Five Myths About the GOP That Just Won't Die

[ChiefKN]

Since politics have been such a hot topic on these boards... I found this opinion piece to be refreshing.

Five Myths About the GOP That Just Won’t Die

Five lies told by Democrats that have increased the dissatisfaction with the Republican Party.


Many Americans today are unhappy with the Democratic Party.

Yet according to a Gallup poll conducted in July 2010, Democrats were still ahead of Republicans, 49% to 43%, in voters’ generic ballot preferences for the 2010 congressional elections.

Why? A big part of the reason is voter dissatisfaction with the Republican Party. And a major reason for that dissatisfaction is that over the years voters have been fed numerous lies by Democrats and the mainstream media to discredit the GOP.

Here are five of those lies:

1. The Bush administration lied about the intelligence leading up to the Iraq War.

Two bipartisan investigations demanded by Democrats refute this myth. In 2004, the Robb-Silberman Report, along with a separate Senate Intelligence Committee report, both concluded that there was no evidence that administration officials manipulated intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq.

2. Republicans caused the mortgage crisis.

In reality it was the Democrats who caused the mortgage crisis and stifled Republican efforts to prevent it.

First, Bill Clinton broadened the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), bypassing the Republican-led Congress and ordering the Treasury Department to rewrite the CRA rules to force banks to fulfill loan “quotas” in low income neighborhoods.

Eventually, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were required by HUD to show that 55% of their mortgage purchases were to low and moderate income borrowers, and lending standards were lowered to meet those goals.

Intense competition caused by Fannie and Freddie’s increasing appetite for loans caused investment and commercial banks to compete for borrowers, and the looser lending standards eventually spread to higher-income and prime borrowers as well.

Then came Clinton’s most disastrous decision: he legalized the securitization of subprime mortgages that allowed the market to soar from $35 billion in risky loans in 1994 to $1 trillion by 2008, thus poisoning the entire mortgage industry.

Republicans tried to rein in Fannie and Freddie’s purchases of subprime mortgages. In both 2003 and 2005, they introduced legislation that would have required Fannie and Freddie to eliminate their investments in them. Both times their attempts were opposed by the Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee, so the bills never made it to Senate floor.

3. Eight years of Republican deregulation caused the financial crisis.

Some myths die harder than others. This is certainly one of them. Financial services were not deregulated during the Bush administration.

The repeal of the Depression-era Glass–Steagall Act in 1999, allowing banks and securities firms to be affiliated under the same roof, was supported by the Clinton administration and signed into law by the president.

Moreover, that was not the cause of the financial crisis. The crisis was caused by banks and investment firms purchasing vast numbers of bad mortgages and mortgage-backed securities.

What contributed to such a high volume of purchases? In 2004, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Democrat Annette Nazareth, who ran the market regulation division at the time, unanimously adopted a rule change known as Basel II.

Adopted by all of the world’s central bankers, Basel II was an attempt to provide greater regulation of investment firms by more accurately evaluating the types of assets they held.

Unfortunately, AAA-rated mortgages were incorrectly considered to be some of the safest assets an institution could own. As a result, Basel II allowed investment banks to leverage their assets of mortgage-backed securities at a ratio as high as 30 to 1. Thus, although Basel II wasn’t the cause of the financial crisis, it certainly contributed to the size of it.

4. Republicans are the “party of Wall Street, big business and special interest groups.”

In the 2008 national election cycle, more campaign donations from the largest banks and Wall Street firms went to Democrats, not Republicans.

Ninety of the top one hundred corporate donors leaned Democratic, and nearly 75 percent of all hedge fund donations in that same period went to presidential candidate Obama.

Furthermore it is the Democratic Party which has deep-rooted unholy alliances with special-interest groups—labor unions, teachers unions, trial lawyers, environmental groups, community organizations such as ACORN and welfare beneficiaries—that often places the interests of those groups ahead of what’s best for the country. Their alliance with trial lawyers, for example, is why tort reform, an effective way to lower health care costs, was not included in the health care bill.

5. Democrats have always stood up for black Americans—and Republicans are either uncaring at best, or overt racists at worst.

Many Americans would be surprised to know that Martin Luther King, Jr. embraced conservative ideals.

Yet King’s choice of political affinity made perfect sense: it was Republicans, not Democrats, who consistently fought for freedom and civil rights for blacks since their founding in 1854—as the anti-slavery party.

In fact, the Democrats tried to filibuster and stop the 1964 Civil Rights Act from passing.

Republicans also established the NAACP and founded and financed all the earliest black schools and colleges.

The fact that most Americans still believe these five myths is a stark reminder that voters can be manipulated by a mainstream media and a Democratic Party who believe “a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth.”

Richard Bernstein, a former life-long Democrat, is the author of "Duped America: How Democrats and the Mainstream Media Have Duped the American People and Are Harming Our Country" (Forrester, 2010).

[mcwops]

Oh I can't wait for SCFire's response. I quit trying to educate him on the other threads, as he just doesn't listen...or read.

[FIREMECH1]

Don't worry, SC will come back with facts debunking the myths.

Nice one Chief !!!!

FM1

[Acklan]

Popcorn anyone?

[Chenzo]

This could get interesting. I think I'll stick around.

I'll bring the brews, and we'll have a grand old party... lol

[nmfire]

It won't be entertaining. All he does is lie, intentionally misquote others, and reword his own arguments on the fly to change his story around as needed. It's like having a debate with a wall.

[emt161]

The difference being, walls are generally useful.

[nmfire]

Apologies to any walls I may have offended. I meant no disrespect. I should have said it was like arguing with a non-load bearing movable partition.

[FIREMECH1]

Free post.. woo-hooo

@ nmfire... It's still a freaking wall....

[edpmedic]

It won't be entertaining. All he does is lie, intentionally misquote others, and reword his own arguments on the fly to change his story around as needed. It's like having a debate with a wall.

I thought you were describing scarecrow for a moment.

[nmfire]

Interchangeable. But since he is gone, that leaves only one lying piece of crap. I don't even care if he's a liberal communist. Everyone is entitled to their own political views. What gets me is his lying and intentional misquoting and general worthless d-baggery.

[abeth86]

While I'm more than happy to debate the merits of the first 4 points, I refuse to accept the last point. Attempting to paint the civil rights debate as Republican v. Democrat is disingenuous at best.

History lesson, shall we?

The Civil War itself was sparked when a Republican abolitionist, Abraham Lincoln, was elected. The largely Democrat south elected to secede. Some say it was for economic reasons, others honestly call it slavery. Regardless of what was running through their minds, it drew battle lines politically that wouldn't shift until the civil rights movement took hold a century later.

Reconstruction, and the brutal policies the South was handed in retribution once Lincoln was assassinated, largely alienated an already embittered population from Republicans. Policy wise it didn't matter what a Republican had to say, the South didn't want anything from the party of Lincoln. By the 1960's there were Republicans from the south, but not very many. You'd be just shocked to know, I'm sure, that southern Republicans voted against civil rights legislation, too.

Also, if I do remember correctly, it was LBJ who really spearheaded the effort against the will of his racist vanguard in the south. The Democratic party sacrificed the south for the greater good, and the Republicans swept in to pick up the voters. This particular shift has resulted in a rapid change in Republican constituents, and thus a rapid change in Republican policies. So while the GOP may have done everything right in getting civil rights legislation passed, they sold their soul to the very racist elements that caused such legislation to be necessary for political gain.

I won't sit here and champion one party's actions over the other when it comes to civil rights. Republicans did good work in the 60's, and so did plenty of Democrats not ensnared by their racist constituencies (or their real racist beliefs). Still, to suggest that Democrats unanimously opposed civil rights legislation and Republicans unanimously supported it is a bald faced lie. The south voted against it, both Democrat and Republican.

Now that we've got that out of the way...

Two bipartisan investigations demanded by Democrats refute this myth. In 2004, the Robb-Silberman Report, along with a separate Senate Intelligence Committee report, both concluded that there was no evidence that administration officials manipulated intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq.

Bipartisan investigations don't exist in the post-Gingrich era. The GOP was in power, and they got the answers they wanted. Every other intelligence agency, even the CIA, said they had serious doubts about any intelligence suggesting there were still WMD's in Iraq. Go watch some old footage of the run up to war. We practically kicked the weapons inspectors out in our rush to burn Baghdad. We weren't taking no for an answer, and we'd use any reason we could feasibly get people to believe to justify it.

That's not to say that they actually manipulated intelligence, but they certainly did overhype what intelligence did exist. The reasons for war became fairly apparent over time, ie - fight the terrorists there instead of here. Morally it's just as reprehensible as a "war for oil" (seriously, where's my cheap gas?), but as a President sworn to protect the interests of Americans only, not the worst thing he could have done.

In reality it was the Democrats who caused the mortgage crisis and stifled Republican efforts to prevent it.

There's enough blame to go around on everyone's head for this.

The legislative history shows Clinton-era Democrats did a number of things that set certain waves in motion. It also shows a very lacklustre attempt from the GOP to do anything about it. Democrats wanted to spur lower income groups in to the middle class through home ownership, surely a faulty policy. But to quote you yourself, sir, how can the minority party stop the majority from doing what they want?

Republicans were far more dominant in Congress back in 2003-05 than Democrats are today. They had public will behind them, they had sheer numbers, and they would resort to very gamey tactics like threating to eliminate the filibuster if it got them their way. They didn't do anything. Rather, they legislated the single most financially disastrous unfunded entitlement in American history (Medicare part D, anyone?) and figured they'd bought the senior vote. This, all while rocketing money to the upper echelons of the tax bracket with oddly unsound tax cuts.

The argument on whether or not that money being back in the hands of the middle and lower income groups would have spared us the mortgage mess is for another day. Ultimately, it was a lack of money in wages that destroyed the mortgage markets, not bad loaning practices and government interference - although that certainly had an important hand to play.

Some myths die harder than others. This is certainly one of them. Financial services were not deregulated during the Bush administration.

Modern Republican deregulation is a beast that had its birth in the Reagan years. Bush didn't really have anything else left to deregulate, if it makes you feel better. Regardless, under his watch the SEC became so lax in its enforcement of existing regulations that the financial crisis became unavoidable. We have these regulations in place for a reason, you know. It's not so big brother can chill out in your office and watch everything you do, it's so the whole country doesn't get dragged down in an unmitigated disaster.

In the 2008 national election cycle, more campaign donations from the largest banks and Wall Street firms went to Democrats, not Republicans.

This is, in large part, due to the way corporate donations were handled at that time. Now, thanks to the newest supreme court ruling declaring corporations as persons, we've already seen corporations outright giving millions of dollars in a go to official GOP gubernatorial re-election PACs. I assure you that Democrats are not the lucky recipients of such green showers.

The legislative history is quite clear on whose side the GOP stands on. They demand continued (or even deeper) tax cuts for the rich, demonstrably at the expense of the lower and middle classes. They obstructed as best they could any reform of Wall St. claiming that the crisis was because of "too much regulation", a laughable denial at best. They served their corporate masters quite well during the health care debate, spinning hospice care as a series of death panels, suggesting a bureaucrat would come between you and your doctor, that it would destroy American freedom and usher in a new socialist era, and other complete nonsense that served to do nothing but stoke reactionary sentiments in an already perpetually frightened population. This, even though the bill was ultimately what the GOP of the 90's thought would be acceptable.

There are no real myths about the GOP, only those things that the GOP has done to alienate itself further from mainstream America. I've been a fairly conservative guy my whole life, and I refuse to vote for the trash the GOP is offering up this year. People like Sharron Angle suggesting second amendment remedies to government "overreach"? Are you serious? A hundred years ago these people would've been charged with sedition. The party has completely lost its soul to the most extreme elements of the right wing, which brings me back to the very first point I made in this whole charade of an argument.

The party of Lincoln is not supposed to be beholden to these kinds of radical elements. They're supposed to be about individual liberty and the expansion of your rights. Instead they marshal support for corporate lobbyists through their very own army of reactionaries, the Tea Party.

In the absence of the party I knew and voted for, I'm left with doing whatever I can to keep the crazies out of office - and vote Democrat. It leaves a sour taste in my mouth, sure. The GOP's antics in the last two years are just too disgusting for me to handle.

[scfire86]

It won't be entertaining. All he does is lie, intentionally misquote others, and reword his own arguments on the fly to change his story around as needed. It's like having a debate with a wall.

The difference being, walls are generally useful.

Apologies to any walls I may have offended. I meant no disrespect. I should have said it was like arguing with a non-load bearing movable partition.

Free post.. woo-hooo

@ nmfire... It's still a freaking wall....

Interchangeable. But since he is gone, that leaves only one lying piece of crap. I don't even care if he's a liberal communist. Everyone is entitled to their own political views. What gets me is his lying and intentional misquoting and general worthless d-baggery.

Love this exchange between the idiot echo chamber.

[scfire86]

For the GOP to claim the mantle of civil rights because Lincoln is their founder is a hoot and a half. To even remotely believe the GOP of that day resembles the modern GOP is a complete disassociation of reality.

Let's look at the south of the day and why they fought the union. Jefferson Davis, former Secretary of War under Franklin Pierce turned Senator from the state of Mississippi, resigned in protest following the election of President Lincoln and was unanimously declared President of the Confederacy… 11 states (out of 33), all in the South East that seceded from the rest of “the Union” in protest of the government in Washington. These “Rebel states” were outraged over the election of a president they saw as anti Big Business (the Southern economy had only one major industry… agriculture, most notably “cotton”… all of which depended heavily upon cheap slave labor), out of touch (aka: “elitist”) with the concerns of the South, a social activist (outspoken Abolitionist) more concerned for the rights of minorities than “decent hard-working Americans”, and believed that the power of the Federal government superseded “states rights”. Many Founding Fathers believed a strong federal government was all that held the nation together, a power that Lincoln knew he would need to restore The Union. Rebel states believed they had the right to “nullify” any Federal law they disagreed with. You know them today as “Tenthers” (aka morons)… referring to the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.

The GOP no longer remotely tries to embrace minority issues, has been on a jihad against organized labor (something Lincoln embraced), and courts big business (the upper echelons of our society) at the expense of the middle class.

One would have to look beyond a cute email that popped into one's Inbox to know the story of the GOP is one of a complete flip flop from the mid 1800's.

Chief, can you point to one conservative ideological standard that can be remotely considered successful in the last 30 years?

[scfire86]

Republicans tried to rein in Fannie and Freddie’s purchases of subprime mortgages. In both 2003 and 2005, they introduced legislation that would have required Fannie and Freddie to eliminate their investments in them. Both times their attempts were opposed by the Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee, so the bills never made it to Senate floor.

This is another milk through the nose moment.

How did the Dems do this when they were in the minority? They could have easily been outvoted by the GOP majority. The housing industry was the only bright spot in the Bush economy. They weren't about to slow it down.

Remember this (though I doubt you do) from W's 2004 acceptance speech at the 2004 RNC:

Another priority for a new term is to build an ownership society, because ownership brings security and dignity and independence.

Thanks to our policies, home ownership in America is at an all- time high.

(APPLAUSE)

Tonight we set a new goal: 7 million more affordable homes in the next 10 years, so more American families will be able to open the door and say, "Welcome to my home."

(APPLAUSE)

BUSH: In an ownership society, more people will own their health plans and have the confidence of owning a piece of their retirement.

I'm thinking folks with 401(k)'s are just pleased as punch that "W" has confidence in their owning a piece of their retirement.

[DaSharkie]

The GOP no longer remotely tries to embrace minority issues, has been on a jihad against organized labor (something Lincoln embraced)

Organized labor has hurt a lot of things in this country. I read an article last night in Reader's Digest (not the best source I will give you that) reporting that in California alone the teacher's unions spent $212,000,000 in lobbying over the past 10 years. Imagine what all that money could have done if it were spent on education!

Unions spend incredible amounts of money, mostly on Democratic/liberal/progressive causes (note that I am not even speaking of candidates) and act as though they have political clout......and you decry the GOP's lack of kow-towing to them? The Democrats lap up union money like crazy while screaming about how the GOP is beholden to special interests - while ignoring their own political puppetmasters.

and courts big business (the upper echelons of our society) at the expense of the middle class.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiight. The GOP is the ONLY party that takes money from business groups. You are kidding right? You cannot be naive enough to actually think that the Dems give one bit about people? Politicians are the most corrupt group to walk the face of the Earth. Come on scfire86 - despite your claims to the contrary, you are smarter than that.

The Democratitc party and candidates takes huge donations from Wall Street, banking, finance, business, and special interest groups - just like the GOP does. You, once again, choose to ignore one party's actions while crying about the other party doing the same thing. Used to be that you were better than that.

One would have to look beyond a cute email that popped into one's Inbox to know the story of the GOP is one of a complete flip flop from the mid 1800's.

As the Democrats have - remember all those no votes by Democrats against the Civil Rights Act? Funny how you forget that.

Chief, can you point to one conservative ideological standard that can be remotely considered successful in the last 30 years?

Don't confuse conservatism with the GOP - they are two different things.

[DaSharkie]

How did the Dems do this when they were in the minority? They could have easily been outvoted by the GOP majority. The housing industry was the only bright spot in the Bush economy. They weren't about to slow it down.

You obviously did not pay attention to the news when the Republicans wanted to reign in spending by Fannie and Freddie while they were stupidly guarnateeing loans that they knew were overly risky.

And - despite your claims to the contrary - you are smarter than that. Take the ideological blinders off and you will be enlightened by so many things.

I'm thinking folks with 401(k)'s are just pleased as punch that "W" has confidence in their owning a piece of their retirement.

A 401(k) does the same thing as your pension system scfire86. It invests in the stock market. And returns more than any money invested in the government sanctioned Ponzi scheme that we know as Social Security.

[mcwops]

How did the Dems do this when they were in the minority? They could have easily been outvoted by the GOP majority.

Gee I don't know scfire, why didn't the 9/11 bill pass, the Dems had a majority. They could have easily outvoted the GOP...right?

[neiowa]

While I'm more than happy to debate the merits of the first 4 points, I refuse to accept the last point. Attempting to paint the civil rights debate as Republican v. Democrat is disingenuous at best.

History lesson, shall we?...

Great, Soros has another recruit for this forum. Or is this just scfire lecturing to himself.

[scfire86]

Gee I don't know scfire, why didn't the 9/11 bill pass, the Dems had a majority. They could have easily outvoted the GOP...right?

The article specifically cited passage at the committee level.

That only requires a majority vote.

The GOP held the majority on that committee at that time.

You're not very bright when it comes to government, are you?