresh. What arose was not the John Birch society by the way in that period
“When LBJ signed the Civil Rights bill – he knew the South would be lost to Democrats ”
But that didn’t happen. The Republicans didn’t start making inroads in the South in any major way until the early 1990’s.
For many years the Democrats were a divided party with the Southern “blue dog” Democrats being almost a different party in ideology.
Essentially untrue or uninformed. There was a massive defection – albeit not a rapid one. Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy was quite successful – albeit blunted by the 3rd party candidacy of George Wallace in ’68. From 1904 to 1948, Republicans broke 30 percent of only in 1920.
The Southern Strategy grew as the GOP pandered to fundamentalists Christians and racists in the Bible Belt, culminating in the takeover of Congress in 1994. It was during this period that the GOP seized upon mindless populism with issues like abortion,l gay marriage and intelligent design to attract the blue collar/working class consitutuency that previously formed the backbone of the New Deal coalition.
BREAKING NEWS: Conservative Republican George Bush new poll numbers in Newsweek scrape the bottom of the barrel:
Only 26 percent of Americans, just over one in four, approve of the job the 43rd president is doing; while, a record 65 percent disapprove, including nearly a third of Republicans.
The 26 percent rating puts Bush lower than Jimmy Carter, who sunk to his nadir of 28 percent in a Gallup poll in June 1979. In fact, the only president in the last 35 years to score lower than Bush is Richard Nixon. Nixon’s approval rating tumbled to 23 percent in January 1974, seven months before his resignation over the botched Watergate break-in.
That’s how bad the Liberals are gasping, folks.
Since 1873 there have only been three Republican governors in Alabama … all three of those have been since 1987. Alabama is one of the nation’s worst states in education and economics.
Since 1876 there have only been two Republican governors of Mississippi. Both of those are since 1992. Mississippi ranks worse than Alabama.
So I see no evidence that Republicans made any significant inroads in Southern politics during the civil rights era OR that Democrats have been particularly effective in easing the situation of the poor in the South. In fact, it appears that they have perpetuated it.
Sooth, you illustrate one of may favorite points perfectly.
You qoute a poll based on what people *believe*, not on what is so. Believing something to be so does not make it so. We have reduced political thought in this country to nothing more than media marketing campaigns and who can make people believe something. All logic is cast aside. And, most importantly, in any random poll, 50% of the respondents are going to be morons.
Bush’s *real* numbers are closer to 35%. This is for a very simple reason. He had 75% of Republicans, and almost 0% of Democrats and about 15% of unaffiliated voters before the immigration debate. His overall numbers were in the low 40’s. Since the immigration debate he has lost the knucklehead faction of the conservative party and so has lost about 7 points.
But! Popularity polls don’t matter one iota. Bush is not running for election. He doesn’t care what the opinion polls are and neither should he. If you were ever a parent you would understand that often the right thing to do isn’t the popular thing to do.
I really don’t see why Democrats are so attached to opinion polls for someone who is never going to face the voters again. They simply don’t matter. But I suppose that if your party is bankrupt of ideas, you have to take whatever news you can get.
Have a look at Harry Truman’s numbers sometime. He didn’t give a damn about opinion polls either when the press and his generals were hammering him for an unpopular war and creating the CIA and NSA which they claimed at the time were creating a police state. Truman’s numbers were horrible but he did the right thing anyway and because of the foundation he laid, we won the cold war.
Sooth
As usual you are suffering rectal cranial inversion.
Look back and research how many of those “liberal” issues Republican put forward and got done.
Read your history of deep south Democrats.
All you did was keep digging your hole by showing your ignorance.
Crosspatch,
Good points.
SS,
You illustrate the problem with labels. First, you take Liberals as those accepting of change and Conservatives as those resistant to change. Then, you apply the terms to suit you.