In this diary, I have more questions than answers so please answer...
How did the Republicans get into this fix? They are about to lose control of the White House and potentially lose filibuster power in the Senate. Blood bath is the only phrase that fits.
If you look back a short time, the situation can be explained by lots of stuff, GWB, crazy spending, corruption, lack of regulation, Neocon Foreign policy etc. etc. etc. but, I wondered, was there something further back that played a role?
Small things done consistently in strategic places have major impact
Please read on...
When I’m trying to solve a problem I often look for the "Trim tab". A trim tab can be found on the trailing edge of a large ship’s rudder. Properly applied and with relatively little energy, this small mechanical device can turn a ship weighing thousands of tons.
Buckminster Fuller put it best when describing himself:
Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary -- the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab.
It's a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it's going right by you, that it's left you altogether. But if you're doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go.
So I said, call me Trim Tab.
I like to think that the application of a "trim tab" will cause good things to happen. But I am also a firm believer in the law of unintended consequences. Thus, for every "good" that comes from the application of a trim tab, there is a "bad." Or in terms a physicist might understand, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
So what was the Republican party’s "trim tab." I’m thinking it was the "Southern Strategy".
Qualifier: What I know about the "Southern Strategy" could barely fill a DailyKos diary, but it seems to make sense.
Go back to the early 60’s and you see the Republican Party figuring out that winning the vote of the 1960s southern white male would put them in power. And it did. Nixon was successful as was GWB (and Carter and less so for Clinton too).
Unfortunately, for the Republicans, they got so good at winning the 1960 southern white male vote that they got bad at winning any other large voting block. (particularly since GWB became president.) And as our nation’s demographics shift, the party of the 1960’s southern white male is vanishing. Good riddance.
Are there other "trim tabs" probably. But they haven’t come to mind yet.
ARB