United States Republicanism in 2009

A good summary from Reddit commenter "jimmyvanl" (who deleted his account the day after he posted this - strange), about the "really-existing" structures and properties of United States Republicans and Democrats:

Image by Roberto Rizzato ►pix jockey◄ via Flickr

American political parties were historically more organized along power coalitions than ideology. Back before the 1960s, the Democratic Party was an uneasy coalition of Southern racists, who still hated the Republicans for Lincoln, and the Northern urban working class and intelligentsia, which supported Roosevelt's New Deal and hated the Republicans for their refusal to fund social spending. These two groups didn't have much in common, but they cooperated to win national elections. When Presidents Kennedy and Johnson supported Civil Rights, though, the Southern Democrats bolted the Party and became Republicans. As Southerners and fundamentalist Christians took over the GOP, Northern and Midwestern professionals, who were the core of the old Republican Party, began to join the Democrats. So today's Democratic Party is basically a coalition between racial minorities, trade unionists and educated professionals. The GOP, conversely, is a coalition between the ultra-rich who don't want to pay taxes, beneficiaries of the military-industrial complex who want America in more wars, and lower-class Southern whites who believe they're somehow victims of an "elitist" conspiracy because they didn't apply themselves in school. Most of today's racists are in that last category.

Creepy to have it broken down all in one place. Now, from an article from SomethingAwful accurately describing how Sarah Palin burst unto the United States political scene (hat-tip to Reddit commenter "cthulhulou"):

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Brutalized by eight years of Bush prosperity, the American people experienced a fit of sanity and elected the center-right corporatist and his goofball sidekick instead of the warmongering economic neophyte and the winking, know-nothing, hockey mom hate shit he took on the face of America.

Politics is an infection of the soul, and devours the ability to exercise personal free will and rationality. I am trying to push my internal political beast into a tiny cage.