Moving Too Far To The Right

CONSERVATIVES OFTEN REMARK, hyperbolically, that the democratic party has moved so far to the left as to be indistinguishable from communism, unrecognizable. This, of course, is nonsense. Franklin Roosevelt, Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern and others of the democratic past were in fact far more liberal than today's crop, with the possible exception of Bernie sanders, who isn't even a democrat. Obama, Clinton, and Clinton may as well be moderate republicans, for they are no more liberal than Howard Baker or Nelson Rockefeller or William Proxmire, or Dwight Eisenhower. The Obamas and the Clintons are in fact quite loyal to their corporate sponsors, as indicated in their voting records. The republican party, however, has indeed moved much farther to the right. It is hard to imagine any republican president today establishing the Environmental Protection Agency or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, like Richard Nixon. An interesting exercise is to download a copy of the republican party platform for 1956, when Eisenhower was running for reelection. Its every bit as liberal as most democratic party platforms of today. In it are provisions supporting labor unions, gender equality, social security, and a host of other plans which today's republicans consider anathema. Late in the Obama administration, the EPA issued a regulation requiring oil companies to repair ruptures in their pipelines, and to clean up the resulting oil spill. prior to that, there had been no such requirement, which demonstrates that the EPA has governed with kid gloves. Oil companies traditionally left pipeline leaks unrepaired, because the cost of repairing them exceeded the value of the oil lost. it can safely be assumed that, based only on common sense ethical considerations, most Americans believe that companies should indeed be required to clean up their onw messes. Trump, not surprisingly, eliminated this very reasonable regulation on the grounds that it imposed an undue burden on industry, and was economically harmful, like all other government regulations. Overwhelmingly, republicans support the deregulation of the economy and the environment, as beneficial to economic growth. For the, the bottom line is more important than keeping the environment clean. They claim that they, like everyone else, are concerned about clean air, water, and soil. they are not. Fifty years ago, they were. The extremism is not manifested in today's liberalism, but rather, within the mainstream conservative movement.