Date: 2024-09-27 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00026252
US POLITICS
REPUBLICAN MESS ... REPORTED ON Feb 14, 2024
MeidasTouch: GOP in TOTAL DISARRAY with Latest Move
REPUBLICAN MESS ... REPORTED ON Feb 14, 2024
MeidasTouch: GOP in TOTAL DISARRAY with Latest Move
Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7NpOuFXBNc
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY ... updated February 2024
While the GOP in the USA may be in 'disarray', it does not mean that voters will vote for Demorcratic candidates up and down the ballot and for Joe Biden for another term as President. The Democrats need to get activated so that all the eligible voters cast their ballots for Democrats up and down the ticket.
Until the early 1980s, people who were 'workers' mainly voted for Democrats, because their policies were seen to be more in alignment with the needs of this demographic. This started to change with Reagan and enabled by his impressive communication skills.
In the 80s my family was friendly with Peggy Noonan, a speachwriter for Ronald Reagan and a very fine wordsmith. I was very much impressed with her ability to communicate ... which fitted well with the Reagan vision. It comes as no surprise, however, that some of the catchy phrases like 'Trickle Down' never were able to function to the benefit of a majority of ordinary folk in the in the real world.
I would argue that since around 1980 there has been the emergence of a dysfuncional duopoly in the economy where a relative few have accumulated a lot of wealth and a large majority of the populace have done more work and been rewarded less.
Sloppy economic analysis became the order of the day with national aggregates looking good while the distribution within the aggregate showing the disproportinate accumulation of wealth attributed to the 'top' being much larger than what was accumulated in the 'middle' and the loss of wealth for those at the 'bottom'. It is no wonder that there has been a long 'season of discontent' with more and more people upset with the performance of the modern US economy.
And, in my view there is also sloppy reporting by most of the media ... or is this something more sinister. I think it is probably the latter. Over the past several decades there has been a hollowing out of the reporter corps as media organizations trimmed down their staffs in response to a changing media landscape. Some of this was to do with new technology, but some of this is also likely to be to do with an unhealthy level of political messaging and what amounts to propaganda and misinformation. What else explains the emergence of the MAGA wing of the Republican Party and the support that someone like Donald Trump gets from a surprisingly large part of the US population.
I am not a great scholar when it comes to history, but I recall something about the development of democracy in the UK and some of the opposition to a universal adult male franchise on the grounds that all people in this group did not have the intelliegence and knowledge to vote and should therefore not be given the vote. The Government of the day rejected that idea and a move towards a universal voting franchise got made.
While in a healthy democracy the norm is expected to be 'everyone' having a vote and each vote having the same 'weight' ... this may not, in fact, be the best way to get an optimised government and an optimised leadership. The problem is that most of the alternatives will, in practice, be far worse!
Peter Burgess
MeidasTouch
2.07M subscribers
Feb 14, 2024
MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on the Republican implosion as they seek to have Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law Laura Trump lead the party while engaging in other behavior that ranges from the very bizarre to catastrophically dangerous.
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