The GOP's Move To The Extreme Right Goes Back Decades: Dana Milbank

Author and Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank joins Morning Joe to discuss his new book 'The Destructionists: The Twenty-Five Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party'.

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The GOP's Move To The Extreme Right Goes Back Decades: Dana Milbank

[guadalahonky]

From 1917 through 1970 (53 years), there were only 58 cloture motions to shut off filibusters. From 1971 to 2006 (35 years), there were 928 cloture motions. From 2007 to now (14 years), there have been 1, 410 cloture motions.” - E.J. Dionne

Mitch McConnell found the way to destroy the Senate, and in-effect, ruling from the Minority.

[playtime]

The GOP's going to the edge of the cliff - let's push them over.

[tomkelly]

Really this all started with Reagan and his alliance with the Moral Majority Christo-fascists--at least they became fascist when they finally achieved political power.

[laurabushey]

Actually, it goes back much further than 1994. It started with the election of Nixon in 1968. The ascendancy of Nixon largely happened due to opposition to school busing to achieve racial balance, as well as opposition to the Vietnam war. Nixon nominated two far right justices to the Supreme Court, but at that time, saner heads prevailed, and both were rejected by the Senate. However, Nixon's "southern strategy" was very much a harbinger of things to come.

[philgroves]

And there you have it - much like I've been saying for a long time - Newt Gingrich is one of the major players behind the downfall of what used to be the Republican faction (the New Fascist Party). In fact, if you've been paying attention, Newt has been a very close confidant of Donald Trump (he's been in many pics with Donnie - in the background), was the guy who pushed Donald to run for president (Donnie even credits him with that), and who has continued to put bugs in Donnie's ears. Gingrich has absolutely no love for the United states, the citizens, or the Constitution - Newt wants only to have power and control ... and he is VERY, VERY committed, sneaky, and vengeful.

[Anthony_Aú.GreenParty]

3:46 - The Republican transition from limited-government to anti-government is a disturbing trend in all levels of our democracy.

[stvp]

Cheney was so extreme in office that I gave up on the GOP, and they’ve gotten even worse since then

[bobyacko]

Newt Gingrich the guy who divorced his wife on her deathbed from cancer the devil himself

[SwiftJustice]

All Republicans do is stand in America's way

[blindfreddy]

"Balancing the budget" was always code for starve the disadvantaged.

Economic eugenics.

[kevlar]

This started when Reagan became president they wanted to do it since Nixon but didn't have a chance to start until Reagan you're just witnessing the Fulfillment of that push to the Ultra right wing

[yapdog]

The GOP's move to the extreme right was less of a move, more of a settling-in.

[jockyoung]

Ralph Reed and Abramoff was when it really went off the rails. Karl Rove and the "permanent republican majority."

[twylaingerson]

Famous republican Barry Goldwater said the republican party got into bed with the religious folks and they can’t get out. Decades ago he projected this as the eventual downfall of the party.

[DavidJ]

The truth is, the Right doesn’t expect a majority of Americans to support their policies,  nor do they particularly care.

The tactics of conservatism vary widely by place and time. But the most central feature of conservatism is deference: a psychologically internalized attitude on the part of the common people that the aristocracy are better people than they are.

Economic inequality, while certainly welcomed by the aristocracy, is best understood as a means to their actual goal, which is simply to be aristocrats. More generally, it is crucial to conservatism that the people must literally love the order that dominates them...

People who believe that the aristocracy RIGHTFULLY dominates society, because of its intrinsic SUPERIORITY, are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.

Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception. The deceptions of conservatism today are especially sophisticated, simply because culture today is sufficiently democratic that the myths of earlier times will no longer suffice.

The opposite of conservatism is democracy, and contempt for democracy is a constant thread in the history of conservative argument. Instead, conservatism has argued that society ought to be organized in a hierarchy of orders and classes and controlled by its uppermost hierarchical stratum, the aristocracy.

But isn't conservatism about freedom? Of course everyone wants freedom, and so conservatism has no choice but to promise freedom to its subjects. In reality conservatism has meant complicated things by "freedom", and the reality of conservatism in practice, has scarcely corresponded even to the contorted definitions in conservative texts.

To start with, conservatism constantly shifts in its degree of authoritarianism. Conservatives have no difficulty claiming to be the party of freedom in one breath, and attacking civil liberties in the next.

Conservatism continually twists the language of conscience into its opposite. It has no choice: conservatism is unjust, and cannot survive except by pretending to be the opposite of what it is.

The real situation with conservatism and freedom is best understood in historical context. Conservatism constantly changes, always adapting itself to provide the minimum amount of freedom that is required to hold together a dominant coalition in the society.

Many conservative theorists to the present day have argued that freedom is not possible at all. Without the internalized domination of conservatism, it is argued, social order would require the external domination of state terror. In a sense this argument is correct: historically conservatives have routinely resorted to terror when internalized domination has not worked...

For thousands of years, conservatism was universally understood as being in opposition to democracy. Having lost much of its ability to attack democracy openly, conservatism has tried in recent years to redefine the word "democracy" while engaging in deception to make the substance of democracy unthinkable.

Conservatism has opposed rational thought for thousands of years. What most people know nowadays as conservatism is basically a public relations campaign aimed at persuading them to lay down their capacity for rational thought.

Conservatism frequently attempts to destroy rational thought, for example, by using language in ways that stand just out of reach of rational debate or rebuttal.

Conservatism has used a wide variety of methods to destroy reason throughout history. Fortunately, many of these methods, such as the suppression of popular literacy, are incompatible with a modern economy. Once the common people started becoming educated, more sophisticated methods of domination were required. Thus the invention of public relations, which is a kind of rationalized irrationality. The great innovation of conservatism in recent decades has been the systematic reinvention of politics using the technology of public relations.

The main idea of public relations is the distinction between "messages" and "facts". Messages are the things you want people to believe. A message should be vague enough that it is difficult to refute by rational means.

One of the most important patterns of conservative message-making is projection. Projection is a psychological notion; it roughly means attacking someone by falsely claiming that they are attacking you. Conservative strategists engage in projection constantly. A commonplace example would be taking something from someone by claiming that they are in fact trying to take it from you. January 6 ring a bell? Trump tried to steal an election, by falsely claiming it was being stolen from him. 

Conservatism is almost gone. People no longer worship the pharaohs. To defeat conservatism today, the main thing we have to do is to explain what it is, and what is wrong with it. 

Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.

Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception, and has no place in the modern world.

[Bdub]

I've been watching the right go crazier and crazier since Reagan eliminated the Fairness Doctrine in '87.

[johnking]

You could argue the mid-50s era with McCarthy, Nixon, Reagan formulating the far right agenda as being the beginning of our fascist GOP.??

[mugwump]

Absolutely correct. The river current began (slowly, subtly) in the Reagan era. Then, after the 1994 mid-term "Republican Revolution" in which a wave of GOPs were elected to DC and Newt Gingrich became Speaker, the GOP devolution into Right Wing extremism/'dog whistle' craziness accelerated (the rapid rise of Rush Limbaugh during the '90s was the result of a symbiotic relationship with this trend). Then came the racist reactions to 9-11, ensuing wars, and the Obama presidency. The now-rushing river's water rising and rising. Then along comes Tronald Dump who enables the GOP's 'dog whistle' and stage dressing to be thrown out the window. Now the brick wall at the back of the theater is starkly visible to all.

[nottiification]

"Government cant do anything right, put us in charge of it and we'll show you what we mean." --GOP

[samiaint]

The Atlantic: How Newt Gingrich wrecked congress and turned partisan battles into bloodsport