ThatDamnedPanda
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ORIGINAL: samboctPanda- interesting comments about Nixon- I just thought he was such an incredible creep and that the young folks who had joined him became the architects of much of our current misery (weren't guys like Roberts, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz etc. groomed under Tricky Dick?) that I didn't realize that he may have accomplished some good other than getting us out of Viet Nam.
I'm not surprised, Sam; very few people seem to be aware of that aspect of Nixon. It's only in the last couple of years, as i started doing some research to compare the political climate of the 60s with that of the Bush era, that I really became aware of it myself, and I was quite surprised at what i found. It piqued my curiosity, and made me dig a little deeper, and i really learned a lot about the man. Like you, I loathed the miserable bastard, but the more I studied him, the more I came to see that as hateful and twisted as he was, there honestly was a very decent, caring, compassionate side to him. The story of Nixon is the story of a deeply troubled, conflicted man, with a seething tangle of internal conflicts waging a constant battle in the background. The trouble was, his paranoia and other psychological disorders always won out in the end, but he did do a lot of good on the domestic front on his way to destroying the fabric of the American political system. One historian even refers to him as the last of the New Deal progressive Presidents, an appellation that really has a surprising amount of validity.
quote:
ORIGINAL: samboct
Hi Panda, Kittin
The problem with that plan for Republican self immolation is that it provides no counterbalance for the democrats. Without an organized opposition-the democrats fall apart. I think it was Will Rogers that said- I don't belong to an organized political party- I'm a democrat!
.......
In short- the members of the Republican party aren't on the right track yet either- and until they take a look around and realize that the messes we're dealing with are a function of the parties failed policies- we're going to make a lot less progress getting out of the hole.
But see, that's the problem right there, Sam. It's like saying that until a pig takes a look around and decides to grow wings, he's doomed to continue wallowing in the pig shit. I'm convinced that the Republican Party has gone beyond the point of no return, that they've drifted so far out into interstellar space there's simply no way to pull them back into a stable orbit. The party has poisoned itself. I don't believe there's any way to rebuild a functional political party out of the rubble of the GOP. If they've got to burn to the ground to make way for a new party, then so be it, but if they try to rebuild what they have now, we'll just have the same corrupt, evil factions building the same divisive, dysfunctional conflicts into the new structure. Nothing will change.
Let 'em burn. They're no longer a counterbalance to the Democrats anyway, they're just the enemies of the Democrats. It's not the same thing. As a party, they're not making any substantive effort to balance out the Democratic agenda anymore. They're just trying to obstruct and defeat it at every opportunity for their own political advantage, in order to position themselves for the next election cycle so they can go back to doing what they've done the last 8 years. They've completely lost any credibility as an alternative to the Dems, because all they've really done is take the worst failings of the Democratic Party to even greater extremes. The only thing they stand for anymore is transferring as much wealth as they can get their hands on into the pockets of the rich, by lowering taxes on the wealthy, driving up federal deficits to pay for them, and sticking the middle class with the bill for the deficit.
That's the whole raison d'etre for the Republican Party in 2009, and it's no counterbalance - it's a purely destructive force, and there's no way the country can move forward with a huge, steeaming pile of Republican blocking the road. Fuck 'em. Let 'em die. It wouldn't take more than a year, or maybe even less, for a viable 3rd party to emerge and begin to establish a position as a true, credible counterbalance. Like you, I'm deeply alarmed by the prospect of an unchecked Democratic Party running amok for a year, but what alternative do we have? Either way, we're fucked. Counting on the Republicans to rebuild itself into a viable party again is like counting on a pig to grow wings, and if we wait 2 more years (or whatever) for that to happen, it's just 2 more years the country will continue to burn. Let's get it over with.
_____________________________
Panda, panda, burning bright
In the forest of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Made you all black and white and roly-poly like that?
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RE: Why the GOP is unraveling. - 
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