You can toss Jack Kemp in there also, who had progressive views on homesteading public housing to create an ownership stake, which were never adopted by his party.

His hijacked party, perhaps. Whether the GOP as presently led can ever take the step it has to – that is, divorcing Ronald Reagan and a failed Trickle Down / Deregulation ideology – in order to win back working Americans is highly in doubt.

They have effectively gone backwards for most of the last 30 years while
a minority of Americans prospered. No amount of window dressing and demagoguery and talking points can alter that. Broadly shared economic opportunity is the only way.

The GOP instead shows a total inability to acknowledge wrong policy and adjust accordingly, and an extremism on most of it’s planks that keeps people out of the tent.

Many Americans think the term Progressive means of necessity liberal or ultra-liberal. To me it only means policy that effects progress – solve the problem don’t ignore it. And some GOP’ers have had it, Lincoln being
the most prominent of course.

And so it is now with the crossroad on national health insurance. Long overdue progress, vs. an untenable status quo. As fabled progressive Bill Clinton said to Bush I in the 1992 debates “We’ve tried it your way for 12 years. It hasn’t worked. We need to change”… ;^)

“Throughout history, Republicans have fought unions, workers’ rights, a living wage for workers, women’s voting rights, minimum wage increases to counter inflation, black civil rights and more recently, equal rights for women and gays.”

The problem here is use of the words “Throughout history”, this is a distortion of facts. It was Theodore Roosevelt, Republican, who lead the fight against child labor, enforced the anti-trust act, pushed for business regulation and passed the food protection act. It was Wilson, Democrat, who fought against womens voting rights and who segregated some federal government departments. If you think that special interests are a new problem I would suggest you read Roosevelt’s New Nationalism Speech from 1910 it could be reread by President Obama today and not seem out of place.

The Republican Party was once the home of Progressive thought in American from McKinley to Roosevelt to LaFollette. To think that all people of one party are evil is a simplification that defies logic. There are still Republicans that hold the principles of Roosevelt, not many most have been driven out by the concerted efforts of the conservatives but some of us hold on.

As for the health care debate I have lived in two countries that have had national health-care systems and was treated under both. The quality of the care in both England and Greece was as good as any in America, the wait time was minimal and the one emergency treatment(car accident) was exceptional in quality and speed of care. I’ve heard all the stories going round about delay in care and rationing but in 6 years of living in Europe I never saw or heard of treatment delays or rationing that seemed out of norm. For non emergency surgery you may wait for a schedule opening or a recovery bed but if your life was in danger you were treated. As for Fox or talk radio I would suggest that these people are selling a product, buyer beware.

30 years ago I started studying German history and ended up, 20 years ago, with a Masters in 20th C. German History. I wanted to know why/how an industrial, relatively cosmopolitan nation could fall to the Nazis/Fascism. Then, like now, the Conservatives and Nationalist parties and industrialists thought they could use the fringe fascists to defeat the Socialists and Communists parties. I see the GOP and corporations doing the same with the fringe, extremists in this country today. The experience of unbridled extremism, Left or Right, is unhealthy for any country and in an economic crisis, for a population already primed on a fear-diet of terror threats and threats to the “fabric of family-values” these past 8 years, well, the parallels to Germany in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s is frightening indeed.

The train-wreck you fear may be coming and if the lessons learned by those who survived the 1920’s, the Great Depression, and World War 2 are forgotten, or misrepresented, (as the revisionists on Fox News and on Right-wing controlled AM radio will have one believe), then tragically we are doomed to repeat them.

Thank you for the reminder about Media Matters. Also, loved your counter-point to Gregor. It was intended to be tongue-in-cheek (?) but, you make an excellent point. It gives one pause for hope when you add to those numbers what Gregor probably considers the liberal-dominated network (CBS, NBC, ABC) news!

2) If you weren’t brainwashed by their lies and Republican lies (same thing), you might be willing to clikc on the Media Matters.org link in the Favored list. They give facts daily that bust Fox’s daily lies.

Live + Same Day Cable News Daily Ratings for September 17, 2009

P2+ Total Day
FNC – 1,586,000 viewers
CNN – 590,000 viewers
MSNBC –454,000 viewers
CNBC – 197,000 viewers
HLN – 374,000 viewers

P2+ Prime Time
FNC – 3,238,000viewers
CNN— 1,054,000 viewers
MSNBC –1,123,000 viewers
CNBC – 259,000 viewers
HLN – 813,000viewers

The objective is to strike a balance between appropriate regulation that protects our citizens from the ravages of unchecked capitalism – i.e., all the things we see now such as massive job losses, home foreclosures, no insurance to get proper medical care, runaway energy price spikes – and
new investment and innovation that drives economic growth.

Not only is it possible to accomplish, it must be accomplished. Total government control of the economy is socialism, and is a proven failure. Total lack of control is laissez-faire capitalism, and is likewise a proven failure. The answer lies in a proper balance. Europe has been practicing it for decades and is far ahead of the U.S. in this regard. (GOP’ers; if your media outlet never clued you in on it, they have plenty of free enterprise
in Europe. They also protect their people from the fallout of business cycle downturns and corporate irresponsibility & excess. It can be done.)

Here I go again… ;^)
Capitalism is like a nuclear reactor – control the burn and it throws off enormous yield. Fail to control the burn and it melts down.

Since government is always bad, that leads to things like the BushCo attempt to privatize Social Security a few years ago, and put all our holdings in the stock market. Which would have wiped out the retirement money of many millions!

And did Bush’s idea to ‘return the money back to the people’ when he slashed taxes on the rich in 2001, create jobs and prosperity that we enjoy today?

Anybody STILL thinking ‘government is the problem’, I sure hope you can never be cancelled off your health insurance if you get very ill, or if you lose your job.