What Changed

[RANT]

"Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future."
- John F. Kennedy

What changed and when.

Politics was never like this the two parties did have their disagreements… big government v. smaller government, safety net v. laissez faire.

Politicians like Tip O’Neill, Everett Dirksen, Bob Dole, George McGovern, Bob Dole, and John McCain all were willing to reach across the aisle but now there are none. Now they build silos.

When did this change?

I think it was during the Reagan administration when the Republicans joined with the Moral Majority and the debate shifted from the size of the budget or deficit or if the government should fund Head Start or not and the debate shifted to Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” in the late seventies.

All of a sudden the Republican Party found that they could get votes and campaign contributions from the Christian rightwing. They found that they had a readymade army to fight Roe v. Wade, and fight the “Gay Menace.” Gays = HIV/AIDS. Democrats = the devil spawn.

From then on the divide between the parties deepen.

Libertarian think tanks started to see as a result of Roe v. Wade that the key was the courts. The courts brought an end to segregation, the courts ended state anti-abortion laws, the courts legalized gay sex, and the courts upheld the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Courts were the key.

When the Republicans controlled Congress they blocked moderate justices and supported conservative judges. During the Obama administration they blocked 79 judges’ nominations and they also block a hearing for a presidential Supreme Court nominee which was never done before and they changed the rules for the number of vote to affirm a Supreme Court justice from 60 to 51.

In the past the senators from the state where the nominee was to by appointed had veto power over the nominee, now they have been stripped of that courtesy. A Democrat senator could block their effort to put a rightwing judge on the bench and the Republicans couldn’t allow that.

They are now cramming through the appointment of justice Kavanaugh that will give them a Christian majority on the court. The judges they have put on the court benches have two common characteristics… they believe in the Bible overrides the Constitution and a libertarianism, a minimalistic view of government.
[/RANT]