John Birch Society (R): America's Third Major Political Party Holds a Plurality in the 2015 House

[Triana]

The Birchers need to win only another 50 seats to reach majority status in the House of Representatives. They hold 168 seats now. That's 50 more seats to reach majority status without support from Business Republicans.

We see fractures in both the Democratic and Republican parties. This diary addresses the observed breakage of the Republican Party into two pieces. The Hard Right piece might as well call themselves "The Birch Society."

Some apply the "Tea Party" tag. But when it comes to voting this is anything but the populist, working class "Tea Party" that offered a conservative/libertarian alternative in 2009.

Republican seats in the House of Representatives have been taken over by ultraconservatives through a well-funded infiltration that goes back to 1980. These election campaigns have been supported by the same family and the sources of money that financed the John Birch Society all the way to back its founding in 1959.

. . .

One touchstone of the approved Bircher world view remains the notion that they are fighting against an evil "collectivist" plot to create a New World Order.

THE REST:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/20/1358555/-John-Birch-Society-R-America-s-Third-Major-Political-Party-Holds-a-Plurality-in-the-2015-House#

[PumpkinAle]

1. The Kochs must be so happy

stinking bawstards that they are.

[lunasun]

23. Would make their dad , a co founder of JBS so happy

[PumpkinAle]

25. The great louse himself

there is no wonder his offspring are so screwed up and full of illogical ideas about America.

[VanillaRhapsody]

2. Maybe so....but the odds are stacked strongly against them in 2016....

The challenge currently facing Democrats will likely be mirrored on the GOP side in 2016, when the Republicans have 24 Senate seats up, to only 10 for the Democrats. Seven of those 24 GOP seats are in states that President Obama won in 2012, and five are in states that he won by 5 points or more.

[former9thward]

4. Not in the House.

The Senate may be play but not the House.

[Fla Dem]

7. As long as you have gerrymandered districts by RW state goverments, it will be difficult

to win back the majority in the House of Representatives. That's why local politics are so critical. We have to start winning back state houses and state legislatures.

[VanillaRhapsody]

17. and WHY we have to go back to the 50 State Strategy of Howard Dean.

[Fla Dem]

19. +1000 nt

[tabbycat31]

22. +1001

In addition this means that we have to run Dems who can WIN in their state/district even if they're not perfect.

Unfortunately in this era of hyper partisanship, a serial killer would win with an R next to his name. We need to find a way to overcome that at the local level (which elections are not always partisan).

[libdem4life]

3. My Dad was a John Bircher. They groom candidates for decades. Just another reason to

have healthy, yeah early, discussions on Democratic candidates.

[yeoman6987]

6. I agree. A lot of their candidates are in their 40's

We need to canvass our Gen Xers and start getting them into Congress and the Presidency.

[Triana]

9. My aunt married into a JBS family. Her in-laws were JBS.

They were abusive and mean as hell. The stories she tells about their extremism and abuse are shocking.

[leveymg]

5. Let's just call them how they were described before McCarthyism: "Native Fascists"

One of the few who were brave enough to call them what they were in the 1930s and 1940s was pioneering investigative journalist, George Seldes. Wiki:

Among the favorite targets of In Fact was the National Association of Manufacturers.[3] Defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg, who subscribed to In Fact while an undergrad at Harvard, said, "I heard about the National Association of Manufacturers first from Seldes and more from Seldes than I ever heard again. If you were to read the mainstream press, you'd hardly become aware that such organizations existed, that businessmen worked together to pursue their own interests." [24] In fact also attacked Charles Lindbergh for his Nazi sympathies, the American Legion for helping to break strikes,[8] and labeled many captains of industry as "native fascists." . . .

In Fact immediately attracted the attention of government authorities. . . Articles claiming that the FBI was infiltrating unions and monitoring union activities resulted in FBI surveillance of Seldes and his publication. J. Edgar Hoover sent Seldes a 15-page letter denying such FBI activities.[27] The FBI subsequently questioned In Fact subscribers, particularly servicemen and -women, and had US postal officials reporting to the FBI on Seldes' mail correspondence. In Fact lost many of its subscribers in the late 1940s. Seldes later claimed that his critical coverage of Yugoslavia got the publication banned from Communist Party bookstores. The political climate discouraged subscriptions on the part of less ideologically committed readers as well.[27] In Fact ceased publication in 1950. I. F. Stone's Weekly, which started publication in 1953, took In Fact as its model.[8]

In addition to writing his newsletter, Seldes continued to publish books. These included Facts and Fascism (1943) and One Thousand Americans (1947), an account of the people who controlled America. Time called One Thousand Americans "a collection of truths, half-truths and untruths about the U.S. press and industry."[28] One Thousand Americans introduced a wide audience to the Business Plot, a supposed plan of America's corporate elite to overthrow the U.S. government in the early 1930s.[29]

Seldes published The People Don't Know on the origins of the Cold War in 1949.

[starroute]

20. My parents were terrified that the feds would get Seldes' complete mailing list

My father only mentioned this to me not long before he died a few years back. But I know that my parents and all their friends were badly spooked by McCarthyism. They didn't let on much about it to the kids, but even when I was five I could pick up on the general sense of paranoia.

[leveymg]

28. I was a pink diaper baby, but my parents were less paranoid about it

When I was a kid I was treated to heroic tales of Fidel and Che by a friend of my parents who had just returned from Cuba - this was the late 1960s, when that trip actually earned you an FBI file. But, my Dad also had William Rusher over for drinks, and he bought me copies off the Grand Central Station newsstand of both Ramparts and The National Review.

I guess if you associate with both extremes, it makes it more difficult for the profilers and gum shoes. They may (wrongly) assume that this makes one a centrist.

[pampango]

8. In their hearts: they are fighting against an evil "collectivist" plot to create a New World Order

Values

The organization claims to identify with a particular type of Christian principles, seeks to limit governmental powers, and opposes wealth redistribution, and economic interventionism. It opposes collectivism, totalitarianism, and communism. It opposes socialism as well, which it asserts is infiltrating U.S. governmental administration. In a 1983 edition of Crossfire, Congressman Larry McDonald (D-Georgia), then its newly appointed president, characterized the society as belonging to the Old Right rather than the New Right.

The society opposed the 1960s civil rights movement and claimed the movement had communists in important positions. In the latter half of 1965, the JBS produced a flyer titled "What's Wrong With Civil Rights?", which was used as a newspaper advertisement. In the piece, one of the answers was: "For the civil rights movement in the United States, with all of its growing agitation and riots and bitterness, and insidious steps towards the appearance of a civil war, has not been infiltrated by the Communists, as you now frequently hear. It has been deliberately and almost wholly created by the Communists patiently building up to this present stage for more than forty years." The society opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, claiming it violated the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and overstepped individual states' rights to enact laws regarding civil rights. The society opposes "one world government", and it has an immigration reduction view on immigration reform. It opposes the United Nations, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), and other free trade agreements. They argue the U.S. Constitution has been devalued in favor of political and economic globalization, and that this alleged trend is not accidental. It cited the existence of the former Security and Prosperity Partnership as evidence of a push towards a North American Union.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society

[mountain grammy]

10. Nothing is stacked against them.

This is how the Nazis came to power, they won elections.. Yes indeed, these boys know what they're doing. Reagan was a Bircher and voters bought into every lie. Want to know what the hell is wrong with Kansas? The Koch's and the John Birch Society. In fact that's what's wrong with America.

The John Birch Society is the Ku Klux Klan, and they have a majority in Congress. We are in a precarious position.

[Triana]

12. +1000 n/t

[blkmusclmachine]

11. Are they the Christian dominionists???

[libdem4life]

13. Don't think so. Back in the day it was about anti-communist...us or them.

I remember around 8 years old going with my Dad to our little Nebraska town's local puddlejumper airport where we were given binoculars to watch the sky for incoming communist planes. They had people sign up for 30 minutes of sky-scanning duty. It was serious business. McCarthy was kind of the face of the movement.

[hootinholler]

15. In Nebraska????!!??

I suspect someone would have noticed them commie planes before they got all the way to Nebraska.

[libdem4life]

16. Yeah, rural Nebraska no less. I've had many a hoot myself about it over the years.

Also the thought crossed my mind, uh, exactly what would we do? But at that age, ours is not to question why, (especially the Birchers) yada yada

Back atcha

[hootinholler]

18. Oh, I believe it was serious business

But I doubt the real reasons had fuck all to do with commie planes.

The absurdity of a plane making it to Nebraska prevented me from considering what would happen then.

Kinda like my childhood memories of the local rural Pa national guard doing riot training in the 60's. Somehow they got the high school to agree to allow the students to play the rioters. They were ready for the hippie scourge to arrive and by gawd knew how to handle them. But Nebraska commie plane watch has that beat by a mile.

[hootinholler]

14. No but there's a bit of overlap

They kinda resonate on some things.

[onenote]

21. Seems like the author had to stretch to make this argument

The Democrats have 188 members, which wouldn't fit the "Birchers have a plurality" argument so the Democrats get broken into two groups, "regular" Democrats and "Business" Democrats. The repubs are also broken into two groups, but its not "regular" and "business", its "Bircher" and "Business."

But I'd argue that ninety-plus percent of the "bircher" Repubs are also "Business" Repubs. THe basis for the distinctions drawn in the article are far from clear and the label assigned to individual members isn't given so its impossible to judge how the distinctions are being made and how valid they are or aren't.

On the Democratic side, on most of the votes taken thus far this Congress, over 170 Democrats have voted as a bloc, including on bills like the Homeland Security Approps bill (181 D's no/2 yes), at the National Pipeline Permitting Act (169 D's no/14 yes), the Save American Workers Act (172 D's voting no/12 yes), a bill to restrict the regulatory process (175 D's no/8 yes). Several, if not all of these bills were supported by most or all of the "business republicans". The two bills on which fewer than 169 Democrats stuck together were the Keystone final passage and a "Jobs creation/small business reform" bill. And on each of those, the Democrats unanimously supported efforts to prevent the bill from coming to a vote (albeit unsuccessfully). On the other side of the coin, its hard to see any basis for distinguishing between the "business" republicans and the "Bircher" republicans. On issues of concern to corporate entities and social issues like abortion, the repubs largely vote as a block.

My point isn't that RWers aren't in control. They clearly are. They have a majority. The Democrats have the minority. Trying to create lines within these two groups to find a "plurality" is inherently arbitrary and result oriented.

[Jamaal510]

24. K&R

[madfloridian]

26. And don't miss Claire Conner's video on how to recognize Birchers today. They are all around.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026131717

[Triana]

27. +1

Claire Conner's book is a must-read too!