Published on Monday, January 26, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Two Santa Clauses or How The Republican Party Has Conned America for Thirty Years
by Thom Hartmann
This weekend, House Republican leader John Boehner played out the role of Jude Wanniski on NBC's "Meet The Press."
Odds are you've never heard of Jude, but without him Reagan never would have become a "successful" president, Republicans never would have taken control of the House or Senate, Bill Clinton never would have been impeached, and neither George Bush would have been president.
When Barry Goldwater went down to ignominious defeat in 1964, most Republicans felt doomed (among them the then-28-year-old Wanniski). Goldwater himself, although uncomfortable with the rising religious right within his own party and the calls for more intrusion in people's bedrooms, was a diehard fan of Herbert Hoover's economic worldview.
In Hoover's world (and virtually all the Republicans since reconstruction with the exception of Teddy Roosevelt), market fundamentalism was a virtual religion. Economists from Ludwig von Mises to Friedrich Hayek to Milton Friedman had preached
More:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/26-0Jude Wanniski
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
<snip>
The Two Santa Claus Theory is a political theory and strategy developed by Jude Wanniski in 1976, which he promoted within the U.S. Republican Party.<7>
The theory states that, in democratic elections, if one party appeals to voters by proposing more spending, then a competing party cannot gain broader appeal by proposing less spending. The "Santa Claus" of the theory title refers to the political party that promises spending. Instead, "Two Santa Claus Theory" recommends that the competing party must assume the role of a second Santa Claus by offering other appealing options.
This theory is a response to the belief of monetarists, and especially Milton Friedman, that the government must be starved of revenue in order to control the growth of spending (since, in the view of the monetarists, spending cannot be reduced by elected bodies as the political pressure to spend is too great).
The "Two Santa Claus Theory" does not argue against this belief, but holds that such arguments cannot be espoused in an effort to win democratic elections. In Wanniski's view, the Laffer curve and supply-side economics provide an attractive alternative rationale for revenue reduction: that the economy will grow, not merely that the government will be starved of revenue. Wanniski argued that Republicans must become the tax-cutting Santa Claus to the Democrats' spending Santa Claus.
More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jude_Wanniski The Two Santa Claus Theory
by: David Dayen
Thu Apr 30, 2009 at 12:44:35 PM PDT
http://www.calitics.com/diary/8718/the-two-santa-claus-theoryHow the Republicans Bankrupted America: The Two Santa Claus Theory
* Started 1 year ago by DougZ
http://www.ohiomajorityradio.com/forums/topic.php?id=361Thom Hartmann's Republican "Divide and Conquer" strategy rant, 25 August 2006
Divide and conquer! That is the absolute strategy of the Republicans and the Bush administration. It has been, well, go back to Nixon. He started with the southern strategy in 1972 saying, "Well, you know, the Democrats pretty much had the corner on racism after the Civil War". The Democrats largely the party of the south after the Civil War and, well, even leading up to the Civil War, arguably. And the Republicans, the party of the union of north and the Democrats right up through the, you could argue, I think frankly quite effectively, at least up until Roosevelt's administration and frankly beyond that on a local and state-wide level, were the party of, of racism in the United States.
And the Democratic Party decided to change that. I mean, you know, that was a very significant, very conscious decision that was made in large part during Jack Kennedy's administration, and his brother Bobby went on to just be a champion for civil rights in the United States. And Lyndon Johnson then carried on with that after Jack Kennedy was assassinated.
And so Nixon said, "Hey, there's a bunch of racists out there. We can pick these guys up. They're voters". And so Nixon came up with his, what, so-called southern strategy and said, "Yeah, let's go for the race vote". And Bill Moyers on this programme, a conversation we had with him a few months ago when I was broadcasting live from the Take Back America conference in Washington, DC, and he sat down with us for a conversation, and my recollection is, he said that he was in the room with Lyndon Johnson when this happened. They brought him the Civil Rights Act or the Voting Rights Act, I think it was the Civil Rights Act of 1967, sat down and said, one of his advisers said to him, "Mr. President, if you sign this piece of legislation, the Democratic Party will lose the south for a generation".
Now, keep in mind, this was after Nixon had declared that the Republicans were going after the racists in the south, and not just the south. I mean, he called it the southern strategy but basically Nixon, as we know now from the tapes, intentionally decided that the Republican Party would start aggressively reaching out to racists. And this is, you know, Strom Thurmond changed parties, went from being a Democrat to being a Republican and, you know, a number of politicians in fact did as a consequence of that.
And Lyndon Johnson said, you know, "If we lose the south for a generation, that's a price I'm willing to pay to have equality and an egalitarian society in the United States". I mean, those are not his exact words, but words to that, he said, "If that's the price, it's a price I'm willing to pay". Those were his exact words according to Bill Moyers.
More:
http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2006/08/transcript-republican-divide-and-conquer-strategy-rant-aug-25-2006Southern strategy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In American politics, the Southern strategy refers to a Republican Party method of winning Southern states in the latter decades of the 20th century and first decade of the 21st century by exploiting opposition among the once segregationist South to the cultural upheaval of New Left, Vietnam protests, the hippie culture, gun control, abortion and to desegregation and the Civil Rights and Women's movements.
Although the phrase "Southern strategy" is often attributed to Nixon political strategist Kevin Phillips, he did not originate it,<1> but merely popularized it.<2> In an interview included in a 1970 New York Times article, he touched on its essence:
From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.<3>
While Phillips sought to polarize ethnic voting in general, and not just to win the white South, the South was by far the biggest prize yielded by his approach. Its success began at the presidential level, gradually trickling down to statewide offices, the Senate and House, as some legacy segregationist Democrats retired or switched to the GOP. In addition, the Republican Party worked for years to develop grassroots political organizations across the South, supporting candidates for local school boards and offices, for instance. Following the Watergate scandal, there was broad support for the Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election.
<snip>
In 1980 Republican candidate Ronald Reagan's proclaiming support for "states' rights" at his first Southern campaign stop was cited as evidence that the Republican Party was building upon the Southern Strategy again. The location was significant - Reagan spoke at the Neshoba County Fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi, the county where the three civil rights workers were murdered during 1964's Freedom Summer,<6><7><8> even though political speeches from local, state, and national politicians at the fair had been a long-standing tradition at the Fair dating back to 1896.<9>
More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
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