I've been critical of modern Democrats' narrow view of the art of polemics. While the Lincoln Project lands some zingers - and I have modest hopes for the earthy wit of Tim Walz - there appears to be little aptitude for what Sherman did in an earlier phase of this ongoing U.S. Civil War... which is corner the confederacy, so that saner members might look around, smack their foreheads and snap out of the trance!
I offer such tactics, elsewhere. But here's a doozy! I found it while sorting through old papers my brother stored for me. One memento of the last century stood out. A political flyer from Ronald Reagan's 1970 campaign to be re-elected governor of California.
Read these excerpts! Because while Reagan's positions were conservative, in the context of that time - (you liberals will find much to disagree with!*) - you'll also be shocked by how mainstream and... progressive... were so many RR talking points.
What it shows... especially to any conservatives who scan here... is that consensus stances of the right wing of the Republican Party were hugely different back then, than those of today's MAGA-ism.
In many cases diametrically opposite!
At least scan the TITLES to each page! Back then it was consensus among even right wing republicans that the state should protect the helpless, improve the environment and reduce pollution, develop new cleaner energy supplies, invest more in education and universities and public transport/rail, reduce drug costs, protect the consumer, and so on!
And that's just Reagan as Governor in 1970. How about the President who later confronted an aggressive Soviet Kremlin? Do you think he would have any truck with today's KGB-loving GOP, its adoration of Kim Jong Un and Vlad Putin's cadre of 5000 "ex" commissars, now spreading a new Evil Empire?
Or today's MAGA all-out war vs all fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror? Ronnie would be outraged!
TO BE CLEAR: I still have grudges toward Reagan, especially his betrayal of America during the Iranian Hostage Crisis. And ignoring AIDS, making it far worse. Union-busting. And his insane Drug War! And sending us down the road of never-ever-correct Supply-Side voodoo 'economics.'
Still, show these pages to others! Read passages aloud to your MAGA aunts. (Your uncles are hopeless, of course.) Look at what Ronald Reagan bragged about achieving in his first term as California governor! And remember that California was far more conservative then. And RR was from the party's 'far-right.'
You may need to copy these jpegs onto your desktop, to read them. But read them!
Still, on balance the campaign brags from this 1970 campaign flyer show a Reagan who would hate Trumpism! It is today's MAGAs and Kremlin-lovers who are the RINOs! Republicans in Name Only.
* All right, I admit it. I did not scan-in and include here every page of the campaign flyer. The page Crisis on Campus, for example, was totally law-n-orderly hostile toward the youth rebels who were then raging at universities. (Remember 1970 at all? Nixon? Cambodia? Vietnam? The then-recent, wretched horrors of 1968? OMG it's a wonder we survived.) It shows that campus protests and even occasional mini riots are nothing new - sometimes with righteous cause and sometimes driven by sanctimony-fetishism. RR's reflexive hostility - when campus protest truly was righteous - showed his dark side.
What's to be made of all this? Just a silly old guy (me), rummaging mementos and yattering about old-timey, wordy political flyers that bear no relevance to our republic's current fight for its life?
