Former Rep Davis Says Dems Have Gone Too Far Left

[Dont Taz Me Bro]

It seems that both the Democrats and Republicans are moving further into their respective corners leaving an ever widening and gaping hole in the middle where fewer and fewer politicians can survive.

Davis also suggested running as a Republican might be a viable option, but said that the Alabama Republican Party has declined to embrace politicians who have switched parties. He noted that party-switching former congressman Parker Griffith was defeated in a GOP primary last year after leaving the Democratic Party. A series of Democrats in lower offices, including the state legislature, have made the same switch, with mixed results.

“While there have been Democrats who have switched down there, the Republican Party has refused to accept them,” Davis said. “Do I agree with the agenda items in the Alabama Republican Party? Some I agree with, and some I don’t. [The state GOP-drafted] immigration law is not something I would have written.”

Davis said he doesn’t identify with a political party in his current role as an increasingly vocal pundit. He caused a splash recently by speaking out in favor of a voter ID law. Given that the Democratic Party regards such laws as an attempt to disenfranchise black voters, having an African-American former Democratic congressman espouse that view wasn’t exactly helpful to the party’s cause.

This week, he wrote a piece for the conservative National Review Online suggesting Sen. Ben Nelson’s (D-Neb.) retirement was due to “an exclusively liberal” Democratic Party.

Davis’s criticism of his party ramped up in the 2010 primary, when he carved out a more moderate persona. He wound up losing badly to the state’s agriculture commissioner, Ron Sparks, by 25 points. Sparks went on to defeat in the general election, and bad blood lingers between the two.

Former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis talks party-switching - The Washington Post

 

[Katzndogz]

Who ever has not seen this happening for the last several years has to be willfully blind.

 

[Truthseeker420]

In America too far left is still right of center.

 

[The T]

It seems that both the Democrats and Republicans are moving further into their respective corners leaving an ever widening and gaping hole in the middle where fewer and fewer politicians can survive.

Davis also suggested running as a Republican might be a viable option, but said that the Alabama Republican Party has declined to embrace politicians who have switched parties. He noted that party-switching former congressman Parker Griffith was defeated in a GOP primary last year after leaving the Democratic Party. A series of Democrats in lower offices, including the state legislature, have made the same switch, with mixed results.

“While there have been Democrats who have switched down there, the Republican Party has refused to accept them,” Davis said. “Do I agree with the agenda items in the Alabama Republican Party? Some I agree with, and some I don’t. [The state GOP-drafted] immigration law is not something I would have written.”

Davis said he doesn’t identify with a political party in his current role as an increasingly vocal pundit. He caused a splash recently by speaking out in favor of a voter ID law. Given that the Democratic Party regards such laws as an attempt to disenfranchise black voters, having an African-American former Democratic congressman espouse that view wasn’t exactly helpful to the party’s cause.

This week, he wrote a piece for the conservative National Review Online suggesting Sen. Ben Nelson’s (D-Neb.) retirement was due to “an exclusively liberal” Democratic Party.

Davis’s criticism of his party ramped up in the 2010 primary, when he carved out a more moderate persona. He wound up losing badly to the state’s agriculture commissioner, Ron Sparks, by 25 points. Sparks went on to defeat in the general election, and bad blood lingers between the two.

Former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis talks party-switching - The Washington Post

What does one expect as Democrats have been taken over and slide more to the left? Republicans not to be outdone/manuvered have to fill the void left by Democrats of yesteryear and act like it?

Maybe why the TEA Party is reviled by both parties, and why the two-party system has to be broken up.

 

[Londoner]

The country has had two political seismic shifts. One was in the wake of FDR, where the New Deal and Big Government was supported by both parties, e.g., Eisenhower & Nixon were both center Left presidents (Nixon was FAR to the Left economically of Carter & Clinton). The other major shift - which still grips us firmly - was in the wake of Reagan, where again, both parties attempted to satisfy the small government consensus, e.g., the Clinton budget and Welfare cuts, and shrinking the federal workforce more than any president in the last 1/2 century. Or, the endless stream of Obama tax cuts, which the Right strategically NEVER mentions.

Obama tried to swing the pendulum back from Reagan to FDR. He failed when the stimulus was hijacked and turned into 1/3rd tax cuts; he failed when he couldn't keep his own Blue Dogs in check on the Public Option; he failed when he didn't repeal the anti-democratic control of politics by the wealthy - he failed when he lost the fight over the Bush tax cuts, which sent the nation into a deficit crisis from which it has not emerged. [FYI: the deficit crisis was classic starve the beast. The GOP intentionally sent the country into a once-in-a-century deficit crisis so they could deprive government of the money to function. They were hoping that the crisis would get so bad that the country would allow them to get rid of social programs, including Medicare. Tragically, this experiment failed miserably. The only thing the tax cuts achieved was to send us further into debt.]

Milton Friedman sold Reagan on "starve the beast" in the 80's. Reagan tried it, that is, he deprived Washington of money with his initial tax cuts, but Washington did something the moron Friedman didn't anticipate: Washington kept spending anyway, mostly on Reagan's steroidal military adventurism. e.g., Star Wars. This created debt and deficits that threatened to destroy the Reagan presidency. BUT Reagan, unlike Bush, did the right thing. He corrected his earlier tax cuts, then he saved Social Security, and he stemmed the tide ever so slightly. Reagan realized that "starving the beast" causes an economic fall out far worst than the theorists predicted. Bush and the current GOP don't understand this.

But make no mistake: there is no Left. There is no Labor Party. There is only Big Business and the wealthy, and their Washington puppets.To suggest that the country is moving Left ignores the facts: the American Government is owned by the market winners, who use their profits to fund elections and staff government.

The OP is getting his information from the last source in the world he should trust: a political party. He doesn't get it. Movement Conservatism IS the funding mechanism for the information that reaches his brain. In effect, his opinions are owned by government: rightwing government. The OP doesn't get it. Movement Conservatism moves money from business into political and media outcomes. Movement Conservatism, by enabling business to fund Think Tanks, television, and radio, OWNS his opinions. God help us.

Son, please turn off the TV and the radio - and logoff the Internet. Go to school dear boy. Go to school.

 

[occupied]

When these people talk about democrats being too far to the left they must be looking through the wrong end of their binoculars. They are much closer then they appear.

 

[midcan5]

...But make no mistake: there is no Left. There is no Labor Party. There is only Big Business and the wealthy, and their Washington puppets.To suggest that the country is moving Left ignores the facts: the American Government is owned by the market winners, who use their profits to fund elections and staff government.

The OP is getting his information from the last source in the world he should trust: a political party. He doesn't get it. Movement Conservatism IS the funding mechanism for the information that reaches his brain. In effect, his opinions are owned by government: rightwing government. The OP doesn't get it. Movement Conservatism moves money from business into political and media outcomes. Movement Conservatism, by enabling business to fund Think Tanks, television, and radio, OWNS his opinions. God help us.

Son, please turn off the TV and the radio - and logoff the Internet. Go to school dear boy. Go to school.

Well said.

Anyone who says America is too far left should be made to stand at the back of the class and write one thousand times the bold statement above. The idea that America is too far left is a concoction of corporate media and the result of revisionist conservative think tanks that do anything but think.

"'Practical' politics, it is held, calls for policies that appeal to the fortunate. The poor do not vote; the alert politician bids for the comfortable and the rich. This would be politically foolish for the Democratic Party; those whose primary concern is to protect their income, their capital and their business interest will always vote for the party that most strongly affirms its service to their pecuniary well-being. This is and has always been the republicans. The Democrats have no future as a low grade substitute.." John Kenneth Galbraith 'The Good Society'

 

[Dont Taz Me Bro]

The country has had two political seismic shifts. One was in the wake of FDR, where the New Deal and Big Government was supported by both parties, e.g., Eisenhower & Nixon were both center Left presidents (Nixon was FAR to the Left economically of Carter & Clinton). The other major shift - which still grips us firmly - was in the wake of Reagan, where again, both parties attempted to satisfy the small government consensus, e.g., the Clinton budget and Welfare cuts, and shrinking the federal workforce more than any president in the last 1/2 century. Or, the endless stream of Obama tax cuts, which the Right strategically NEVER mentions.

Obama tried to swing the pendulum back from Reagan to FDR. He failed when the stimulus was hijacked and turned into 1/3rd tax cuts; he failed when he couldn't keep his own Blue Dogs in check on the Public Option; he failed when he didn't repeal the anti-democratic control of politics by the wealthy - he failed when he lost the fight over the Bush tax cuts, which sent the nation into a deficit crisis from which it has not emerged. [FYI: the deficit crisis was classic starve the beast. The GOP intentionally sent the country into a once-in-a-century deficit crisis so they could deprive government of the money to function. They were hoping that the crisis would get so bad that the country would allow them to get rid of social programs, including Medicare. Tragically, this experiment failed miserably. The only thing the tax cuts achieved was to send us further into debt.]

Milton Friedman sold Reagan on "starve the beast" in the 80's. Reagan tried it, that is, he deprived Washington of money with his initial tax cuts, but Washington did something the moron Friedman didn't anticipate: Washington kept spending anyway, mostly on Reagan's steroidal military adventurism. e.g., Star Wars. This created debt and deficits that threatened to destroy the Reagan presidency. BUT Reagan, unlike Bush, did the right thing. He corrected his earlier tax cuts, then he saved Social Security, and he stemmed the tide ever so slightly. Reagan realized that "starving the beast" causes an economic fall out far worst than the theorists predicted. Bush and the current GOP don't understand this.

But make no mistake: there is no Left. There is no Labor Party. There is only Big Business and the wealthy, and their Washington puppets.To suggest that the country is moving Left ignores the facts: the American Government is owned by the market winners, who use their profits to fund elections and staff government.

The OP is getting his information from the last source in the world he should trust: a political party. He doesn't get it. Movement Conservatism IS the funding mechanism for the information that reaches his brain. In effect, his opinions are owned by government: rightwing government. The OP doesn't get it. Movement Conservatism moves money from business into political and media outcomes. Movement Conservatism, by enabling business to fund Think Tanks, television, and radio, OWNS his opinions. God help us.

Son, please turn off the TV and the radio - and logoff the Internet. Go to school dear boy. Go to school.

You telling me to go to school is rather amusing after you just spent 20 minutes spewing out Marxist propaganda.

 

[Dont Taz Me Bro]

"'Practical' politics, it is held, calls for policies that appeal to the fortunate. The poor do not vote; the alert politician bids for the comfortable and the rich. This would be politically foolish for the Democratic Party; those whose primary concern is to protect their income, their capital and their business interest will always vote for the party that most strongly affirms its service to their pecuniary well-being. This is and has always been the republicans.

President Obama has raised over $15 million this year from financial institutions with nearly $12 million of that going to the Democratic National Committee. In fact, Obama has raised twice as much from Wall Street as Mitt Romney, but I don't want facts to get in the way of your lies and propaganda.

Obama Tops GOP Candidates in Wall Street Donations

 

[Remodeling Maidiac]

Liberalism is a crippling disease which has no known cure and if left unchecked spreads like cancer.

 

[EriktheRed]

"'Practical' politics, it is held, calls for policies that appeal to the fortunate. The poor do not vote; the alert politician bids for the comfortable and the rich. This would be politically foolish for the Democratic Party; those whose primary concern is to protect their income, their capital and their business interest will always vote for the party that most strongly affirms its service to their pecuniary well-being. This is and has always been the republicans.

President Obama has raised over $15 million this year from financial institutions with nearly $12 million of that going to the Democratic National Committee. In fact, Obama has raised twice as much from Wall Street as Mitt Romney, but I don't want facts to get in the way of your lies and propaganda.

Obama Tops GOP Candidates in Wall Street Donations

So are you saying, too, the Prez is a Marxist?

 

[midcan5]

"'Practical' politics, it is held, calls for policies that appeal to the fortunate. The poor do not vote; the alert politician bids for the comfortable and the rich. This would be politically foolish for the Democratic Party; those whose primary concern is to protect their income, their capital and their business interest will always vote for the party that most strongly affirms its service to their pecuniary well-being. This is and has always been the republicans. The Democrats have no future as a low grade substitute.." John Kenneth Galbraith 'The Good Society' [corrected quotation]

President Obama has raised over $15 million this year from financial institutions with nearly $12 million of that going to the Democratic National Committee. In fact, Obama has raised twice as much from Wall Street as Mitt Romney, but I don't want facts to get in the way of your lies and propaganda.

Obama Tops GOP Candidates in Wall Street Donations

So are you saying, too, the Prez is a Marxist?

Obama changes from minute to minute in the minds of the ideologues of the right. A Wall Street Marxist socialist Kenyan Democrat. What a man! But IMHO he is too accommodating to both wall street and big money given the economic situation in America today, but that is American politics today and our ideologues in the SCOTUS just made it worse. Democracy after Citizens United | MIT World

Another Galbraith quote from same book.

"In the political turnover in the United States in the autumn of 1994, as previously indicated, those opposing aid to the poor in its several forms won their stunning victory with the support of less than one quarter all eligible voters, fewer than half of whom had gone to the polls. The popular and media response was that those who had prevailed represented the view and voice of the public. Had there been a full turnout at the election, both the result and the reaction would have been decidedly different. The sense of social responsibility for the poor would have been greatly enhanced." John Kenneth Galbraith 'The Good Society'

 

[ba1614]

Too bad he didn't wake up a decade ago