The GOP thing is much, much later. I don't think it's the structural explanation. Oh, agreed, but I think it's a very useful data point in studying this. And

The GOP thing is much, much later. I don't think it's the structural explanation. Oh, agreed, but I think it's a very useful data point in studying this. And you have a point about the declaration of war, but, in our small c constitution, the president pretty much had free reign with the Navy, including of course the Marines, it took the Congress to get the Army seriously involved. Which ended with WWII (see e.g. http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/h_multi_sections_and_teasers/WarDeclarationsbyCongress.htm http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/h_multi_sections_an...), since then we've bled mightily in the Korean "Police Action" (although be careful about the figures for the dead, the initial one was accidentally for all servicemen in any part of the world who died for any reason), Vietnam, heck, the Republican Congress explicitly refused to declare war after 9/11, and I don't think that had anything to do with the football et. al. Between official governmental suppression and co-option, the "Tea Party" never got anywhere, I'm not sure it's relevant. My explanation for the GOP is that they never got over the minority party attitude that was inculcated from 1955 or 1931 through 1995. Even when Newt and company were in theory running it, they didn't act like the party in power, see e.g. the Waco hearing(s). Of course, your Nixon era retreads theory comports perfectly with mine ... but does it, for example, explain Boehner, who's political career started in 1981? Well, he he came of age before Nixon's election, but look at the much younger Ryan, he was born a few days into Nixon's 2nd year in office....