Paul Krugman's blog post today as usual is correct: The Republican Party is dying and destined for oblivion. for the last 30 years it has increasingly come under the spell of ideologues bent on destroying the welfare state. They've been trying to do this with their incremental agenda of cutting taxes, thereby intentionally cutting government revenue, creating deficits and then calling for cuts to these programs when the government comes up short. The big problem is that all the programs they want to kill are incredibly popular, like Medicare, Medicaid and social security.
But even the last election results, which made clear the majority opinion on welfare programs, has not broken through to their failed ideology and they keep wanting to cut these programs against the will of the people. They just do not know what else to do, stuck in this dysfunctional cycle. Which is of course good news, since the more they stay on this course the more they seal their death spiral, soon to be a Party of history with no future power or relevance, perhaps any existence whatsoever. And I say Amen and good riddance.
What will fill the gap in our usual two-party system? I say let the true progressives break off from the Democrat Party, since the latter as a whole is much more like what the GOP used to be. Then let the Progressive Party win elections so that we enact the kind of policies that will carry us forward, like Medicare for All, marriage equality, immigration reform, marijuana legalization, gun control, economic stimulus, etc.
This post at Alan Colmes site* supports my contention that Democrats like the President are much like moderate Republicans in the 80s. Obama is not even close to be a socialist, which the New Progressives would be. Democratic Socialists, that is, like Bernie Sanders.
ReplyDelete* http://www.alan.com/2012/12/14/obama-in-the-1980s-i-would-be-considered-a-moderate-republican/