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rdean
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Republicans reap what they sow - The Boston Globe
After 35 years of Republicans relentlessly bashing government, voters have been well taught to mistrust politicians and demean public service. They are drawn to candidates who reflect their own contempt. And if campaign rhetoric is rude, crude, and seemingly stewed, so much the better.
When Ronald Reagan, in his first inaugural address, said that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem,” he may only have been promoting a fiscally conservative ideology as a corrective to Great Society spending. But after decades of Republicans demonizing people on welfare, degrading teachers and other public workers, starving the public sector enough to guarantee its inefficiency, and demeaning the office of the presidency, voters got the message that all politics is rotten. Now these over-plucked chickens are coming home to roost.
Republicans have become adept at manipulating census data to draw congressional districts that only conservatives can win. But they’ve crafted them too well, because now even powerful Republican incumbents are being tossed out by uncompromising newcomers who claim to be free of Washington’s taint.
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Exactly what I've been saying.
After 35 years of Republicans relentlessly bashing government, voters have been well taught to mistrust politicians and demean public service. They are drawn to candidates who reflect their own contempt. And if campaign rhetoric is rude, crude, and seemingly stewed, so much the better.
When Ronald Reagan, in his first inaugural address, said that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem,” he may only have been promoting a fiscally conservative ideology as a corrective to Great Society spending. But after decades of Republicans demonizing people on welfare, degrading teachers and other public workers, starving the public sector enough to guarantee its inefficiency, and demeaning the office of the presidency, voters got the message that all politics is rotten. Now these over-plucked chickens are coming home to roost.
Republicans have become adept at manipulating census data to draw congressional districts that only conservatives can win. But they’ve crafted them too well, because now even powerful Republican incumbents are being tossed out by uncompromising newcomers who claim to be free of Washington’s taint.
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Exactly what I've been saying.