US Republican Party

Overview

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Conclusions

Since at least the year 2000 (possibly beginning during the Reagan administration), this party has become mainly about:

• obstructionism -- the "party of No", "the Republican'ts" -- opposed to any measures supported by Democrats, even if Republicans originally supported or proposed those same measures
• corporatism -- rewriting laws and decimating public-interest government regulation to suit their corporate sponsors; see RepubliCorp
• ignorance, fear, and untruth -- furthering their agenda at any cost, including promotion of long-debunked falsehoods, embracing radical populism (e.g. the Tea Party), abandoning rational discussion, and failing to have any sense of shame over repeated instances of hypocrisy

Reference

• Republican National Committee official web site
• Wikipedia
• Campaigns Wikia

Related Pages

• American republicanism: the mindset of those who tend to be attracted to the Party's ideology
• 2004 US Republican Party Platform
• 2000 US Republican Party Platform

Actions

• 1995: Republican-led Congress Closed the Office of Technology Assessment
• 1994: The Contract with America was a significant Republican platform in the 1994 Congressional election

Qualities

• Seemingly hostile towards science [1], while the Democrats tend to be opposed to large engineering projects
• Known for pointlessly "dirty" campaigning [2]

Links

Filed Links

version 3

• 2012-12-11 [L..T] Explaining Socialism To A Republican “My friend seemed totally shocked when I said “All socialism isn’t bad”. She became very serious and replied “So you want to take money away from the rich and give to the poor?” I smiled and said “No, not at all. Why do you think socialism means taking money from the rich and giving to the poor?”
• 2011-07-25T14:20:00 [L..T] Taxing The Poor: The Only Tax Increase Republicans Support While they fight the expiration of the budget-busting Bush tax cuts, Republicans have continually cited a report that shows that 51 percent of Americans don't pay income taxes, even admitting that middle- and lower-class Americans need to shoulder a larger burden in deficit reduction efforts.
• 2011-07-25T11:32:00 [L..T] The New Orthodoxy It’s a bizarre, nonsensical politics that finds Republican members so wedded to their base that the pronouncement of an extremist advocacy group should factor into the calculus of not just members of the party fringe, but party leadership, too.
• 2011-07-24 [L..T] JP Morgan Tells Investors Why Middle Class Americans Are Screwed Why are your Republican friends aggravated? They aren’t getting paid their fair share of the national GDP and economic growth and they are paying an increased burden of the taxation in this country. Think about this, as you work harder for a company and productivity increases, you’re not seeing your share of the profits you helped the company earn.
• 2011-07-14 [L..T] Getting to Crazy The insanity of the GOP, which many people are finally just noticing, has been building gradually for a long time.

version 2

• 2006-11-03 [Talk|Index] The Kerry Flap § [2]“The right-wingers were all over this, of course. Here's the elitist Kerry calling our troops stupid and uneducated. It is ridiculous that Kerry, a veteran himself, would actually think such a thing. But even if by some fluke he did think it, he would not be foolish enough to say it out loud. So we might suspect an alternative explanation.” ... “One of the most exasperating tropes of modern politics is that “both parties do it.” But they don't. The Republicans are much more vile and much less interested in fair play.”

[refresh]

Dirty Campaigning

• 2006 [3][4]:
  • Philadelphia, PA
  • Kansas
  • New Hampshire
  • Connecticut
  • New York

Commentary

• 2006-10-31 This Is No Fun: right-wing blogger John Cole shreds the recent performance of the GOP
• 2005-11-14 Is the GOP still the conservative party?
• ShelleyTheRepublican.com: ok, I confess... I can't tell if this is meant to be serious...
• Republicans for Humility

Findings

• 2005-12-21 Fear of death may factor into who we vote for: specifically, subtle reminders of mortality caused people to switch votes from Kerry to Bush; this seems likely to be a specific of a more general trend of voting Republican/Conservative being correlated with perceived danger level. The Party seems well aware of this, as they have a created a number of entities whose sole purpose seems to be to generate calculated levels of alarm and fear, at will, in the general population.

News

• 2007-05-09 Retired Generals Challenge GOP in Ads: "Three retired generals challenged a dozen members of Congress in a new ad campaign Wednesday, saying the politicians can't expect to win re-election if they support President Bush's policies in Iraq." The generals in question are Maj. Gen. John Batiste (ret.), Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton (ret.), and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark (ret.); the ads were created by VoteVets.org.

See Also

• 2000-2007 US Presidential Administration

Bumper Sticker Ideas

Respect Republican Principles Now! WHAT PART OF "ME ME ME!" DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?