Tuesday, October 26, 2010

a thought

I've been thinking, and perhaps one of the things that bothers me most about the Republican party is that they no longer seem to be the party of pragmatism. I mean, I get the need for both progressives and conservatives, one acting to advance society, the other acting to curb the excesses that sometimes arise from change. People often accuse liberals of idealism, but that is required to promote change.
But what I see these days is that it is the supposedly conservative Republican party that acts as ideologues, and the pragmatists all seem to belong to the Democratic side.

3 comments:

Pryme said...

Of course, if what you say is true you realize that it means the idea that the Democratic Party is full of liberals is a complete myth, and that currently American politics is a battle between ideologues and pragmatists.

That would seem to fit considering that more and more ex-Republicans have decided to switch to the Democratic Party. As JP noted, three prominent bloggers/political activists were ex-GOP (hint: they are also all of Greek decent).

daveawayfromhome said...

Question is, am I correct in my assumption? I say so, but if you asked a Republican, they would tell you that they were just being "realistic". I dont have any fact-based evidence to support my theory, unfortunately, though that does not mean such evidence doesnt exist.

Pryme said...

The sick sad truth is the people like that who you meet on the street are pawns of pawns; and most of the pawns (aka, elected officials) have long ago decided to just "run with it" and collect a check.

I suppose you could prove your theory by tracing the voting record of key issues by those who identify themselves as "progressives" and/or "conservatives" over, say, the last 10-20 years.