Tuesday, May 22, 2012

“The Big Flip”

Todd S. Purdum, writing in the slick, liberal Vanity Fair, has quite rightly proclaimed that “over the past half-century, the two parties completely switched roles, with the G.O.P. turning into rebels and the Democrats defending the status quo.”

As Purdum says, Republicans have become
a radical insurgency bent on upending the prevailing practices of the national government . . . For most of its history the Republican Party was something else entirely: a steward of the status quo. It was the Democrats who were historically on the barricades in the fight for radical change. But the Democrats these days have turned into the stewards—beleaguered defenders of the government and country we have evolved into. The two great national parties have. . . switched roles . . .—the Big Flip—is . . . a substantial reality and it’s substantially complete.
Purdum’s attempt to characterize today’s GOP is way wide of the mark. According to Purdum, Republicans have moved so far to the right today they wouldn’t nominate either Ronald Reagan or Abraham Lincoln. It would seem that liberals—Purdum anyway—have so refashioned Reagan into a tax-raising moderate, and Lincoln into a big government hero, that they believe Republicans no longer worship the two. Wrong. Really so very wrong and so deeply removed from reality.

On today’s Democrats, Purdum says they are fighting “simply to stay in the same place.” They are “status-quo oriented, centrist protectors of government.” Right. And the reason Republicans aren’t is because our status-quo government is ruining America. We cannot afford today’s entitlement society with its annual deficits over $1 trillion, with federal government spending at 25% of GDP and rising, and with, according to House budget chair Paul Ryan, 70% of Americans getting more back from the federal government than they put in.

The two parties have flipped. Here’s what remains the same: those fighting to preserve the status quo are on history's losing side.

2 comments:

Mike Hu said...

It's accurate to say that the Democratic Party has become the party promoting the conformity to the "political correctness" they feel entitled and qualified to dictate -- largely because of their "liberal arts" education -- which since their inception in the Dark Ages, has been about preserving and enforcing the authoritarianism of the totalitarian establishment -- which used to be the Church, but now are largely the schools of indoctrination (compulsory education).

Presently, it is themselves as those who have claimed government as their exclusive lifetime sinecures -- only defending their own entitlements to maintain their positions all their lives -- with the duty and responsibility of everyone else, just to fulfill their demands of "support" -- just like in the olden times.

The Republicans on the other hand, have remained the Party of nonconformist, independent thinkers -- that range across the total spectrum and range of persuasions, beliefs, and ideologies -- not conforming to what the mainstream mass media would have us believe we all should think and be.

That is the current great divide in the country -- the conformists and the nonconformists, which includes anybody who doesn't chant what their union stewards tell them to chant, as they do all the thinking for everybody else, and want only to be repeated, what they've previously determined is right for everybody else -- for the maintenance of their exclusive benefit.

But more and more people are deciding -- they can think for themselves, and it is no longer necessary for the political establishment to do all their thinking and talking for them -- as "all the news fit to print," and insisting there is nothing beyond that but sheer folly to question and inquire.

Galen Fox said...

Mike, thank you for your thoughtful comment.