White House Confident Obamacare Glitches Are A Thing Of The Past

Though many political and implementation hurdles remain on the horizon, White House officials seem increasingly confident that the website malfunctions that plagued the Affordable Care Act's rollout are behind them.

There’s reason for relief. The deadline to enroll in a health care plan that provided coverage starting Jan. 1 led to a crush of visitors to HealthCare.gov, and the website performed better than expected.

According to data points being circulated within the administration and sent to The Huffington Post, "nearly two million" people visited the site on Dec. 23, with a peak moment of concurrent usage by 83,000 people at approximately noon. Both numbers exceeded administration officials' predictions after the site's much-heralded tech upgrade concluded Dec. 1. At that time, officials said the site could handle 50,000 visitors at once and 800,000 over the course of a day.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/27/white-house-health-care_n_4508771.html


I have huge respect for Obama, where he has stuck to his guns to get this project off the ground, having everything thrown at him, trying to prevent it, says much for his character to be honest and hope this works

Of course, the reason why the Republicans are throwing everything at Obamacare, is they know that if it succeeds all their lies will be revealed.  Obamacare succeeds on numbers.  So Republicans will do everything to get people to refuse to sign up.  But they are signing up.

Republicans lie.  Don't ever forget that.  They will say anything at the spur of the moment to get their way.  How do you think we got into the Iraq war?  The whole fabric of their platform is lies.  

Republicans have to lie because they represent the special interests...whereas Democrats represent the general interest.  If you represent only special interests, you get fewer voters, right?  DUH...fewer people represented means fewer voters.  Republicans have to lie to attract voters.

Never, ever believe a Republican.  He has to lie in order to be successful.  When he says something, believe the opposite!

Quill I respect your views and I do not even support the Republicans, I back the Democrats, liberals and back this plan to the hilt, but to stereotype all Republicans lie, when all politicians lie.

I have never seen such greater hostility than that posted by the left about the right and visa versa, no wonder little real action gets done in the world.

So 100% behind Obama on this, your assumptions on lying when all lie a tad redundant

@phil and Quill
replace republican with tea party and your dead on the money

@Didge:  I'm not really attacking the person(s) as much as the system.  The crucial aspect is that Republicans chose to represent a goal.  That goal was/is the putative American Dream.  This is a metaphysical theory, involving a good and bad: the rightious succeed and the unwashed fail.  You want to reward the good and punish the evil, correct?  A common moral premise.  Thence, the Republicans have come to represent the wealthy...who, after all, manifest all the signs of the righteous and better.

Democrats, on the other hand, never embraced a metaphysical theme.  They were just too busy just helping people they found wounded and injured on the roadside....the vanquished South after the Civil War; the populists; the immigrants; the war veterans of two WW's; the former slaves and African Americans who went through a century of segregation and still suffer from racism in the South (Trayvon Martin); then the Hispanics; and now even women, whose uteruses have somehow become public property.

There is no comparison, didge.  They are two different kinds of entities.  It's not any one person.  It's the radically different moral value system that governs how you approach politics.

@veya:  Absolutely the tea party.  But you are too lenient on the rest of the Republicans.  The tea party is merely the abscess turned into an open pustule sore.  It's the obvious.  But the rest are just as problematical.

Take Gov. Chris Christy of New Jersey.  Seems a reasonable guy...rejects all the tea party rhetoric and shakes hands with a Black president.  But look at the guy's platform.  Screw the Blacks.  Oppose immigration and reject the Hispanics.  Govern women's bodies.  Suppress liberal voters.  Take away freedoms.  Quell the Constitution.  Start wars.  Embrace torture, rape and killing. All of the standard Republican agenda.  All to fill out this blustery persona, that deceives people into thinking things (or forgetting) that don't serve their interest.

Republicans lie.  They have to lie.  It's written in the logic of the Universe: if you don't serve the interests of the people, you must fool the people.

To be honest Quill I do not know enough about American Politics to even dare to enter a debate on the topic with you and thus would be at a great disadvantage being as you are well versed on the matter so happy to concede on that, but my point is many people lie, I do not think it is inherent in people just because of their political leaning which people can and do change to other political views but I know you are talking about the system, I just don't see it like that.

I agree that the Tea Party are bonkers.

PhilDidge wrote:To be honest Quill I do not know enough about American Politics to even dare to enter a debate on the topic with you and thus would be at a great disadvantage being as you are well versed on the matter so happy to concede on that, but my point is many people lie, I do not think it is inherent in people just because of their political leaning which people can and do change to other political views but I know you are talking about the system, I just don't see it like that.

I agree that the Tea Party are bonkers.

If you don't believe that political ideology affects the way people act, how would you account for Italy and Germany in the 1930' and 1940's.  That wasn't inherent in all people.  That had to be introduced in the heads of people.

I will tell you, I do not believe in the bi-laterality of evil in people.  Like the Nazis, the evil had to be imposed externally.  Now, it's only an example, and I don't mean to equate Republicans to Nazis (although they came close during the Bush administration).  But I do mean to say that ideology and its consequences can befall one person, and yet not befall his neighbor.  It is in that sense that I say, Republicans have to lie...and no, not all people have to lie in politics, nor do they.  Democrats do not have to lie; nor do they, typically.  

Oh, make no mistake, Republicans will accuse the Democrats of lying; but that is only to cover up what they (Republicans) are doing to screw the American people.  The Republican motto should be: Look over there, don't look over here.  Because that is exactly the Republican purpose...to fool the people and screw their interests.  What do you think the Wall Street bail-out was?  Why do Republicans not take up the American Jobs Act?  Why do the Republicans want the poor and underprivileged to starve?  Why do Republicans want to leave children unnourished and uneducated?  Why do Republicans not want universal health care for all Americans...is there something immoral or wrong with being healthy and staying well?

The most ridiculous thing of all is the Republican Congress' refusal to participate in governing during the Obama administration.  That means, Republicans want the United States of America to fail in its entirety during the Obama administration.  That means, Republicans would wish to screw the people of the United States of America rather than shake hands with a Black President.  That means Republicans are seditious and un-American, just as any foreign spy or agent would be. Why do you think that Republican Representative Issa has committed violations of the Espionage Act by releasing top secret materials that his Investigation Committee receives?  He places his selfishness over the wellbeing of America and the American people. Republicans are so selfish and radically minded that they will work to bring down the US.  They have no conscience.  They have no humanity.  They are elitists.  They believe in a certain class order, and those who fall below the line have no standing.  With that background, why wouldn't they wish to screw the people?

Now...convince me that Republicans care one wit about the people.  The only problem that they have is if the people find them out.  Hence, Republicans have to lie. All Republicans lie.

The story of American health care and attempts to reform it is so bizarre ... it of course, all starts with the inherent flaws that have plagued the system since it began:

* We have no real non-profit system for the majority of Americans.

* We are the only first-world nation that allows the health industry to name its price

So basically, our obsession with capitalism led to all sorts of horror stories -- way too many people couldn't afford health care, way too many more people could barely afford it and even for those who could afford it, it's still been too expensive, a far too large slice of the household budget pie chart.

So U.S. politicians have been trying to figure out how to fix it since at least the late '80s. The left looked to the rest of the world and decided that we needed a single-payer system; in the U.S. that would probably be modeled after the ones in Canada and Australia (no offense to the U.K., but I don't think we'd ever go so far as to make the majority of our health workers government employees).

The right decided -- as it always does -- that any solution must be palatable to its ideology first, regardless of whether it didn't work as well. So conservatives started to put forward the idea of "individual responsibility" -- we Americans are proud, individualistic pioneers who take care of ourselves, often beating our rugged chests while we do so. We don't need The Government (always, in America, depicted as people not like "us" -- a bunch of elitist eggheads "over/up/down there, in Washington D.C." -- rather than as part of our populace and very much included among "us") to be our "nanny."

"Individual responsibility" became the "individual mandate"; everyone had to buy insurance, insurance companies couldn't turn away anyone who sought to purchase a plan, the competition over a large pool of buyers would cause rates to drop and with everyone insured, there would be enough people paying in more than they took to cover the people taking out more than they paid. Romney is elected Massachusetts governor and implements it, and it works pretty well -- coverage expanded to include all but about 2 percent of the Commonwealth's population, and rates dropped. Many prominent Republicans, including Newt Gingrich and John McCain, praised it.

So we've done the impossible, right? We've figured out how to provide for universal health care that manly, individualistic capitalists can abide. But not so fast, because when Obama started to see the individual mandate as a realistic (meaning, it could pass) solution to the U.S. health care nightmare, the right completely abandoned it. They called their idea "socialist" and compared Obama to everyone from Stalin to Hitler for even proposing it.

And that took us to the 2012 presidential election, in which Romney the Republican had to denounce and abandon his successful idea because his Democratic opponent had made it apply to the entire country. If Obama had never brought up health care reform and still ran against Romney, Romney would no doubt have been talking about his awesome health care reform accomplishment in every speech and debate.

What this proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to me is that Republicans have no honor, no honesty, and really, no principles. If the individual mandate really was important to them, they'd have applauded its implementation at the national level, even as their political instincts led them to continuously (and rightfully) claim credit for the idea. But they proved that attaining power and opposing anyone seen as a liberal is far more important to them than any of their ideas.

Oh yes, absolutely.  You hit the nail right on the head...right down to the perfect definition of the personality derived from the Republican metaphysic:

Ben wrote:
The right decided -- as it always does -- that any solution must be palatable to its ideology first, regardless of whether it didn't work as well. So conservatives started to put forward the idea of "individual responsibility"

See, Republicans follow ideology, not common sense and general well-being.

Ben wrote:[W]e Americans are proud, individualistic pioneers who take care of ourselves, often beating our rugged chests while we do so. We don't need The Government (always, in America, depicted as people not like "us" -- a bunch of elitist eggheads "over/up/down there, in Washington D.C." -- rather than as part of our populace and very much included among "us") to be our "nanny."

You hit upon the John Wayne of it all.  Republicans have this ideology--this personality--this script that they have to play out above all things.

It is in this sense that Democrats differ drastically...not only in degree, but in kind.  It is a service party in politics, not a scripted ideological party.  It meets needs and attempts to fix them, without resort to any script or stereotype.  Therein is the core difference between the two parties.

Liberal vs. Conservative is just the overlain veneer of the matter.  Liberal should be redefined as pragmatic; conservative should be redefined as a stage act...Father Knows Best or some such show.  (I do hope you have read George Lakeoff, Moral Politics.  He even goes into the gender origins of liberal and conservative in much greater detail.)

The model of the Affordable Care Act, as well as Romney's Massachusetts Care Act, was written by the RW Heritage Foundation.  How's that for shocking news.  Heritage Foundation ideas, becoming first a market-based Health Care program with balls, and then denounced as a liberal, pinko, stinking commie program, by that *@$$%@*)) bastard socialist's idea.

Tell me.  Does the tail wag the dog with the Republicans?

I think so, especially when you look at how demonically on-message they usually manage to stay! Definitely a Father-Knows-Best scenario when you have the likes of Limbaugh or Fox News putting out the talking points and all the followers paraphrasing them, seemingly without any critical thinking applied. It's the only way I can explain why Benghazi is huge and "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S." was not.

I have not read Moral Politics, but I'll definitely be taking a look at it now. I did have an employee who was also a grad student one time and did a really interesting thesis on the "gender" of different countries. She surmised that the U.S. is one of the most masculine-in-character nations of the world, while her homeland of France was more feminine. I'll be interested to take a look at what Lakeoff says.

May I recommend The Republican Brain? I thought it was fascinating in how it used cutting-edge neuroscience to explain how conservatives' brains literally are different and work differently from ours, making their ideology in some senses a coping mechanism that allows them to deal with the complex and sometimes-scary world by oversimplifying it and imposing an authority structure upon it that doesn't (and shouldn't) really exist.

Back on NewsHabit I wrote a mini-essay wherein I proposed that when you see people like Arlen Specter defecting to the Democrats, you're starting to see a new division in U.S. politics. We've seen it more recently with Teabaggers (and the new Whacko Birds) basically vying to out-crazy one another. I think that rather than a left-right divide we're starting to see a sanity-insanity divide, and we've already had the Democrats adopt right-wing ideas that make sense (another example is cap-and-trade, an idea that came out of the Reagan administration as a solution to acid rain) and the Republicans run from all ideas that make sense.

Original Quill wrote:

PhilDidge wrote:To be honest Quill I do not know enough about American Politics to even dare to enter a debate on the topic with you and thus would be at a great disadvantage being as you are well versed on the matter so happy to concede on that, but my point is many people lie, I do not think it is inherent in people just because of their political leaning which people can and do change to other political views but I know you are talking about the system, I just don't see it like that.

I agree that the Tea Party are bonkers.

If you don't believe that political ideology affects the way people act, how would you account for Italy and Germany in the 1930' and 1940's.  That wasn't inherent in all people.  That had to be introduced in the heads of people.

I will tell you, I do not believe in the bi-laterality of evil in people.  Like the Nazis, the evil had to be imposed externally.  Now, it's only an example, and I don't mean to equate Republicans to Nazis (although they came close during the Bush administration).  But I do mean to say that ideology and its consequences can befall one person, and yet not befall his neighbor.  It is in that sense that I say, Republicans have to lie...and no, not all people have to lie in politics, nor do they.  Democrats do not have to lie; nor do they, typically.  

Oh, make no mistake, Republicans will accuse the Democrats of lying; but that is only to cover up what they (Republicans) are doing to screw the American people.  The Republican motto should be: Look over there, don't look over here.  Because that is exactly the Republican purpose...to fool the people and screw their interests.  What do you think the Wall Street bail-out was?  Why do Republicans not take up the American Jobs Act?  Why do the Republicans want the poor and underprivileged to starve?  Why do Republicans want to leave children unnourished and uneducated?  Why do Republicans not want universal health care for all Americans...is there something immoral or wrong with being healthy and staying well?

The most ridiculous thing of all is the Republican Congress' refusal to participate in governing during the Obama administration.  That means, Republicans want the United States of America to fail in its entirety during the Obama administration.  That means, Republicans would wish to screw the people of the United States of America rather than shake hands with a Black President.  That means Republicans are seditious and un-American, just as any foreign spy or agent would be. Why do you think that Republican Representative Issa has committed violations of the Espionage Act by releasing top secret materials that his Investigation Committee receives?  He places his selfishness over the wellbeing of America and the American people.  Republicans are so selfish and radically minded that they will work to bring down the US.  They have no conscience.  They have no humanity.  They are elitists.  They believe in a certain class order, and those who fall below the line have no standing.  With that background, why wouldn't they wish to screw the people?

Now...convince me that Republicans care one wit about the people.  The only problem that they have is if the people find them out.  Hence, Republicans have to lie.  All Republicans lie.

Sorry Quill but I again disagree with some of your view points, I do not even like the Republicans but to say now on a conception on religious grounds, evil, is going way above rational thinking here to say the least. I think you have given a very simplistic connection about Germany and Italy through the 1930's, these views had been around for a very long time. For example the Pan Germanic League was a for runner to the Nazi Party in ideals and the inbuilt prejudice in Germany to Jews had been going on for centuries due to Lutheran beliefs. The Pan German League had developed in the 19th Century and believed in Lebensraum and many argue that this influence was felt in Namibia, where Germany carried out atrocities also using death camps against ethnic groups in the country at the turn of the 20th century, one of these death camps was Shark Island. The point is in both Italy and Germany had been left in turmoil after the first world war and political ideologies not only far right but far left also in Communism took hold, in other words people were reaching out to new ideologies. The Catalyst for the Nazi's even gaining power was the Wall Street Crash, without it I doubt they would have ever gained enough power, as in 1928 they only received 14 seats, so on many factors I think you need to delve further before claiming it was the Nazi ideology alone that won Germans over, when as seen many already had an inbuilt prejudice against Jews, were already a proud nationalist nation and put a person as gifted as Hitler in oratory and you have a combination to bring them all together.

All I am seeing is your opinion that one political movement is wrong when, the opposition could say the exact same thing in regards to the Democrats, claiming that they lie, that there policies and beliefs made the country bad etc, when the reality is even within a Political movement people have varying political beliefs, they differ greatly even within a party. Now I agree on your point in regards to how the Republicans tried to blackmail Obama, to me that was wrong, but again you would some on the opposition claim that Obama was refusing to compromise, that is how things get perceived and are perceived by people on both sets of the divide. To me the best is when you have people from both sides come to agreements on the same issue's, sadly this very rarely happens, because it is more bout damaging your opponent than doing what is best for the country and on both sides, they are both guilty of this at one time or another.

What makes me laugh though is I am an Obama supporter and the Democrats and the nearest political party to them in equivalents in political leaning is the Tories here, yet people associate the Tories with the Republicans, which is woefully wrong, if anything the Democrats are slightly more right wing than the Tories, as they are really a center right party, if anything the Republicans are like UKIP with how far they are on the political right. This is why I find such assertions of claiming to political groups together as misguided all the time.

But most Americans are actually to the left of the Democrats:

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/08/tea_party_shocker_even_right_wingers_become_liberals_when_they_turn_off_fox_news/

Well, Didge, you are expounding on the Germanic example, no doubt really well, when I have used Germany and Italy of WWII as only an example or comparison.  But if we are not to be talking past one another, you've got to address my real point:  that ideologies are not innate.  They are conventional.  Same with characteristics of ideologies.  Hence, not everyone is born a liar and not all politicians lie...a false equivalency that less critical thinkers use to brush aside thorny concepts and ideas.  The idea that all politicians lie is contradicted by the many politicians who deal with, and speak with frank factual reality.  Conversely, if a politician has an identifiable motive to lie, you can begin to build a theory.  Such is the case with Republicans...and that is my point.

You need to study Lakeoff too.  It is not directly about good and evil, but about the ideologies that shape good and evil.  Lakeoff says:

Geo. Lakeoff wrote:
Cognative scientists, however, can infer the Cognitive Unconscious and study it in detail, as we shall in this book.  But it is difficult to engage in public discourse about things that most people have no public access to.  Yet it is vitally important that we do so if Americans are to understand, and come to grips with, the deepest fundamental division in our country, one that transcends and lies behind all the individual issues: the role of government, social programs, taxation, education, the environment, energy, gun control, abortion, the death penalty, and so on.  These are ultimately not different issues, but manifestations of a single issue: strictness versus nurturance [@at Ben: here starts the discussion about gender character in politics, and ultimately economic individualism versus humanism]."

@Didge, again: I disagree with your assessments of Tories vis-a-vis political parties in American.  I think the British Tories basically learn from, and take their cues from the American Republicans...in terms of daily politics.  Where the adjustment is needed is in the histories of the two nations, and the resultant familiarity with socialism...or not.

Britain went through a socialist period that was entirely missed by America, due in part to frontierism in American, and the related preoccupation with capitalism.  British socialism gave the British a familiarity with social institutions (national health) and state ownership of fundamental production (nationalism).  This adjusted to the left the parties perceptions, and most significantly Tories became accustomed--if not happy--with a socialist way.  This never happened in America, and so the resulting appearance is, as you believe, Didge, that the American left is to the right of the British right.

The Progressive left in America has just as wildly liberal ideas as those of the left in Britain.  (Indeed, because of the monarchistic tendencies in Britain, I find them very often to the extreme right of America.)  And mainstream America is most accepting of liberal ideas (most of the American people are to the left of their politicians, as you point out Ben), but mainstream America just lacks famiarity with socialism.  Hence, the Republicans can use the big 'S" word to scare many middle Americans, when actual socialism is perfectly satisfactory arrangement of economics and politics.

Add to that the Cold War, for which America bore the weight of tensions with the USSR, and Americans cannot separate socialism from Communism.  But when you speak generically, without labels, Americans are probably more progressive than Britons.  It's just that Britain is more accustomed to the wider range of options, so to speak.

@quill
there is an Australian proverb/joke, I don't know if you have it in other countries.

How do you know when a politician is lying?
...
there lips are moving.

So of Course Republicans lie I would expect nothing less, they are in politics after all.

You only lie if you need to deceive. Republicans do; Democrats don't.

Bilateralism is a false equivalency, necessary to those who don't want to look closer. Your neighbor just wants to help you; the wealthy want to exploit you. Which one needs to lie?

Hi Quill

I just don't see the Tories as equivalent to the Republicans, one being I do not support the Republicans and some of their policies, I seem them more like the Democrats and in fact many Tories are Democrat supporters

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/2445951/Tory-MPs-abandon-Republicans-to-back-Barack-Obama.html


As I say to offer the view of a stereotype which changes with time as seen shows that you cannot stick such labels onto such groups, as now many Tories are in the same view as Democrats

@Quill

I severely doubt anyone could reach the point of nomination for either political party with out telling a metric fuck-ton of lies.

You guys need stronger independents then at least more shit gets out in the open and the pollies have to behave slightly better (they still Lie all the time though        )

PhilDidge wrote:Hi Quill

I just don't see the Tories as equivalent to the Republicans, one being I do not support the Republicans and some of their policies, I seem them more like the Democrats and in fact many Tories are Democrat supporters

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/2445951/Tory-MPs-abandon-Republicans-to-back-Barack-Obama.html


As I say to offer the view of a stereotype which changes with time as seen shows that you cannot stick such labels onto such groups, as now many Tories are in the same view as Democrats

Well, you are never going to get a perfect, across-the-board comparison between parties of the two countries, didge. I think you will find more dissimilarities on the RW issues. Do Tories support regulation of industries? Democrats do. Do Tories champion income equalization? Democrats do. Do Tories wish to see the wealth gap closed, or at least narrowed? Democrats do.

I think conservatives are the same all the world over...they favor the programs that promote the privileged and wealthy, over programs that promote equality, the interests of the poor and middle class and economic justice. Or, if they don't, they don't stand for anything. In your country, the Conservatives have been reduced to the party you reach for if the real parties--Liberal and Labour--do something to piss you off. I think it's that slipperiness of meaning that permits you to speculate over the LW leanings of the Conservatives/Republicans. I think they don't meet the tests of liberalism on either side of the pond.

The only thing that skews the cross-the-pond comparison is that Britain has always had this extra component, socialism, that American has never had. But that's in addition to your LW; it doesn't change the alignment of the rest of the components in the line.

veya_victaous wrote:@Quill

I severely doubt anyone could reach the point of nomination for either political party with out telling a metric fuck-ton of lies.

You guys need stronger independents then at least more shit gets out in the open and the pollies have to behave slightly better (they still Lie all the time though        )

Hi veya,

With all due respect, I think that such a view is just the result of lazy thinking.  You can't generalize from specifics.  You have to understand each specific, on its own, until you begin to see some similarities between them.  (So, that's a lot of work and most people don't want to do it.)  Once you see similarities between the specifics, then you can begin to generalize.  Then it is the generalization that must be substantiated.

If you make a generalization like, 'All politicians are liars' you are tacitly guaranteeing that you have personally checked out all politicians and you can assure us that the generalization is valid and true.  But you haven't really done that, because it's a lot of work and you're lazy, right?  I understand.  Don't feel bad...that's the way most people operate.  Most people want to appear wise, but don't want to do the work to gain wisdom.  So they throw such generalizations out and hope no one else does the work to disprove them.  It sounds right.  It sounds like you have a lot of experience.  It sounds wise.

These are the kinds of generalizations that all or most people accept as truisms, but they never really check it out.  It's easier to just accept it, than to do the work to check it out.  Listen, the world was once considered flat; same kind of thing, except someone finally checked it out.  Thomas Hobbes told us that all men are ambitious, with avarice and anger...until psychologists came along and checked it out and found out that is isn't necessarily true.  Now, you are telling us that all politicians lie...you are making the generalization that all politicians lie.  So, prove it.  Show us how and why all politicians lie.

Now, I have made the assertion that all Republicans lie.  But I can show you how and why this is true, unlike your generalization.  There are not just two different parties in America, but two different kinds of parties.  One--the Republicans--cannot establish their premises; they must lie.  Democrats are more like a service club...they simply try to find a need and fill it.  There is very little ideology to it.  That difference is my generalization.

See, Republicans haul along this whole host of baggage known as a theoretical premise.  It is a self-justifying premise that favors the wealthy: work hard, remain devout, meet responsibility and you will become rich.  But, all but the 'wealthy' part is simply self-justification and self-glorification, working backwards.  Like the arguments of predestination, they shortened it to: if you are rich, you did everything right...or, rich is right.  See how beliefs work?  Thus, Republicans became the party of the rich.

The monumental flaw in all of this is that not everyone was or is rich.  Working backwards, it became an indictment upon the middle class and poor.  After whatever moral agony they went through, the middle class and poor simply 'chucked it' and started voting their interests.  It was decidedly not in their interest to make others rich, and concordantly, themselves poor.  There were more of them than the wealthy, and so Democrats began to win elections...culminating in Roosevelt's four terms as President.

Republicans realized their flaw and developed a singular strategy to stem the tide: lie.  If you deflect the truth, and focus on non-economic issues, you will be able to preserve your little pocket of selfishness, and force the great masses to concern themselves with other matters.  The greatest distraction of all would be to start a war, however irrelevant, because it involves people, with fanfare, bluster, and all the drums and marching.  Bush and Cheney did this to perfection.  It is a perfect distraction...one that gets you reelected while you pass monumental tax breaks, deregulation, and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (forbade regulation of derivatives) and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, or Financial Services Modernization Act, (eliminated New Deal barriers to mergers of stockbrokers, commercial and investment banks and insurance companies): abolishing all of the significant rules put in place at the time of the Great Depression designed to prevent a repeat. Perfect!

But there are other things you can do: social issues.  If you get devout, but stupid Baptists to get all up in arms about abortion, contraception and women's rights, you can distract from equal pay for women.  And African American men...aren't they evil by birth?  And isn't Obama a Muslim?  And, didn't he provide for death panels in the Affordable Care Act...evil, evil.  And WTF, Obama wasn't even born here, was he?  He is a Kenyan, born in Africa or Asia or somewhere.  And Benghazi...wasn't that Obama siding with the Muslims?

You see all the wonderful distractions you can create if you just lie.  In the meantime, you get yourself reelected with all the noise, and then carry on your programs favoring the wealthy...tax breaks, deregulation, curb spending, bail-outs for Wall Street.  It's a great strategy.