Conservativism - the path forward

[Guy Chamberlin]

18 hours ago, methodical said:

It wont change.

 

trump-ism is the party's go forward path because its become the party of the intellectually lazy, those living in constant fear and outrage (ie far right media consumers), the bigoted and the christians all lead by the spineless.  The chances of any one of those groups collectively going "we didn't sign up for this" is about zero.  It was the path before trump ever came into the picture.  It's been the path since fox news and talk radio realized they'd make tons of money stirring up outrage of those people and the republicans started having to swing right to the tea party idiots to keep their seats.  They did that themselves by their gerrymandering.

 

So I have doubts that it has anything to do with candidate messaging or using common sense, or that they will ever recover from trump (nor should they).  It maybe will end when districts are drawn so they don't have to out-far-right each other but they still have their nutty propaganda machine and other right wing billionaire sociopaths that they have to kowtow to.  By now though the damage is already done, maybe not right now this year, but as soon as the boomers decline.

 

+1

 

But what also needs to happen is a difficult conversation about why the Democratic alternative hasn't been compelling or motivating enough --- essentially getting bullied by an extremist minority that doesn't even share the values of bedrock Republicans. That conversation starts with intellectual laziness as well. 

[Danny Bateman]

I voted "No, needs new leader," "Yes, need a balance," & "Blue Wave + New spokesman needed."

Put me down as someone who wants to see a return to pre-Reagan, moderate, reasonable conservatism. The conservatives from the FDR period on up to Reagan were very good at being reasonable and finding bipartisan, consensus solutions to problems. The growth of equality and increasing quality of life seen over this period is what we need to return to.

 

Movement conservatism, starting in the 60s with Goldwater and continuing today under the guise of people like Ted Cruz, Mick Mulvaney, Roy Moore, Mitch McConnell, Tom Cotton, Paul Ryan & the House Freedom Caucus, is apologetically uncompromising and toxic as hell for the health of our political system. These yahoos need to be pried off the wheel of the car driving conservatism, booted to the curb and the party needs to start over with a new direction.

 

It doesn't seem like it's headed that direction, because the movement itself is slowly becoming subservient to Trump and synonymous with Trumpism. People who are moderate, reasonable or willing to compromise are derided and/or heading for the exits (like Jeff Flake, Bob Corker or any number of the elected Rs who are declining a run for reelection instead of defending Trumpism).

 

I think liberal policies make much more sense than conservative ones on a number of issues. But I fully realize we need a healthy mix of both sides. I understand a lot of people prefer moderate governance. To have that, we have to return to pre-Reagan conservatism. To get there, we need to toss out the bums.

[Danny Bateman]

FWIW, this is probably the most conservative person I follow on Twitter. He's Never Trump but still identifies as a Republican who wants to take his party back from the likes of Trump & his lackeys.

 

 

[Moiraine]

9 minutes ago, Clifford Franklin said:

FWIW, this is probably the most conservative person I follow on Twitter. He's Never Trump but still identifies as a Republican who wants to take his party back from the likes of Trump & his lackeys.

 

 

 

 

Good reply here:

 

" Agree but would submit the only thing that really matters is 2) Dems winning the house. No matter what Mueller does or doesn't find only congress can act against the POTUS. "

[TGHusker]

   Here is an excellent article on the topic.  The path forward for conservatives.  The author gives 3 choices:

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018/03/15/anti-trump-republicans-trump-supporters-forge-alliance/

Quote

 

Older movement conservatives must also come to grips with the wavering support for — and lessening priority given to — shrinking government. While most partisan Republicans continue to support the idea of a smaller government, increasingly they prioritize issues such as tax reform or fighting the spread of cultural progressivism. And many of the new voters Trump attracted, those who had voted for Obama and other Democrats in years past, don’t care much about shrinking government at all.

We can see the reduced priority that conservative Republicans place on cutting government by looking carefully at how they have voted in prior presidential primaries. University of New Hampshire political scientist Dante Scala and I examined exit-poll data from the Republican presidential primaries from 2000 through 2012 in our book The Four Faces of the Republican Party. We found that fiscal conservatives — people who both favored shrinking government and prioritized it in their voting — made up somewhere between a tenth and a sixth of GOP-primary voters. Social conservatives were over twice as numerous, and even if they supported fiscal-conservative goals, they made social issues — abortion bans, religious liberty, and so forth — their voting priority. That simple fact explains why fiscal-conservative favorites such as Steve Forbes and Fred Thompson failed to catch fire, while religious-conservative leaders such as Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum did.

 

Quote

 

The small-government, globally minded Trump critic has three choices. First, he or she can support a primary challenge to President Trump in 2020. This is doomed to failure, however, because these critics are such a small, albeit influential and vocal, part of the broader party. They might not perceive this limitation because so many of them live in and around Washington, D.C. But consider this: Only three cities or counties in the entire country gave Marco Rubio and John Kasich over 70 percent of the vote in the 2016 primaries: Washington, D.C.; and two inner suburbs in Virginia, Arlington and Alexandria. The Trump critics’ circle of friends in the D.C. area is very unlike the national party or movement.

Their second choice is to start a new party, as Juleanna Glover suggested in a recent New York Times piece. This idea suffers, however, from the same problem as the primary challenge. There simply aren’t enough dissatisfied conservatives to form a viable party. Joining with the Libertarian party won’t add much to their numbers, as partisan libertarians are no more than 1 percent of the total electorate. To gain viability, they would therefore have to join with dissatisfied moderate independents and moderate liberals who are upset at the Democratic party’s swerve leftward. That combination could gain enough support to win elections, but the conservative part of this grouping would have to compromise a lot to make the new union coherent. The party’s economic platform would look a lot more like Simpson-Bowles than the return of Ronald Reagan.

That leaves Trump’s conservative critics with a third choice: work within the current conservative movement to maximize their influence on the GOP. That will force the critics to sort out their own priorities. If they care more about immigration and trade than they do about defense policy or tax cuts, their influence will probably wane. But if they are willing to work with other conservative-movement types on immigration and trade to reach common ground, they might find that other longtime conservatives are willing to work with them.

This makes the attitude of movement leaders crucial to the movement’s continued development. For all the bluster and boisterous behavior one finds in Trump-friendly circles, Trump fans do not represent a majority of Americans. Trump lost the popular vote, and one big reason was that a significant number of Trump-critic conservatives voted for Gary Johnson, Evan McMullin, or a write-in. Re-attracting these critics would increase the power of the Trump-dominated GOP. But to win them back, the pro-Trump portion of the party must listen to their dislike of tariffs and of racially charged language, and note their preference for a higher-toned, more optimistic view of America and her future.

Both the movement and its conservative critics face what Reagan called a time for choosing. Do we choose to see that we have more in common than we do not? Do we choose to work out those differences in a spirit of unity rather than one of division? Or do we instead choose to maintain our purity and, as Reagan said of purists, “jump off the cliff with flags flying”?

The conservative movement has never been a uniform, doctrinaire group. Frank Meyer’s fusionism ensured for its time that social conservatives, libertarian conservatives, traditionalists, and defense conservatives could all coexist — if at times uneasily — in the same political home. Our task is to renew that fusionism for today, to renew the conservative movement so that it continues to provide political guidance for a nation that sorely needs it. If not us, who? If not now, when?

 

 

[BigRedBuster]

 

[Making Chimichangas]

If I could recommend one thing to conservatives: please dump and get rid of the religious nutjobs who have hijacked the republican party.

[TGHusker]

^^^^  Again blanket labeling destroys any recommendations you may make.  

 

Another good OpEd by Michael Gerson.    He argues against 'fusion' - anti-trump conservatives trying to find common ground with trump or

trump 'conservatives'.   He says, now more than ever, is a time to stand on principles and don't let the conservative movement to be hijacked by

pretenders. 

 

Quote

What would fusion with this type of politics look like? Trump defines loyalty to conservatism as contempt for many of our neighbors. One might as well have proposed a fusion between popular sovereignty and Abraham Lincoln’s conception of inherent human rights. They were not a dialectic requiring a synthesis. They were alternatives demanding a choice.

 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-madness-will-pass-conservatives-cant-give-up/2018/03/29/33367342-3369-11e8-8bdd-cdb33a5eef83_story.html?utm_term=.f2f463c20acd

 

End paragraph:

Quote

Which raises a fourth option: For elected leaders to remind Americans who they are and affirm our common bonds. For conservative policy experts to define an agenda of working-class uplift, not an agenda of white resentment — which will consign Republicans to moral squalor and (eventually) to electoral irrelevance. For principled conservatives to hear the call of moral duty and stand up for their beliefs until this madness passes. As it will.

 

[Moiraine]

@TGHusker

 

I don't see any "blanket labelling" in the post you're pointing at.

 

The Republican party has religious nutjobs, and they should try not to associate with said nutjobs or let them run the show (i.e. hijack the party).

 

@Making Chimichangas may think all religious people are nutjobs, but didn't say so. There's no blanket statement whatsoever in the post.

Edited April 3, 2018 by Moiraine

[TGHusker]

18 minutes ago, Moiraine said:

@TGHusker

 

I don't see any "blanket labelling" in the post you're pointing at.

 

The Republican party has religious nutjobs, and they should try not to associate with said nutjobs or let them run the show (i.e. hijack the party).

 

@Making Chimichangas may think all religious people are nutjobs, but didn't say so. There's no blanket statement whatsoever in the post.

forgive my over-reading Chimi's statement.  

 

Of course that beg's the question - Whom are the religious nut jobs of which he speaks?  Is it all pro-lifers, all evangelicals or all those who disagree with his position politically?  I guess he would have to answer that question.  So it would help to have clarification when the statement is made.

Edited April 3, 2018 by TGHusker

[Danny Bateman]

Relevant:

 

 

Probably belongs in the "Netflix sh#t worth watching" thread.

 

[HS_Coach_C]

On 3/29/2018 at 9:31 PM, Making Chimichangas said:

If I could recommend one thing to conservatives: please dump and get rid of the religious nutjobs who have hijacked the republican party.

To me it looks like Trump has hijacked the Republican party, and he's far from religious.

 

He might say something every now and then to try to get support from Christians, but it's not because he believes it.

 

Also, are you saying anyone who is religious is a nutjob?  Or just the people who take it to such extremes that they stop practicing what they preach?

[Moiraine]

16 minutes ago, TGHusker said:

forgive my over-reading Chimi's statement.  

 

Of course that beg's the question - Whom are the religious nut jobs of which he speaks?  Is it all pro-lifers, all evangelicals or all those who disagree with his position politically?  I guess he would have to answer that question.  So it would help to have clarification when the statement is made.

 

 

Going to answer for myself.

 

It's the ones who think "religious freedom" means they should have the freedom to deny the rights of others.

 

It's the ones who think gay people should not be protected by anti-discrimination laws, but Christians should.

 

It's the ones who think gays shouldn't be allowed to adopt, but don't say anything about adulterers or divorcees or any other sin-committers.

 

It's the ones who would vote for and continue to support the antithesis of a Christian (aka Donald Trump) because he says during his election year that he's become a Christian during said year.

 

There are many more examples of what a religious nutjob is to me. Being pro-life doesn't make someone a nutjob. But being against sex education and/or the defunding of CHIP/Medicaid and simultaneously being pro-life does.

 

 

4 minutes ago, HS_Coach_C said:

To me it looks like Trump has hijacked the Republican party, and he's far from religious.

 

He might say something every now and then to try to get support from Christians, but it's not because he believes it.

 

Also, are you saying anyone who is religious is a nutjob?  Or just the people who take it to such extremes that they stop practicing what they preach?

 

 

87% of evangelicals voted for him and still largely support him today. The nutjobs among them have had the GOP by the gonads since before Trump.

Edited April 3, 2018 by Moiraine

[HS_Coach_C]

53 minutes ago, Moiraine said:

87% of evangelicals voted for him and still largely support him today. The nutjobs among them have had the GOP by the gonads since before Trump.

This is somewhat misleading.  Maybe some exit polls show something similar to that, but here's a little perspective:

 

TGC

Quote

1. Exit polls do not capture the ‘evangelical’ vote, only the ‘white evangelical’ vote.

2. The exit poll conflates ‘evangelical’ and ‘born-again.’

3. Many cultural Christians who never go to church identify as ‘evangelical’ or ‘born-again.’

4. Exit polls only tell us about the people who have voted.

 

...the actual number of evangelical Trump voters would be even lower, likely between one-third (roughly 35 percent) and two-fifths (about 40 percent).

 

Whether you consider that final estimated number to be too high or too low, one thing is certain: it is substantially less than the 81 percent figure that is being touted as representing the voting figures for our faith community.

 

Before we opine on what evangelical voting behavior means, we should first make certain our claims are based on reasonably accurate assumptions about how evangelicals voted—or didn’t vote.

 

Addendum: One more category from the exit poll that is worthy of notice is the “Best description of vote.” While the majority of Democratic voters said, “I strongly favor my candidate” (53 percent), only 42 percent of Republicans said the same. The majority of Republicans said the best description of their vote was “I dislike the other candidates” (51 percent).

 

Assuming the same percentage is true for white evangelicals who voted Republican, we can make a rough estimate and conclude that the majority voted for Trump because they did not like Clinton. We can also assume that approximately only 1 in 5 of all evangelicals (about 18 percent) strongly favored Trump—about the same as the number that strongly favored Clinton (an estimated 19 percent). 

Agree or not, it's a different and reasonable perspective.  A lot of voters disliked both candidates.

 

Also, 60% of evangelicals who voted in the primaries didn't vote for Trump.  Stuck with a Trump v. Clinton decision, many settled on Trump.

 

In addition, voting for the president is not about a single issue.  Many people chose Trump over Clinton because of issues not related to their faith.

The economy and national security were the biggest issues.  Has Trump been terrible at almost everything? Yep, but he was saying a lot of the right things to trigger voters at that time.

 

This was not about a ton of people actually liking Donald Trump.  It was about a giant field of weak Republican candidates and a terrible Democratic candidate.

 

Edit: I do agree that there are plenty of nutjobs in the Republican party that need to go away.  In the same way there are plenty of anti-Christians that want nothing more than to silence anyone of faith in the Democratic party.

 

Okay, I'm done.  Now fire away...

Edited April 3, 2018 by HS_Coach_C

[TGHusker]

40 minutes ago, Moiraine said:

 

 

Going to answer for myself.

 

It's the ones who think "religious freedom" means they should have the freedom to deny the rights of others.

 

It's the ones who think gay people should not be protected by anti-discrimination laws, but Christians should.

 

It's the ones who think gays shouldn't be allowed to adopt, but don't say anything about adulterers or divorcees or any other sin-committers.

 

It's the ones who would vote for and continue to support the antithesis of a Christian (aka Donald Trump) because he says during his election year that he's become a Christian during said year.

 

There are many more examples of what a religious nutjob is to me. Being pro-life doesn't make someone a nutjob. But being against sex education and/or the defunding of CHIP/Medicaid and simultaneously being pro-life does.

 

 

 

 

87% of evangelicals voted for him and still largely support him today. The nutjobs among them have had the GOP by the gonads since before Trump.

In a pluralistic society as ours, everyone has the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness as the Declaration declares and equal protection.  I am evangelical, conservative, & prolife and I recognize that the freedoms given to me apply equally to me and to those who may have view opposite of mine.  When it comes to sin and sinning - we all fall short of the glory of God in different ways.  We categorize sin on some kind of spectrum from "bad" to "unforgivably bad".  I don't see God making any such distinction.  We are all in need of grace and grace can't be earned by 'acting Christian like'. 

 

While I don't think evangelicals are 'nutjobs' for voting for Trump - based on whether the fact that they could vote for someone who gives lip service to their deeply held values vs voting for someone who was diametrically opposed to most of those values, I do have continued concern when the same people don't speak up when Trump violates so many of the other 'moral' values they profess to hold.  As I mentioned in another post, the dead clock is right 2x a day - so Trump can be correct on a few of the issues supported by evangelicals, but the rest of the time, evangelicals should be speaking out against his 'godless' behavior.  

I agree wt your last  statement - being prolife should be a 'whole life' (not insurance) issue. 

Again I long for the day when there is a candidate who is prolife from the womb to the grave. 

@HS_Coach_C post does a good job breaking down the evangelical votes than what I have done.   We had a choice between "very bad", and "very, very bad" in respect to the 2 candidates(I say this in respect to prolife issues and not as a general rule on policy). I think the election process failed all of us on both sides of the political debate - something we all have in common and something I hope we can fix together if reasonable voices are allowed to be heard.

Edited April 3, 2018 by TGHusker