"... what the party has become in 2016 is what it has been since the Southern Strategy." Positively Nixonian.... too bad.

...................................................................................................................................................................
COMMENTS: 
*  This is totally right. The Republicans have been wrong about everything; it is all vapor and smoke held up by fear, anger, greed, and propaganda.  The Republican brand is toast, and for the simple reason that eventually, sooner or later, people will move towards the truth ... which is obviously bad for a bullshit platform devoted to class warfare.  We are witnessing the death throes of the power centers currently running the Republican Party, which will survive only by completely changing - completely. From bullshit to truth, from serving the elite few to serving all, as it should have always been.  It should be interesting.
*  Today's Republicans campaign on a platform of Fear and Loathing ...nothing more.
*  every time the anti american conservative idea fail they say they werent being conservative enough. so they more to the right. the next failure is the name they werent conservative enough.  which brings us to the current situation totally out of touch and unable to compromise. compromise means you arent conservative enough.
*  I can't think of one thing the republicans did that was good for America since Eisenhower started the interstate highway system. Can anyone?
*  They are baiscally the party of Slavery. In the sixties they supported slavery for African Americans, now they support slavery for everyone but the one percent. What has always blown my mind is that they find so many supporters who want to have their rights taken away.
*  Just remember the axiom : Left is right and right is wrong
...................................................................................................................................................................
Has the GOP Been Right About Anything This Century?
By Byron Williams, September 30, 2015

Here's what Peter Wehner, who headed the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives under President George W. Bush, had to say about the Republican presidential contest as it currently stands:

"This year is different, and what is happening now is leaving a searing impression," he said. "This is toxic for the Republican Party -- potentially lethal for it."

It almost feels Wehner is lamenting what has his party become. Though legitimate, there's another possibility.

Could Wehner's concerns be based more on the unvarnished version among many within the current GOP field, though uncomfortable to some, is it consistent with where the party has been for decades?

Decades before Donald Trump began blathering his mean-spirited utterings about immigration or Dr. Ben Carson, with total disregard for the Constitution, telling every Muslim American child that the day you were born, if he had his way, their religion would disqualify them from becoming President of the United States, Richard Nixon was crafting his "Southern Strategy."

The Southern strategy was a campaign tactic adopted by Republican Party for gaining political support, in particular white Southern voters, by appealing to racism against African Americans.

In 1980, candidate Ronald Reagan, days after securing his party's nomination for president told a group in Philadelphia Mississippi, the place where three civil rights workers were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964, he believed in State's rights. For many whites living in Mississippi and the surrounding areas, this was the dog whistle for race.

Here's what the late Lee Atwater, Republican political advisor and architect of the infamous Willie Horton ad during the 1988 presidential campaign, said in 1981 about the Southern Strategy:

You start out in 1954 by saying, "N****r, n****r, n****r." By 1968 you can't say "n****r" -- that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff, and you're getting so abstract. Now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites... "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N****r, n****r."

For several decades this Faustian bargain with race had proven effective for the Republican Party. The GOP did not universally embrace this macabre practice, there was enough, however, to comprise a quorum.

As the nation moved into the 21st century, the changing demographics did not detour the party from perusing the path of systematic marginalization.

Beyond being on the wrong side of practically every significant public policy issue foreign and domestic, what does the Republican Party have to show for itself this century?

Its current brand has been shaped by championing an ill-advised war in Iraq, opposing gay rights, conflating illegal immigration with terrorism, against equal pay for equal work, blaming low-income people for the economic mess that was created by irresponsibly supporting tax cuts ad nauseam, exploding the deficit, and shutting down the government.

When asked how he planned to reach out to African Americans, presidential candidate Jeb Bush stated, "Our message is one of hope and aspiration." He continued, "It isn't one of division and get in line and we'll take care of you with free stuff."

Really? To whom was Bush's response directed? Was it the African American community or is he still stuck in the morass of post-Southern Strategy thinking?

Were GOP predictions right about the Affordable Care Act? Is it, as Ben Carson stated, "the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery"?

The party in its current state suffers from a toxic form of insufferable certainty based on a track record that has proven consistently wrong, rendering it unable to compromise. Eschewing that compromise is the hallmark of American democracy.

It is unhealthy for any group to overwhelmingly support a political party based on biological consideration, i.e. blacks, Hispanics, etc. But the voter suppression tactics, conducted largely in the states that necessitated the Civil Rights Act of 1964, along with the vitriol immigration speech is not the language of a party who truly wants their support.

Perhaps more recalcitrant, but what the party has become in 2016 is what it has been since the Southern Strategy.
...................................................................................................................................................................