A history lesson on the continuing development of the Republican party

[Indy Texas]

Hoover arguably belongs on the Lincoln/Eisenhower side of the equation, despite the assumptions that scattershot readings of history make about him. He was an engineer and a product of the Industrial Revolution and the Machine Age. He saw society as one big factory and all of its citizens and institutions as its moving parts - solving public policy problems was no different than trying to make an assembly line run more smoothly. On one hand, it's optimistically liberal - it opens the door for central planning and reliance on experts over the collective decision making of market actors. On the other hand, it's unsympathetically conservative - it can give rise to a cold, managerial "run government like a business" mentality. But the fact that Hoover believed government could work well and be a positive force in society is what precludes him from being lumped in with the Tea Party.

[Indy Texas]

It changed because the anti-stagflation CRA and the Clinton-era housing stimulus collapsed global credit markets?

Oh God, you're one of those "poor people crashed the economy" conservatives. Now I know you're truly a troll.

He ate up Rick Santelli's vein-throbbing histrionics about how none of it would have happened if those lazy, greedy lower-middle class slobs hadn't insisted on buying the tract house with the guest bathroom.