The Forty-Year Hissy Fit (Why “Republicanism” is doomed)

[hifiguy]

7. I am old enough to tell you that it was once true.

There were Eisenhower-style middle-of-the-road ("Rockefeller&quot Republicans well into the 1980s. Centrist-to-slightly conservative on fiscal issues, moderate-to-slightly liberal on social issues. Senators like Chuck Percy, Jacob Javits, Edward Brooke, Dave Durenberger, Howard Baker, Margaret Chase Smith, Nancy Kassebaum, representatives like Bill Frenzel of Minnesota, John Anderson of Illinois, and plenty of governors. And there were many more than these. IOW rational, sensible grown-ups.

We had a lot of them here in Minnesota and there were even a couple of prominent ones - including Governor Arne Carlson - until the late 1990s but they were all eventually purged by the batshit-crazy Jesus-wheezers and the greedhead libertarians. The modern Republican party is where the Birchers and organized paranoids were in the 1960s and 1970s and the Democrats are where moderate Republicans were at that time.

See: http://crooksandliars.com/cliff-schecter/no-longer-rock-party