Rick Perlstein's new book on the history of modern American conservatism

@edgarblythe,

Excellent list of Johnson's accomplishments. I also visited the Johnson Library in Austin a couple of times; the last time about two years ago, they were renovating the place. Would like to visit again when we visit our son.

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But for that war, Johnson would have, in my opinion, served a second term, and Nixon possibly never elected.

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@blatham,

blatham wrote:

But then we get to 2016 and the Rs know what troubles they will be facing then (unless they read nothing but right wing press and the worst of it to boot).

Actually I'm on record predicting a Republican win in 2016. No right-wing press. All my own logic.

My thinking is that Obama wasted all of his political capital in a futile assault against the NRA in 2012. Because of that, he is not going to have any second term legislative achievements. By the time 2016 rolls around, the voters will be tired of a president who hasn't achieved anything in the past six years. It should be an easy win for whoever the Republicans nominate.

I'm also predicting that a Republican victory in 2016 will lead to a big rightward shift on the Supreme Court:

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: age 81
Anthony Kennedy: age 78
Stephen Breyer: age 75

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@oralloy,

Quote:

Actually I'm on record predicting a Republican win in 2016. No right-wing press. All my own logic.

I wonder from where you gain your notions.

There are now some 5 - 6 million Americans newly insured under the ACA. The war in Iraq was ended. Osama is dead. Financial reforms under Dodd Frank (not enough but) working, A short list of his accomplishments with more to come.

He has not brought America together but that's the very thing his opposition has been working from day one to prevent. All out obstruction was the GOP strategy from the very evening of the inauguration. ..

Quote:

“The room was filled. It was a who’s who of ranking members who had at one point been committee chairmen, or in the majority, who now wondered out loud whether they were in the permanent minority,” Frank Luntz, who organized the event, told FRONTLINE.

Among them were Senate power brokers Jim DeMint, Jon Kyl and Tom Coburn, and conservative congressmen Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy and Paul Ryan.

After three hours of strategizing, they decided they needed to fight Obama on everything. The new president had no idea what the Republicans were planning."

http://to.pbs.org/1on0NbB

As Mitch McConnell put it, "

Quote:

"the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,"

Futile assault on NRA? What assault? What did he do? He spoke disparagingly of a situation where 4 and 5 year old children had their heads and bodies blown to bloody bits across schoolroom floors. What do Americans think? Polling in Jan 2013 by John Hopkins...

Quote:

"According to the survey, released today, a majority of Americans support a wide array of policies being discussed in Congress: 89 percent support closing the so-called gun show loophole by requiring background checks for all firearms sale; 69 percent support banning the sale of semiautomatic assault weapons; while 68 percent support banning the sale of large-capacity ammunition magazines. Meanwhile, more than 80 percent favor prohibiting “high-risk individuals” from having guns, including those convicted of a serious crime as a juvenile or those convicted of violating a domestic-violence restraining order."

http://bit.ly/1on2uG8

What do Americans think of the two parties? Here's polling from a few days ago (ABC News/Wash Post)...

Quote:

"– Among women, the favorable/unfavorable numbers for the GOP are 33-62. For the Democratic Party they are flipped around, at 54-40.
– Among nonwhites, those numbers for the GOP are 25-70. For the Democratic Party they are flipped around at 68-26.
– Among Latinos, those numbers for the GOP are 29-65. For the Democratic Party they are flipped around at 61-33.
– Among adults aged 18-29, those numbers for the GOP are 31-61. For the Democratic Party they are flipped around at 51-35.
– Among moderates, those numbers for the GOP are 32-66. For the Democratic Party they are flipped around at 52-45.

Feel free to dream as you please re 2016

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@blatham,

blatham wrote:

I wonder from where you gain your notions.
There are now some 5 - 6 million Americans newly insured under the ACA. The war in Iraq was ended. Osama is dead. Financial reforms under Dodd Frank (not enough but) working, A short list of his accomplishments with more to come.

When the 2016 election rolls along, it will have been 6 years since he got any legislation through Congress. That's a long time for a president to go without passing any legislation.

blatham wrote:

Futile assault on NRA? What assault? What did he do?

He took all of the political capital that he had gained from winning in 2012, and he wasted every last bit of it pushing for legislation that was forbidden by the NRA.

All that political energy that might have been used to pass some kind of useful legislation, instead just vanished uselessly into thin air.

blatham wrote:

Feel free to dream as you please re 2016

I've made my prediction and I'm going to stay out on this here limb. If the 2016 elections go the other way, feel free to start sawing on the limb.

1 Reply

@oralloy,

Quote:

it will have been 6 years since he got any legislation through Congress.

VA overhaul bill through yesterday.

But you've conveniently ignored why bills have been stymied. I just laid that out with some detail and relevant quotes. He was stopped precisely so that people like you might say or think this was his fault. "He failed! He's incompetent!" Or "He won't compromise!" when bills sponsored by some GOP member are voted against by that same member the moment Obama signs on. And of course the latest when Obama does push, "He's a tyrant!".

Quote:

" former Senator George Voinovich also goes on record telling Grunwald that Republican marching orders were to oppose everything the Obama administration proposed.

“If he was for it, we had to be against it,” Voinovich tells Grunwald. And at another point, characterizing a strategy session Republicans and McConnell had held in early January of 2009, Voinovich said: “He wanted everyone to hold the fort. All he cared about was making sure Obama could never have a clean victory.”

http://wapo.st/1uuHTA6

This was and is a completely cynical strategy to try and regain power through one party setting out to effectively destroy the functions of governance in the nation. McConnell also said (I'm paraphrasing as I can't find the quote right now) that Republicans couldn't be seen to cooperate with Obama because that would leave the parties undifferentiated in voters minds. In other words, screw effective governance, screw stuff we really do need to do in the nation (infrastructure, policing Wall Street, poverty, climate change, etc etc and screw citizens we're supposed to be representing. There's a reason why your party's polling stinks so badly.

Your ideas re the NRA thing I've not seen advanced by anyone on either side of the divide though some NRA flack might have said it to promote the notion of invincibility. And as the polling I quoted above demonstrates, many of his positions on guns match the majority of citizens, so I don't know what the hell you're talking of re "political capital". I hope you don't mean with Republicans in Congress as that would be a frigging joke.

The modern GOP has become post-policy - everything is about PR and presentation and the pretense of governance. Bills are not brought forward or explicated by them or where they are, they will, if implemented, produce something like the opposite of what is claimed (jobs, poverty).

It has become post-truth - "All we want are jobs, jobs, jobs" when they've done really nothing to encourage job growth and have stymied any attempts by the administration to create or expand jobs because that might hurt them electorally. Or "Obama grows government" when the size of government has shrunk during the last six years and never has during GOP administrations

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XFoU-z5j5_k/U95eQQFkggI/AAAAAAAAf-Y/N-tHHqI7q5w/s1600/PublicJuly2014.jpg

You can certainly hang on to your prediction re 2016 and it is a ways away but as I said initially, GOP strategists don't share your optimism...

Quote:

"Republicans Secretly Think Hillary Clinton Will Crush Them In 2016"

http://www.businessinsider.com/hillary-clinton-republicans-2016-2013-3#ixzz39nefTr2Y

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@blatham,

I could add, though it ought to be obvious, that modern conservatism and the modern GOP have moved to a place that is effectively post-citizen democracy. Though the citizens of the nation twice voted to put Obama in the WH (with a two term margin not seen since Eisenhower), conservatives have moved consistently to prevent the citizens' choice from governing and passing policy wherever they might be able to do so. Power is everything.

And what "justifies" such a conception of their proper role is build upon the notion that their ideology is the only ideology that is legitimate.

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@blatham,

You wrote,

Quote:

Feel free to dream as you please re 2016

I do not believe that the actual turnout of the next election will reflect those poll numbers that you posted. If that were so, even the last election would have been in favor of the democratic party. The non-performance of congress have been on-going since Obama took over the administration.

I think the polls of the moderates speaks volumes, and makes elections unpredictable.

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@cicerone imposter,

I'm sure you're right, ci, given the traditional history of mid-term voting. But I was speaking to the chap's vision of 2016 where that turnout dynamic shifts. Women and minorities and youth will be very important and with each of those demographics, Republicans are in serious trouble. They {the smarter folks involved} know it and they are trying to figure ways to alter the trajectory but movement conservatives are doggedly, openly and loudly pushing and voicing increasingly extremist ideas and policies. The "post mortem" done after the last presidential election acknowledged these things but there's been no change in rhetoric or behavior, only attempts at disguising what they think and plan.

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@blatham,

One more observation on your graph about jobs growth by presidents. It's my opinion that the job growth under GW Bush was based on the faulty economic growth based on the balloon created by the financial institutions; selling to consumers who could not afford to carry those levels of debt. The Great Recession was the result of that 'balloon,' and the impact of job loss after that was the true reflection of it.

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@cicerone imposter,

You may well be right ci. I tend to avoid such discussions as I just don't know enough in that realm to contribute anything of value.

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@blatham,

blatham wrote:

VA overhaul bill through yesterday.

Yes, but that wasn't something that Mr. Obama pushed through. That was something that the Republicans wanted to pass just as badly as the Democrats did.

It was also possible that immigration reform might have happened. But not because of any effort on the part of Mr. Obama. Rather, it had a chance of passing because there are some Republicans who are for it.

blatham wrote:

But you've conveniently ignored why bills have been stymied.

It is certainly true that Republicans are not eager to work with a Democratic president (just as Democrats are not eager to work with a Republican president). However, a president can use his political capital to coerce unwilling politicians into action.

The problem is that Mr. Obama frivolously wasted all of his political capital, leaving the Republicans free to oppose him with impunity.

blatham wrote:

There's a reason why your party's polling stinks so badly.

Reminder: I'm a conservative Democrat.

blatham wrote:

Your ideas re the NRA thing I've not seen advanced by anyone on either side of the divide

That's OK. I'm not fazed by the prospect of being the only person in the universe to advance a given idea.

blatham wrote:

though some NRA flack might have said it to promote the notion of invincibility.

The NRA does not need to promote the notion of invulnerability.

I don't think there were any questions about how strong the NRA is. But if there were, those questions were answered when the NRA stopped Mr. Obama's gun legislation cold.

blatham wrote:

And as the polling I quoted above demonstrates, many of his positions on guns match the majority of citizens, so I don't know what the hell you're talking of re "political capital". I hope you don't mean with Republicans in Congress as that would be a frigging joke.

When a president has freshly won an election, he has political capital that he can use to persuade members of the opposing party to support his programs.

That's why we spent all that time focused on gun legislation. Mr. Obama was using his political capital to try to force people to pass gun legislation.

If Mr. Obama had used that same political capital to press some other agenda, he likely would have gotten his bills passed.

blatham wrote:

You can certainly hang on to your prediction re 2016 and it is a ways away but as I said initially, GOP strategists don't share your optimism...

If it turns out that I'm right, the Republicans will have a pleasant surprise then. Unless they blow it badly, I believe the Republicans will have an easy walk back to the White House in 2016.

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@oralloy,

Quote:

Reminder: I'm a conservative Democrat.

Woody Allen - "My wife and I were married by a Reformed Rabbi. Very reformed. A Nazi."

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@oralloy,

Let me narrow that down a bit.

Why do you choose to vote for and support the Dem party rather than GOP?

1 Reply

@oralloy,

oralloy wrote:

If it turns out that I'm right, the Republicans will have a pleasant surprise then. Unless they blow it badly, I believe the Republicans will have an easy walk back to the White House in 2016.

You seem to be ignoring the fact that the GOP doesn't have a single viable candidate. Their chances in 2016 lie somewhere between slim and 'is this a joke?'

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@Lustig Andrei,

Maybe, oralboy's going to run! He's so knowledgeable about most topics, he can surely forecast the 2016 presidential election results.

Like most of his opinions.

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I await with interest his answers to my questions in prior post.

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@blatham,

blatham wrote:

Let me narrow that down a bit.
Why do you choose to vote for and support the Dem party rather than GOP?

If you mean "what issues do I agree with the Democrats on, that result in me identifying as a Democrat," mostly it is my support for a strong social safety net, and for a progressive tax structure to pay for it.

But that does not necessarily translate into me voting for and supporting the Democratic Party.

Traditionally I examined the record of individual candidates, and supported or opposed them based on my view of their individual positions. I didn't give the Democratic Party my blanket support across the board.

However, my rage over the 2008 Michigan Presidential Primary remains white hot. Currently I automatically vote for Republicans in every single race unless a Democratic candidate happens to give me a very good reason to vote for them.

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@Lustig Andrei,

Lustig Andrei wrote:

oralloy wrote:
If it turns out that I'm right, the Republicans will have a pleasant surprise then. Unless they blow it badly, I believe the Republicans will have an easy walk back to the White House in 2016.

You seem to be ignoring the fact that the GOP doesn't have a single viable candidate. Their chances in 2016 lie somewhere between slim and 'is this a joke?'

I predict that any of the common Republican frontrunners will win the 2016 election if they are nominated.

I hope the Tea Party doesn't nominate anyone scary. I'm likely to cross party lines on primary day and vote for someone safe and mainstream like Jeb or Romney, but the Tea Party has more votes than I do, so the choice is ultimately going to be theirs.

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@blatham,

blatham wrote:

I await with interest his answers to my questions in prior post.

I'm happy to answer your questions as best I can, but it wasn't my intent to hijack your thread and make it all about me.

I just figured I'd be putting my position on record for when election day rolls around, and then you'd be back to talking about this book.

1 Reply

Rick Perlstein's new book on the history of modern American conservatism

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