This is not Ike's GOP

Atrios' feature series the Wankers of the Decade reminds us that from Bush v. Gore until recently, the warnings many of us who blog were sending about the extreme and radical Republican Party were ridiculed as the rantings of DFHs, dirty f*cking hippies, not to be taken seriously by the Very Serious People.

Last week, E.J. Dionne wrote, "Right before our eyes, American conservatism is becoming something very different from what it once was. Yet this transformation is happening by stealth because moderates are too afraid to acknowledge what all their senses tell them." With all due respect to Dionne, who really has been good on this issue for some time, this is not a recent development. They are who we (the DFH bloggers) thought they were—a radical, extreme party intent on returning the country to a pre-New Deal state.

This past week, President Obama sounded like "one of us," warning that a Court overturn of the Affordable Care Act would hearken a return to the the Lochner Era of economic substantive due process, when the Court struck down federal and state laws that prohibited child labor. The president also delivered a speech in which he said of the proposed Republican budget:



This Congressional Republican budget is something different altogether. It is a Trojan Horse. Disguised as deficit reduction plan, it is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It is thinly-veiled Social Darwinism [...]

I read with interest your recent discussion regarding my comments on the floor during the debate on John Roberts' nomination. [...] I thought this might be a good opportunity to offer some thoughts about not only judicial confirmations, but how to bring about meaningful change in this country. [...] According to the storyline that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists - a storyline often reflected in comments on this blog - we are up against a sharply partisan, radically conservative, take-no-prisoners Republican party. They have beaten us twice by energizing their base with red meat rhetoric and single-minded devotion and discipline to their agenda. In order to beat them, it is necessary for Democrats to get some backbone, give as good as they get, brook no compromise, drive out Democrats who are interested in "appeasing" the right wing, and enforce a more clearly progressive agenda. The country, finally knowing what we stand for and seeing a sharp contrast, will rally to our side and thereby usher in a new progressive era. I think this perspective misreads the American people. From traveling throughout Illinois and more recently around the country, I can tell you that Americans are suspicious of labels and suspicious of jargon. They don't think George Bush is mean-spirited or prejudiced, but have become aware that his administration is irresponsible and often incompetent. They don't think that corporations are inherently evil (a lot of them work in corporations), but they recognize that big business, unchecked, can fix the game to the detriment of working people and small entrepreneurs. They don't think America is an imperialist brute, but are angry that the case to invade Iraq was exaggerated, are worried that we have unnecessarily alienated existing and potential allies around the world, and are ashamed by events like those at Abu Ghraib which violate our ideals as a country. It's this non-ideological lens through which much of the country viewed Judge Roberts' confirmation hearings. A majority of folks, including a number of Democrats and Independents, don't think that John Roberts is an ideologue bent on overturning every vestige of civil rights and civil liberties protections in our possession. Instead, they have good reason to believe he is a conservative judge who is (like it or not) within the mainstream of American jurisprudence, a judge appointed by a conservative president who could have done much worse (and probably, I fear, may do worse with the next nominee). While they hope Roberts doesn't swing the court too sharply to the right, a majority of Americans think that the President should probably get the benefit of the doubt on a clearly qualified nominee. [Emphasis supplied.]

I think we can safely say that the era of the Post Partisan Unity Schtick is over. And well buried. But it was not always so. In a 2005 Daily Kos diary, Tone, Truth and the Democratic Party , then-Sen. Obama wrote:I was among those who Sen. Obama was addressing, issuing broadsides against Sens. Baucus, Leahy and Feingold (yes, Feingold) for announcing their intention to vote to confirm John Roberts as chief justice of the United States (Sen. Obama voted against confirmation). Seven years later, I believe we have been demonstrated to have had the better of the argument.

John Roberts is who we thought he was. The Republican Party is what we thought it was. They are who we thought they were. As for tactics, it seems the president now sees it our way—a Fighting Democratic Party is a more progressive and politically successful Democratic Party.

One of the most important fronts in the fight is the Supreme Court. Let's discuss the extreme and radical Roberts Court on the other side.

(Continued on the other side)