“Why has the American center right disappeared from the ballot box?” asks Jan-Werner Müller in the Guardian. Along the way, he takes a minute to say this about Ronald Reagan:
Infamously, he kicked off his 1980 election campaign in Mississippi – close to the site where three civil rights activists had been murdered in 1964 – and endorsed “states’ rights”.
This line of thinking seems odd. Sixteen years had gone by between the murder of the civil rights activists – almost certainly a crime carried out by Democrats – and Reagan launching the Republican campaign at a place nearby. Evidently Professor Müller thinks that a place where a crime occurred must remain off-limits for political activity for longer than sixteen years, lest having a campaign event there be taken as endorsement of the crime. If one took seriously the argument made by Tim Walz and Hillary Clinton that the infamous pro-Nazi German-American Bund rally in Madison Square Garden in 1939 meant that Trump’s rally in the same venue in 2024 was tainted by co-location, then the time for which a place must not be used for political activity after a crime or extremist political event would be at least 85 years. This would rule out almost all of America. Good thing the limit only seems to apply to Republicans.
Update: having written the post above, I found that the point I wanted to make today had already been made far better in 2011 by David Kopel, writing in the Volokh Conspiracy website (now at Reason magazine): “Reagan’s infamous speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi”.
Um, the 1939 MSG was demolished in 1968, AND was several blocks away from the current MSG, built in 1968.
That’s right, it is not even the same location or building.
The establishment tried something similar last year by criticising the music video to Jason Aldean’s truly excellent “Try that in a small town”.
It briefly featured a Courthouse in Tennessee outside which a lynching took place back in 1927 and, as a result, the video was banned by the influential CMT station. This did not prevent it reaching No.1 in the billboard charts and racking up 69m views on YouTube.,
https://youtu.be/b1_RKu-ESCY?si=T2cEqI-hgBqQAemm
The wiki article is a classic of leftist spluttering indignation.
I really hope the Donald invites Jason to perform it at his inauguration.
Both Ronald Reagan was and Donald Trump is “centre right” – neither tried for a dramatic role back of the state, I wish they had – but they did not.
The last President who dramatically reduced the size and scope of government – cutting government spending by 25%, releasing political prisoners, and-so-on, was Warren Harding – and that, his anti statism, is the real reason why the establishment has such a fanatical hatred of President Harding – it is nothing to do with “corruption”, indeed corruption in his Administration was no worse than in many Administrations – it was certainly less than in the Administration of Franklin Roosevelt “FDR” and the establishment love that Administration (they love it because of its statism – its expansion of the size and scope of government).
As for the Guardian – it is written by supporters of tyranny and has been for many years, even as far back as 90 years ago it (as the Manchester Guardian) was covering up the murder of millions of human beings by the socialists in the Soviet Union – and it has supported a series of tyrannies since then.
On claims of “racism” – standard Guardian lies. They are not making honest intellectual mistakes – they are lying. Their motive remains what has been for so many years – to push tyranny, in this country and around the world.
When Jan-Werner Muller bemoans the ‘disappearance of the centre-right’, I think he really means he wants to go back to the Clinton/Obama days when the Republicans nominated useless candidates who donated their carcasses to get buried in presidential races (e.g Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney).
Seen this game played in the UK when the left claims they miss people like John Major, Ted Heath, Rory Stewart, William Hague compared to the ‘extremists’ now on the right – they miss them because they could easily beat these chumps.
Martin – yes, he wants people like Prime Minister Heath – who massively the size and scope of the state and even befriended the Marxist Dictator of China – Mao – the largest scale mass murderer of the 20th century (perhaps of all time). Richard Nixon in the United States followed similar policies – wild government spending, price controls, and crawling to the mass murderer Mao, a murderer of tens of millions of human beings – see both “Mao: The Unknown Story” by Jung Chang – and the historical works of Frank Dikotter, who has written three scholarly works on the period of Mao’s blood soaked Marxist rule in China.
Or Prime Minister John Major – “we have spent more money than Labour promised to spend”.
“Conservatives” who follow the agenda of the left. Puppets – whether they know it or not.
I have great respect for President Reagan. He did the unthinkable. The thinkable was WWW III with nukes or something like accomadation with Marxism or an emergent hybrid “Swedish”* style world-order. Reagan saw evil and knew the USA (and chums) could defeat it. And we did!
I often surprise people by knowing that Lincoln was a Republican. People find this unbelievable. They also find the history of the Democrats (Jim Crow?) astonishing as well.
Is it conceivable that utterly patronising DEI (and the rest) is just the Dems playing the race card again? Only this time from the bottom of the deck. The Dems need their “victim-classes” don’t they? This is increasingly looking like a bust-flush. I think this might be the big take from this election. Black and Hispanic Americans perhaps increasingly don’t want Uncle Tom (or Auntie Kamala) looking after them (didn’t slave owners do that as well?). Perhaps this is a bigger thing than the actual result.
*Yeah, the Swedes who are self-righteous pricks. They were selling ball-bearings to the NAZIs and doing eugenics well into my lifetime. I don’t find them reprehensible for those things (I do) as much as I find their self-righteous. And they do that in spades. Sorry for all the car references but I play poker.
NickM Yes indeed.
Even though many of the insults directed at Republicans today are the same as the insults directed at Republicans in the time of Lincoln.
“Religious fanatics”, “money obsessed hypocrites”, “walking along with the Bible in one hand – but with a loaded pistol in the other hand, and a well worn account book in their pocket”.
Even the charge “he wants to replace the Income Tax on the rich with a Tariff that will hit the poor” was not invented to attack President Trump – it was first used on President GRANT (Republican General Grant from the Civil War – President from 1869 to 1877).
The basic charge is that, to a Republican, money is more important than race. Although the Democrats also claimed that President Harding was secretly part black (not true) – their “evidence” being, like so many Republicans, he was against lynching. Why would someone be against lynching black people? Such a person “must” be part black themselves – according to the Democrats.
As for the Democrats – they have gone from being pro white to being anti white, but it is still RACE, racial group, obsessed politics with them. The Democrats refuse to see people as INDIVIDUALS – they only see them as members of groups, racial, sexual…..
Magical thinking is mostly what leftists do.
Consider the magical Laws of Contagion, “things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed.” and Similarity, “Like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause”.
These “Laws” are active in the idea of a morally contaminated place.
By which I mean, leftists don’t think, they emote.
HAH!
It hasn’t disappeared. The Far Left has just branded it as ‘alt-right’ and everything right of that as ‘far right’.
Unless its the Democrats themselves – who are the Part of Slavery, Segregation, cause the US Civil War, opposed the 1968 CRA, and had KKK members in the Senate all the way up until 2010 – when Byrd died *still in office*.
Agammamon.
Correct.
And one good thing is how West Virginia has improved since Senator Byrd died – for example it is now a Right to Work State, in his day people could be FORCED to join unions – now it is unlawful to force people to join a union in West Virginia.
There is not a perfect match – but the States who voted for President Trump tended to be Right to Work States, and the States that voted against him, tended to be States where people can be forced to join a union.
Martin, I agree on the desire by the Left for hopeless people such as Hague and Rory Stewart. In the latter case, I find the veneration for him to be bizarre. He has a face like a witch doctor’s rattle and his views are statist environmentalism. A parody of “centrist Dad” mindfuckery.
Johnathan Pearce.
William Hague started out O.K. – but gradually became an establishmentarian.
As for Rory Stewart – he indeed suggested that he might vote for the Green Party in the last election, so either he knows nothing about their policies, or he was always a radical statist – as you know the “Greens” just use “the environment” as an excuse for policies that are even more Collectivist than those of the Labour Party.