The Republicans have moved very far to the left over the past 30-40 years, from where they used to be.
Topics no longer up for serious discussion in the Republican Party that used to be very common:
Doing away with Social Security / replacing SS. Getting rid of Medicare and Medicaid, replacing them with entirely private systems. The gold standard, going back to it. Cutting spending (actually attempting to do it, not just paying rare lip service to it). Getting more aggressive with the war on drugs. Increasing punishment for crime, putting people into prison for longer sentences.
It was George W Bush's administration that implemented the successful Housing First program for homelessness assistance, which would have been considered an exceptionally bad welfare state program by the 1980s Republicans. Back then it would have been considered to encourage homelessness, they would have said it entrenches it.
Today's Republicans support rampant welfare give-aways in the form of stimulus checks. That would have been considered a crazy Socialist program universally by Republicans just as recently as the early 1990s. Giving people checks during a recession was unthinkable by Republicans as recently as 20 years ago (eg the 2001-2002 recession).
Trump - with wide Republican support - just implemented the best criminal justice reform in US history. That would have gotten near zero Republican support in the 1980s.
The Republicans in Reagan's time were very militantly against gay marriage, and any form of sexuality being shown anywhere at any time. In the early 1990s Murphy Brown - a fictional TV character - deciding to raise a child on her own was a very controversial matter among Republicans, so much so that Dan Quayle made it a prominent issue. Republicans just 30 years ago were radically more conservative than they are today and that's putting it mildly.
Those same Reagan era Republicans were almost universally - with very few exceptions - strongly in favor of the war on drugs. Every other word out of their mouths was about how to further criminalize drugs. Today the exact opposite is true, very few Republicans are in favor of the war on drugs. Trump just came and went and the Republicans barely lifted an eyebrow at trying to roll back the positive momentum of drug liberalization.
If people on the left think Republicans today are far right, well, ha. They don't remember what Republicans were like back then apparently. Today's average Republican is a centrist Democrat circa the mid 1980s and early 1990s.
Topics no longer up for serious discussion in the Republican Party that used to be very common:
Doing away with Social Security / replacing SS. Getting rid of Medicare and Medicaid, replacing them with entirely private systems. The gold standard, going back to it. Cutting spending (actually attempting to do it, not just paying rare lip service to it). Getting more aggressive with the war on drugs. Increasing punishment for crime, putting people into prison for longer sentences.
It was George W Bush's administration that implemented the successful Housing First program for homelessness assistance, which would have been considered an exceptionally bad welfare state program by the 1980s Republicans. Back then it would have been considered to encourage homelessness, they would have said it entrenches it.
Today's Republicans support rampant welfare give-aways in the form of stimulus checks. That would have been considered a crazy Socialist program universally by Republicans just as recently as the early 1990s. Giving people checks during a recession was unthinkable by Republicans as recently as 20 years ago (eg the 2001-2002 recession).
Trump - with wide Republican support - just implemented the best criminal justice reform in US history. That would have gotten near zero Republican support in the 1980s.
The Republicans in Reagan's time were very militantly against gay marriage, and any form of sexuality being shown anywhere at any time. In the early 1990s Murphy Brown - a fictional TV character - deciding to raise a child on her own was a very controversial matter among Republicans, so much so that Dan Quayle made it a prominent issue. Republicans just 30 years ago were radically more conservative than they are today and that's putting it mildly.
Those same Reagan era Republicans were almost universally - with very few exceptions - strongly in favor of the war on drugs. Every other word out of their mouths was about how to further criminalize drugs. Today the exact opposite is true, very few Republicans are in favor of the war on drugs. Trump just came and went and the Republicans barely lifted an eyebrow at trying to roll back the positive momentum of drug liberalization.
If people on the left think Republicans today are far right, well, ha. They don't remember what Republicans were like back then apparently. Today's average Republican is a centrist Democrat circa the mid 1980s and early 1990s.