Excellent Article from FreedomWorks (Old) Criticizing Hawley

[Libertas Vel Mors]

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/josh-hawley-and-rick-scotts-bizarre-support-for-socialist-price-controls

[Libertas Vel Mors]

If Josh Hawley wins the nomination in 2024, the party is done. No credible conservative could support him. Donald Trump Jr > Hawley.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

If Josh Hawley wins the nomination in 2024, the party is done. No credible conservative could support him. Donald Trump Jr > Hawley.

Jr lacks basic competence.

Yeah. He's also a stupid grifter. But Hawley isn't even a conservative.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

Hawley is a social conservative and economic moderate.

I would put Hawley to the left of most of the Dems elected in 2018.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

Hawley is a social conservative and economic moderate.

I would put Hawley to the left of most of the Dems elected in 2018.

Its where the GOP base is at though. Most fiscally conservative base voters live in trendy, fast growing metros and are either being transformed by immigration, transformed by generational change (with millennials desperate for gov't action on student loan debt and climate), or being alienated themselves for whatever reason. There just isn't vast tracts of endless suburbia ready to crawl over broken glass to vote Republican up and down the ballot anymore.

There is endless swaths of hollowed out middle America, rural areas, small towns, ex-manufacturing enclaves, and working class non-college white suburbs that are more than willing to because they hate the Democrats on immigration, energy/environment, and social issues. It just so happens these people want their social security, their medicare, healthcare and good paying jobs.

Chase a phantom of the past or evolve to meet the needs of the real tangible voting blocks (be it those new voters in the suburbs or the old ones in the rural areas), the direction markers are point the same direction.

Reality is unraveling the lie that conservatives have told themselves for the past 30 years about static ideologies advancing static agendas. The economy is constantly evolving and the policies have to be just as dynamic or the voters will eventually cast those advocating the static boilerplate to the dustbin of history.

Large numbers of voters loved higher tariffs in 1860 and 1896, not so much in 1932. Reaganism was the new thing on the block in 1980 just like Protectionism was in the 19th century and it benefited the growth region and that region reacted by powering its majorities. Eventually though the dynamic shifts, tariffs became a hindrance to exports and once that became painfully exposed, it was washed away in an instance. I expect the same to happen to supply side tax cutting.

Conservatism will be just fine and will exist forever but the exact policies that were popular and benefited the growth region in 1980 are a chapter in a book people will read about decades from now, with several more coming after it. When it worked, and then when it didn't work anymore.

Better dead than red. If conservatism doesn't include fiscal, than it is not a place for the 60% of Republicans who define as fiscally conservative, and it certainly doesn't include me. I'd still never vote D for baby killers, but if it's one statist party vs another the American experiment has failed.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

And that's just bad economics. Supply side tax cuts return capital to the private economy and encourage investment. They help, not hurt, everyday Americans.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

Hawley is a social conservative and economic moderate.

I would put Hawley to the left of most of the Dems elected in 2018.

Its where the GOP base is at though. Most fiscally conservative base voters live in trendy, fast growing metros and are either being transformed by immigration, transformed by generational change (with millennials desperate for gov't action on student loan debt and climate), or being alienated themselves for whatever reason. There just isn't vast tracts of endless suburbia ready to crawl over broken glass to vote Republican up and down the ballot anymore.

There is endless swaths of hollowed out middle America, rural areas, small towns, ex-manufacturing enclaves, and working class non-college white suburbs that are more than willing to because they hate the Democrats on immigration, energy/environment, and social issues. It just so happens these people want their social security, their medicare, healthcare and good paying jobs.

Chase a phantom of the past or evolve to meet the needs of the real tangible voting blocks (be it those new voters in the suburbs or the old ones in the rural areas), the direction markers are point the same direction.

Reality is unraveling the lie that conservatives have told themselves for the past 30 years about static ideologies advancing static agendas. The economy is constantly evolving and the policies have to be just as dynamic or the voters will eventually cast those advocating the static boilerplate to the dustbin of history.

Large numbers of voters loved higher tariffs in 1860 and 1896, not so much in 1932. Reaganism was the new thing on the block in 1980 just like Protectionism was in the 19th century and it benefited the growth region and that region reacted by powering its majorities. Eventually though the dynamic shifts, tariffs became a hindrance to exports and once that became painfully exposed, it was washed away in an instance. I expect the same to happen to supply side tax cutting.

Conservatism will be just fine and will exist forever but the exact policies that were popular and benefited the growth region in 1980 are a chapter in a book people will read about decades from now, with several more coming after it. When it worked, and then when it didn't work anymore.

Do you think Hawley would actually campaign on raising federal income taxes?!

I could more reasonably see the next Republican president imposing a federal VAT.  That goes pretty hand in hand with protectionism.

Yes and yes.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

FreedomWorks is basically TPUSA but dumber and more hillbilly.

And Nick Fuentes is basically Alex Jones but more stupid and more racist. It amuses me to no end that a man named "Fuentes" is leading the Groyper charge.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

Hawley is a social conservative and economic moderate.

I would put Hawley to the left of most of the Dems elected in 2018.

Its where the GOP base is at though. Most fiscally conservative base voters live in trendy, fast growing metros and are either being transformed by immigration, transformed by generational change (with millennials desperate for gov't action on student loan debt and climate), or being alienated themselves for whatever reason. There just isn't vast tracts of endless suburbia ready to crawl over broken glass to vote Republican up and down the ballot anymore.

There is endless swaths of hollowed out middle America, rural areas, small towns, ex-manufacturing enclaves, and working class non-college white suburbs that are more than willing to because they hate the Democrats on immigration, energy/environment, and social issues. It just so happens these people want their social security, their medicare, healthcare and good paying jobs.

Chase a phantom of the past or evolve to meet the needs of the real tangible voting blocks (be it those new voters in the suburbs or the old ones in the rural areas), the direction markers are point the same direction.

Reality is unraveling the lie that conservatives have told themselves for the past 30 years about static ideologies advancing static agendas. The economy is constantly evolving and the policies have to be just as dynamic or the voters will eventually cast those advocating the static boilerplate to the dustbin of history.

Large numbers of voters loved higher tariffs in 1860 and 1896, not so much in 1932. Reaganism was the new thing on the block in 1980 just like Protectionism was in the 19th century and it benefited the growth region and that region reacted by powering its majorities. Eventually though the dynamic shifts, tariffs became a hindrance to exports and once that became painfully exposed, it was washed away in an instance. I expect the same to happen to supply side tax cutting.

Conservatism will be just fine and will exist forever but the exact policies that were popular and benefited the growth region in 1980 are a chapter in a book people will read about decades from now, with several more coming after it. When it worked, and then when it didn't work anymore.

Better dead than red. If conservatism doesn't include fiscal, than it is not a place for the 60% of Republicans who define as fiscally conservative, and it certainly doesn't include me. I'd still never vote D for baby killers, but if it's one statist party vs another the American experiment has failed.

America was industrialized under a policy of protectionism, internal subsidies and land grant colleges.

How can you judge a 250 year old country a failure, based on the failure of an economic agenda that is just 40 years old? Are you saying that America was a "red" country prior to 1980? This would come as quite a shock to Calvin Coolidge, Ike and especially Richard Nixon.

I divide it into periods like this:
1860-1896 - Protectionism+Internal Subsidies (mainly for railroads, but also land for farmers)
1896-1932 - Protectionism+Lassiez Faire (Yes, Wilson and TR don't neatly fit this paradigm but the 1920s does and so does McKinley)
1932 - 1980 - Free Trade+Keynesianism
1980 - ? - Free Trade+Supply Side Economics

Of course there were exceptions to this naturally and the years are somewhat arbitrary, but it illustrates the point just how short term these economic policy cycles are, 36 to 48 years in length and typically book ended by a Depression/Recession that reshapes people's understanding of how policies benefit them in reality.

Values are not policies. The values can guide policy, but the policy should not be mistaken for values, clinged to inflexibly. If that were the case, then Reagan would have never overcome Keynesian economics himself. The situation on the ground dictated that result. Likewise, the situation now dictates difference means.

Plus I don't think it will be the same level of statism, far from it. Also its worth noting that Hawley is at this point mostly positioning with little substance or accomplishment to back it up. So I wouldn't be hitting the panic button of him, but it should validate my years old predictions, the fact that he has calculated as much and is positioning himself accordingly is solid evidence that is where possible contenders think things are heading.

Also fiscally conservative is not the same as supporting supply side. In fact I would point out that pre-Reagan, "fiscal conservatives" opposed deficit funded tax cuts because their priority was removing the debt not cutting taxes.

No, America was industrialized by men like Andrew Carnegie and John Rockerfeller. It was not land grant colleges that built the Erie Canal, or the steel mills of Pennsylvania. It was not internal subsidies (save for the selling off of land) that built the oil drills of Texas. And what Josh Hawley calls for is not just protectionism. Protectionism is the governmental picking of winners and losers. It is shameful economic interference that harms consumers and businesses alike. But we have dealt with it before, and will deal with it again if it becomes an issue. Nay, the issue with Josh Hawley is that he calls for big government, and of the sort that only once in your listing of economic timeframes has ever appeared before. But now is not 1946. It is not 1947. We are not alone in the ruins of a post war world, with America alone as an economic superpower. We live in an increasingly globalized world, where Hawley's big government, just like Roosevelt's big government did with the second spike in 1938, will inevitably harm and burn our country like a chimp with a machine gun. And when they do, it remains to be seen if there is any last resistance. In the 60s, in the 70s, and the 80s, we were lucky enough to be saved by courageous conservatives, men and women like Barry Goldwater, Phyllis Schafly, and Ronald Reagan. But with partisanship and demographics today, who is to say that we can pull that off a second time? If the Manchurian Candidate wins, who is to say that we will be so lucky again? Who is to say that the values our great nation was founded upon, of the right to life, of the right to liberty, of the right to property, of the right to the pursuit of happiness, will survive?

[Libertas Vel Mors]

Firstly, NC Senator is one of the best, most informative posters on this board.

Secondly-the vast bulk of the GOP electorate doesn't care about abstract issues like "the size of government" or other National Review/Ron Paul style niche economic issues.  The Tea Party movement was initially very Libertarian/small government and anti-war, but rather small when Bush was still in office.  By mid 2009-2010, the big money donors got involved and it swelled into a juggernaut movement, but it's focus moved onto cultural wedge issues rather than Libertarian Doctrine.

Trump got the Tea Party's full fledged support without much in the way of fiscal conservatism or constitutional originalism.  He accomplished this with making immigration policy front and center, rejecting the ongoing Middle Eastern wars, attacking NAFTA against the backdrop of a long dying domestic industry, and mastery of both social media and traditional media manipulation.  Tapping Pence and Scalia's passing got him the Evangelicals full support.

The vast Tea party voting base never cared about hardcore fiscal conservatism (evidenced by their support for Trump) and GOP voters who did nearly all lined up behind Trump once nominated because the other option was, well.. Hillary Clinton.

What fiscal conservatives, particularly those who bemoan the populist trend like much of National Review's staff or posters like Dean Heller have to understand, is that enthusiastic Paul Ryan-ite fiscal conservatism is political poison to 70+ percent of the electorate.  Furthermore, the white-collar suburban voters that left the GOP are NOT coming back and won't come back unless the DNC goes full fledged Squad/Labour, which ain't happening.  The GOP needs to persuade new voters, particularly those under 40 and populist economics appear far more "compassionate" then Reaganomics.

You have literally no evidence to back that up, and you're letting your political opinions seep in here. A higher % of GOP voters define as fiscally vs socially conservative. A ticket with Paul Ryan on it got a higher % of the vote than Trump did. Every GOP candidate since 1976 has run on a platform of free market conservatism mixed with socially conservative values, and that has been one of the most successful periods for our party, ever. And the Tea Party being about cultural wedge issues must be a joke -- it was literally built around hatred for Obamacare, a policy that would be at 90% in most countries, yet is even now at just 50-39 and was steadily in the negatives before Trump came into office and made support for it = opposition to him. But sure king, go off on how arguing for a government that doesn't buy people's diapers for them is so damn abstract.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

Firstly, NC Senator is one of the best, most informative posters on this board.

Secondly-the vast bulk of the GOP electorate doesn't care about abstract issues like "the size of government" or other National Review/Ron Paul style niche economic issues.  The Tea Party movement was initially very Libertarian/small government and anti-war, but rather small when Bush was still in office.  By mid 2009-2010, the big money donors got involved and it swelled into a juggernaut movement, but it's focus moved onto cultural wedge issues rather than Libertarian Doctrine.

Trump got the Tea Party's full fledged support without much in the way of fiscal conservatism or constitutional originalism.  He accomplished this with making immigration policy front and center, rejecting the ongoing Middle Eastern wars, attacking NAFTA against the backdrop of a long dying domestic industry, and mastery of both social media and traditional media manipulation.  Tapping Pence and Scalia's passing got him the Evangelicals full support.

The vast Tea party voting base never cared about hardcore fiscal conservatism (evidenced by their support for Trump) and GOP voters who did nearly all lined up behind Trump once nominated because the other option was, well.. Hillary Clinton.

What fiscal conservatives, particularly those who bemoan the populist trend like much of National Review's staff or posters like Dean Heller have to understand, is that enthusiastic Paul Ryan-ite fiscal conservatism is political poison to 70+ percent of the electorate.  Furthermore, the white-collar suburban voters that left the GOP are NOT coming back and won't come back unless the DNC goes full fledged Squad/Labour, which ain't happening.  The GOP needs to persuade new voters, particularly those under 40 and populist economics appear far more "compassionate" then Reaganomics.

You have literally no evidence to back that up, and you're letting your political opinions seep in here. A higher % of GOP voters define as fiscally vs socially conservative. A ticket with Paul Ryan on it got a higher % of the vote than Trump did. Every GOP candidate since 1976 has run on a platform of free market conservatism mixed with socially conservative values, and that has been one of the most successful periods for our party, ever. And the Tea Party being about cultural wedge issues must be a joke -- it was literally built around hatred for Obamacare, a policy that would be at 90% in most countries, yet is even now at just 50-39 and was steadily in the negatives before Trump came into office and made support for it = opposition to him. But sure king, go off on how arguing for a government that doesn't buy people's diapers for them is so damn abstract.

It's important to make the distinction between politically engaged people like us (who make up a small minority of the population) who are also on the right compared to politically disengaged normies, who are the massive bulk of the population.  Someone who reads Daily Wire or National Review everyday and reads Sowell and Friedman (as I do or did) and is a total policy wonk is going to have different priorities and convictions than their Facebook aunts.  But politics is an art performance about convincing half the people that you are the least-bad choice, that a know-it-all like Ben Shapiro won't necessarily succeed at.

Romney/Ryan also got 100 fewer EVs than Trump/Pence, and lost the PV by 4 instead of 2.  Both Romney and Ryan, however experienced and brilliant they may be, were both mediocre politicians at least on the national level.  I've read Sowell extensively so I feel I have a solid grasp on Free market/Austrian economics (and I was a libertarian for 4 years), but if the prevailing narrative in politics and the media is that supply side economics are awful for the 99% (based off the absurd predication that "the pie" is static and can't grow) and 70% of the country believes that, the GOP unfortunately has to work within those confines.  Having the right policy means little if you can't get elected, and the GOP has serious issues getting elected.

Bush junior and John McCain were hardly Milton Friedman disciples, so forgive me if attacking Hawley's betrayal of the old GOP economic agenda falls on deaf ears.  The old, pre-Trump GOP deserves at least half of the blame for driving away moderate suburban voters, how do you expect a return to the neocons will convince them to return??

Trump proved in 2015 that you don't have to be a hardcore fiscal conservative to gain the hearts and souls of the Tea party base.  There was alot more enthusiasm for him than Romney, and Romney was running against the face of the ACA earlier, only 1-2 years after the TP was at it's peak strength.  You're absolutely correct that the ACA (and the very partisan matter which Obama acted on that and other matters) had an outsized role in the growth of the Tea Party in 2009-10.  But the Libertarian, anti debt/defecit, anti tax, anti war principles that the TP was founded upon in 2008 were far less relevant 5 years later once the ACA was actually implemented, what drove the bulk membership of people online who identified with the TP movement (who weren't hard core political nerds like we are) was always social issues if it wasn't the ACA.

John McCain was not a free marketeer -- he voted against repeal! Not only that, but while I do agree that the media's narrative has been hurtful for us, that does not mean that the American people have suddenly turned into socialists who favor big government. Sure, 74% might say they support paying $200 for paid leave, but when it gets to $400?  , we're in the negatives! And hell, 62% of Americans outright oppose even the statement "Wealth should be taken from the rich and given to the poor." Now, I do admit I'm using a biased source for those numbers, but even decreasing those by a few points doesn't change the genuine reality. Furthermore, what has ever become of principles? Are we now really willing to sell out what we know to be right, to elect a more left wing candidate then the right winger we got elected just 4 years ago despite his imperfections and rape comments? And hell, will you not consider that bad policies have bad effects? If we surrender and agree to implement policies that hurt America yet more, and raise taxes yet again, and betray the principles this nation was founded on once again, what do you think will happen? Implementing policies we know to be bad ones does not help -- it will simply build backlash, anger, and resentment, and allow China and foreign threats to gain the upper hand.