@Jackdaw33
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In the 19 and early 20C the Republicans were the progressives and the Democrats reactionaries. Now it's the other way round.
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Does that explain why their red/blue colour coding is the other way around or is that (a) a recent thing (b) arbitrary assignment (they wouldn't have cared how we did it)?
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Ab Editor
Thanks.
Policy platform, eh? Dunno. What little I understand (hard to sift policies from out of the platitudes and bloviation) leads me to think they should re-brand as the Libertarian party: low taxes; small government. However, that kind of voter is, I think, already in the fold, so their would be no added vote-haul, possibly even loss of more moderate voters, who know who the real winners would be under Libertarianism - those rich enough to own the privatised replacements of former public services.
fwiw, I only started to see GOP a few years ago and that was via shared news stories, on Facebook. I reckon I noticed the point where Newsnight began using the term (audience expected to know/use wiki) and that was later - maybe the last election cycle.