Democrats are historically [i]by far[/i] the most racist and most prejudice people in American politics. This is an indisputable fact that the vast majority of Democrats were slave owners, and the vast majority of Republicans wanted to abolish slavery. Without Republicans, we might still be a slavery nation, or at least have been one for a long time. You see what I'm doing? Exactly what you're doing. Now I am not trying to claim anything in my previous paragraph, but you claim that Republicans are objectively the worst offenders in American politics when in fact that is not true. The Democrats are equally soiled with a history of hate and racism. The Democrats are the ones who wanted to keep slavery, and I sure hope that we all agree that slavery is very bad. It's ironic when you say "ITT: holier-than-thou centrism" when you proceeded to take a holier-than-thou approach to your hateful and biased argument.

Lol. I think we all know how many transformations each party has been through throughout the years. If one were to talk about either the Democratic or Republican party in terms of centuries, it would be useless to draw any comparisons; looking at them in each period makes more sense. When a Democrat tells a Republican that the latter is being extreme, the Republican generally does not respond with "well your party used to own slaves so there!". The modern american political environment is accepted to have started post-WWII. That being said, it is a fact that the Republican party is the most polarized and obstructionist party since either have been quantifiably measured (hence historical standards). They have accelerated to such a politically extremist position that even Ronald Reagan would have a hard time fitting in. Gingrich's strategy in the House and, more recently, the debt ceiling debate are examples of a party that has taken unprecedented steps to pull itself further right and weaponize constructive debate, turning it into purposeful obstructionism.

Where is your source for that? Or is it just your opinion? Plus, fascist=extreme republican. Normal republican=/=fascist.

[url=http://www.amazon.com/Even-Worse-Than-Looks-Constitutional/dp/0465031331]Further reading.[/url] A collaborative effort by Thomas Mann, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Since I probably have to qualify this further, Brookings is one of the oldest political thinktanks in the country and one of the most respected. It is regarded as having a center-left perspective. The American Enterprise Institute is a little newer (40's I think) and is a conservative organization that focuses primarily on limited government, individual freedom, and private enterprise. Mann and Ornstein are regarded as the best congressional scholars alive, having worked together for decades in Washington to study and analyze congress and the political system. [quote]However awkward it may be for the traditional press and nonpartisan analysts to acknowledge, one of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the center of American politics, it is extremely difficult to enact policies responsive to the country’s most pressing challenges.[/quote] -Part of the introduction. [quote]The Democrats had controlled the House that Gingrich entered for twenty-four years, and he believed that the great advantages conferred by incumbent status made a race-by-race approach to winning a majority for his party a losing one. How, Gingrich wondered, could the minority party overcome the seemingly paradoxical situation in which people hated the Congress but loved their own congressman? The strategy he settled on would bring him to power but have a devastating impact on the institution he ultimately led... ...The core strategy was to destroy the institution in order to save it, to so intensify public hatred of Congress that voters would buy into the notion of the need for sweeping change and throw the majority bums out. His method? To unite his Republicans in refusing to cooperate with Democrats in committee and on the floor, while publicly attacking them as a permanent majority presiding over and benefiting from a thoroughly corrupt institution.[/quote] -Excerpts on how Gingrich transformed Congress. Incidentally, here's something relevant to the OP. [quote]What caused the party polarization? It would be nice if we could boil it down to a single root cause. The pundits’ favorite cause, in spite of impressive evidence to the contrary, is the gerrymandering of legislative districts. Redistricting does matter somewhat. It contributes to party polarization by systematically shaping more safe districts for each party, thereby helping to create homogeneous echo chambers, to make party primaries the only real threat to representatives, and to enhance the power of the small number of activist ideologues who dominate in primaries. But that impact is relatively minor and marginal.[/quote] I should mention that I've taken the liberty of removing numbered references to citations, since the numbers clutter up the text. As an example, the bit on polarization leads to an article in the American Journal for Political Science published in July 2009, "Polarizing the House of Representatives: How Much Does Gerrymandering Matter?".

I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not going to buy a book from Amazon just to see your source. I appreciate that you quoted some of it, but no matter how many words are in that book, it is still one big opinion unsupported by any hard facts. I don't care if you're the smartest person in the world. If you claim something to be true in the lack of evidence, you are really just giving an opinion, not a fact. I almost entirely disagree with your second quote there. The reason why there was a sweeping change in Congress was because Americans were generally dissatisfied with how Obama was running the country, so independents like myself voted Republican. It's no surprise that this has happened. Congressional swings have happened many many times before, and this certainly won't be the last. Within the next 20 years, I guarantee that the Democrats will hold the majority of seats. If a Republican president does bad, people will vote Democrat. If a Democratic president does bad, people will vote Republican. It's a cycle that we've seen happen throughout America's history.

[quote]it is still one big opinion unsupported by any hard facts.[/quote] There are, by my count, 169 citations in the book. Here's [url=http://www.senate.gov/CRSReports/crs-publish.cfm?pid=%270E%2C*P\%3F%3D%23%20%20%20%0A.]one.[/url] It's 34 pages long, but it's free!!! Have at it. The second quote has nothing to do with the Obama administration. Newt Gingrich was elected to the House of Representatives for the first time in 1978. He led the Republican Revolution of 1994 and became the House Speaker. He doesn't even serve anymore, so I don't know where you got the idea that this had something to do with the midterm election of 2010. Something to keep in mind: [quote]Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge'.[/quote]-Isaac Asimov "We both have opinions so I'm just as right as you are... even if you have spent decades poring over the Constitution and congressional records, conducting off-record interviews, and working with the most accomplished and respected political scholars in the country!1!!1". Right. You asked for proof and you got it; you can cover your ears and sing loudly, but the great thing about reality is that it's true regardless of your "opinion" of it.

The current republican party shouldn't be judged from past republicans. Otherwise you might as well judge the US based on it's historical trangressions: 'The Americans are equally soiled with a history of hate and racism.'

I believe Mr Silly Man was replying to the part where Hoards Bovine said "Republicans are, objectively, the worst offender by far in American politics.." You cannot say that statement without some allusion to history, which Mr Silly Man then used to show that Democrats are just as bad as Republicans.

eh, I interpreted it as current politics, to each his own I suppose.