Can conservatives ever wrest back control of the Republican Party from the Religious Right?
Yes indeed Nixon would be considered a moderate Democrat were he active in politics today Ford was a bit more conservative but as you say would not have been able to pass the social issues test required by the southern wing of the Republican Party of today. The party now has also to deal with the very ambiguous Tea Parties issues though it seems likely that they will be overcome by the religious right one need only look to the recent attempts in the CR debate to hold up an agreement due to the attempt to end family planing funding as a condition for Republican approval of a compromise, though this time with some pressure by the President that was over come.The claim that the Republican party is a big tent party has been a fallacy since Ronald Reagan re-worked the set of coalitions that make up the base of the party. The Reagan Republican Party became more southern more religious, less fiscally conservative, much more activist in it's legal outlooks and much more conservative in it's social outlooks. The Meme that Republicans are the party that believes in cutting government spending while super-fiscally being true is fundamentally false in that the no Modern Republican President or majority in congress has actually accomplished a reduction in the size of the US government. Reagan while he is rightfully credited with lowering the marginal tax rates left office with America paying a larger tax bill due to the broadening of the US tax base on Social Security Taxes passed as part of his solution the the SS crisis of the times and the change to the AMT tax (1) made while he was president. Also the largest deficits in US history (until the recession of 2008) occurred under President Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush and George W. Bush.Since Reagan the Republican party has been the home of the Social Conservative movement in America and I do not see any forces that will change that any time soon.1 Per Wikipedia "he AMT has undergone several changes since 1969. The most significant of those, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, occurred under the Reagan era Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982.[17] The law changed the AMT from an add-on tax to its current form: a parallel tax system."
Does the definition of conservatism change because the Republican party platform changes?
No. Because Republican does not inherently mean Conservative, just as Democrat does not inherently mean Liberal. Conservative vs Liberal is merely a scale used for how quickly one wants society to progress. Both are progressive in nature, but liberalism calls for rapid change while conservatism calls for slower change. Democrat vs Republican is based on how much power one believes the government should have. Democrats believe in a very large central government, and thus increase taxes to increase how much power the government holds (more money from taxes means more plans they can pass) while Republicans believe in a smaller government, and thus reduce taxes. That's about as basic as I can make it but I'm willing to go further if you'd like
When did the Republican party become the conservative party, and the Democratic party become the liberal party?
It’s a long, complicated topic, but a very succinct history can be found in these two articles:The Conservative Fantasy History of Civil Rights by Jonathan Chait:t is true that most Republicans in 1964 held vastly more liberal positions on civil rights than Goldwater. This strikes Williamson as proof of the idiosyncratic and isolated quality of Goldwater’s civil rights stance. What it actually shows is that conservatives had not yet gained control of the Republican Party.But conservative Republicans — those represented politically by Goldwater, and intellectually by William F. Buckley and National Review — did oppose the civil rights movement. Buckley wrote frankly about his endorsement of white supremacy: “the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically.” More often conservatives argued on grounds of states’ rights, or freedom of property, or that civil rights leaders were annoying hypocrites, or that they had undermined respect for the law.Dixie's Long Journey From Democratic Stronghold To Republican RedoubtThe South was once home to the "yellow dog Democrat" who would vote for a mutt over someone from the party of Abraham Lincoln. Now, the party of the Great Emancipator has made Dixie its bedrock, the base of its Electoral College vote and its majorities in Congress. Many a great-granddaddy buried in rebel gray has been rolling over in his grave for some years now.The South's rejection of its Democratic DNA began more than 60 years ago with a Supreme Court decision, and significant historic milestones have followed like clockwork in almost every decade since. (The one exception was the 1970s, when Watergate torpedoed the Nixon presidency and led to the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976.)
At what point in recent American history did being a Liberal become bad and NeoCon good?
I remember a time when being called a Conservative was nearly as slanderous as being called a Liberal is today. When you look up the definitions of both terms... Conservatives resisted change, went by the rules and were generally thought of as stodgy old men smoking cigars at 'the club'. Liberals, on the otherhand, were "for the people", hippy-generation types. Always looking to change the world. When I look at the news and political terrain of today, I see that Liberals are about on par with calling someone a Communist in the McCarthy Era. The Conservatives of today seem quite a bit more militant and bent of rewriting history and our constitution in one fell swoop. I do not consider myself either. I like to think I'm like the American Majority...being a Middle of the Road type of guy. I dont agree with either side and it disturbs me that the system is so far out of balance.
How and why did the Republican “Party of Lincoln” become popular with confederate sympathizers?
The thing is, the GOP never really wanted this, or attempted to make it happen. Nobody likes those people, and they aren’t supported by the GOP at all. However, they still seem to like the GOP, so there is an explanation that someone needs to give. I think this does the job well:The GOP doesn’t care much about raceThe Democratic party does care about raceMany people on or associated with the Democratic party say that the GOP is racist.The GOP responds by doing nothing; in the view of the GOP, that’s the least racist thing they can do: not pay attention to race.People misunderstand the GOP’s not doing anything about race, and think the GOP must be racist. This leads to one of two scenarios:Non-racist people who don’t know the GOP think it’s racist.Racist people see the GOP not doing anything and assume that means the GOP is racist.This is the problem here: everyone seems to misunderstand the GOP, and as a result, nobody is happy.
Why do conservatives get blamed for slavery?
I'm not sure conservatives get hit as hard as whites in general, regardless of their political views. The thing that you have to remember is that both political parties have evolved over the years. I'm not sure why slavery is still an issue and more over I'm not sure why people, blacks especially, are seeking revenge for it. While slavery is an atrocity in and of itself, I feel no personal responsibility for any of it and I'm about as white as they come. Do I condone slavery? No. Am I glad that its over? Absolutely. Nevertheless, I've never done anything to anyone, slavery, nor any other sort of racist actions and therefore I don't believe I should have to apologize for nor should I have to explain the actions of those who lived hundereds of years ago. I realize that the hardcore black leftists like to pin everything bad on republicans simply because the republican party has become the quasi-embodiement of the 'white devil', but at the sametime I think thats why nobody takes them seriously. Now, its one thing to have black activists and leaders educating and raising awareness about those unbelievably horrible atrocities that took place 200 hundered years ago, which is fine. Understanding the mistakes of history is the best way to prevent them from happening again. Furthermore, those days of old were not only a defining time for black history, but American history itself. It really proved that we are a superior country because we did in fact not only realize that slavery is wrong, but we indeed took the steps necessary to end it. Lastly, we have to understand that the 'white devils' werent soley responsible for slavery, we also have to note the African leaders at the time who sold their own people to slaver traders, but for some reason that part of history always gets left by the wayside. People like to make it seem like George Washington blew over to Africa, single-handedly abducted thousands of people and brought them back to America with absolutely no help from the African people......give me a God d@mn break. In short, the whole finger pointing at whites and conservatives for slavery is really just a bunch of bullocks. Most intelligent people that I deal with are progressive thinking conservatives who think that the entire religious right and republican party is just as corrupt if not more so than the meandering liberals. It just goes to prove that broad generalization strikes again. -J.