Thursday, May 29, 2008

Is it really "The End of the Long Reagan Era"?

Joseph Lowndes on TPM Cafe suggests it might be The End of the Long Reagan Era and perhaps he's right. I appreciated this portion:
That Nixonian gesture ultimately begat not only the figure of the Reagan Democrat, but the founding of the Democratic Leadership Council in the late 1980s, which sought to win back the white middle through racialized positions on crime and welfare. Indeed, we can hear its strains today in Hillary Clinton's appeal to hard-working whites even as she opposes another Democratic candidate who is hardly an ultra-liberal by the standards of the 1960s.
Indeed the DLC and other "centrist weenies" are as big a problem for serious Progressives as are movement conservatives. Those that try the Republican Lite approach in an effort to reach "the middle" will never, ever, in any way win the support of voters. Those that do this middle way routine seldom offer solutions to the many troubles that face our nation and world. John Gunn

UPDATE ~ Evening of May 29, 2008 - Mark Schmitt's Can Identity Politics Save the Right?: Fresh out of other options, the Republican Party's bid to regain power is likely to come in the form of a pander to "real Americans."

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