Cheer up;
the opposite is true. The most liberal party we have is center-right.
I will throw my hat in and say that the common thread of what is missing here is "leadership". There are republicans that have been good leaders and democrats who share the same attribute.
Whether or not anyone likes Bill Clinton, he did in fact negotiate the biggest "fix" of welfare ever. That it's been mostly undone recently is disturbing, but that's not the point. And looking way back at Richard Nixon, of all people. He was a champion of clean air, raising the minimum wage, and
civil rights enforcement and ultimately ended the Vietnam war.
More African-Americans called themselves Republicans during the Eisenhower years because A) He demanded desegregation become law and B) Democrats at the time blocked passage of key civil rights legislation. What's the difference between the "
Dixiecrats" and the Tea Party? Maybe not as much as we'd like to think. (Though I take exception to what Tea Party has come to mean as defined by the media.) Note the words "
beset by an oppressive federal government" in the Wikipedia post. Sound familiar? It doesn't make either party right or wrong. It just means that political parties have little real "definition" of what to expect if they are elected. These are stereotypes and they're just damn ugly.
I maintain that this is not about ideology alone, but about a bunch of politicians who work "by the public pole numbers" or vote based on the most powerful "lobbyists". Nor should it be solely about how to get re-elected. Leadership demands that some will be unhappy, and that's where I have a problem... that politicians today are too afraid to not please the public. Both houses of Congress are guilty of this and have recent presidents this has been slowly increasing over time. Nobody was more pissed than I when Bush, whom I supported, passed the biggest debt expansion with the Prescription Drug program. It's healthy for Obama supporters to see some things that give them pause as well.
In the case of Obama, why he feels the need to raise millions for a direct ad campaign to the public for his causes is a complete mystery. We are not a direct democracy. We are a representative democracy. It was designed this way so that those supposedly "smarter and wiser" than the average Joe would lead us, like parents, even when we're screaming "No I don't wanna. I don't like spinach." We get our chance to "throw the bums out" every 2, 4 or 6 years. See how California has done with it's Propositions and you'll see why the country cannot be run that way.
But the degrading of America in my opinion has been mostly in the media. The substitute for churches and synagogues, namely the MSNBC's and FOXNEWS of the world are the popular man's new religion... gives them something to believe in... fervently. Leaders, real leaders need to pretend they don't exist and just "act" using the balance of power as it was designed to be used by the founding fathers.
What's it going to take? I don't know, but it's going to have to change, and with 300 million guns out there, people may die (again) to change it. Has happened, could happen again.
Peace to all!
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