Post by the Scribe on Sept 6, 2022 1:17:06 GMT
Is conservative ideology dying out in America?
www.quora.com/Is-conservative-ideology-dying-out-in-America
Alex Frantz
Observing American politics with unconcealed nausea since Watergate.Author has 1.6K answers and 728.6K answer views 3y
Traditional American conservatism was supposedly built on several principles:
Small government
Individual liberty
Strong national defense
Fiscal Responsibility
Institutional traditionalism
Support for business owners over workers
That set of ideas is dying out or even already dead in the USA. Republicans love to give speeches about small government, personal freedom, and fiscal responsibility. Good luck finding anyone in the current Republican Party who actually believes any of that crap. When in power they actually support:
Running up the deficit at every opportunity
Presidential power to launch wars without Congress
Drug war policies that lead to mass incarceration
Abortion and contraception rules that restrict freedom
Asserting that the president is above the law
Crony capitalism and corruption
Manipulating district lines, voting rolls, precinct locations, and every aspect of elections to rig outcomes in their favor, even to the point of welcoming foreign intervention
The root of this comes in the decision since Reagan to use white evangelicals as the voting base of the allegedly conservative Republican Party. Republicans have no trouble increasing the power of government and restricting liberty to meet evangelical goals with regard to abortion or homosexuality. And since the Evangelical movement they merged with was deeply colored by racism, they’re happy to push for policies that leave vast numbers of American, mostly not white, incarcerated in prisons under shockingly brutal conditions.
Republicans love to pass tax cuts, the bigger the better, for the wealthy. That has been for some time the only real reason for the Party’s existence. They toss in tax cuts for the middle class because they know that makes the policy more popular. They’re always happy to talk about cutting spending because that is also popular, but they know real cuts in real programs aren’t popular, so they never really go there except the occasional bit of performance art such as cutting a few million from the already puny budget of the National Endowment for the Humanities. When they run up the deficit, they can always blame it on Democrats, and most people are gullible enough to buy it.
Republicans still claim they believe in a strong national defense, but it’s a bit difficult to take that seriously when they are now less of a party than a personality cult organized around a man who has publicly boasted that he ‘fell in love’ with Kim Jong Un and doesn’t need the CIA because he gets all the intel he wants from Vladimir Putin. And when they do try to justify their undeserved rep for defending the country, it leads to reckless actions with no thought for consequences, such as the invasion of Iraq and Trump’s current crusade to ensure that Iran develops nuclear weapons.
The support for businesses over workers (and consumers) is the only major value of traditional conservatism that is still practiced by modern Republicans.
www.quora.com/Is-conservative-ideology-dying-out-in-America
Alex Frantz
Observing American politics with unconcealed nausea since Watergate.Author has 1.6K answers and 728.6K answer views 3y
Traditional American conservatism was supposedly built on several principles:
Small government
Individual liberty
Strong national defense
Fiscal Responsibility
Institutional traditionalism
Support for business owners over workers
That set of ideas is dying out or even already dead in the USA. Republicans love to give speeches about small government, personal freedom, and fiscal responsibility. Good luck finding anyone in the current Republican Party who actually believes any of that crap. When in power they actually support:
Running up the deficit at every opportunity
Presidential power to launch wars without Congress
Drug war policies that lead to mass incarceration
Abortion and contraception rules that restrict freedom
Asserting that the president is above the law
Crony capitalism and corruption
Manipulating district lines, voting rolls, precinct locations, and every aspect of elections to rig outcomes in their favor, even to the point of welcoming foreign intervention
The root of this comes in the decision since Reagan to use white evangelicals as the voting base of the allegedly conservative Republican Party. Republicans have no trouble increasing the power of government and restricting liberty to meet evangelical goals with regard to abortion or homosexuality. And since the Evangelical movement they merged with was deeply colored by racism, they’re happy to push for policies that leave vast numbers of American, mostly not white, incarcerated in prisons under shockingly brutal conditions.
Republicans love to pass tax cuts, the bigger the better, for the wealthy. That has been for some time the only real reason for the Party’s existence. They toss in tax cuts for the middle class because they know that makes the policy more popular. They’re always happy to talk about cutting spending because that is also popular, but they know real cuts in real programs aren’t popular, so they never really go there except the occasional bit of performance art such as cutting a few million from the already puny budget of the National Endowment for the Humanities. When they run up the deficit, they can always blame it on Democrats, and most people are gullible enough to buy it.
Republicans still claim they believe in a strong national defense, but it’s a bit difficult to take that seriously when they are now less of a party than a personality cult organized around a man who has publicly boasted that he ‘fell in love’ with Kim Jong Un and doesn’t need the CIA because he gets all the intel he wants from Vladimir Putin. And when they do try to justify their undeserved rep for defending the country, it leads to reckless actions with no thought for consequences, such as the invasion of Iraq and Trump’s current crusade to ensure that Iran develops nuclear weapons.
The support for businesses over workers (and consumers) is the only major value of traditional conservatism that is still practiced by modern Republicans.