In recent history whenever the right has splintered due to a challenge from the right, rather than hurting that party, it has resulted in that party eventually moving further to the right. Examples include the Canadian Reform Party, the TEA Party and the UCP in Alberta. Extremism always leads to bad outcomes.
I would argue yes. The TEA party ran candidates against Republicans in primaries. It's really as much as you can do in a 2 party system.
The Reform Party and UCP were both parties farther to the right than the traditional conservative parties and ran against them. It didn't take too long for the parties to merge and move further to the right.
Right-wing ideologies usually have strength and power as one of the dynamics. So, it's not surprising that they tend to be pragmatic when it comes to splitting votes and watering down their influence.
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I heard some pundits talking yesterday about how disconnected the government has become from the people and one of the points that was made related to age. I haven't fact checked the numbers but apparently the average age in the US is 38 and the average age of the ruling class in Washington is 68. I found that to be quite interesting.
I would argue yes. The TEA party ran candidates against Republicans in primaries. It's really as much as you can do in a 2 party system.
The Reform Party and UCP were both parties farther to the right than the traditional conservative parties and ran against them. It didn't take too long for the parties to merge and move further to the right.
Right-wing ideologies usually have strength and power as one of the dynamics. So, it's not surprising that they tend to be pragmatic when it comes to splitting votes and watering down their influence.
Hmm, admittedly the two-party system makes it hard to differentiate between a party split and an ideological split inside a party.
I'm also personally of the opinion that the more-or-less-fascists have been the majority within the Republican party for quite some time now. It's mostly a split between outright fascists and people who support all the same ideas but are too ignorant to actually know what fascism is.
This video puts it very well. (It's a video you need to watch in full, sorry.)
Last edited by Itse; 01-24-2021 at 05:56 AM.
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I would argue yes. The TEA party ran candidates against Republicans in primaries.
The Tea Party was not an alternative or splinter movement. The Tea Party was devised and run by well-known Republican operatives at the bidding of their libertarian funders. What appeared to be grassroots was actually astro turf.
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It's really as much as you can do in a 2 party system.
Yep, this is how you radicalize and quickly shift party position away from reasonable and centrist governing practices. The benefactors were tired of a slow shift to the right and manufactured a seismic event to shake the party foundations and create an apparent groundswell of support. In reality it was a very small segment of the base, but the echo chamber provided by Fox and Hate Radio made the movement appear larger and gain traction in the mainstream base. It was a brilliant psyops campaign and proved very effective. Lessons learned from observing this were used to weaken ISIS and radical Islam in the Middle East.
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Right-wing ideologies usually have strength and power as one of the dynamics. So, it's not surprising that they tend to be pragmatic when it comes to splitting votes and watering down their influence.
They don't have strength and power, but they desire strength and power. They will do anything and everything to attain positions where strength and power are benefits, then do anything to maintain that power. Pragmatism rarely enters the equation. The playbook for these power thirsty ######bags is The Prince and they embrace every sub-human characteristic described in that text.
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They don't have strength and power, but they desire strength and power. They will do anything and everything to attain positions where strength and power are benefits, then do anything to maintain that power. Pragmatism rarely enters the equation. The playbook for these power thirsty ######bags is The Prince and they embrace every sub-human characteristic described in that text.
This may be splitting hairs but what I meant was that right-wing parties tend to do whatever it takes to get or maintain power, including merge with more extreme right groups.
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The Canadian examples are pretty much the definition of splinter parties dragging the main party to the extremes.
A brief history of the two parties;
The Reform party was a federal splinter party that ran against the traditional Progressive Conservatives. They actually won more seats then the traditional party forming official opposition, but the Liberals still won elections amid some typical liberal scandals, so the parties decided to merge into the Alliance with I'm going to say was 2/3 of the way right between the PCs & The Reforms. The Alliance did terrible electorally and rebranded itself The Conservative Party which tacked back to the left a bit about half way between the Reforms and the old PCs (dropping progressive from their title).
The Wild Rose ran against the provincial progressive conservative party, from a position to the right of the median republican (which is saying something, because in the 90s US democrats were to the right of Canadian PCs), again the PCs won government and the WR won official opposition twice. Then there was a backlash election to have two conservative parties running the government, and our unionist New Democrat Party won a governing majority. While neither of Conservatives parties were in power they merged into the United Conservative Party and won a supermajority in the next election. I would say about 75 - 90 % of the way to the WR. They are now basically US republicans, which in Canada I would define as right wing extremists and there is no credible conservative movement in Alberta right now, because the splinter party dragged them so far to the right.
With Alberta being the heartland of the Canadian conservative movement, the UPC party has actually dragged the slightly more moderate federal conservative party to the right, who is doing well with some of the divisive rhetoric the republicans are using in Canadas version of the rust belt (suburban Ontario). So the provincial splinter party had even managed to drag the federal party to the right.
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Sure would like to see the administration stop rationalizing this 100 million does in 100 days goal. The last three days in the US have seen well over 1 million doses per day.
Even Fauci debunked this "starting from scratch" narrative that some are trying to promulgate.
I understand the psychology behind criticizing your predecessor and lowering expectations but the math is out there for all to see.
Sure would like to see the administration stop rationalizing this 100 million does in 100 days goal. The last three days in the US have seen well over 1 million doses per day.
Even Fauci debunked this "starting from scratch" narrative that some are trying to promulgate.
I understand the psychology behind criticizing your predecessor and lowering expectations but the math is out there for all to see.
Fauci is full of ####. His purview is NOT the logistics of vaccine distribution. The feds haven't had a plan for distribution of vaccine, which has been a big part of the problem. They have left it up to the states and counties. The feds grossly under ordered vaccine and have not been able to get the right amount to the states to meet the need. For example, Arizona is begging for more vaccine because the state has a distribution plan in place and has executed on it fairly efficiently with only small level of spoilage due to lack of refrigeration. Some states have been good while others have been a train wreck. This never should have been handed off the states, this should have been a FEMA issue and that agency should have been tasked with getting the vaccine in arms of people. This has been a disaster from the word go. Not enough vaccine purchased, no logistical support in distribution, no verification of the required infrastructure to support the program, and no expertise on the ground to make sure things run smoothly.
Fauci isn’t full of ####. It’s just a lack of context and predictably the media twisting words to make everything political.
Fauci answered the question honestly and so did Biden. Their answers weren’t at odds with each other because they weren’t talking about the exact same thing and they don’t have the same outlook.
It’s ridiculous that his has turned into a gotcha moment.
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Barring supply issues, 100M doses in 100 days is an extremely low bar to meet and ending up anywhere around that would have to be considered a big failure. Deliveries are expected to come in at more than double that.
Right now, the US doesn't have a problem due to lack of doses ordered or distribution issues; they're just hitting the limits of the manufacturing capabilities of the companies. Pfizer and Moderna are only delivering about 8.5M doses a week (1.2M a day) right now and the US is administering about that many per day at this point. That will have to increase (by almost double) if they're going to meet their 200M doses by the end of March, but as long as administered doses are matching the deliveries, the bottleneck is production, like it is everywhere else in the world.
Barring supply issues, 100M doses in 100 days is an extremely low bar to meet and ending up anywhere around that would have to be considered a big failure. Deliveries are expected to come in at more than double that.
Without a solid distribution plan that is consistently applied across the country, that target is difficult to hit.
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Right now, the US doesn't have a problem due to lack of doses ordered or distribution issues; they're just hitting the limits of the manufacturing capabilities of the companies.
Yes, there are significant problems. The lack of direction and logistical expertise from the feds has made this a massive boondoggle.
"After months of planning, the U.S. government's "warp speed" rollout of COVID-19 vaccines has instead progressed at a snail's pace, threatening to prolong local lockdowns and increase the virus death toll in America. "
"Some states have expressed disappointment with the rollout, acknowledging their own issues but also seeking more federal resources amid concerns about the burden they now have to get vaccines into patients' arms. In several cases, local snafus on the ground have created their own delays, not to mention dangerous and costly mistakes."
"With no federal mandate for how to administer the vaccine, it's up to the states to decide who gets the vaccine and when, creating a confusing patchwork of rules that vary greatly across the country. While some states are focused exclusively on health care workers, others have started vaccinating the elderly and other frontline workers, too."
"But many states continue to struggle with the vaccine roll out. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says the federal government raised expectations by expanding eligibility but didn’t follow up with the supply. And in California the new strain of the virus has been detected in several large outbreaks."
"The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued elaborate vaccine priority guidelines, but states are free to come up with their own rules and a number of them have done just that."
"In the first major hiccup of the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine, states this week found themselves scrambling to adjust as they received word they would get between 20% and 40% less vaccine next week than they had been told as late as Dec. 9."
States are demanding more vaccine as they found they were shorted expected volumes (referenced above) or they have exceeded the doses available to them.
What makes things even worse, some states have been instructed to give out the doses they have and not be concerned about having enough on hand for the second dose.
"The Trump administration is asking states to speed delivery of COVID-19 vaccines to people 65 and older and to others at high risk by no longer holding back the second dose of the two-dose shots, officials said Tuesday."
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Pfizer and Moderna are only delivering about 8.5M doses a week (1.2M a day) right now and the US is administering about that many per day at this point. That will have to increase (by almost double) if they're going to meet their 200M doses by the end of March, but as long as administered doses are matching the deliveries, the bottleneck is production, like it is everywhere else in the world.
The real problem here is the Trump administration didn't order enough vaccine to begin with. They had the opportunity and the right of first refusal and didn't do the right thing and really try to understand the larger problem. They never had a plan and as a result never developed a plan that could deal with the logistics of such a problem.
I know in our county we don't have enough vaccine on hand to vaccinate 1st responders and the elderly. We don't have enough doses to deal with demand. The state keeps asking for more, but we don't have enough. In other areas there aren't enough people and spaces available to held administer the vaccine. They are reliant on volunteers and that is holding things up. It is a logistical nightmare. This should have been a FEMA matter and then activated the National Guard to setup locations and administer the vaccinations. That would have been a real response, but under Trump it was every state for themselves, and it has been a #### show.
The US buying more doses wouldn't have made them get produced any faster in the first quarter. It might have made the companies prioritize the US a bit more, but even that is questionable. The US is already getting about 85-90% of Moderna's worldwide production, so there isn't really much room to increase deliveries there.
For Pfizer, they didn't take OWS money (and thus weren't beholden to the US) and were negotiating with a bunch of countries all at the same time. When the US signed the agreement with them in late July, Pfizer had already concluded a deal with the UK, was 10-15 days from concluding deals with Japan and Canada, and was negotiating with the EU for a very large order. So the US getting all of their production was never in the cards, no matter how many doses they ordered. Any additional doses that Pfizer offered to sell would have mostly been arriving in Q2 and beyond.
As for the other stuff, every country is going through the exact same things except to an even greater degree. The federal government in Canada gave rough guidelines for prioritization, but ultimately the provinces distribute them how they see fit. The provinces don't need the federal government to hold their hands in determining who to prioritize, so I don't see why states would either. I mean, I know the US medical system is a mess, but it's not that hard to figure it out. If the Yukon and its 35K population could come up with a clear and robust vaccination strategy in December, there's no reason every single state can't.
Ultimately, the US is currently administering doses about as fast as they can be manufactured, so manufacturing is clearly the bottleneck at this point. So while I'm sure there are tons of issues (like there are everywhere) and the federal government under Trump was useless, at the end of the day the rollout can only occur as fast as doses are being produced.
The Canadian examples are pretty much the definition of splinter parties dragging the main party to the extremes.
A brief history of the two parties;
The Reform party was a federal splinter party that ran against the traditional Progressive Conservatives. They actually won more seats then the traditional party forming official opposition, but the Liberals still won elections amid some typical liberal scandals, so the parties decided to merge into the Alliance with I'm going to say was 2/3 of the way right between the PCs & The Reforms. The Alliance did terrible electorally and rebranded itself The Conservative Party which tacked back to the left a bit about half way between the Reforms and the old PCs (dropping progressive from their title).
The Wild Rose ran against the provincial progressive conservative party, from a position to the right of the median republican (which is saying something, because in the 90s US democrats were to the right of Canadian PCs), again the PCs won government and the WR won official opposition twice. Then there was a backlash election to have two conservative parties running the government, and our unionist New Democrat Party won a governing majority. While neither of Conservatives parties were in power they merged into the United Conservative Party and won a supermajority in the next election. I would say about 75 - 90 % of the way to the WR. They are now basically US republicans, which in Canada I would define as right wing extremists and there is no credible conservative movement in Alberta right now, because the splinter party dragged them so far to the right.
With Alberta being the heartland of the Canadian conservative movement, the UPC party has actually dragged the slightly more moderate federal conservative party to the right, who is doing well with some of the divisive rhetoric the republicans are using in Canadas version of the rust belt (suburban Ontario). So the provincial splinter party had even managed to drag the federal party to the right.
We've had sort of a similar phenomenon in Finland, with a new right wing anti-immigrant conservative party Perussuomalaiset exploding into one of the largest parties in the country, and they clearly moved the Overton window in Finnish politics quite a bit to a more conservative-right position. (Fiscally they're kind of right wing, but mostly just uninterested, so in that sense the change hasn't been significant.)
That said, the GOP as is really can't move much more right without outright digging out the swastikas. I think a party split right now would leave the rest of the GOP in a much more moderate position. History doesn't always repeat itself.
It also seems to me that the attack on Capitol has sent some shockwaves through the right, with a lot of people suddenly realizing they have to differentiate themselves from the actual extremists and sideline the fascists from positions of power, if not for any other reason than to prevent their own ideas to be completely drowned out among the waves of extremism.
The attack on Capitol could even mark somewhat of a turning tide globally. For example it seems to me that the Finnish media has suddenly realized they need to be a lot more critical of our local right wing populists, and our other major right wing party has suddenly been a lot less eager to side with Perussuomalaiset. (Both are currently in the opposition.)
(I think this is a temporary situation though, my personal expectation is that things have to get a lot worse before they start getting better.)
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