They somehow became a fringe group. Compare Republican voters/politicians in the 80s to what you have now and you would see what I mean. How the heck did this happen?
fox news? fox knows how to stroke the emotions republicans have about god,gays and guns. its good for their ratings but its bad for our nation.
Both Democrats and Republicans are more extreme than they've ever been in my lifetime. Both parties are owned by special interest groups and care about one thing and one thing only -- getting re-elected. I stopped voting for Dems and Repubs a long time ago.
They're certainly truer to the principles of the 1980's, indeed the 1780's, than democrats, who have become the party of gay marriage, socialized medicine, abortion on demand and endless bailouts.
sure. lets go back to 1980. 1. Reagan was a serial tax raiser. As governor of California, Reagan ¡°signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state up till then.¡± Meanwhile, state spending nearly doubled. As president, Reagan ¡°raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office,¡± including four times in just two years. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan ¡°a dear friend,¡± told NPR, ¡°Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration ¡ª I was there.¡± ¡°Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes,¡± said historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited Reagan¡¯s memoir. Reagan the anti-tax zealot is ¡°false mythology,¡± Brinkley said. 2. Reagan nearly tripled the federal budget deficit. During the Reagan years, the debt increased to nearly $3 trillion, ¡°roughly three times as much as the first 80 years of the century had done altogether.¡± Reagan enacted a major tax cut his first year in office and government revenue dropped off precipitously. Despite the conservative myth that tax cuts somehow increase revenue, the government went deeper into debt and Reagan had to raise taxes just a year after he enacted his tax cut. Despite ten more tax hikes on everything from gasoline to corporate income, Reagan was never able to get the deficit under control. 3. Unemployment soared after Reagan¡¯s 1981 tax cuts. Unemployment jumped to 10.8 percent after Reagan enacted his much-touted tax cut, and it took years for the rate to get back down to its previous level. Meanwhile, income inequality exploded. Despite the myth that Reagan presided over an era of unmatched economic boom for all Americans, Reagan disproportionately taxed the poor and middle class, but the economic growth of the 1980¡äs did little help them. ¡°Since 1980, median household income has risen only 30 percent, adjusted for inflation, while average incomes at the top have tripled or quadrupled,¡± the New York Times¡¯ David Leonhardt noted. 4. Reagan grew the size of the federal government tremendously. Reagan promised ¡°to move boldly, decisively, and quickly to control the runaway growth of federal spending,¡± but federal spending ¡°ballooned¡± under Reagan. He bailed out Social Security in 1983 after attempting to privatize it, and set up a progressive taxation system to keep it funded into the future. He promised to cut government agencies like the Department of Energy and Education but ended up adding one of the largest ¡ª the Department of Veterans¡¯ Affairs, which today has a budget of nearly $90 billion and close to 300,000 employees. He also hiked defense spending by over $100 billion a year to a level not seen since the height of the Vietnam war. 5. Reagan did little to fight a woman¡¯s right to choose. As governor of California in 1967, Reagan signed a bill to liberalize the state¡¯s abortion laws that ¡°resulted in more than a million abortions.¡± When Reagan ran for president, he advocated a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited all abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, but once in office, he ¡°never seriously pursued¡± curbing choice. 6. Reagan was a ¡°bellicose peacenik.¡± He wrote in his memoirs that ¡°[m]y dream¡_became a world free of nuclear weapons.¡± ¡°This vision stemmed from the president¡¯s belief that the biblical account of Armageddon prophesied nuclear war ¡ª and that apocalypse could be averted if everyone, especially the Soviets, eliminated nuclear weapons,¡± the Washington Monthly noted. And Reagan¡¯s military buildup was meant to crush the Soviet Union, but ¡°also to put the United States in a stronger position from which to establish effective arms control¡± for the the entire world ¡ª a vision acted out by Regean¡¯s vice president, George H.W. Bush, when he became president. 7. Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants. Reagan signed into law a bill that made any immigrant who had entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty. The bill was sold as a crackdown, but its tough sanctions on employers who hired undocumented immigrants were removed before final passage. The bill helped 3 million people and millions more family members gain American residency. It has since become a source of major embarrassment for conservatives.
Like this CON JOB........ Really Rich Michael Moore Says All Wealthy Americans' Money is Not Theirs It's 'Ours' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzfd_sNw2-Y
I thought the Bailouts for banks were under the watch of Bush? And Medicare plan D was a bush thing, how much is that costing us? And the Ethanol subsides using taxpayer money was another Bush thing. Somehow the Republicans today are not the Republicans I remembered back in the 80s.
They pander to the nuts because they need 'em. The independents are turning away from the reps, and that leaves only the reps' core constituency, the rich, necessarily a minority.
I can't think of a better way to put it. This is exactly what is happening. We Americans watch too much television.