Race, class and sex no longer as divisive as political ideology

I quit reading when Obama was described as a truly liberal Democrat.

 

That's succinctly -- and aptly -- summarized.

If you think what's going on is about where you shop, turn off the Fox News. Seriously.

 

... and I did mean to add, there's a lot in-between, too, a great middle that's not getting heard in-between the two extremes.

And I don't watch Fox News. Nor have cable at all. I just want to be left alone without having to pay for your birth control, without being called an idiot or a bigot. It's not about where you shop, but where you shop, where you live and what you eat often defines who you are. And we look disdainfully at those who aren't believing and acting in the ways we do, and want to ban those who aren't as enlightened as us.

 

Carter was not a particularly liberal Democrat. He was a fiscal conservative who often locked horns with Tip O'Neill and Ted Kenned over spending on big projects.

Because Carter was a devout evangelical Baptist, a Southerner, a military man, an USNA grad, a business man and had never been divorced, I was surprised how much the right wing hated him. They instead elected someone who was not particularly religious, had no military service, was divorced and was from Hollywood.

 

One of the things that bothers me is that the discord between right and left isn't the by-product of our political situation, but "mission accomplished" for political consultants. Fewer undecideds, more people afraid, pissed off, outraged etc. to tap for money, and little expectation that any of their work will lead to advancement of a party's goals.

 

Carter came at the beginning of the winnowing-out of the ideological movements within the two major parties. You'll never again see a Republican like Gerald Ford, whose wife wore a pro-ERA button at campaign rallies. And you'll never again see a Democrat like Carter, who was a devout Baptist. Carter's foreign policy (especially with regards to Israel), and his energy policies (agreeing to tie deregulation with a windfall profits tax on oil companies, for example ... plus his inability to do much about the multiple energy crises under his watch) really hurt him with the fiscal conservatives and the neocons. Post-Bush, the Ron Paul wing of the party has begun to silence the neocons.

The biggest key to my argument before was, ideological purity has become the hallmark of both major parties, and it has transcended everything to even affect how people live, where they shop, how/if they worship and how they view each other ... and how both sides really go out of their way to impose their values on each other and believe that if the other gets its way, it'll be the end of society as we know it.

 

I believe Ford himself supported ERA, as did Nixon and Carter.

 

Crimsonace, you're jumping over a significant period, post-9/11, when the country was pretty well together. And then the administration and GOP lied and lied and lied and lied and intimidated all dissenters and put us in Iraq. That's the betrayal that caused the fissure that exists and grows today. Not just because of the memories and the human toll but because, for all the talk about how the economy got to this point and the enormous debt load we now carry, and the opportunity to blame consumers for that debt load, the simple fact is without having to pay for Iraq we would have no debt problem, or at least certainly not one that was reaching crisis levels.

Not that we can go back and get a do-over, but your string of false equivalencies completely omits how we got here in all ways.

 

Ding ding ding.

Ten million people didn't come together on February 15, 2003, because they hated the fact that some people shop at Walmart.

 

I would like to read more about the persecution of the middle class, white, Christian male.

 

Meanwhile, the GOP kills the paycheck fairness bill.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/2chambers/post/paycheck-fairness-act-fails-in-the-senate-as-expected/2012/06/05/gJQATX4XGV_blog.html

 

We've had a tough go at it the past 100 years.