Discussed the history of the Republican party from the Republican perspective during the Clinton years specifically.
Timestamp 4:02: When Democrats Bill Clinton and Al Gore were elected into office, Movement conservatives didn’t like them. They were already dissatisfied by George Bush, and were against Clinton. Republicans during this time work to contain social programs so they can later dismantle them. To achieve this, they work on focusing on cutting taxes to take money away from social programs which would help economic growth. They also attempted economic growth by putting money at the top so they would employ people at the bottom..
Timestamp 9:39
Democrats are claimed to be buying votes with Social Welfare legislation by giving away free stuff in a socialist fashion to buy their votes. This supports the movement conservative opinion on the “ re-distribution of wealth”.This makes movement conservatives feel that people at the “bottom” shouldn’t be able to vote for social programs that they aren’t paying into.
Timestamp 12:31
Motor voter act says that you can vote at government offices and DMV’s by making it easier to vote which Republicans viewed as vote packing by making the voting process easier.
Timestamp 14:31
Clinton’s were surrounded by scandal, most notably a property investment. During this time, they didn’t turn a profit, but the person they invested in continued to have questionable deals of which they weren’t involved. The Republican they appointed was connected to the Arkansas project, who had interest in getting rid of Clinton. The Prosecutor (Ken Starr) Subpoena’s Paula Jones on the grounds of sexual harassment.
Timestamp 18:20
Standoff in Idaho at Ruby Ridge convinced people who were told the US government is leaning towards socialism that Ruby Ridge is building Militias. This thought process is reinforced by Waco, TX.
Timestamp 22:35
To break the democratic hold on the house, Republicans introduce a program called The Contract with America. This contact was intended to be a binding agreement to fulfill promises to the American people. These items included changes of auditing congress, cutting staffing, and ⅗ of congress had to be in agreement to pass tax related items, amongst other things.
Timestamp 27:32
Rush Limbaugh becomes an honorary member of the Freshman class of the house of representatives. This allows him to spread their agenda, including shredding the social welfare system. During this time, the main agenda is no longer changing social welfare, but rather cutting taxes. Clinton Veto’d some of their ideas, which frustrated republicans. As a reaction, the Republicans shut down the government for 28 days.
Timestamp 33:10
Republicans under the Senate argue Voter fraud for two elections when women won office. They imply black people don’t have the integrity to vote and skew the voting results. In reality, voter fraud is almost non existent.
Timestamp 40:30
K Street project was Designed to make lobbyists work with Republicans to initiate cutting budgets for House Representatives. This results in House Representatives not having the budget to pass laws since their staff is cut, which forces them to turn to lobbyists.
Timestamp 42:15
Movement conservatives get their own News Channel, which is Fox News. This is owned by Rupert Murdoch. He sees movement conservatives as a market, and he supplies “selling” the ideas. Fox News is not a news channel, even though News is in the name. It is an entertainment channel, as stated within their terms of use. Their reporters are real and are accountable for documenting sources, but their TV personalities are not. They present an image of movement conservative agenda, with watered down facts, and women who simply do what they are told. People who use Fox news as their main source of information are 3-8% more likely to change their party to Republican.
Timestamp 51:50
Economy did very well during the Clinton years. This happens by taxing people who make over 250k, increased corporate taxes by 1% and gas tax by almost 4%. Republicans anticipated this would ruin the economy, but it boomed. GDP climbed, unemployment dropped, and inflation fell. Deficits began to shrink as well. This didn’t work in the favor of the republican agenda, so they revisited the Whitewater Scandal. Ken Starr found a new female witness, which was Monica Lewinsky. During this scandal, Clinton remained credible, but Newt Gingrich was viewed as an embarrassment due to his extramarital affair and that he couldn’t fill seats in the house as promised.
Timestamp 59:54
Voter ID law right before the 2000 election in an effort to “reduce voter fraud”, in reality, this only reduces black African Americans from voting. This is an attempt to get the Clintons out of office by taking 100,000 voters off the roll with this law in Florida.
[From wikipedia] Richardson’s first book, The Greatest Nation of the Earth (1997), stemmed from her dissertation at Harvard University. Inspired by Eric Foner’s work on pre-Civil War Republican ideology, Richardson analyzed Republican economic policies during the war. She contended that their efforts to create an activist Federal Government during the Civil War marked a continuation of Republican free labor ideology. These policies, such as war bonds and greenbacks or the Land Grant College Act and the Homestead Act, revolutionized the role of the Federal Government in the U.S. economy. At the same time, these actions laid the groundwork for the Republican Party’s shift to Big Business after the Civil War.
In this 2001 book, Richardson "focused on the “Northern abandonment of Reconstruction.” Building on the earlier work of C. Vann Woodward, she argued that a more complete understanding of the period required appreciation of class, not only race. As Reconstruction continued into the 1870s and especially the 1880s, Republicans began to view African Americans in the South more from a class perspective and less from the perspective of race that had driven their earlier humanitarianism. In the midst of the labor struggles of the Gilded Age, Republicans came to compare “the demands of the ex-slaves for land, social services, and civil rights” to the demands of white laborers in the North. This ideological shift was the key to Republican abandonment of Reconstruction, as they chose the protection of their economic and business interests over their desire for racial equality." [From wikipedia]
In this 2007 book, "Richardson presented Reconstruction as a national event that impacted all Americans, not just those in the South. She incorporated the West into the discussion of Reconstruction as no predecessor had. Between 1865 and 1900, Americans re-imagined the role of the federal government, calling upon it to promote the well-being of its citizens. However, racism, sexism, and greed divided Americans, and the same people who increasingly benefited from government intervention—white, middle-class Americans—actively excluded African-Americans, Native Americans, immigrants, and organized laborers from the newfound bounties of their reconstructed nation." [from wikipedia]
In this book, published in 2010, Richardson "focused on the U.S. Army’s slaughter of Native Americans in South Dakota in 1890. She argued that party politics and opportunism led to Wounded Knee. After a bruising midterm election, President Benjamin Harrison needed to shore up his support. To do so, he turned to The Dakotas, where he replaced seasoned Indian agents with unqualified political allies, who incorrectly assumed that the Ghost Dance Movement presaged war. The Army responded by sending one third of its force in order to avoid spending cuts from Congress. After the event, Republicans tried to paint the massacre as a heroic battle to stifle the resurgent Democrats." [wikipedia]
In this 2014 book, Richardson "extended her study of the Republican Party into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book studied the entire life of the GOP, from its inception in the 1850s through the presidency of George W. Bush. The party’s founders united against the “slave power,” a small group of wealthy white men who controlled all three branches of government. These Republicans articulated a new vision of an America in which all hardworking men could rise. But after the Civil War, Republicans began to emulate what they originally opposed. They tied themselves to powerful bankers and industrialists, sacrificing the well-being of ordinary Americans. A similar process took place after World War II, when Republicans sought to dismantle successful New Deal policies and prop up the wealthy. However, in both cases, reformers within the party were able to return the GOP to its founding vision of equality of opportunity, first Theodore Roosevelt during the Progressive Era, and then Dwight D. Eisenhower, who enforced integration and maintained the New Deal. The Nixon and Reagan administrations have represented yet another fall from the GOP’s founding purpose. It's ironic, Richardson points out, that Republicans treated Barack Obama with an unprecedented level of disrespect, as Obama's rise from humble beginnings to the highest office in the nation embodied the vision of the original Republicans." [wikipedia]
In her most recent publication, Richardson argues "that America was founded with contradicting ideals, with the ideas of liberty, equality, and opportunity on one hand, and slavery and hierarchy on the other. United States victory in the American Civil War should have settled that tension forever, but at the same time that the Civil War was fought, Americans also started moving into the West. In the West, Americans found and expanded upon deep racial hierarchies, meaning that hierarchical values survived in American politics and culture despite the crushing defeat of the pro-slavery Confederacy. Those traditions--a rejection of democracy, an embrace of entrenched wealth, the marginalization of women and people of color--have found a home in modern conservative politics, leaving the tremendous promise of America unfulfilled." [wikipedia]
