Living on the plains of Utah. In essence the Mormon community represents the core values of the American way of life as the Republican party advocates in the 21st century. It’s a political philosophy of cohesion whereas the liberal, progressive Democrats is a party of diversity. The Mormons are pro-life, anti-gay and practice a religion of wealth by the grace of God.
The electorate had to make a choice of a mad man representing the GOP or a DINO who had thought it wise to move towards the right as a Republican lite on issues of national security, foreign policy and the privacy of citizens. It reminds me of Rockefeller Republicans which had moved closer to the principles of the Democratic party, he failed.
○ Trump’s America: One Year On
○ Trump Orders Largest National Monument Reduction In U.S. History
The Mormons: From Poverty and Persecution to Prosperity and Power | American Heritage |
But what in fact is the status of the Mormons today, more than 130 years after their trek to the land of Zion in the Salt Lake Valley of Utah? They are one of the fastest-growing and most prosperous denominations in the country. They claim nearly 2,500,000 adherents within the United States and another million overseas, and thanks to energetic proselytizing at home and abroad, their numbers increase almost daily. So does their influence. The Mormons, who were unsophisticated, poorly educated rural folk in 1846, have joined the general American trend by turning away from the countryside to dwell in suburbs and cities, and away from farming and simple crafts to the professions, commerce, finance, and industry.
The State of Utah voted for the Democratic presidential candidate seven times since 1900: 1916 ; 1932 through 1948 ; and in 1964. In 2016 HRC got 27.5% of the vote in Utah.
More below the fold …
Today more than half of the American Mormons live outside Utah and its immediate neighbors, and they are as likely to be found directing major businesses and real-estate operations in Los Angeles, Detroit, or New York as working in Salt Lake City. Nor do they confine themselves to private business. They have contributed senators, congressmen, governors, and presidential candidates. In local affairs they have won membership on school boards, city councils, and citizens’ advisory groups.
Their attitudes are precisely those one would expect of an affluent, confident middle class blessed with homes of visible comfort. While there are liberals among them, most, especially among the leaders, are political conservatives. Unlike their forefathers of three generations ago, they no longer favor social or economic experimentation, be it in town building, irrigation systems, or multiple wives. They still have a remarkable cohesiveness, but much of their force is directed inward now, toward strengthening the church by conserving its membership, rather than outward toward meeting widely felt social or economic needs.
The New Shape of American Politics | The Atlantic – Jan. 1987 |
After six years in office Ronald Reagan has changed everything about American politics except ideology. Democrats and Republicans agree that Reagan has transformed the agenda, but in a peculiar way. We want to do the same things as before–stabilize the economy, protect the poor and the elderly, fight drug abuse–only with less government. Public opinion, however, hasn’t shifted to the right. If anything, the voters have moved slightly to the left since Reagan took office–there is less support for military spending, more support for domestic social programs, increased concern about arms control, hunger, and poverty. Why hasn’t there been a discernible conservative shift in public opinion? Because the impact of the Reagan revolution is more likely to be felt in the long run than in the short run. The President has not, after all, dismantled the New Deal welfare state. As Hugh Heclo, of Harvard University writes in Perspectives on the Reagan Years, “Much as F. D. R. and the New Deal had the effect of conserving capitalism, so Reaganism will eventually be seen to have helped conserve a predominately status quo, middle-class welfare state.”
Fair enough, but in the same volume Jack A. Meyer, of the American Enterprise Institute, in what he calls “a long-term perspective,” offers a different view of the Reagan legacy. “The administration seems to highlight its social philosophy toward federal programs, an area where most of its accomplishments seem rather marginal. By contrast, it downplays and is defensive about its fiscal politics which, while incomplete, herald a major accomplishment for the administration.” That accomplishment was to “pull the revenue plug” on the federal government. First came the 1981 tax cut, and then year after year of record budget deficits. Now and for the foreseeable future everything the federal government does must accommodate to one central fact: there is less money.
○ Institute Plays Key Role In Shaping Reagan Programs [NY Times – 1981 issue]
The President sold his tax and budget policies as a means to an end: curbing inflation and restoring the nation’s economic stability. From the public’s point of view they did just that. But tax cuts, budget deficits, and tax reform are no longer passing items on the political agenda. They form the basis of a new institutional order that will set the terms of political debate far beyond the Reagan years.
One element in this new institutional order is the restoration of confidence in the presidency. “Many close observers of the Washington scene and system saw Reagan as a media success who would be overwhelmed by the immense substantive and managerial demands of the presidency,” Richard P. Nathan, of Princeton University, writes. ( “An amiable dunce” in the words of one insider.) Writing before the Iran fiasco, Nathan concluded that “Reagan’s abilities…have restored a belief that an extraordinary, but mortal, person can give leadership and a sense of direction to the American national government.” The crisis over covert U.S. arms sales to Iran is the strongest test yet of that achievement. The President will end up either “out of it” and overwhelmed by the issue or “above it all” and therefore able to draw on the reserves of confidence he has built up over six years.
There are however, many important differences between the moment Reagan became president and today with the presidency of Trump. In 1979 the global confidence in the leadership was at a low in the aftermath of the Islamic Revoluion in Persia by Ayatollah Khomeini and the hostage taking of Americans in the U.S. Embassy of Teheran. President Carter foolishly followed the Bzrezinski doctrine to counter the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan – battle the Red Menace with support from religious fanatic from Saudi Arabia. Pakistan and the region still hasn’t recovered from that ill-fated policy.
The years of the early 1980s witnessed the world in a enduring economic recession after years of high inflation. It led to a Tory administration in Great Britain under leadership of Maggie Thatcher and the exploits of the Falkland War with Argentina. A lot of decisions on foreign policy was based on the importance of fossil fuel for economic growth of the Western nations.
In 1960 Barry Goldwater began the revolt of the Republican Party’s constituent “outsider” or “country class,” by calling for a grass-roots takeover of the Party. This led to Goldwater’s nomination for President in 1964. The Republican Establishment maligned him more vigorously than did the Democrats. But the Goldwater movement switched to Ronald Reagan, who overcame the Republican Establishment and the ruling class to win the Presidency by two landslide elections. Yet the question: “who or what does the Republican Party represent” continued to sharpen because the Reagan interlude was brief, because it never transformed the Party, and hence because the Bush (pere et fils) dynasty plus Congressional leadership (Newt Gingrich was a rebel against it and treated a such) behaved increasingly indistinguishably from Democrats. Government grew more rapidly under these Republican Administrations than under Democratic ones.
In sum, the closer one gets to the Republican Party’s voters, the more the Party looks like Goldwater and Reagan. The closer one gets to its top, the more it looks like the ghost of Rockefeller. Consider 2012: the party chose for President someone preferred by only one fourth of its voters – Mitt Romney, whose first youthful venture in politics had been to take part in the political blackballing of Barry Goldwater.
One reason for the Republican Party’s bipolarity is the centripetal attraction of the ruling class: In the absence of forces to the contrary, smaller bodies tend to become satellites of larger ones. Modern America’s homogenizing educational Establishment and the ruling class’ near monopoly on credentials, advancement, publicity, and money draws ambitious Republicans into the Democrats’ orbit. That is why for example a majority of the Republican Establishment, including The Wall Street Journal and the post-W.F. Buckley National Review supported the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and its premise that big, well-connected enterprises are “too big to fail” – which three fourths of the American people opposed vociferously. For these Republican cognoscenti vox populi is not vox dei, but the voice of idiots.
- ○ What Happened to Moderation? by Martin Longman @BooMan on May 7, 2005
Inspired by my diary posted @EuroTrib today …
○ All Out Class Warfare, No Compromise
