[nokona13]

[ QUOTE ]
So let me see if I understand your defense. Pre-Goldwater Democrats and Republicans did not represent liberalism and conservativism. Democrats of today are not the Democrats of yesterday (without defending the Democrats of yesterday). Republicans of today are not the Republicans of yesterday.

That's one helluva program you bring to the table. Let's not talk about past events, experience, or associations -- let's just talk in platitudes about the future.

...

I'm still looking for core beliefs (and that shouldn't include "I believe this because it makes me feel good ...")

[/ QUOTE ]

You write like you have a clue, so I'm going to assume you're simply suffering from the normal conservative blinders disease that's running rampant in this country. Since you seem to know some history, you'll know that, on the whole, in the 20th century, the Republican party has been the more beholden to the interests of the business elite and large corporations, and there has been a larger, though not always dominant, economic populist voice within the Democratic party.

Now, since you know that history, you're only kidding yourself if you can't admit there was a dramatic sea change in the posture of the two parties with relation to civil rights and cultural issues in general in the 1960s. There's clearly no argument that in the 19th century, it was indeed the Democratic party that was the bastion of racist whites, especially in the south. It's also quite clear that ALL of those people (or their physical or political descendants) have now switched parties and are now a dominant faction with the Republican party. The Democrats decline, in fact, has been linked to the flight of working and middle class white voters to the GOP, starting with racist whites in the south in the 1960s.

Is it abandoning history to recognize that this massive change has occured? No, it seems more a twisting of the historical truth to try to claim any of the mantle of Lincoln's emancipation for the modern Republican party, whose resurgence was kicked off by the attraction of racist whites from a Democratic party that had come to vote for civil rights for minorities.

Now for core beliefs, if you want a pithy response to the Republican "God, guns, no taxes, and death to the fags", how about "Reason, opportunity, enough taxes, and love your mother earth"?