Too few politicians, Republican or Democrat, wish to get ahead of the groupthink mentality of public office. Most are afraid to publicly tell the truth. Too often I have been told by an office holder they would like to speak their mind in public—but feel if they did they would lose the next election.
We have decent, well intentioned folks holding office—but their goal is not to change policy or tell the truth about the excesses of government, but to win the next election.
Oh, Jews voted Republican until the 1932 election. Then they started voting for Democrats, like Franklin Roosevelt—who was a vicious anti-Semite. The Democrat Party, except for Truman, has hated Jews—but take their money while, like Obama, hating Jews and Israel.
By Richard Colman, Exclusive to the California Political News and Views, 8/12/22
The Republican Party ought to rename itself the Cookie Cutter Party, meaning that just about every Republican says the same thing. There are only a few exceptions.
The Democratic Party isn’t much better, but there are differences between Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
Too many Republicans think alike, sound alike, and look alike.
Going back two generations, the Republican Party basically had three wings: the Nelson Rockefeller wing; the Richard Nixon wing; and the emerging Goldwater wing. In years like 1952 and 1960, Republican national conventions were even interesting.
Rockefeller, in the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s, was a liberal Republican governor of New York State. Nixon, from 1953 to 1961, was vice president during the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower. Nixon was basically a centrist Republican. Nixon in 1960 lost the presidential race to John Kennedy. (On Nov. 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, making Vice President Lyndon Johnson president.) In 1968, Nixon won the presidency, was overwhelmingly re-elected in 1972, and resigned in disgrace in 1974. Goldwater, for many years, was a conservative Republican senator from Arizona. In 1964, Goldwater overwhelmingly lost the presidential race to Democrat Johnson.
Today, with perhaps two or three exceptions, the Republican Party thinks and acts monolithically. Almost all Republicans are anti-abortion, homophobic, xenophobic, and protectionist. However, they do agree on one major issue: support for Israel. That Zionist support comes mostly from evangelical Christians or Christian fundamentalists, many of whom live in the Deep South or in certain Western states like Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana.
In 2020, the Republicans, at the federal level, managed to lose the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. The loss of both the Senate and the House was narrow.
Politics is not religion, but too many Republicans act as if they are religious fundamentalists. If a Republican disagrees with the majority of other Republicans, he or she is basically excommunicated. Congresspersons Liz Chaney and Adam Kinzinger are examples. Also, somewhat on the fringe, are two Republican senators: Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
Over the last 100 years, no Republican presidential candidate, according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, has ever won a majority of the Jewish vote.
Even a somewhat moderate Republican candidate, Arnold Schwarzenegger, when running for re-election in 2006 as governor of California, did well with Jewish voters but only managed to get 48 percent of the Jewish vote.
The time has come for Republicans to become more flexible. In 1952, at their national convention, they showed that the centrist Dwight Eisenhower could beat the more conservative Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio. The contest between Eisenhower and Taft was bitter. But enough Republicans, after losing the White House in 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944, and 1948, knew that Eisenhower could win a national election.
In America, nobody like a loser. If the Republicans want to start winning national elections, they need to become more tolerant of different views.
At the present time, there is little philosophical difference among Donald Trump, a president who could not win re-election in 2020, Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, and Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida. Ideological rigidity may work well in houses of worship but it doesn’t guarantee electoral victory.
If the Republicans don’t change their ways, they will end up antagonizing voters and continue to lose elections.
Democrats have similar problems but, perhaps under the rubric of Franklin Roosevelt, tend to be united on major issues like support for universal health care, the public schools, and child care for every youngster.
Many of today’s Democrats engage in “group think,” meaning that certain groups, often ethnic groups, have rights that supersede the rights of individuals. An example is that many Democrats favor lottery systems over merit in admissions to prestigious high schools. This group-think bias even extends to admission to prestigious universities. Also, group think applies in the hiring of people for certain jobs, especially public-sector jobs.
In today’s America, most voters support a strong defense, believe that America must remain the land of opportunity, and support –- within certain limits -– a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.
Basically, Americans are not extremists, but the nation’s major political parties, unlike most Americans, are composed of too many extremists.
America needs a vibrant two-party system. No such thing exists today.
