Not so much. The GOP progressive wing started pulling out with Teddy Roosevelt. That whole Bull Moose thing, he pulled out of the Republican party and took the progressives with him. After that 3rd party run failed, they mostly returned to the fold. But over the next couple of decades the urban, progressive wing of the GOP mostly shifted over to the DNC, joining the labor movement. So by the 30’s you had a Democratic Roosevelt (FDR) passing the New Deal.
Previous to this point all American political parties had been coalitions with conservative and liberal wings. The progressives were the GOP’s left. And when they booked it they basically left only the parties conservative wing, and its connections to big business (which had been a key part of their coalition back when they were a small abolitionist party).
The Southern Strategy was when the DNC’s conservative wing (the rural, largely Southern Jim Crow Democrats, at one point a 3rd Dixiecrat Party) got peeled off into the GOP.
As for “surrender[ing] to the Christians”. Well for the bulk of US history Christians were closely associated with the left. Particularly once progressivism became a thing. Abolition was closely associated with religious movements, both black and white. As was women’s suffrage. And the labor movement was very, very closely tied with the Methodists. Also Prohibition, because we can’t have anything nice. And its was Protestants at the heart of that. Specifically your “Mainline” protestant denominations. Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists. And that end of the Christian community still largely sits on the pretty far left.
The rise of the Christian Right was a result of a deliberate strategy by the GOP to bind together large, socially conservative religious groups that had traditionally hated each other into one cooperative voting block. The Mormons, The Catholics, and Evangelicals. Mormons and Evangelicals being groups that had suddenly seen bursts in membership. The strategy was to use wedge issues, and specifically Abortion and Roe v Wade. To turn those groups into one big political machine.
And when that happened, election wise with Reagan, we finally had our current political parties. But looking back from the 80’s. The GOP hadn’t been the more progressive party in nearly a century.
Engineers, logistics, transport etc. And warm bodies, which means combat infantry. Who apparently mostly dig holes.
In terms of mission accomplished. Not so much. The work the military was willing to do, set up and digging holes. Moving material down there is over. But the stated plan, even out of the military, was to keep them down there. They were supposed involved providing air transport, logistic support, maintenance and what have to the National Guard units and Customs agents who are actually allowed to do things on US soil through the end of the year. That’s apparently not happening? Also I think those National Guard units are coming back? Our local one is back already at any rate.
Just as an example from the military base nearby, where a bunch of my family served.
How much do you suppose it costs to take one of these, fill it full of these, and these. A bunch of troops. Supplies. And spare parts.
And fly it 3,000 miles?
I think they sent down 3 choppers which means 2 c5’s. And those helicopters don’t go anywhere without one of these for midair refueling.
Even just in fuel that’s an enormous amount of money. Now that’s a National Guard Search and Rescue unit. But that’s _one_outfit. That’s to get like 9 search and rescue people in the air over the border. I’m sure ground troops are less complicated, and less expensive. But you aren’t just paying the troops wages for that deployment. You’re moving 5,000 people, vehicles, food, equipment, fuel to support all that.
I’ve been shocked they’re saying its only $200m. The Pentagon was saying it would cost almost half a billion.
We’ve already got a bunch of them, have had them for a long while. And they are heinous. Rampant violations of habeas corpus and due process. Pregnant teens held in “hot boxes”, concrete cells without ventilation in the Texas Desert. Rampant sexual abuse. There are still lawsuits spooling though from the G W Bush era (and a lot of these policies and practices started then). Apparently temporary holding, and asylum seekers aren’t as straight fucked as the permanent holding facilities for “illegals”.
But I do not think “concentration camp” is a bad descriptor.
Probably a fair bit of that up thread. Outside the US “Liberal” tends to refer to those specific parties with “Liberal” in their name. Who represent a very particular end of liberal politics, and don’t really seem to be worth much of a damn these days. In the US it tends to refer to the entire spectrum of left wing politics derived from Liberalism. Which includes shit like progressivism and socialism.
Not really. The “liberal” in there isn’t really related to “liberal” as an political term. And the economic theory grew pretty specifically out of Conservative policy (and was initially pushed and accepted in Europe before it caught on in the US).
Except for this
They did. But it wasn’t only both US parties. It was broadly speaking most of the governments and major political parties of your major Western nations. Every body seemed to just decide at some point in the 90’s that that shit worked so long as you didn’t call it Trickle down.
