The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted

I reviewed this book when it was released in August 2012 during the heat of that year’s campaign. However, the review was written in a heated moment of a heated campaign, so I took it down son after the election. I am a registered member of the Republican party, but was annoyed with Republican nomination of Mitt Romney for all the reasons Lofgren mentions. I voted for Obama and blogged for him. Not that Romney's a bad person, but a corporation CEO and venture (vulture?) capitalist as president was the last thing we needed in 2012, so soon after the corporations had wrecked the economy with systemic banking fraud combined with the fever to destroy employment in the USA by moving everybody's job to Mexico and China.I decided to repost the review in July 2016 because Mr. Lofgren correctly anticipated back in 2012 that Republican voters would eventually rebel against their party’s “establishment.” Now in 2016 they’ve done it by nominating Donald Trump over the party's "establishment" candidates, like John Kasich, whom Lofgren worked for. Thus, my original review of 2012 may serve as an audit trail that explains the roots of the disaffection among Republican Party voters (like me) going back to the 2012 election:==========================Mike Lofgren’s credentials as a moderate-to-conservative Republican seem beyond reproach. He worked for 28 years as a staff member for Ohio Republican Congressman John Kasich and Republican Senator Judd Greg, both influential Conservative Republicans who did yeoman work on budgeting and national security.I agree with his take that:=====Republican politicians became more and more intransigently dogmatic. They doubled down on advancing policies that transparently favored the top 1 percent of earners in this country while obstructing measures such as the extension of unemployment insurance. They seemed to want to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted in the middle of the worst economic meltdown in eighty years.Do Democrats offer a sane alternative? The explanation is more complicated, but the answer is, finally, no….It is not that they are fanatics or zealots; it is that most do not appear to believe in anything very strongly.These new Democrats will say anything to win an election….Many of them last only a term or two, because if people want a Republican, they will vote for the real thing. What has evolved in America over the last three decades is a one-and-a-half-party system, as Democrats opportunistically cleave to the “center,” which, in the relativistic universe of American politics, keeps moving further to the right.====Lofgren is right that the center of gravity of American politics has shifted far to the right. That happened because President Reagan’s economic policies of cutting taxes and deregulating business were so successful in reviving our stagnant economy. When Reagan took office in 1981, the maximum federal income tax rate was 70%. The 49% rate kicked in at $45,800 for married couples filing jointly. The economy couldn’t grow when middle class families were paying half their incomes to the federal government, while the wealthy who are most prone to invest in business creation were paying 70%. Furthermore, the high inflation Reagan inherited pushed people into higher tax brackets every year even if their buying power did not increase. This was the perfect witches brew of economic “malaise” that stagnated the economy during the 1970s.Reagan and the conservative Congressional allies who were elected with him in 1980 restored the economy by reducing the maximum tax rate to 28% and indexing it to inflation. Reagan also persuaded Congress to repeal its legacy of excessive regulation (such as price controls on energy production) enacted during its prior years of Liberal Democratic control.America’s economic revival was observed around the world. As Russia’s future President Boris Yeltsin said, after visiting the United States: “Under President Reagan a number of improvements took place, and he was reelected. He turned out not to be such a simpleton as we had been led to believe---although several sore spots remained, which he was unable to cure in eight years. Nevertheless, the major improvements, especially in the American economy, were there for all to see.”Not only did Reagan recover the U.S. economy, but the visible success of his policies eventually overturned the Socialist / Communist regimes in the rest of the world and won the Cold War. Thus, there is little wonder that the USA shifted far to the right during and after Reagan’s terms.However, as often happens in life, successful policies get carried to unproductive extremes. During the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush (concurrent with Republican-controlled Congresses), taxes on investments were reduced all the way down to 15%, while regulations on banks were repealed, thereby allowing them to play the stock market and concoct complex and unstable investment vehicles with their depositors’ money.Combined with this was the mania of jobs elimination by corporations via {downsizing, rightsizing, offshoring, outsourcing, re-engineering, work force reduction, involuntary early retirement}. The middle class became increasingly dis-employed, putting downward pressure on wages, while also reducing or eliminating the private sector’s pensions and healthcare benefits that the middle class depended upon.The reasons for the dis-employment of the middle class might be considered good or bad, depending on one’s viewpoint. Some jobs were eliminated by automation; some by mergers and acquisitions; some by removal of American jobs to foreign countries with lower labor costs; and some by “business re-engineering” which seeks to lower labor costs by removing the higher-paid workers from the payroll. As a result, labor force participation peaked in 1999 and began declining. The incomes of the middle class fell with them, making it ever more difficult to sustain the consumption side of the economy.We thus had a situation where1. Funds available for investment were increased by tax cuts, but the funds were not invested in productive, economy-building projects like new factories. They were mainly used to inflate the values of real estate, stocks, and unstable investment derivatives to unsustainable levels. Much of the “investment” was made in mergers and acquisitions and the removal of American jobs to foreign countries, which destroyed employment rather than creating it.2. As job opportunities diminished and wages declined, the Middle Class became unable to pay its mortgages and other obligations, and the economy became unbalanced with too much “investment” and too little consumer spending.3. The result was the economy’s near death experience in 2008 and the weak-as-dishwater recovery that has followed.Both parties viewed the economic collapse through ideological prisms. Republicans insisted that we needed MORE tax cuts and deregulations, while Democrats insisted that we needed more public spending on infrastructure and education. Of course it is entirely natural that the parties should think this way. After all, Reagan’s economic policies of tax cuts and deregulations DID revive the economy in the 1980s, while Franklin Roosevelt’s massive spending on public works did soak up the worst of the unemployment during the Great Depression of the 1930s.Lofgren devotes most of his efforts toward critiquing the Republicans’ economic agendas. Unfortunately, instead of telling us WHY he believes Republican policies are no longer effective in recovering the economy, he beats us over the head with the idea that the Republicans are just plain nuts. According to him Republicans started going nuts when Newt Gingrich brought them Congressional majorities in 1994. He characterizes Republicans as gun-crazy, liberty-destroying, Bible-thumping Neanderthals who cater to the rich while ignoring the middle class and poor. He thinks their favorite spectator sport is sending the sons of the poor off to foreign countries to kill people who speak other languages and worship in other faiths. It’s a waste of time to rehash the Iraq War, when the main priority of Americans now is with jobs and the economy.His diatribe against religion is also childish. I attend Catholic Churches that offer prayers both to prevent abortion (Conservative value) and to promote Social Justice (Liberal value). The churches have every right to make their feelings known on these moral issues.This book is especially disappointing, since it started out being 100% dead-center, right-on-the-money in describing the malaise that afflicts both our parties. Unfortunately, after the first 20% it becomes an irrational diatribe against Republican Conservatives. I am a moderate Republican who agrees with Lofgren that the Republicans have been unreasonable in opposing Obama to such an extreme. But they have opposed him on principle, not because they’re insane.However, Lofgren has correctly predicted that voters had become fed up with "Establishment" candidates. Bernie Sanders made an imposing challenge to Hillary Clinton, while Republican voters rejected their party leaders' favorites like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich (and even passed over the unabashedly conservative Ted Cruz) in order to select Donald Trump. It is apparent that many Republican voters share Lofgren’s view that the Republican Party Establishment had become out of touch with the middle class rank-and-file. The majority does not seem to crave more tax cuts for the 1% or more deregulation of the bankers whose reckless speculations plunged us into the Great Recession. They’re not keen on privatizing Social Security. They're concerned mainly about the deterioration in their personal economic prospects. They want more jobs IN AMERICA for themselves and their children.Now, in July 2016, I am curious to know Lofgren’s opinion on Trump. Is he happy that Trump has trumped what Lofgren sees as the harebrained conservative excesses of the Republican leadership? Or does he think Trump is merely a different manifestation of what he claims are Republican delusions? I googled up one of his recent columns, and it seems to be some of both:=====My experience with GOP politics was a bit more up-close and personal than that of most pundits. For 28 years, I worked on Capitol Hill as a Republican staffer. The 2008 selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as vice presidential candidate was embarrassing enough to me, but once the congressional GOP appeared eager to drive the country into a debt default in 2011, I decided to leave and become a political independent. By that point it seemed plausible to me that Trump – or someone similar – was likely if not inevitable. Although conservative ideologues denounce him for being doctrinally impure, he is the logical culmination of deeper psychological trends both in the party and the broader American culture that I have observed over the years.=================As for now, with Trump leading the Republicans, I'm reminded of the lyric in the Three Dog Night song "This is the craziest party that could ever be!" I can imagine Lofgren saying that in a pejorative way, but I'm wondering if Trump might not turn out to be "crazy like a fox." At any rate, I'll be looking for Lofgren's take a year from now, no matter how the election turns out!

Mike Lofgren's THE PARTY IS OVER is a distillation of what a lot of people have been saying about what is wrong with Washington for sometime now. I suspect that I am like a lot of the other unwashed who had no idea who this man was until the publication of this book that is as scary as a cancer diagnosis. Mr. Lofgren until his recent retirement was a senior analyst on the House and Senate Budget committees so he has an insider's view of what goes on on Capitol Hill. Taking no prisoners, he writes with authority and, unlike so many of the authors churning out books on Washington, he includes footnotes, something that a lot of journalists apparently have forgotten about. I was so pleased to see him describe Bob Woodward-- who has moved light years away, in my opinion, from those days when ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN inspired a whole generation of idealistic young people to go into journalism-- as someone who with his "'just so' stories and improbable recall of dialogue he never heard, has served as a vehicle for senior White House personnel to dispense self-aggrandizing gossip." I have railed for years about Woodward's telling us what persons he never interviewed "thought" since he usually uses only anonymous sources and expects us to take him at his word.But I digress. Mr. Lofgren's chapter on "Media Complicity" is about just one of the things wrong with Washington. But he does remind us that so-called neutral journalists have become stenographer's for "self-serving factions in government operating under a cloak of anonymity." In addition to the media, Lofgren takes on Wall Street, the religious right, taxes and the rich, anti-intellectualism, the obsession with war, and how all these are tied into the current Republican party, but he also reserves a chapter for the Democrats and finds that they are not a whole lot better.As I said earlier, much of what this writer says is not new; he just gets it all down in one place and says it so well. Some of his observations: There is no divine plan guaranteeing America's global preeminence. In other words God may not be on our side. Under the current broken system, politicians are in a permanent campaign mode from the moment they are sworn in. The Constitution, contrary to the crazies, was written by fallible human beings. He finds that members of Congress are equipped with a "low cunning" since they got elected. Small businesses, in spite of all the rhetoric about letting them create jobs by doing away with regulations and taxes, account for only 7.2% of total employment in the U. S. , according to the nonpartisan Center for Economic and Policy Research. He debunks the myth that half of Americans pay no taxes. While they may not pay income taxes because of low incomes, they pay a lot of other taxes, payroll taxes for example, one of the "most regressive" forms of taxation. Mr. Lofgren attributes much of what is wrong with current Washington to Newt Gingrich, an "old reprobate," who is of course such an easy target. And I was glad to see him call out Saxby Chambliss for linking Max Cleland with Osama bin Laden in the 2002 Senate race in Georgia thereby winning the election. Whether or not you like Cleland, surely a triple-amputee who had received both a Silver and Bronze Star for his military service in Vietnam--Chambliss never served in the military-- can hardly be labeled as aiding the enemy. Lofgren also reminds the reader that Mitch McConnell said publicly that his mission was to insure that President Obama was a one-term president. Such statesmanship!Lofgren's chapter on "A Devil's Dictionary" is about how Republicans have seized control of the way Americans speak about public life and Democrats do not understand the power of language: "homeland" and "homeland security," "entitlements," "the war on terrorism shortened to "war on terror," "collateral damage" instead of "dead civilians." These and other words and phrases have become a part of our contemporary American political terms. The author offers his own list of over twenty words. Darwin's theory of evolution is an evil doctrine that "denies the teachings of the Bible." "Pro-life" is "the unconditional support of the first nine months of a human being's existence. After that period has expired, the same human being has an unconditional right to be executed by the state, sent off to war, or die without health insurance." And one more: The Tea Party is composed of people "covered by Medicare who hate socialized medicine."In his chapter "A Low Dishonest Decade" Lofgren discusses among other both depressing and scary topics Bush's rush to take the country into the war in Iraq: "Despite the elaborate efforts of the Bush administration to disguise the Iraq was as an exercise in self-defense, it was clearly a war of aggression." He also reminds us that despite the government's continual build-up of more expensive and technical weapons, that "two-thirds of the thousands of military casualties in the decade ahead would come from primitive homemade bombs." Finally by Lofgren's numbers, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the establishing of the Homeland Security Department and increasing the budgets of the State Department and Veterans Administration come to $4 trillion "of the $12 trillion slide in the fiscal picture since 2001."There is much more in this book. In the final chapter the author puts forth possible solutions to the mess he has described. Among them he suggests that young people go into public service and take back government, but his first proposal is that elections be public funded and that political cammpaigns only run from Labor Day until November. This would let politicians who are elected spend their time governing rather than being in a perpetual race for reelection. That would be quite wonderful; would it not? Mr. Lofgren speaks of and decorates the cover of his book with blue donkeys and red elephants-- and while I hope against hope that his suggested solutions come to fruition-- sadly I see another animal, a pig with wings.

See the US reviews for details on content. Everyone on the planet who is interested in the fate of the US, and the world, should understand the deep sickness at the heart of US politics. This is not a generalised critique of American capitalism or immorality, it's a careful analysis primarily of how the Republicans have destroyed democracy in the US, starting with the era of Gingrich, Abramoff, DeLay, Rove, etc. This is a relatively modern phenomenon where the last shreds of decent behaviour, including honesty and compassion have been burned away from the political machine in Washington by people who range from deranged to quite possibly evil. The Democrats have become infected with the corporate ownership disease in a sort of catch-up mode, possibly not having any choice. Result: an utterly dysfunctional system that cannot hope to address the needs of the US middle class - the main tax base, or pay its way in the world.So although some of us sit and watch the 'debates', read the NYT and other US media, really, we are looking at a useless spectacle. People from outside the US need to understand what's really going on fro two reasons: a) to avoid going the same path elsewhere and b) to be prepared for the shock-waves of the next decades in the US, as it heads down the path of becoming a totalitarian corporatised theocracy.

Very interesting but dated. Deals with the Republican Party in the lastelection, 2012 and earlier.

One of the the best non-partisan essay on the contemporary crisis of the American democracy and the gradual sclerosis of many of its institutions.

A1+++

Great