Razib Khan

September 24, 2009

Richard asks:

When in the past 25 years has the Republican Party ever made a non-left-wing argument, or championed a non-left-wing cause?

In my short life the only time I felt a sort of rollback of Leftist assumptions was 1994-1996. In hindsight 1996 was the turning point, in particular the government shutdown, but that wasn’t clear to me until the rise of George W. Bush and “compassionate conservatism.” The Reagan years I associate with sitcoms such as Family Ties, not considerations of policy or politics (being as I was a child), so I can’t speak to that. Of course, I’m not very versed in political history so my impression could be entirely wrong. I have to think on possible metrics for this sort of thing though…something plot or chartable.