Free Speech Tv Ring of Fire Featuring Howard Nations - The de - Evolution of the gop

MIKE PAPANTONIO: Welcome back to Ring of Fire. I’m Mike Papantonio. A few decades ago it was completely embarrassing for someone to admit that they were a member of the Republican party because of the Michele Bachmann and Glenn Beck factor. And I don’t know that that’s changed that much. But I have Attorneys Howard Nations and Mike Burg with me now to tell us how the GOP has been identified as the party of crazy. Howard, it looks like just this loony kind of realignment taking place with the Republican party that’s been evolving quite frankly for quite some time all the way back to Lee Atwater’s southern state strategy that really started tearing the Republicans apart. What is you take on what’s happening with all this right now? HOWARD NATIONS: Yes. The realignment began, which is a systematic shift in patterns of electoral support for a political party. What the classic example of this is the white southerner shift to the Republicans after the Civil Rights Act was signed in 1964 by President Johnson. This all began with the Civil War. The reconstruction during the 1870s drove the south into the Democratic party, and it became known as the solid south because it was absolutely solid Democrat, and it had a very populist appeal. The Republican party at the time was Midwest small towns of the north, but it was then a business party as it is today. But their principles were based on personal responsibility, self sufficiency. And they were actually better suited for the south, but for the Civil Rights position. Better suited for the south which was rural Anglo-Saxon Protestants. They were in favor of small government. But the Lincoln Republican party, the reconstruction had settled deeply into the southern soul. PAPANTONIO: Yeah, and of course, Lee Atwater figured out how to tie into all that, and how to inflame all that, and how to turn NATIONS: Beautifully. PAPANTONIOPAPANTONIO: Everybody in the south against everybody that didn’t happen to live there. Michael, Eisenhower seemed if you take a look at Eisenhower, he seemed to be and is very often called the last rational mind that came out of the Republican party as far as really a centrist. Somebody that didn’t, you know, very suspect of extremists. Suspect of the military complex. Suspect of the crazy religious right. What’s your take on where we are since then? BURG: Well, Eisenhower was a war hero, so he had great popular appeal both with the Democrats and Republicans. What happened after that though is the polarization. The Republicans began to polarize their party to the right. As you know, my partner, Alan Simpson, was the minority whip and actually was the majority whip with Bush. I was with him yesterday. We talked about that polarization. What has happened is that these party centrists of the Republican party have moved and polarized the party so far to the right that moderates are not even allowed to be in the party or speak to the party. He for one has been told the fact that he’s worked with Obama on a number of the commissions that somehow he’s a traitor to the Republican party. PAPANTONIO: Yeah, he’s a rhino as they put it. BURG: Right. PAPANTONIO: Even though he tries to speak with a rational mind, he does remember the days of statesmanship, of real politicians like Eisenhower, for example. But he’s considered a rhino. Howard, the polarization. What’s your take on it? How would you characterize the polarization, and what it means for this Republican party? NATIONS: Well, there’s an excellent book out by Geoffrey Kabaservice. It’s on the market right now, that explains it in interesting terms. He says, of course, the polarization is a big factor in the movement, but the other thing that has built the Republican party today, it’s been moved by political actors. And they realize that they had enemies on two fronts. They were not only against liberal Democrats, but they were against moderate Republicans. And Buckley’s National Review said the modern conservatism formed in opposition to the Eisenhower administration, and have been four things that brought about the transformation, and that is grassroots. You’ve got to give them credit. They worked everything from the local precincts all the way through to the national party, the conservatives taking it over. The second thing were institutions. The misnamed, the great misnomer think tanks. Such as National Review, and the Heritage Foundation. The third was religious groups such as the Moral Majority which was neither moral nor a majority. And then there’s the media technology. Conservative voices on the radio and cable television. And the goal was to purge the Republicans of moderate voices, and install conservatives at every single power position. They were going to purify the party. PAPANTONIO: Michael, has this been a windfall, or a disaster for the Republicans? BURG: Well, you know, in some way it’s a windfall and a disaster to be honest with you. It’s a disaster because they’re out of touch with the rest of the country on the social issues. It’s been a windfall because they’ve been able to really shut down democracy. For them, that’s what they want to do. They want no government. Not little government, but no government. And they’ve been able to accomplish that because they take such extreme positions. As Senator Simpson mentioned to me yesterday, he would work across the aisle. He and Ted Kennedy were best friends. They would compromise on the issues so that democracy would work. Today that doesn’t exist. And in fact, just talking to someone across the aisle for these rightwing conservatives is basically a slap in the face to the party. PAPANTONIO: Does Alan Simpson you are his law partner, Michael. Does Alan Simpson believe that this trend is reversible, or has it caught so much steam that we all know the ending to this story, and that is the Republican party in demise? BURG: Well, what he thinks may happen is that actually some the far left liberals and some of the far right conservative Tea Party people may join together, that’s the hope, with regard to protecting individual rights. I mean, one of the things that we’re seeing right now with the NSA is you are seeing people on the far left and the far right saying look, you know, we need to have, and they are joining together. Also with regard to the rights relating to litigation. In terms of immunity for giant corporations. So on the one hand, he’s concerned about it, but he’s hopeful that we may be able to get back to a government that may begin to work. But for right now, he sees it as a demise of the GOP. PAPANTONIO: Howard, Mike just raises what we’re seeing this week all week, and that is the really far right Tea Partiers reaching out to the moderate to left liberals in regard to the Syria disaster train wreck that is playing itself out right now. What is your take on it? What kind of joint relationship does that mean for the politics of both parties? NATIONS: Well, the Democrats obviously have fewer conservatives. So what they’re doing is forming a coalition between liberals and moderates, and Democrats are appealing strongly to independents, and we can’t forget the independents in this mix because they can often be the swing voters. Democrats have very strong they’re very strong in the Midwest, they control the coast, and they’re making end roads in urbanized south and in Florida. The Republicans have their strength in the interior and in the states of the old south. But where they’re strong in the mountain states and the prairie states, very thin populations, so they’re going to have to do something. And what’s happening with the Tea Party, as the extreme voters maintain more and more control, they’re alienating the independents and the larger segments of the populations such as minorities and women. The more alienation the more power goes to the extremes, and the extremes are the Tea Party. PAPANTONIO: How is a character like Rand Paul playing out, Howard? Rand Paul, of course, is you know, there’s so few things you can ever agree with where it comes to Rand Paul. He’s right about Syria. He’s right about our war machine for probably the wrong reasons. But where does he fall in this future spectrum for what used to be kind of a well defined Republican party? NATIONS: Well, Rand Paul is a voice that started out more in terms of the same line as the Tea Party. He’s thought of as being to the right. But now as the Tea Party moves further and further to the right, Rand Paul is taking positions that make him look more reasonable and more acceptable as he’s setting himself up to run for President. So whether he’s actually going to be acceptive or not is highly questionable because in the most recent poll from the Wall Street Journal and the NBC News, what we found was that the Tea Party has gained a little bit recently in terms of a positive view among Republicans, 51% up from 46% in January, but they’re down considerably from their high of 63% in December. PAPANTONIO: Yeah, the more we know, the scarier they are. Michael, we hear the term obstruction, obstruction, obstruction. It’s going to kill the Republicans, and we hear that. And intuitively we believe that yeah, the irrational public would look at these people and say look, there’s nothing we can agree on at any time for anything that’s positive about this country. We want to stop the country. We don’t want to move anything positive in this country. And a rational mind would say well, that’s not good for a political party. Is that true here? BURG: Well, it depends on where we’re talking. With regard to their base which we’ve talked about in the Midwest, in you know, Kansas and Nebraska, in the south, it’s good for their party. Because that’s what the voters there are looking for. They want and believe that the government is not looking out for their best interest. The one thing I want to go back to though is the fact that the Tea Party on this Syria issue are talking to people across the aisle I think is a good thing. Once you begin to talk to each other you may find out there are other things that you can agree on, and maybe the country can get going. I think the bottom line is that the Republicans find themselves really between a rock and a hard place. Are they going to continue to move to the right and polarize the country, and not be able to elect on a national level the President and Vice President, or are they going to continue to try to move and coordinate with some of the Democrats and find grounds in which they can agree upon? Whether it be the NSA issues. Whether it be Syria. If that happens we may see new coalitions that occur in this country which change what’s going on in the GOP. PAPANTONIO: Howard, in about thirty seconds, don’t you get the impression that the Republicans care so little about the national scene compared to what they’re doing state by state? I think you reported on this couple of times. And that seems to be where their grip is and what they’re going to hold onto is simply go state by state, avoid all this discussion that takes place on a national scene where it comes to the big elections. Has that changed in your mind at all that they have a very clear methodology for trying to gain control in this country? NATIONS: Absolutely. The reason they will not go into coalitions is because they have to cater to their base. The more they cater to their base the further to the right they move. The further to the right they move the higher profile they become, then they create more fear among Republicans who have to move to the right with them or they’ll get primaried in their own party. So it’s more likely that what’s going to happen is Michele Bachmann will remain the face of the party. Todd Akin type candidates will continue to be out there and be suicidal, and the Democratic party should thank them very much. PAPANTONIO: Howard Nations, Michael Burg, thank you for joining me.