As much as I like what you've done here, Barry, the one fly in the ointment is the legacy of Ronald Reagan. Even if you take out the extremism of Trump, you cannot go back to the Eisenhower / Nixon years without first confronting Reagan's nostrum that the government is the problem. I think that notion is so embedded in the DNA of Republicans that any platform that relies on a major government program such as RUBI is doomed. Reagan's 'government is the problem' was a safe way for whites to express their superiority over blacks and other peoples of color, since in Reagan's view whites didn't need government and everyone else was a 'welfare queen' (of course, the rich loved government, but accessed it quietly behind Reagan's back - with his full knowledge and support). So, it still comes back around to white supremacy for the GOP and it will likely take a couple of generations for the demographics to reduce whites to a minority status as the majority will be multi-racial.
As much as I like what you've done here, Barry, the one fly in the ointment is the legacy of Ronald Reagan. Even if you take out the extremism of Trump, you cannot go back to the Eisenhower / Nixon years without first confronting Reagan's nostrum that the government is the problem. I think that notion is so embedded in the DNA of Republicans that any platform that relies on a major government program such as RUBI is doomed. Reagan's 'government is the problem' was a safe way for whites to express their superiority over blacks and other peoples of color, since in Reagan's view whites didn't need government and everyone else was a 'welfare queen' (of course, the rich loved government, but accessed it quietly behind Reagan's back - with his full knowledge and support). So, it still comes back around to white supremacy for the GOP and it will likely take a couple of generations for the demographics to reduce whites to a minority status as the majority will be multi-racial.
I fully agree with what you've said. That's why I left Reagan out of the list of examples-to-learn-from.