Chris
09-07-2014, 12:43 PM
A Donkephant breakdown (widh they would breakdown!).
Democratic Political Mush Vs. GOP’s Three Branches and a Twig (http://reason.com/archives/2014/09/07/democratic-political-mush-vs-gops-three/)
Placing either of America's two big-tent parties into a single ideological box misses historical and contemporary cross currents that buffet Democrats and Republicans to the left, to the right, and back toward the center. In the second decade of the 21st century, there are at least two wings of the Democratic Party, and three branches, plus a twig, of the GOP.
...I would argue there are two basic factions now in the Democratic Party:
(1) The Progressive Era throwbacks: big government, statist liberals, in denial about failures of the New Deal and Great Society, who gave us Obamacare, ironically with its sell-out to Big Insurance and even Bigger Pharma. This faction also includes anti-war, non-interventionists in the electorate, and social-cultural liberals in the congressional and presidential wings, as well as in the electorate.
(2) Centrist, but not-so-New (anymore) Democrats: they tilt interventionist in foreign policy, much like the Warrior Princess, Hillary Clinton, who mutters phrases like "America, the indispensable nation." Centrists are less anti-business, and in fact many are allies of Wall Street crony capitalists, not friends of free markets. Most New Democrats now fall in line with social-cultural liberalism, since Democrats won the culture war.
...
The three branches and a twig factions of the GOP are right now much more interesting, because the GOP has been on the ropes, at least nationally, and is fighting internally for what is sometimes called the "soul of the party," a rallying cry of losers, who want to claim they—and only they—have the formula for getting the party back on track.
(1) Main Street/Wall Street conservatives. They are typified by that old-time (ex-Sen.) Robert Dole. They want to balance budgets and avoid an excessively regulatory state—except when K Street comes pleading for special favors. Newt Gingrich once called Dole "tax collector for the welfare state." (I yell that at parking enforcement officers in the District of Columbia, where it takes a lot of quarters to fund corruption.)
(2) Social-cultural conservatives. Mostly centered regionally in the Christianist, reliably Republican South, they have the national GOP by its elephantine cajones. The "Soc-Cons" turn off the center of the electorate, but demand party allegiance because they vote two-thirds GOP. That's not quite the 90 percent-plus African-American vote enjoyed by Democrats, but enough that they expect to be rewarded with important GOP platform planks. They are also reliably militarist.
(3) Libertarian holdouts. Some traditional Goldwater libertarians have stuck with the party, because they feel they can rely on Republicans for more free market sensibility. But many have been turned off by oxymoronic "big government conservatism." They are often centrist, even tilting left on social issues, though some (many younger) have deserted the GOP and become independents, including those shunning foreign interventionism.
(4) Neo-Con twig. Not a full branch, the neo-conservatives punch above the weight of their tiny band of Billy Kristol and his various Kagan acolytes, because of close alignment with the powerful military-industrial complex and the American Israeli lobby. They populate conservative think tanks and are read disproportionately on neo-con editorial pages, like that of The Washington Post, which give aid-and-comfort to America's elective wars, Bush's Iraq invasion, and Obama's Afghanistan surge. The Neo-Cons infuriate traditional conservatives and libertarians, with their big government domestic policies, typified by Part D prescription drugs for greedy geezers adopted under George W. Bush.
....
Democratic Political Mush Vs. GOP’s Three Branches and a Twig (http://reason.com/archives/2014/09/07/democratic-political-mush-vs-gops-three/)
Placing either of America's two big-tent parties into a single ideological box misses historical and contemporary cross currents that buffet Democrats and Republicans to the left, to the right, and back toward the center. In the second decade of the 21st century, there are at least two wings of the Democratic Party, and three branches, plus a twig, of the GOP.
...I would argue there are two basic factions now in the Democratic Party:
(1) The Progressive Era throwbacks: big government, statist liberals, in denial about failures of the New Deal and Great Society, who gave us Obamacare, ironically with its sell-out to Big Insurance and even Bigger Pharma. This faction also includes anti-war, non-interventionists in the electorate, and social-cultural liberals in the congressional and presidential wings, as well as in the electorate.
(2) Centrist, but not-so-New (anymore) Democrats: they tilt interventionist in foreign policy, much like the Warrior Princess, Hillary Clinton, who mutters phrases like "America, the indispensable nation." Centrists are less anti-business, and in fact many are allies of Wall Street crony capitalists, not friends of free markets. Most New Democrats now fall in line with social-cultural liberalism, since Democrats won the culture war.
...
The three branches and a twig factions of the GOP are right now much more interesting, because the GOP has been on the ropes, at least nationally, and is fighting internally for what is sometimes called the "soul of the party," a rallying cry of losers, who want to claim they—and only they—have the formula for getting the party back on track.
(1) Main Street/Wall Street conservatives. They are typified by that old-time (ex-Sen.) Robert Dole. They want to balance budgets and avoid an excessively regulatory state—except when K Street comes pleading for special favors. Newt Gingrich once called Dole "tax collector for the welfare state." (I yell that at parking enforcement officers in the District of Columbia, where it takes a lot of quarters to fund corruption.)
(2) Social-cultural conservatives. Mostly centered regionally in the Christianist, reliably Republican South, they have the national GOP by its elephantine cajones. The "Soc-Cons" turn off the center of the electorate, but demand party allegiance because they vote two-thirds GOP. That's not quite the 90 percent-plus African-American vote enjoyed by Democrats, but enough that they expect to be rewarded with important GOP platform planks. They are also reliably militarist.
(3) Libertarian holdouts. Some traditional Goldwater libertarians have stuck with the party, because they feel they can rely on Republicans for more free market sensibility. But many have been turned off by oxymoronic "big government conservatism." They are often centrist, even tilting left on social issues, though some (many younger) have deserted the GOP and become independents, including those shunning foreign interventionism.
(4) Neo-Con twig. Not a full branch, the neo-conservatives punch above the weight of their tiny band of Billy Kristol and his various Kagan acolytes, because of close alignment with the powerful military-industrial complex and the American Israeli lobby. They populate conservative think tanks and are read disproportionately on neo-con editorial pages, like that of The Washington Post, which give aid-and-comfort to America's elective wars, Bush's Iraq invasion, and Obama's Afghanistan surge. The Neo-Cons infuriate traditional conservatives and libertarians, with their big government domestic policies, typified by Part D prescription drugs for greedy geezers adopted under George W. Bush.
....