Tornado Alley (PROG)

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The S Word, the F Word and the Election

"Tax Cuts and Leprechauns (Wonkish)"

Guess which party is really un-American.

By Paul Krugman
Opinion Columnist

June 27, 2019


Trump supporters demonstrated before the first Democratic presidential debate on Wednesday.CreditCreditScott McIntyre for The New York Times

What did you think of the bunch of socialists you just saw debating on stage?

Wait, you may protest, you didn’t see any socialists up there. And you’d be right. The Democratic Party has clearly moved left in recent years, but none of the presidential candidates are anything close to being actual socialists — no, not even Bernie Sanders, whose embrace of the label is really more about branding (“I’m anti-establishment!”) than substance.

Nobody in these debates wants government ownership of the means of production, which is what socialism used to mean. Most of the candidates are, instead, what Europeans would call “social democrats”: advocates of a private-sector-driven economy, but with a stronger social safety net, enhanced bargaining power for workers and tighter regulation of corporate malfeasance. They want America to be more like Denmark, not more like Venezuela.

Leading Republicans, however, routinely describe Democrats, even those on the right of their party, as socialists. Indeed, all indications are that denunciations of Democrats’ “socialist” agenda will be front and center in the general election campaign. And everyone in the news media accepts this as the normal state of affairs.

Which goes to show the extent to which Republican extremism has been accepted simply as a fact of life, barely worth mentioning.

To see what I mean, imagine the media firestorm, the screams about lost civility, we’d experience if any prominent Democrat described Republicans as a party of fascists, let alone if Democrats made that claim the centerpiece of their national campaign. And such an accusation would indeed be somewhat over the top — but it would be a lot closer to the truth than calling Democrats socialists.

The other day The Times published an Op-Ed .. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunday/republican-platform-far-right.html?action=click&module=inline&pgtype=Homepage ..

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[EXCERPT outed here..
The difference is that in Europe, far-right populist parties are often an alternative to the mainstream. In the United States, the Republican Party is the mainstream.

“That’s the tragedy of the American two-party system,” Mr. Greven said. In a multiparty government, white working-class populists might have been shunted into a smaller faction, and the Republicans might have continued as a “big tent” conservative party. Instead, the Republican Party has allowed its more extreme elements to dominate. “Nowhere in Europe do you have that phenomenon,” he said.

The situation predates the current administration, Mr. Greven said. While we could analyze Republican manifestos only through the 2016 election, since then, President Trump has openly expressed approval .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/21/donald-trump-marine-le-pen-french-presidential-election .. for politicians like Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader of France’s National Rally, who was recently ordered .. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/13/world/europe/marine-le-pen-isis-tweets.html .. to stand trial for posting pictures on Twitter of killings by the Islamic State.

The Democrats fall closer to mainstream left and center-left parties in other countries, like the Social Democratic Party in Germany and Britain’s Labour Party, according to their manifestos’ scores.]
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that used analysis of party platforms to place U.S. political parties on a left-right spectrum along with their counterparts abroad. The study found that the G.O.P. is far to the right of mainstream European conservative parties. It’s even to the right of anti-immigrant parties like Britain’s UKIP and France’s National Rally. Basically, if we saw something like America’s Republicans in another country, we’d classify them as white nationalist extremists.

True, this is just one study. But it matches up with lots of other evidence. Political scientists who use congressional votes to track ideology .. https://voteview.com/articles/party_polarization .. find that Republicans have moved drastically to the right over the past four decades, to the point where they are now more conservative than they were at the height of the Gilded Age.

Or just compare the G.O.P., point by point, with parties almost everyone would classify as right-wing authoritarians — parties like Hungary’s Fidesz, which has preserved some of the forms of democracy but has effectively created a permanent one-party state.

Fidesz has cemented its power .. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/9/13/17823488/hungary-democracy-authoritarianism-trump .. by politicizing the judiciary, creating rigged election rules, suppressing opposition media and using the power of the state to reward the party’s cronies while punishing businesses that don’t toe the line. Does any of this sound like something that can’t happen here? In fact, does any of it sound like something that isn’t already happening here, and which Republicans will do much more of if they get the chance?

One might even argue that the G.O.P. stands out among the West’s white nationalist parties for its exceptional willingness to crash right through the guardrails of democracy. Extreme gerrymandering, naked voter suppression and stripping power from offices .. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/4/18123784/gop-legislature-wisconsin-michigan-power-grab-lame-duck .. the other party manages to win all the same — these practices seem if anything more prevalent here than in the failing democracies of Eastern Europe.

Oh, and isn’t it remarkable how blasé we’ve become about threats of legal persecution and/or physical violence against anyone who criticizes a Republican president?

So it’s really something to see Republicans trying to tar Democrats as un-American socialists. If they want to see a party that really has broken with fundamental American values, they should look in the mirror.

But that won’t happen, of course. Whoever the Democrats nominate — even if it’s Joe Biden — Republicans will paint him or her as the second coming of Hugo Chávez. The only question is whether it will work.

It might not, or at least not as well as in the past. By spending decades calling everything that might improve Americans’ lives “socialist,” Republicans have squandered much of the accusation’s force. And Donald Trump, who was installed in office with Russian help and clearly prefers foreign dictators to democratic allies, is probably less able to play the “Democrats are unpatriotic” card than previous Republican presidents.

Still, a lot will depend on how the news media handle dishonest attacks. Will we keep seeing headlines that repeat false claims (“Trump Says Democrats Will Ban Hamburgers .. https://newrepublic.com/article/153187/potency-republicans-hamburger-lie ”), with the information that the claim is false buried deep inside the article? Will we get coverage of actual policy proposals, as opposed to horse-race analysis that only asks how those proposals seem to be playing?

I guess we’ll soon find out.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/opinion/socialism-2020.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

See also:

Benjamin Wittes' list of Trump's aggression against the paramount law enforcement agency of
the U.S.A. is the form of reminder we should be given repeatedly. Notes of his list in that video
- Comey firing
- attacks on AG Sessions
- attacks on Dep. AG Rosenstein
- attacks on Special Counsel Mueller
- attacks on named, as Andrew McCabe and James Baker
- attacks on line agent Peter Strzok
Wittes says Trump's behaviour is "unprecedented" and "profoundly dangerous". i just stuck in some of the names.
P - Brian Klaas's concern that Trump's authoritarianism may not be a blip, because his and his
administration's actions are fundamentally changing institutions in the U.S.A. go to this one
P - Former Federal Judge: Trump Is Packing the Courts with Unqualified Conservative Extremists

https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=137666843

Christo-fascist/Christo-fascism
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=131914423

JimLur -- a brazen fascist call to mass murder
true colors, shining through
all should read that one
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=129149923
.. Mark was talking about this one ..
They Are Playing With A Revolution… By Joe Six Pack!
By Bill Holter March 1st, 2017 at 1:19 PM (CST)
(h/t to Justified)
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=129145900

conix, among other things, one thing Antifa undeniably is, is Antifascist.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=149338547

Tearex, To your TDS - Trump Denial Syndrome

...Is Donald Trump a Sociopath?
Doctors say yes — and that should disqualify him from the presidency.
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2018/01/18/Is-Donald-Trump-A-Sociopath/
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=149039509
P - conix, Fascists? You display your ignorance of fascism as proudly as those who still wear the imbecilic MAGA hat even today. They display their ignorance of the man they still see as a savior. You know. That one you say you don't serve. The self-serving, malignant-liar mess who sits in and spits from the house he loves, at least to an important part, because it's called the White House. The hats are red, not sure but i guess the color symbolism could be communism. I mean it's a one-for-all cult isn't it. Or is the red supposed to suggest he has a love for firetrucks.
"Home of the Fascists"
Father of Fascism Studies: Donald Trump Shows Alarming Willingness to Use Fascist Terms & Styles
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143801426
.. more here ..
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=149042893