Posted on 08/09/2014 5:04:53 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Republicans had Barry Goldwater. Democrats now have Elizabeth Warren. What do they have in common? Years back, he pointed the way for his party, and now she’s doing the same thing for hers.
Goldwater was already a force in Republican politics when his Conscience of a Conservative was published in 1960. He pushed the party toward a conservative future. Warren is riding a liberal surge among Democrats and prodding them in an even more liberal direction.
We know where Republicans wound up. They’re the conservative party, all the more so as a result of Tea Party activism. We don’t know where Democrats will ultimately land. But if Warren, a senator from Massachusetts, is any guide, they’ll be a far more liberal party than they are today and more politically vulnerable as well.
Much attention has been paid to the GOP’s recent drift to the right. The mainstream media, echoing President Obama, have characterized congressional Republicans as the chief cause of gridlock in Washington. Obama’s role as an impediment to compromise and his allegiance to liberal interest groups has been largely ignored.
That Democrats have grown more liberal has been quantified by both Gallup and Pew Research. In January, Gallup found that 43 percent of Democrats identify themselves as liberals, up from 29 percent in 2000. Gallup’s Jeffrey Jones called the shift “a telling indicator” of a once-diverse party “increasingly dominated by those from the left end of the ideological spectrum.”
In February, pollster Andrew Kohut wrote that Pew’s “values survey” from 1987 to 2012 shows Democrats “as a whole have moved to the left in recent years. They are much more socially liberal than they were even a decade ago, more supportive of activist government, more in favor of increased regulation of business.”
In June, another Pew survey found that since 1994 the share of Democrats who regard themselves as usually liberal had jumped from 30 percent to 56 percent. And 70 percent of active Democrats said their views are mostly or always liberal, double the 35 percent of two decades ago.
Josh Kraushaar of National Journal is one of the few journalists to call attention to this trend. Citing Pew’s polling, he noted five issues on which Democratic liberals and moderates disagree: the deficit, the environment, social issues, income inequality, and foreign policy. On all five, he wrote, “Obama is on the leftward side. . . . Obama has been effective in portraying himself as a moderate consensus-builder while governing in a liberal direction.”
Liberals and Obama “give low priority to dealing with the deficit,” Kraushaar wrote. They favor “paying higher prices to help the environment.” Liberals “are much more optimistic about the ability of government to make a meaningful difference in the income gap.” Kraushaar also noted Pew found that “most liberals don’t believe in ensuring peace through military strength.”
Obama’s fidelity to liberal interest groups, a key feature of his presidency, has intensified this year. With Latin American children flooding across our southern border, he initially backed a change in a 2008 law that protected them from quick deportation. But after liberal, pro-immigration groups urged him not to, the president dropped that idea.
To jack up Democratic turnout in the midterm elections, his policies are focused entirely on stirring the Democratic base—racial minorities, the poor, environmentalists, peaceniks, gays, unions, and every other liberal faction. “It’s tactical,” Obama’s only hope for enlarging the turnout, says Republican adviser Karl Rove. Obama has given up on appealing to independents and moderates.
He’s unleashed Attorney General Eric Holder to insinuate that Republicans are racist. He’s outlawed antigay bias in hiring by federal contractors. In his speeches, Obama stresses income inequality—an issue spawned by the failed Occupy Wall Street protest—and raising the minimum wage. He talks about CIA “torture” and reduced payments on student loans.
Meanwhile, “an ascendant progressive and populist movement . . . is on the verge of taking over the party,” Doug Sosnik, the political director for President Clinton, wrote in Politico. It’s currently “simmering beneath the surface.”
For Sosnik, the change from his years in the Clinton White House must be vivid. Conservative scholar Steven Hayward says the “most notable shift is that Democrats have shed the relative moderation of the Clinton years on social and economic policy in favor of the old-school, punitive redistributionism of Elizabeth Warren.” Indeed, “Bill and Hillary Clinton’s support for traditional marriage,” Hayward says, “is being airbrushed out of party history as effectively as a disgraced Soviet Politburo member.”
Warren isn’t charismatic or an eloquent speaker, but she arouses liberals in a way Obama hasn’t since his 2008 campaign. She’s also a problem for Democrats. She’s forgotten what happened the last time Democrats tilted sharply to the left (pre-Obama). It was in the 1970s, and the backlash led to the presidencies of Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, and Bush 43. And Obama was elected while posing as a bipartisan unifier.
Sosnik pointed out the liberal trend among Democrats has been accompanied in public opinion by something very un-liberal—“a desire for less government, not more.” Thus Democratic activists must reconcile public support for smaller government “with their own progressive impulses,” he wrote.
That won’t be easy if Warren has her way. She’s not a reconciler. Her most famous remark is that America’s economic system is “rigged” in favor of the high and mighty. And who else is there to uproot the system but the federal government? The 11 principles of progressivism she laid down at the Netroots Nation convention amount to an invitation for Washington to intervene. If such a thing as a small government liberal exists, she’s not one.
Warren’s progressive tenets include these: “Wall Street needs stronger rules and tougher enforcement . . . the Internet shouldn’t be rigged to benefit big corporations and that means real net neutrality . . . fast-food workers deserve a livable wage . . . students are entitled to get an education without being crushed by debt . . . equal means equal and that’s true in marriage, it’s true in the workplace, it’s true in all of America . . . immigration has made this country strong and vibrant and that means reform . . . corporations are not people.” These sound nice, but they all require bigger, more intrusive, and more powerful government.
In her mind, this package of liberal ideas is more than a political agenda. “This is 21st-century democracy,” she said. “This is the future of America.” I’d put it differently. Warrenism is the future of liberalism.
The key question is who the “kingmaker” or in this case the “queenmaker” George Soros supports. Remember it was his money that enabled Obama to overtake Hillary. My guess is Warrren is his choice not only because she is more of a socialist but also because he can never forgive Hillary’s “F****g Jew Bastard” slur even if it was directed at Dick Morris. Just my opinion.
BULL SHIT! THEY CHEAT!
The Democrats need a credible candidate on wooing back blue collar and middle class voters, and Warren fits the bill.
She's got the media in her hip pocket, she's a woman, and she'll eviscerate the GOP nominee.
It doesn't matter if she has the IQ of bread mold, or if she's spewing the same leftist platitudes that have never ever worked in the past.
Get up to speed on political strategy rather than seeing things at face value and patting yourself on the back and saying it'll be OK.
you’re afraid of shadows. they nominate that silly, unserious woman, and we will romp in 2016.
get up to speed on the electoral college. the dems won’t win by nominating a fringe loony neophyte from a state that they would carry if they nominated that bread mold you were talking about.
she won’t woo back sh!t — she will make their base orgasmic, and get dusted in the general election.
the sum total of her accomplishments to date are: winning an unlosable senate election in the people’s republic of massachusetts. srsly. think it through.
perfect example: she went to WVA last month to “support” the dem candidate for senate. the dem’s polls dropped 3 points.
she’s toxic.
She doesn't have to be coherent. That's the thing. The Dems are using her to trick the blue-collar and middle-class voters back into the fold, and the GOPe doesn't have an answer to this, other than Palin. Her us-vs-them rhetoric speaks volumes. Get it through your skull.
get up to speed on the electoral college. the dems won’t win by nominating a fringe loony neophyte from a state that they would carry if they nominated that bread mold you were talking about.
The Electoral College is a non-factor in 2016. The Democrats will use Warren to go after the blue-collar voters and she's going to deliver and she will carry the states that Obama won in 2012.
she won’t woo back sh!t — she will make their base orgasmic, and get dusted in the general election.
She will hold onto the leftist base, and she will get crossover blue-collar and middle-class voters. Republicans are going to be portrayed as evil rich guys and they're going to lose.
the sum total of her accomplishments to date are: winning an unlosable senate election in the people’s republic of massachusetts. srsly. think it through.
Her accomplishments are irrelevant. What were Obama's accomplishments? He never ran so much as a lemonade stand, yet got elected twice.
perfect example: she went to WVA last month to “support” the dem candidate for senate. the dem’s polls dropped 3 points.
Doesn't mean anything. Alyson Grimes is quietly wiping the floor with McConnell in KY. The GOP is not going to take back the Senate because they have abandoned blue-collar, working-class, and middle-class voters to the myth of chasing after "the Hispanic vote"
You truly need to understand politics and how the Democrats play the game.
If the GOP moves Left with a Romney 2.0 then there’s a chance Warren can win...
ah. ok, I get it. this isn’t an “elizabeth warren rocks” argument, it’s one of those trendy “the republicans suck” arguments.
whatever.
we both know why obama was elected twice; he has a 3-0 count before he ever steps into the batters box. and mcconnell is +4 in the last round of polling. and those were your stronger points.
A certifiable DINGBAT!
Election 2016 may be kinda fun to watch!
wanna know what I can wait for? alleged conservatives clapping when we lose. it sickens me.
You are probably right; the American people are too confused to elect anyone good even if we had a good nominee. The Founding Fathers should have developed another way to choose leaders besides elections or monarchy.
Fauxcahnotas would be a disaster.
Elizabeth Warren..... I hope the Dems nominate that ugly witch. She is the George McGovern of the 21st Century. She is too far left for America. McGovern only carried Massachusettes and the District of Columbia. He didn’t even carry his home state of South Dakota. Warren will not lose that badly, in this cursed culture, but she will be handily defeated.
You could add: she practiced law in Massachusetts for years and she didn’t have a license.
FACT CHECK: First of all the “Jew Bastard” slur was not directed at Dick Morris. She said that about Paul Fray, an advisor during Clinton’s unsuccessful 1974 congressional run. Secondly, George Soros couldn’t give a sh** less about Israel or his Jewish brethren; he is a non-Observant Jew. Money is his god, Obama his prophet and Israel be damned. There is an extra-hot spot reserved for him in hell.
Get it right Kenny.
Speaking of licenses, the Democrat Ohio candidate for Governor opposing incumbent John Kasich has been revealed to lack a drivers license for 10 years ending in 2012, and many people say he was driving the whole time. No explanation. He even got a few “learners permits” during that time frame where you need to be accompanied by a licensed driver. Sounds real dumb. Moron!
It is a minor point, really, whom she said it to or about.
Soros doesn’t like Hillary, just offering my opinion as to why that is. Like I said it could also be that the Clintons are part of the DLC and thus considered to be “centrists.”
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