Is The Republican Platform To Starve The Opposition As Much As Possible

Why do political parties view their opposition as more extreme than they are? I’ve seen Liberals claim Republicans want the poor to starve, and Republicans claim Liberals want everything for free!

It’s a sad reality of modern media that ideas and people get compressed into two dimensional caricatures of themselves. Sure, there are nutters on the fringes. But many people have depth and rationale behind their political motivations: they’re 3D people, not 2D.So what to make of it when our political foes talk past us, when they incessantly call us names or label us as viciously they do? An angry response often doesn’t work, and merely brings us down to their level. My answer has been to fight back, but with humor where I can, and mockery of the many weaknesses of my opponent’s arguments, without attacking their personhood. The Chinese have a old saying: let your enemy lose with grace.In other words, don’t cross boundaries that your own morality would have you set for yourself and others.I’m a conservative, with libertarian leanings. I remind myself that my “liberal” and “progressive” friends (and I do have some) are often motivated by good intentions, by impulses to fairness, and may be responding to injustice in the best way they know how. For me, this opens up a gateway to a dialog IF they are willing to step off the ramparts and have such a dialog. (Alinsky would tell them to avoid such a discussion at all costs due to the risk that our side’s arguments begin to make sense.)It was in developing this point of view that I came to realize that modern liberals aren’t very liberal at all. Not when they are unwilling to open a debate. Not when they insist on the 2D caricature of Republicans as the rich Monopoly man, calling him racist, sexist and all the other labels they can think of. It was then that I realized that my small-government conservative friends were far more liberal than those claiming that label.

Before Ronald Reagan, what was the Republican Party's political stance?

There were always two main tendencies in the postwar Republican Party. One, best represented by Eisenhower, accepted the New Deal; the other wanted it reversed as much as possible. Another factor came about as the civil rights movement got underway in 1960. Some northern Republicans sided with the push for civil rights, such as Nelson Rockefeller. Southern Republicans opposed them, of course, and the more conservative wing of the party also did so.As a general rule, however, both wings of the party stood for lower taxes, a lot of defense spending, a balanced budget, and reducing social programs.Reagan was ideologically closer to the more conservative wing of the party but he also understood that by the time he began to run for President that it was no longer possible to directly oppose most of the New Deal and even many of the social programs initiated by Lyndon Johnson, such as Medicare. His technique for reducing social programs was the concept of “starve the beast,” which in practice meant reducing taxes while increasing military spending, thereby creating a budget imbalance which he would address by cutting social programs.So the answer to your question is that Reagan represented a more conservative GOP than existed before him. Both Ike and Nixon did not buy into the supply side illusion, gave some support to civil rights, and did not attempt to scale back the New Deal. Reagan basically stopped trying to enforce civil rights laws as much as possible, did buy into the supply side illusion, and tried at the margins to cut back the New Deal. He paved the way for future attempts along those lines in the Bush 43 administration and now, of course, the present GOP is openly out to destroy as much of the New Deal and Great Society as it can.

Why was the Conservative Party formed?

The modern Conservative party has had 2 foundations.In the 1840s the country was trying to cope with a long run of poor harvests_so much so that the decade was called the hungry forties.Before then corn could only be imported if the price reached a certain level, in order to protect British farmers. However so many people were starving that the government decided that it had to abolish the corn laws, to bring prices down. As the tories were in power this split the party. Those who favoured this policy and free trade spent about 15 years as a loose faction called the peelites. Eventually they joined the whigs who then renamed themselves the liberal party. Those who had opposed the abolition of the corn laws became known as the Conservative partyThe modern Conservative party dates from 1922,when the backbench party decided to leave coalition led by David Lloyd George and deposed its leaders who wished to remain in the coalition.

What changes would the Republican Party need to make to cause you to vote for them?

It's hilarious to me to look down thru most of the answers and basically all of them say become more like democrats. On the contrast I have been a reluctant republican just because they seem to be closer to libertarianism than the democrats. I think that the republicans should follow Rand Paul's lead and become a big tent party, and de-emphasize social issues. Even As a devout Christian, I think the government has no business enforcing morality (see Barry Goldwater's thoughts on this). Government has no business regulating marriage. It never did. As a society, we need to have an honest discussion about race and gender relations. We need to strip aside the ridiculous sensationalism and speak plainly as to what the problems are and propose solutions. Both parties have denounced racism and sexism. Racists and sexists, sadly, make up enough of the electorate to influence elections. I'm sure both parties would love to  not have to pander to certain groups that may hold distasteful views to win elections.Republicans have always been a free market party which is good and does not need to change, because I think this is still a strong selling point. My father's parents were poor, yet they voted for every republican since Goldwater because they liked the idea of meritocracy. Republicans are doing a great job as the pro-2A party, because that is a worthy cause. America is unique among civilized nations in that we have retained a fairly low-regulation gun culture. This is important because an armed, informed public is harder to break than a disarmed, permissive public that allow anything that the wind blows to pass.

Which political ideology is the closest to social Darwinism?

In the late 19th century USA, Social Darwinism was a standard part of the “liberal” political tendency of that era. The word “liberal” first came into popular use in the 1870s through the efforts of a group of pundits and academics, who often operated through academic conferences. This included sociologists like William Graham Sumner, who is often associated with the idea of “social Darwinism”.The 19th century liberal movement were strongly opposed to any government regulation of business or interference in the market. They believed that market competition was a natural device to separate out the successful from the failures, a social process that powered “the survival of the fittest.” So if people are going to starve, the logical result of their view would be, let them starve. They opposed child labor laws or eight hour laws. They advocated free trade. Thus unconstrained laissez faire capitalism was what they advocated.In 1962 Milton Friedman’s book “Freedom & Capitalism” advocated this philosophy. As he says in the beginning of the book “liberalism” is the name of his politics. He was using “liberalism” in that late 19th century sense.Later on in the 1960s a group of advocates of this right wing laissez faire liberal ideology decided to re-brand their ideology by taking over the word “libertarian” — previously associated with libertarian socialists (syndicalists, anarchists).So the American right wing “libertarians” are the present-day ideological faction closest to 19th century social Darwinism.