Quote from Misthos:
John (jficquette):
My point is not about popularity, but results. The Republicans were/are not true conservatives - they indebted our nation unnecessarily - they need to clean their house. And I can care less about your characterization of past democrats - again, I have voted pretty evenly for both parties, and even voted for Perot in '92. Blind faith in a party is what corrupts it. Free yourself from being a blind supporter of any party - that's one thing we Americans need to do more of.
And when foreigners criticize us, who cares?! The kneejerk patritotic angry response only makes us follow the politicians that use patriotism as a last resort.
scriabinop23:
I agree with you - my 99%/1% is arbitrary-nonetheless there is a large distinction amongst those that benefit from government largesse and those that do not.
I like to think myself more of a liberterian - but that is a concept that most of the electorate fears - and why? Because both wealthy and poor will have to actually WORK and be subject to risk.
I agree the Republican Party that Goldwater stood for has degenerated into a bunch of Moralist's more interested in trying to run peoples lives while embracing the Nanny State as much as the Socialists.
While the Republicans worry about trival issues such as Abortion and Gay marriage the country drowns in $50 Trillion dollars of unfunded entitlements.
Both Republicans and Democrats want the Government to run the show they just disagree what behavior the Government should sponsor.
Goldwater:
Libertarian views
"Signing autographs at the Fiesta Bowl parade in 1983.By the 1980s, with Ronald Reagan as president and the growing involvement of the religious right in conservative politics, Goldwater's libertarian views on personal issues were revealed, which he believed were an integral part of true conservativism. Goldwater viewed abortion as a matter of personal choice, not intended for government intervention."
As a passionate defender of personal liberty, he saw the religious right's views as an encroachment on personal privacy and individual liberties. In his 1980 Senate reelection campaign, Goldwater won support from religious conservatives but in his final term voted consistently to uphold legalized abortion and, in 1981, gave a speech on how he was angry about the bullying of American politicians by religious organizations, and would "fight them every step of the way".[18] Goldwater also disagreed with the Reagan administration on certain aspects of foreign policy (e.g. he opposed the decision to mine Nicaraguan harbors). Notwithstanding his prior differences with Dwight Eisenhower, Goldwater in a 1986 interview rated him the best of the seven Presidents with whom he had worked.
After his retirement in 1987, Goldwater described the conservative Arizona Governor Evan Mecham as âhardheadedâ and called on him to resign, and two years later stated that the Republican Party had been taken over by a âbunch of kooks.â In a 1994 interview with the Washington Post the retired senator said,
â When you say âradical rightâ today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye. â
In response to Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell's opposition to the nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court, of which Falwell had said, âEvery good Christian should be concerned,â Goldwater retorted: âEvery good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.â[19] Goldwater also had harsh words for his onetime political protege, President Reagan, particularly after the Iran-Contra Affair became public in 1986. Journalist Robert MacNeil, a friend of Goldwater's from the 1964 Presidential campaign, recalled interviewing him in his office shortly afterward. "He was sitting in his office with his hands on his cane...and he said to me, 'Well, aren't you going to ask me about the Iran arms sales?' It had just been announced that the Reagan administration had sold arms to Iran. And I said, 'Well, if I asked you, what would you say?' He said, 'I'd say it's the goddamn stupidest foreign policy blunder this country's ever made!'",[20] though aside from the Iran-Contra scandal, Goldwater thought nonetheless that Reagan was a good president.[21] Also, in 1988 during that year's presidential campaign, he pointedly told vice-presidential nominee Dan Quayle at a campaign event in Arizona "I want you to go back and tell George Bush to start talking about the issues." [4]
Some of Goldwater's statements in the 1990s aggravated many social conservatives. He endorsed Democrat Karan English in an Arizona congressional race, urged Republicans to lay off Clinton over the Whitewater scandal, and criticized the military's ban on homosexuals: âEveryone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar.â[22] He also said, âYou don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.â A few years before his death he went so far as to address the right wing, "Do not associate my name with anything you do. You are extremists, and you've hurt the Republican Party much more than the Democrats have."[23]
In 1996 he told Bob Dole, whose own presidential campaign received lukewarm support from conservative Republicans: âWe're the new liberals of the Republican Party. Can you imagine that?â In that same year, with Senator Dennis DeConcini, Goldwater endorsed an Arizona initiative to legalize medical marijuana against the will of social conservatives."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Goldwater
While the Republicans have lost their way, the Socialist Democrats have never even tried to look for it.
John
