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→Speaker Mike Johnson
In middle school, we used to chant, "Smear the queer!" I had no idea what it meant. I just chanted along. This was in Texarkana. We could watch the political ads from Shreveport. Shreveport politics is, um, entertaining.
In middle school, we used to chant, "Smear the queer!" I had no idea what it meant. I just chanted along. This was in Texarkana. We could watch the political ads from Shreveport. Shreveport politics is, um, entertaining.
Johnson's views on energy and climate are right up my ally: [https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-a-environment/4275625-johnson-brings-record-of-climate-skepticism-to-speakership/ Johnson brings pro-oil, climate-skeptical record to speakership]. After all, Biden is pro-oil too, he just wants the oil produced in Venezuela and Iran. [[User:PeterKa|PeterKa]] ([[User talk:PeterKa|talk]]) 20:33, October 25, 2023 (EDT)
Johnson's views on energy and climate are right up my ally: [https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-a-environment/4275625-johnson-brings-record-of-climate-skepticism-to-speakership/ Johnson brings pro-oil, climate-skeptical record to speakership]. After all, Biden is pro-oil too, he just wants the oil produced in Venezuela and Iran. [[User:PeterKa|PeterKa]] ([[User talk:PeterKa|talk]]) 20:33, October 25, 2023 (EDT)
:[EC] Left-wing ideology has always been changing, and "right-wing" is defined as whatever is to the right of the present strain of Leftism. Jeffersonian Republicans were classical liberals who supported ''laissez-faires'' free-market capitalism and free trade, yet comprised the left wing of politics because they opposed the classically conservative and "aristocratic" Federalists. Subsequent hardline Jacksonianism left-wing outlets, especially the Young America movement under [[George Nicholas Sanders]], supported free trade, the gold standard, the expansion of capitalism, and popular sovereignty. Of course, support for the gold standard changing from a left-wing position in antebellum years to right-wing in the postbellum era was due to changing circumstances: the central government was no longer dispensing gold alone, but greenbacks, and business interests once open to paper now supported a quick return to ''specie payments''.
:And so, the left-wing Democrats in the postbellum era were divided: some maintained the same positions regardless of changing political context (the purportedly "right-wing" August Belmont who supported ''specie'' in 1868 was previously a key figure in the radically liberal Young America movement), while others applied a consistent spirit of Jacksonianism now in support of greenbacks, particularly the Copperhead [[George H. Pendleton]] of Ohio. In [[Rutherford B. Hayes]]'s winning gubernatorial campaign, the hardcore Jacksonian candidate used populist Jacksonian rhetoric in support of greenbacks against the "Money Power" and was labeled by Republican media outlets as a radical, Communist-aligned revolutionary.
:Machine politics also demonstrates another change in political ideology definitions: countless Northeastern "reactionaries" were once aligned with or sympathetic to liberal reform in Reconstruction and the early Gilded Age. The [[Liberal Republican Party]], to the left of the regular Grantist GOP element, were adamant supporters of ''laissez-faires'' and anti-Communist. [[Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr.]], the poster child of archreactionary Republican politics in the [[Progressive Era]], held sympathies with liberal reformers in the 1880s!
:And the shift from the Progressive Era to the New Deal exemplifies the "old leftists become new rightists" perception further. Key Progressives such as [[Hiram Johnson]], [[Burton K. Wheeler]], and arguably even Clare Hoffman were once solid on the left, and yet at some point in the 1930s "moved rightward." Of course, what really happened was that the context changed: FDR attempted to circumvent constitutional separation of powers with his infamous [[court packing]] scheme, which was too much for Progressives to swallow: they were willing to support most [[New Deal]] initiatives, but the idea of packing the court to achieve liberal accomplishments was unacceptable.
:The real shift in left–right ideology materialized in the [[World War II]] years. Price controls, stemming from a centralized bloated bureaucracy, was opposed by an alliance of conservatives and old-school Progressives, and because the issues were no longer primarily over tariff rates, public vs. private rural electrification, and tax rates on the rich, the Progressives increasingly aligned with conservatives in opposition to the "new liberalism" of FDR and Truman. The [[States' Rights Democratic Party]] ([[Dixiecrat]]s) were anti–Fair Deal, but many were once solidly pro–New Deal.
:And this is just a condensed summary. :) —[[User:LT|<code><span style="background:#FF8181">'''LT'''</span></code>]] '''''[[User talk:LT|<sup>Rev. 22:13</sup>]]''''' Thursday, 20:36, October 25, 2023 (EDT)