NationStates Jolt Archive

Part of being the liberal elitist that I am requires that I read the New Yorker, even though I live hundred miles away from New York. There was a recent article that was sort of a survey of different books about the Republican Party, but mostly just about its campaign strategy since Nixon: attack the liberal Establishment (whether or not it exists). The entire story is here (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/26/080526fa_fact_packer), and anyone who has time should definitely read it. But the gist of the article was this:

Nixon was coldly mixing and pouring volatile passions. Although he was careful to renounce the extreme fringe of Birchites and racists, his means to power eventually became the end. Buchanan gave me a copy of a seven-page confidential memorandum—“A little raw for today,” he warned—that he had written for Nixon in 1971, under the heading “Dividing the Democrats.” Drawn up with an acute understanding of the fragilities and fault lines in “the Old Roosevelt Coalition,” it recommended that the White House “exacerbate the ideological division” between the Old and New Left by praising Democrats who supported any of Nixon’s policies; highlight “the elitism and quasi-anti-Americanism of the National Democratic Party”; nominate for the Supreme Court a Southern strict constructionist who would divide Democrats regionally; use abortion and parochial-school aid to deepen the split between Catholics and social liberals; elicit white working-class support with tax relief and denunciations of welfare. Finally, the memo recommended exploiting racial tensions among Democrats. “Bumper stickers calling for black Presidential and especially Vice-Presidential candidates should be spread out in the ghettoes of the country,” Buchanan wrote. “We should do what is within our power to have a black nominated for Number Two, at least at the Democratic National Convention.” Such gambits, he added, could “cut the Democratic Party and country in half; my view is that we would have far the larger half.”

The Nixon White House didn’t enact all of these recommendations, but it would be hard to find a more succinct and unapologetic blueprint for Republican success in the conservative era. “Positive polarization” helped the Republicans win one election after another—and insured that American politics would be an ugly, unredeemed business for decades to come.
I have two questions to Generalites: 1) Is this true, has the blueprint since 1968 been to split the haves and have-nots of the Democrats, and 2) Is this strategy, as the article says later, on its way out? Is the country shifting to a more liberal, or at least less Republican, period of history?

I thought he was the President of Earth? Or at least his head is...

I thought he was the President of Earth? Or at least his head is...

I'll never give up my dog, Checkers!

The real Nixon, is dead but Robot Nixon (http://robotnixon.ytmnd.com/) is Immortal.

I thought he was the President of Earth? Or at least his head is...

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i210/holygroundhog/Futurama_nixons_head.png

I have two questions to Generalites: 1) Is this true, has the blueprint since 1968 been to split the haves and have-nots of the Democrats,
I think so, in a way, with varying degrees of success or failure. At least, "divide and conquer" has been their strategy for a good while now, which they seem willing to use against any other group that comes along.

and 2) Is this strategy, as the article says later, on its way out? Is the country shifting to a more liberal, or at least less Republican, period of history?
We can only hope, but I'm not optimistic that I'll live to see that way of thinking come back any time soon.

hmmm.
divide and conquer seems to be a strategy of both parties. though it never seems to work. the republicans have never broken the minorities away form the democrats despite the fact minorities tend to be more religious.

Like wise the democrats have yet to break away the civil liberty republicans away from the republicans despite what the current president has done.

hmmm.
divide and conquer seems to be a strategy of both parties. though it never seems to work. the republicans have never broken the minorities away form the democrats despite the fact minorities tend to be more religious.

Like wise the democrats have yet to break away the civil liberty republicans away from the republicans despite what the current president has done.

In the end, there always seem to be more similarities than differences

In the end, there always seem to be more similarities than differences

in a two party system like ours we don't elect many extremes.
republicans tend to be right of center, and democrats tend to be center or slightly left of center (more so with attempts at nat'l Heath care. )

I have two questions to Generalites: 1) Is this true, has the blueprint since 1968 been to split the haves and have-nots of the Democrats, and 2) Is this strategy, as the article says later, on its way out? Is the country shifting to a more liberal, or at least less Republican, period of history?
Man, I love the New Yorker, great cartoons and movie reviews! But I must give you my cynical take on American politics (remember, poli is latin for many, and tics are bloodsucking arachnids). Partisan politics in the US has always been about the haves vs the have-nots, but both parties are parties of the haves. Elections are mostly distractions for the masses, like the circuses of ancient Rome. The outcome is more about who gets their hand in the cookie jar than forwarding an ideology.

I have two questions to Generalites: 1) Is this true, has the blueprint since 1968 been to split the haves and have-nots of the Democrats, and 2) Is this strategy, as the article says later, on its way out? Is the country shifting to a more liberal, or at least less Republican, period of history?

It probably is true. Conquer and divide is not a new tactic and certainly has been practiced with equal chill and disdain by Democrats on other opposing parties as well. There are no innocents in politics....and never has been.