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On Thu, 22 Oct 2015 22:11:29 -0400,
wrote:

On Thu, 22 Oct 2015 20:58:57 -0400, wrote:

Not the GOP I grew up knowing. The Tea Party movement changed it.

Yeah I know. Eisenhower actually reduced the size of government,
eliminated the deficit and paid down some of the debt.
Nobody has even come close since. We had a chance with Goldwater
(Hillary even thought so) but people chose the "peace" candidate who
got into a decade long war ... that we lost.
It went downhill steadily from there. The middle class never
recovered, deficits soared, the government bloated up and we have been
in never ending war for half a century.

The tea party sounded like they might be on to something but they
turned out to be bible thumping fanatics who lost their focus and
their credibility.

If I had to pick the time that congress and the media flipped, it was
Watergate. Politics became more about "gotcha" than accomplishing good
things for the country and the media is always looking for some kind
of scandal to exploit.

===

That's a damn good summary. I hereby appoint you arm chair
philosopher and governmental analyst of the year. :-)

I have always believed that going after Nixon like they did may have
been the worst thing that ever happened to this country. It enabled
the media (like Chevy Chase) to ridicule Ford for no particular reason
and it went down hill from there.
Can you imagine doing wheelchair jokes about FDR or outing JFK's
peccadillos?
Carter got softballs, his policies were bad enough. Reagan and HW
mostly got a pass although we probably had more war than we should
when they called Bush a wimp.. When Clinton and later GWB were in
office, the gloves were off and nothing was out of line or out of
bounds. That brings us to where we are today.
It is no wonder we have so many nutty candidates. Who in their right
mind would want to throw themselves into that meat grinder?