Right wingers, Republicans, conservatives, the GOP, did not used to be, think and act like they do now. The party used to stand for something. Below are just a few examples...
Historically, more progressive leaders in the Republican party supported environmental protection. For example, Republican President Theodore Roosevelt was a prominent conservationist whose policies eventually led to the creation of the modern National Park Service.
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Republican President Richard Nixon was responsible for establishing the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.
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In 2006, Arnold Schwarzenegger, then the Republican Governor of California, signed into law a set of carbon emission regulations that were the country's first cap on greenhouse gases, and included vehicle emissions standards higher than those of the Federal Government. These regulations were opposed by the Bush administration.
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Republicans introduced and strongly supported the welfare reform of 1996, which was signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton and limited eligibility for welfare, successfully allowing many former welfare recipients to find jobs.
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1956 Republican Convention Platform:
Provide federal assistance to low-income communities;
Protect Social Security;
Provide asylum for refugees;
Extend minimum wage;
Improve unemployment benefit system so it covers more people;
Strengthen labor laws so workers can more easily join a union;
Assure equal pay for equal work regardless of sex.
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Bob Dole was instrumental in making food stamps easier to get and use, and made fraud more difficult. He expanded the school lunch program and helped establish the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants and Children, better known as WIC.
Bob Dole recovering from wounds from World War 2.
Bob Dole signing legislation for food stamps.
The Republican party...used to stand for small government. That meant, they largely advocated staying out of peoples private lives. You want a hooker, you're gay, you want to smoke weed, you want to own guns, for the most part, they viewed that as "your" private business and not the governments business. You know..."small government". Then Reagan hooked up with that charlatan Jerry Falwell to get votes from the so called "Moral Majority" and the party became an arm of the radical Evangelical Christian Right. And its been going downhill ever since. When George W Bush got handed the POTUS title from the Supreme Court, he set off invading countries, starting and losing wars everywhere, tried to shut down the "porn" industry, violated the civil rights of the LGBTQIA community, signed into law the "Patriot Act" which allows the Feds to read every e-mail you've written, and listen to, and record every landline and cell phone call you've made the last 20 years. And now, the icing on the cake of insanity and the total opposite of old school Republicans...Trump.
The irony of this, things in your private life, personal issues, LGBTQIA, porn, sex, weed, guns, what you read, write, watch, and a myriad of other examples, a couple of people that are closest to that same mentality and agenda of what the GOP used to be? Gary Johnson and Bernie Sanders. Strange bedfellows. :)
