Sunday, August 04, 2013
A Schizophrenic Elephant
Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog 14 Comments

The Republican Party's biggest problem is mental illness. The big elephant party is suffering from a severe case of split personality disorder. It's an old problem that has only gotten worse over the years.

It can be hard to remember sometimes while swimming in the media bubble that depicts the Republican Party as some offshoot of the John Birch Society, the KKK and the Confederacy, that it's the exact opposite. All of the organizations mentioned got their start opposing the Republican Party. The Republican Party might have been considered radical before the Civil War, but by the time it was over, it had become the ultimate big government party. It was the over-sized elephant tying together big government and big industry.

The Republican Party spent generations running on Lincoln, the Civil War and Unionism. It followed the politics of what would much later be described as Eisenhowerism. And those politics were reasonably successful. Big government and big business got along really well. Industries boomed, land was opened up and a big country got bigger and bigger. Not everyone was happy, but not everyone mattered.

The Elephant was socially liberal and fiscally conservative. It believed in growth and modernity. It championed national power over regional power. It was concerned about social problems and looking for ways to bind the country together around a shared set of values that could be exported around the world. If you want to understand what it was like, find a top big city Republican donor and talk to him about the issues. You'll get a faint echo of the party from back then.
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Reagan's populism brought home the schizophrenia of a Republican Party whose base sounded more like Goldwater and whose leadership still sounded the same.

The Republican Party became lost in the political currents and found itself stuck with a populist base that opposed most of its values. The contradictions were paved over with rhetoric. The GOP would pretend to represent the values of its base on social and economic issues, even as worked against them. And no matter how often this baffling betrayal takes place, it's always a shock to a base that imagines
. . .
The GOP "folds" on so many issues, because it doesn't believe in them. It isn't really folding, it's shrugging and counting on its base to move on.

The schizophrenic elephant consists of a party without a base and a base without a party. The base is still represented widely in lower offices. You can find plenty of Republican Jacksonians in local and state offices. There are a respectable number of them in Congress. But there are only a handful in the Senate who really mean what they say. And forget about the White House.
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The elephant is out of touch with the enemy and out of touch with its own base. It's out of touch with America and the world. It dwells in a comfortable bubble where nation building still works, amnesty solves problems and a few good attack ads can swing any election. It doesn't understand the issues on foreign policy and it can't connect with domestic issues anymore. That bubble is Washington D.C.
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http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2013/08/...c-elephant.html

From the comments:

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Most Americans are, deep down, libertarian (small "l") but are not to be confused with the equally divided Libertarian Party that has its own cadre of destructive radicals. We see this around the country every time we talk to people using the World's Smallest Quiz. They are not conservative, nor are they anarchists. They want to live their lives, accomplish their goals and prosper. The Republican Party, it's anti-slavery fire long since spent, wants Americans to sit down, shut up and let them get on with their wheeling and dealing at our expense. The Democrat party wants To transform Americans into good little prols, sacrificing our own lives for their radical visions. Both want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg and then keep it on life support so that they can suck out its substance with no thought to what happens when they have consumed us utterly.

The GOP has gone the way of the Whigs, and will not utter so much as a polite protest while the radical wing of the Democratic Party sells us into slavery.

We need a new party. One that represents us.

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From:
Carroll Quigley
Professor of history at Georgetown University & Clinton’s mentor
Tragedy and Hope 1966
Chapter XX The Future in Perspective

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“The chief problem of American Political life for a long time has been how to make the two Congressional parties more national and international. The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. . . . Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies."

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@/Greenfield Ping @FP123@algernonpj@Palinista@W-Girl

ATG

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The Republican Party became lost in the political currents and found itself stuck with a populist base that opposed most of its values. The contradictions were paved over with rhetoric. The GOP would pretend to represent the values of its base on social and economic issues, even as worked against them. And no matter how often this baffling betrayal takes place, it's always a shock to a base that imagines
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Heh. How many who people label themselves as conservatives would be surprised to learn that they aren't conservatives. They are really populists?

Thanks for posting.

Thanks for the post and the ping!

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From:
Carroll Quigley
Professor of history at Georgetown University & Clinton’s mentor
Tragedy and Hope 1966
Chapter XX The Future in Perspective

Zitat

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“The chief problem of American Political life for a long time has been how to make the two Congressional parties more national and international. The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. . . . Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies."

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So funny that you posted that famous Quigley quote here today! Just the other night I was telling someone about it and they were astonished. It is on page 1247 in my 1966 First Printing of Tragedy and Hope (which getting harder and harder to find (a good target when browsing in old bookstores!), the later editions have much of the more "controversial" materials removed!). That whole chapter is worth re-reading every now and again as a refresher! (Well, the whole book is worth slogging through at least once, the genius Quigley had a handle on world history and civilization that was probably without equal in modern times.)

Quote: FP123 wrote in post #3

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Thanks for the post and the ping!

Zitat

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From:
Carroll Quigley
Professor of history at Georgetown University & Clinton’s mentor
Tragedy and Hope 1966
Chapter XX The Future in Perspective

Zitat

---

“The chief problem of American Political life for a long time has been how to make the two Congressional parties more national and international. The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. . . . Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies."

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So funny that you posted that famous Quigley quote here today! Just the other night I was telling someone about it and they were astonished. It is on page 1247 in my 1966 First Printing of Tragedy and Hope (which getting harder and harder to find (a good target when browsing in old bookstores!), the later editions have much of the more "controversial" materials removed!). That whole chapter is worth re-reading every now and again as a refresher! (Well, the whole book is worth slogging through at least once, the genius Quigley had a handle on world history and civilization that was probably without equal in modern times.)

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I guess that goes under 'great minds . . . ' LOL

You can buy a copy [reprint] of the original here:
http://www.realityzone.com/tragedy.html

Or download a copy in PDF Here:
www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/Tragedy_and_Hope.pdf

Or get either pdf or text format here:
http://www.archive.org/details/TragedyAndHope
http://archive.org/stream/TragedyAndHope/TH_djvu.txt

Quote: Cedric wrote in post #5

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This:

The GOP "folds" on so many issues, because it doesn't believe in them. It isn't really folding, it's shrugging and counting on its base to move on.

The schizophrenic elephant consists of a party without a base and a base without a party.

Is pure gibberish.

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