Thirty years of the conservative agenda

"Trickle down" economics? Fail.

"Assertive," "tough" foreign policy? Fail.

Deregulation? Fail.

Everything they've been allowed to do since essentially taking control of the reins of government in 1994 has gone spectacularly, incredibly, depressingly, wrong. They opposed the things we got right, like Clinton's fight in the Balkans, and trying to head off the approaching crisis in what passes for our healthcare system. The only things they didn't fuck up much were the things they claim to care most about, like abortion, and that's because they never really tried to implement their agenda, because they, like everyone else, know the end result: political disaster. Here's a simple thought experiment: would we, as a society, be happier if abortion were made illegal? I think the vast majority of people would instinctively choose "No" as the answer to that question. Probably within a decade, their hostility to gays will seem about as cruel and senseless as the hostility many people had towards Jews, or Italians, or the Irish, or whatever group you'd like to name in the last century. It's an entire political movement based on an entirely discredited agenda, an agenda that has either been rejected by large numbers of Americans, or that has been implemented and gone horribly wrong in practice. They are a party trying to claim political power when they have no credible plan to make peoples' lives better if they are given that power. What, then, is the point of the Republican Party?