Why the Hawley hype?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Hawley is a neo-communist who favors big government regulation and intolerable left wing radicalism. I would vote for Donald Trump JR over him.

Hawley is the exact opposite of a communist or a radical.

In fact Hawley is operating as a Traditionalist Conservative, which is why he favors government action on some points. By doing so, he is hoping to release the societal pressure that absent action will just keep building and building until the other side gets to dictate the results on everything. That is how politics works in reality.

Hawley's premise is that you concede and co-opt the left on one or two points to save the rest of the conservative pie from complete annihilation.

What is radical is the radical adherence to economic libertarianism, which will cause an equal and opposite reaction in favor of socialism. It is worth remembering that Capitalism itself is a liberal concept and as such its creative destruction is naturally contrary to the interests of societal stability, family cohesion and religious faith all of which are tropes ingrained in the concept of Traditional Conservatism. Therefore a trad con would want to reign in capitalism and restrain it to serve the interest of preserving those three priorities: Stability, family and faith.

Just because someone isn't your kind of conservatism, doesn't mean they are socialists. There is more to politics than a simple linear spectrum based entirely on one's views of how big government should be.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Hawley is a neo-communist who favors big government regulation and intolerable left wing radicalism. I would vote for Donald Trump JR over him.

Hawley is the exact opposite of a communist or a radical.

In fact Hawley is operating as a Traditionalist Conservative, which is why he favors government action on some points. By doing so, he is hoping to release the societal pressure that absent action will just keep building and building until the other side gets to dictate the results on everything. That is how politics works in reality.

Hawley's premise is that you concede and co-opt the left on one or two points to save the rest of the conservative pie from complete annihilation.

What is radical is the radical adherence to economic libertarianism, which will cause an equal and opposite reaction in favor of socialism. It is worth remembering that Capitalism itself is a liberal concept and as such its creative destruction is naturally contrary to the interests of societal stability, family cohesion and religious faith all of which are tropes ingrained in the concept of Traditional Conservatism. Therefore a trad con would want to reign in capitalism and restrain it to serve the interest of preserving those three priorities: Stability, family and faith.

Just because someone isn't your kind of conservatism, doesn't mean they are socialists. There is more to politics than a simple linear spectrum based entirely on one's views of how big government should be.

No, economic freedom is not a radical ideal. It is traditional Americana, straight from the very start. From Washington and Jefferson to Goldwater and Reagan to Cruz and Walker, freedom has been paramount in American values. And to assert that capitalism, which has created the actual nuclear family and delivered prosperity for so many people worldwide, is harming the family, is ridiculous -- it is only with capitalism have we managed to achieve such standards of living as for the nuclear family to even become possible. Instead of digging ditches from sundown to sunset, the natural productivity of free markets allows for increased prosperity and economic growth. No, perhaps Hawley is not a socialist. I am used to speaking to those who are not very well politically informed, for whom more distant concepts are not best used in explanations. But Hawley is a freedom hating, wealth redistributing, distributist, and his success would come at the expense of all that makes America great.

The market seeks its own equilibrium, even if at the expense of ten million middle class jobs. Husbands who go home, fight with their wives in front of the kids, turn to drugs in despair, leading the wife to seek a divorce. Meanwhile the schools have lost their tax base, and the kids start hanging out with the wrong crowd.

Throw in the fact that said equilibrium is being skewed by the simple fact that we play by free market rules while China lives by neo-mercantilism, and essentially turning free trade into the unilateral disarmament of the previous cold war.

Anything good can be taken too far and that includes democracy itself. The Constitution was written to reign in "excess of democracy" and that was IIRC, Washington's words in the lead up to the convention. That is why diehard libertarians reject the Constitution as an illegal, reactionary counter coup by authoritarian elites to repress the freedoms won in the revolution, a view I don't share but it is out there.

If democracy and freedom can be taken too far (be it yelling fire in a crowded theater or voting to enslave people because they look different - Stephen Douglas and Lewis Cass ftr), then surely capitalism, markets and free trade can be taken too far and need to be reigned in at times.

There is no other outcome to the situation in healthcare drug prices then some form of gov't dictation. Either the left will do it via single payer, or the right can do it as a stand alone regulation as Hawley wants to do. Either way you slice it, people will only stand for this hostage style distorted market (the only way for demand to drop is for bodies to hit the floor so there is no natural restraint on prices). If you think "America's legacy" as a free country will stave off desperate people from seeking redress, the next decade or two is going to be eye opening.

If Conservatives don't adapt to this reality now, they are going to find themselves in the exact same place the New Deal Democrats found themselves in by 1985. Outside looking in, having failed to address the current economic misery.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Hawley is a neo-communist who favors big government regulation and intolerable left wing radicalism. I would vote for Donald Trump JR over him.

Hawley is the exact opposite of a communist or a radical.

In fact Hawley is operating as a Traditionalist Conservative, which is why he favors government action on some points. By doing so, he is hoping to release the societal pressure that absent action will just keep building and building until the other side gets to dictate the results on everything. That is how politics works in reality.

Hawley's premise is that you concede and co-opt the left on one or two points to save the rest of the conservative pie from complete annihilation.

What is radical is the radical adherence to economic libertarianism, which will cause an equal and opposite reaction in favor of socialism. It is worth remembering that Capitalism itself is a liberal concept and as such its creative destruction is naturally contrary to the interests of societal stability, family cohesion and religious faith all of which are tropes ingrained in the concept of Traditional Conservatism. Therefore a trad con would want to reign in capitalism and restrain it to serve the interest of preserving those three priorities: Stability, family and faith.

Just because someone isn't your kind of conservatism, doesn't mean they are socialists. There is more to politics than a simple linear spectrum based entirely on one's views of how big government should be.

No, economic freedom is not a radical ideal. It is traditional Americana, straight from the very start. From Washington and Jefferson to Goldwater and Reagan to Cruz and Walker, freedom has been paramount in American values. And to assert that capitalism, which has created the actual nuclear family and delivered prosperity for so many people worldwide, is harming the family, is ridiculous -- it is only with capitalism have we managed to achieve such standards of living as for the nuclear family to even become possible. Instead of digging ditches from sundown to sunset, the natural productivity of free markets allows for increased prosperity and economic growth. No, perhaps Hawley is not a socialist. I am used to speaking to those who are not very well politically informed, for whom more distant concepts are not best used in explanations. But Hawley is a freedom hating, wealth redistributing, distributist, and his success would come at the expense of all that makes America great.

The market seeks its own equilibrium, even if at the expense of ten million middle class jobs. Husbands who go home, fight with their wives in front of the kids, turn to drugs in despair, leading the wife to seek a divorce. Meanwhile the schools have lost their tax base, and the kids start hanging out with the wrong crowd.

Throw in the fact that said equilibrium is being skewed by the simple fact that we play by free market rules while China lives by neo-mercantilism, and essentially turning free trade into the unilateral disarmament of the previous cold war.

Anything good can be taken too far and that includes democracy itself. The Constitution was written to reign in "excess of democracy" and that was IIRC, Washington's words in the lead up to the convention. That is why diehard libertarians reject the Constitution as an illegal, reactionary counter coup by authoritarian elites to repress the freedoms won in the revolution, a view I don't share but it is out there.

If democracy and freedom can be taken too far (be it yelling fire in a crowded theater or voting to enslave people because they look different - Stephen Douglas and Lewis Cass ftr), then surely capitalism, markets and free trade can be taken too far and need to be reigned in at times.

There is no other outcome to the situation in healthcare drug prices then some form of gov't dictation. Either the left will do it via single payer, or the right can do it as a stand alone regulation as Hawley wants to do. Either way you slice it, people will only stand for this hostage style distorted market (the only way for demand to drop is for bodies to hit the floor so there is no natural restraint on prices). If you think "America's legacy" as a free country will stave off desperate people from seeking redress, the next decade or two is going to be eye opening.

If Conservatives don't adapt to this reality now, they are going to find themselves in the exact same place the New Deal Democrats found themselves in by 1985. Outside looking in, having failed to address the current economic misery.

This is all under the assumption that the U.S. is economically libertarian or even close to it. No radical libertarian on the right would argue this. In fact, no moderate libertarian economically would argue this. It would be a stretch to even say a die-hard fiscal conservative would argue this as well.  The closest instances of the U.S. having libertarian economics were in times where the family was stronger, cultural identity was in greater unison, and religious values remained strong.


If anything, the current situation we are in is exactly because we drifted away from classical liberalism. Libertarianism emerged because of the failures of government to address all the problems government created. Libertarianism became more radical when there was a greater case of businesses working with government to create unfettered corporatism that masked itself as unrestrained capitalism.

It's not really assuming anything about ideology, though the right does get very libertarian when it comes to resisting proactive preclusion of the growing left-wing tide.

Most people don't view things in an ideological lense, especially issues like drug prices. All they now is prices are rising 12,000% in some cases with no natural restraint on prices other than people dying. Classical liberalism doesn't have a good answer to that.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Hawley is a neo-communist who favors big government regulation and intolerable left wing radicalism. I would vote for Donald Trump JR over him.

Hawley is the exact opposite of a communist or a radical.

In fact Hawley is operating as a Traditionalist Conservative, which is why he favors government action on some points. By doing so, he is hoping to release the societal pressure that absent action will just keep building and building until the other side gets to dictate the results on everything. That is how politics works in reality.

Hawley's premise is that you concede and co-opt the left on one or two points to save the rest of the conservative pie from complete annihilation.

What is radical is the radical adherence to economic libertarianism, which will cause an equal and opposite reaction in favor of socialism. It is worth remembering that Capitalism itself is a liberal concept and as such its creative destruction is naturally contrary to the interests of societal stability, family cohesion and religious faith all of which are tropes ingrained in the concept of Traditional Conservatism. Therefore a trad con would want to reign in capitalism and restrain it to serve the interest of preserving those three priorities: Stability, family and faith.

Just because someone isn't your kind of conservatism, doesn't mean they are socialists. There is more to politics than a simple linear spectrum based entirely on one's views of how big government should be.

No, economic freedom is not a radical ideal. It is traditional Americana, straight from the very start. From Washington and Jefferson to Goldwater and Reagan to Cruz and Walker, freedom has been paramount in American values. And to assert that capitalism, which has created the actual nuclear family and delivered prosperity for so many people worldwide, is harming the family, is ridiculous -- it is only with capitalism have we managed to achieve such standards of living as for the nuclear family to even become possible. Instead of digging ditches from sundown to sunset, the natural productivity of free markets allows for increased prosperity and economic growth. No, perhaps Hawley is not a socialist. I am used to speaking to those who are not very well politically informed, for whom more distant concepts are not best used in explanations. But Hawley is a freedom hating, wealth redistributing, distributist, and his success would come at the expense of all that makes America great.

The market seeks its own equilibrium, even if at the expense of ten million middle class jobs. Husbands who go home, fight with their wives in front of the kids, turn to drugs in despair, leading the wife to seek a divorce. Meanwhile the schools have lost their tax base, and the kids start hanging out with the wrong crowd.

What? How are you trying to connect husbands fighting with their wives and using drugs to the market meeting supply and demand and getting rid of wasteful jobs? Should we still be employing all those poor laid off candlemakers from before we discovered electricity, because they're "good middle class jobs?" And "at the expense of ten million middle class jobs?" How do you think those jobs are created in the first place? Do you think they grow on trees?

The Second half here, indicates full well you understood the connection. Unemployment is disruptive and detrimental to the cohesion of society, it also leads people to seek answers in the extremes. Fascism, Socialism and Communism. It is how we got Donald Trump.


Its not that you don't eliminate candlemaking it is that you have some kind of an answer other than "Move" or "learn to code", both of which people will just say F you and start to look for extremes that will give them the answers they want to hear, case in point, Trump's nomination.

Hawley is a neo-communist who favors big government regulation and intolerable left wing radicalism. I would vote for Donald Trump JR over him.

Hawley is the exact opposite of a communist or a radical.

In fact Hawley is operating as a Traditionalist Conservative, which is why he favors government action on some points. By doing so, he is hoping to release the societal pressure that absent action will just keep building and building until the other side gets to dictate the results on everything. That is how politics works in reality.

Hawley's premise is that you concede and co-opt the left on one or two points to save the rest of the conservative pie from complete annihilation.

What is radical is the radical adherence to economic libertarianism, which will cause an equal and opposite reaction in favor of socialism. It is worth remembering that Capitalism itself is a liberal concept and as such its creative destruction is naturally contrary to the interests of societal stability, family cohesion and religious faith all of which are tropes ingrained in the concept of Traditional Conservatism. Therefore a trad con would want to reign in capitalism and restrain it to serve the interest of preserving those three priorities: Stability, family and faith.

Just because someone isn't your kind of conservatism, doesn't mean they are socialists. There is more to politics than a simple linear spectrum based entirely on one's views of how big government should be.

No, economic freedom is not a radical ideal. It is traditional Americana, straight from the very start. From Washington and Jefferson to Goldwater and Reagan to Cruz and Walker, freedom has been paramount in American values. And to assert that capitalism, which has created the actual nuclear family and delivered prosperity for so many people worldwide, is harming the family, is ridiculous -- it is only with capitalism have we managed to achieve such standards of living as for the nuclear family to even become possible. Instead of digging ditches from sundown to sunset, the natural productivity of free markets allows for increased prosperity and economic growth. No, perhaps Hawley is not a socialist. I am used to speaking to those who are not very well politically informed, for whom more distant concepts are not best used in explanations. But Hawley is a freedom hating, wealth redistributing, distributist, and his success would come at the expense of all that makes America great.

Throw in the fact that said equilibrium is being skewed by the simple fact that we play by free market rules while China lives by neo-mercantilism, and essentially turning free trade into the unilateral disarmament of the previous cold war.

If you mean to say that the Chinese government is putting into place unfair trade rules that tariff American products without our past governments having had the guts to fight back, yes. That's not an argument for strangling the rights of farmers to sell their goods in the EU though, or to deny free markets and implement socialized medicine.

I mean to say that I don't buy the neoliberal white washing of our history, as we have already discussed. I started off learning history first with no ideology pushing me one way or the other. It is simple fact that we went from being a backwater to the most powerful economy in the world while having strongly protectionist policies and China has gone from the bottom of the pack to the largest while engaging in similar tactics.

Clearly, something is getting lost here in the narrative that free trade is the best course, at least for a developing economy. Beyond that for the sake of those industries that we want to see grow and prosper, we need to at least shield them from dumping and currency manipulation. How you do that is a matter for debate and discussion but if you cannot even have that conversation because it is being shouted down by the neo-liberal consensus then you are stuck at square one. Blindly adhering to free trade (unilateral disarmament) while China continues to take us to the cleaners with their one sided trade war they were waging for the past 25 years.

Hawley is a neo-communist who favors big government regulation and intolerable left wing radicalism. I would vote for Donald Trump JR over him.

Hawley is the exact opposite of a communist or a radical.

In fact Hawley is operating as a Traditionalist Conservative, which is why he favors government action on some points. By doing so, he is hoping to release the societal pressure that absent action will just keep building and building until the other side gets to dictate the results on everything. That is how politics works in reality.

Hawley's premise is that you concede and co-opt the left on one or two points to save the rest of the conservative pie from complete annihilation.

What is radical is the radical adherence to economic libertarianism, which will cause an equal and opposite reaction in favor of socialism. It is worth remembering that Capitalism itself is a liberal concept and as such its creative destruction is naturally contrary to the interests of societal stability, family cohesion and religious faith all of which are tropes ingrained in the concept of Traditional Conservatism. Therefore a trad con would want to reign in capitalism and restrain it to serve the interest of preserving those three priorities: Stability, family and faith.

Just because someone isn't your kind of conservatism, doesn't mean they are socialists. There is more to politics than a simple linear spectrum based entirely on one's views of how big government should be.

No, economic freedom is not a radical ideal. It is traditional Americana, straight from the very start. From Washington and Jefferson to Goldwater and Reagan to Cruz and Walker, freedom has been paramount in American values. And to assert that capitalism, which has created the actual nuclear family and delivered prosperity for so many people worldwide, is harming the family, is ridiculous -- it is only with capitalism have we managed to achieve such standards of living as for the nuclear family to even become possible. Instead of digging ditches from sundown to sunset, the natural productivity of free markets allows for increased prosperity and economic growth. No, perhaps Hawley is not a socialist. I am used to speaking to those who are not very well politically informed, for whom more distant concepts are not best used in explanations. But Hawley is a freedom hating, wealth redistributing, distributist, and his success would come at the expense of all that makes America great.

Anything good can be taken too far and that includes democracy itself. The Constitution was written to reign in "excess of democracy" and that was IIRC, Washington's words in the lead up to the convention. That is why diehard libertarians reject the Constitution as an illegal, reactionary counter coup by authoritarian elites to repress the freedoms won in the revolution, a view I don't share but it is out there.

If democracy and freedom can be taken too far (be it yelling fire in a crowded theater or voting to enslave people because they look different - Stephen Douglas and Lewis Cass ftr), then surely capitalism, markets and free trade can be taken too far and need to be reigned in at times.

I completely agree on the danger of democracy and the tyranny of the majority; it is why I find the label of Republican to be so apt. Yet still, this is a complete and total non sequitur -- your argument is simply that unrestricted democracy can be taken too far, so thus capitalism and free markets are being taken too far today. It does not hold up under even the most base of analysis.

No, I merely established in that section that both can be taken too far, not are. Notice the word "can" appears above in relation to the economy in my words as written. In other sections though I have given examples where it is being taken too far today.

Hawley is a neo-communist who favors big government regulation and intolerable left wing radicalism. I would vote for Donald Trump JR over him.

Hawley is the exact opposite of a communist or a radical.

In fact Hawley is operating as a Traditionalist Conservative, which is why he favors government action on some points. By doing so, he is hoping to release the societal pressure that absent action will just keep building and building until the other side gets to dictate the results on everything. That is how politics works in reality.

Hawley's premise is that you concede and co-opt the left on one or two points to save the rest of the conservative pie from complete annihilation.

What is radical is the radical adherence to economic libertarianism, which will cause an equal and opposite reaction in favor of socialism. It is worth remembering that Capitalism itself is a liberal concept and as such its creative destruction is naturally contrary to the interests of societal stability, family cohesion and religious faith all of which are tropes ingrained in the concept of Traditional Conservatism. Therefore a trad con would want to reign in capitalism and restrain it to serve the interest of preserving those three priorities: Stability, family and faith.

Just because someone isn't your kind of conservatism, doesn't mean they are socialists. There is more to politics than a simple linear spectrum based entirely on one's views of how big government should be.

No, economic freedom is not a radical ideal. It is traditional Americana, straight from the very start. From Washington and Jefferson to Goldwater and Reagan to Cruz and Walker, freedom has been paramount in American values. And to assert that capitalism, which has created the actual nuclear family and delivered prosperity for so many people worldwide, is harming the family, is ridiculous -- it is only with capitalism have we managed to achieve such standards of living as for the nuclear family to even become possible. Instead of digging ditches from sundown to sunset, the natural productivity of free markets allows for increased prosperity and economic growth. No, perhaps Hawley is not a socialist. I am used to speaking to those who are not very well politically informed, for whom more distant concepts are not best used in explanations. But Hawley is a freedom hating, wealth redistributing, distributist, and his success would come at the expense of all that makes America great.

There is no other outcome to the situation in healthcare drug prices then some form of gov't dictation. Either the left will do it via single payer, or the right can do it as a stand alone regulation as Hawley wants to do. Either way you slice it, people will only stand for this hostage style distorted market (the only way for demand to drop is for bodies to hit the floor so there is no natural restraint on prices). If you think "America's legacy" as a free country will stave off desperate people from seeking redress, the next decade or two is going to be eye opening.

Are you kidding me? Do you so fail to understand basic economics that you can honestly assert this? Yes; demand for life saving drugs will and is by nature high. But you seem to think that demand operates in a vacuum, as the Keynesians do, which is simply not the case. The issue with the drug market today is in the field of supply, where well connected corporatists block supply from rising to meet demand with artificially placed government regulations that block new drugs and suppliers from meeting the market. And not only would your "solution" fail to address the actual root cause of the problem, but it would actually make it worse -- just as in rent control or other similar examples, price ceilings simply act to distort the natural seeking of market equilibrium by eliminating the further incentives for new research and production, leaving us with the kind of stagnating drug market we see in so many European countries today. Just as rent control is the easiest way to destroy a city, so is price capping the easiest way to destroy the drug market.

I don't give a crap about Keynesian versus Supply side, its all bullsh@%t. Its like fighting over which wing of the plane is more important and frankly both economic schools of thought should be taken out to the wood shed and killed with a dull axe.

I am a fiscal conservative in that I support balancing the budget or at least getting it close to balance. I think you should promote long term both supply and demand, supply through business creation and entrepeneurship, and demand through beneficial infrastructure projects that are paid for that will generate long run economic growth. The Erie Canal created the Midwest as an economic powerhouse, the Highways created the suburban sprawl, both of which were paid for. Neither of which was an unfunded mandate, or paying people to dig useless holes like Keynes talked about.

Quit trying to other me and make me out to be a leftist because I am not your kind of conservative. We would do so much better, if we spent more time trying to actually do things like balance the budget instead of constantly arguing with the mirror on the wall over whose is the fairest of them all and seeking to exterminate those that don't pass muster.

This constant purity seeking is Soviet in origin and frankly I have no desire for any kind of conservatism that seeks to emulate Vladimir Lenin's tactics. They have clearly lost the plot at some point.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Hawley is a neo-communist who favors big government regulation and intolerable left wing radicalism. I would vote for Donald Trump JR over him.

Hawley is the exact opposite of a communist or a radical.

In fact Hawley is operating as a Traditionalist Conservative, which is why he favors government action on some points. By doing so, he is hoping to release the societal pressure that absent action will just keep building and building until the other side gets to dictate the results on everything. That is how politics works in reality.

Hawley's premise is that you concede and co-opt the left on one or two points to save the rest of the conservative pie from complete annihilation.

What is radical is the radical adherence to economic libertarianism, which will cause an equal and opposite reaction in favor of socialism. It is worth remembering that Capitalism itself is a liberal concept and as such its creative destruction is naturally contrary to the interests of societal stability, family cohesion and religious faith all of which are tropes ingrained in the concept of Traditional Conservatism. Therefore a trad con would want to reign in capitalism and restrain it to serve the interest of preserving those three priorities: Stability, family and faith.

Just because someone isn't your kind of conservatism, doesn't mean they are socialists. There is more to politics than a simple linear spectrum based entirely on one's views of how big government should be.

No, economic freedom is not a radical ideal. It is traditional Americana, straight from the very start. From Washington and Jefferson to Goldwater and Reagan to Cruz and Walker, freedom has been paramount in American values. And to assert that capitalism, which has created the actual nuclear family and delivered prosperity for so many people worldwide, is harming the family, is ridiculous -- it is only with capitalism have we managed to achieve such standards of living as for the nuclear family to even become possible. Instead of digging ditches from sundown to sunset, the natural productivity of free markets allows for increased prosperity and economic growth. No, perhaps Hawley is not a socialist. I am used to speaking to those who are not very well politically informed, for whom more distant concepts are not best used in explanations. But Hawley is a freedom hating, wealth redistributing, distributist, and his success would come at the expense of all that makes America great.

If Conservatives don't adapt to this reality now, they are going to find themselves in the exact same place the New Deal Democrats found themselves in by 1985. Outside looking in, having failed to address the current economic misery.

I think I'm beginning to get it. It is not even that you genuinely think these ideas work or make sense, it is that you are so damn scared of losing. You've lost all your courage to stand for principle. You're already ready to bend the knee and sell out. It is simply pathetic.

What the hell use is a conservatism that basically enables the socialist takeover of the country through its own incompetence and stupidity? My primary ideological underpinning is based on the study of Edmund Burke and how he rationalized opposition to the French Revolution, while supporting the Glorious and American (rhetorically) Revolutions. The main thing that it tells me is that the radicals of all kinds have to be stopped and the best way to stop a movement driven by building societal pressure for change is to release the steam out of the kettle. It doesn't have to be Bismarckian welfare state, but the same idea applies.

There are three things that separate us from being able to win on the budgets, on life, even on guns when you think about it, that is healthcare, climate change and gay rights. Frankly, there are some people on the right would gladly see the Democrats dominate for 40 years to get us to a point where America will desire conservatism of that sort again. The problem is 40 years of Supreme Court justices, working majorities and them solving these problems "Their way" will ensure that you have lost out on far more and that the conservatism that does finally get back into power will be completely unrecognizable to what I desire, much less what you would desire.

Once the left enacts single payer, there is no going back, it will be in place forever. If it means averting the single payer outcome, there is nearly nothing I wouldn't condone, because nothing would be as damaging to the health care sector and to the drug market as the gov't literally setting prices, dictating prices on everything. Compared to a regulation limiting price increases, that is on a whole different planet and if it alleviates the societal pressure for single payer then it will have done a service to conservatism on a range over other issues from life, to the constitution, to balanced budgets and especially on health care.

For years, you have been use to conditioning everything on an us versus them plane, and everyone that disagrees with you is either a liberal, a traitor or a coward. I have not violated any of my principles, because I don't define my conservative principles on the basis of martyrdom and suicide on every last point. I am not selling out Supply Side economics because I don't believe in supply side economics as being suitable to our current times. Conservatism has existed for hundreds of years, supply side economics has existed for just 40. Are you really going to write off everyone who came before Reagan as a socialist? Calvin Coolidge? Robert Taft? Even Barry Goldwater? Finally, the last thing I want to happen is see conservatism bend the knee for 28 to 40 years, because some people couldn't leave the gays alone and some others just couldn't get bast their ideological blinders for long enough to address the pressing economic despair.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Hawley terrifies me and I am convinced that he will become President. His record isn't spotless (e.g., being anti-RTW and signing onto ACA lawsuits) but he knows rhetorically how to paint himself as a worker friendly trad-con. He's been in the Senate for a year and a half and he's already become basically the Senate figurehead for the "traditional" social conservative movement. My sense is that there are plenty of people in the intellectual trad con world who already adore him (e.g., the press they've given him after the Bostick case).

I think he has much better odds of capturing the post-Trump GOP mantle than someone like Haley or Cotton. Haley is basically an establishment-foisted stiff who is squishy on Trump and will reek of an unpopular establishment. Cotton is hawkish, disdainful of the WWC outside of culture war red meat, and uncharismatic. If he didn't light himself on fire in 2016 I could actually see the Rubio of 2019/2020 being competitive in a national primary but people's memories aren't that short.

I think Haley has done a good job appealing to both sectors and represents a Nixon to Trump's Goldwater in the form of triangulated policies which may be necessary to win a primary and general. I'm not convinced the GOP is ready to go full Hawley yet since the party clearly hasn't let go of their traditional economics. It'll take a little longer. Hawley could still win but it's a much riskier choice, like Reagan in 1968 over 1980.

What the GOP really needs is someone that can meld Hawley and Rand Paul together. Trump kind of achieved the same concept when you consider his FP positions and how he handled bathrooms while running against Cruz in Indiana and of course the real main course on Trump, which was immigration and trade.

It had been my hope that John Kasich could pull this off as far back as 2013, a kind of combination of libertarianism on some areas and populism on others, but he fell into the Midwest McCain vibe and nobody really wants that at this point. I was the lone Kasich supporter on this forum for 2 years almost, when he was at like 1%, only to be horribly disappointed by late 2015.

There was time when it looked like it would be Rand Paul versus Christie, and I was prepared to back Paul in that struggle. The thing that bothers me with Paul, is that I am not fond of ideological grand standers and while I respect him for his principles, its rather off putting.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Hawley is a neo-communist who favors big government regulation and intolerable left wing radicalism. I would vote for Donald Trump JR over him.

Hawley is the exact opposite of a communist or a radical.

In fact Hawley is operating as a Traditionalist Conservative, which is why he favors government action on some points. By doing so, he is hoping to release the societal pressure that absent action will just keep building and building until the other side gets to dictate the results on everything. That is how politics works in reality.

Hawley's premise is that you concede and co-opt the left on one or two points to save the rest of the conservative pie from complete annihilation.

What is radical is the radical adherence to economic libertarianism, which will cause an equal and opposite reaction in favor of socialism. It is worth remembering that Capitalism itself is a liberal concept and as such its creative destruction is naturally contrary to the interests of societal stability, family cohesion and religious faith all of which are tropes ingrained in the concept of Traditional Conservatism. Therefore a trad con would want to reign in capitalism and restrain it to serve the interest of preserving those three priorities: Stability, family and faith.

Just because someone isn't your kind of conservatism, doesn't mean they are socialists. There is more to politics than a simple linear spectrum based entirely on one's views of how big government should be.

No, economic freedom is not a radical ideal. It is traditional Americana, straight from the very start. From Washington and Jefferson to Goldwater and Reagan to Cruz and Walker, freedom has been paramount in American values. And to assert that capitalism, which has created the actual nuclear family and delivered prosperity for so many people worldwide, is harming the family, is ridiculous -- it is only with capitalism have we managed to achieve such standards of living as for the nuclear family to even become possible. Instead of digging ditches from sundown to sunset, the natural productivity of free markets allows for increased prosperity and economic growth. No, perhaps Hawley is not a socialist. I am used to speaking to those who are not very well politically informed, for whom more distant concepts are not best used in explanations. But Hawley is a freedom hating, wealth redistributing, distributist, and his success would come at the expense of all that makes America great.

The market seeks its own equilibrium, even if at the expense of ten million middle class jobs. Husbands who go home, fight with their wives in front of the kids, turn to drugs in despair, leading the wife to seek a divorce. Meanwhile the schools have lost their tax base, and the kids start hanging out with the wrong crowd.

Throw in the fact that said equilibrium is being skewed by the simple fact that we play by free market rules while China lives by neo-mercantilism, and essentially turning free trade into the unilateral disarmament of the previous cold war.

Anything good can be taken too far and that includes democracy itself. The Constitution was written to reign in "excess of democracy" and that was IIRC, Washington's words in the lead up to the convention. That is why diehard libertarians reject the Constitution as an illegal, reactionary counter coup by authoritarian elites to repress the freedoms won in the revolution, a view I don't share but it is out there.

If democracy and freedom can be taken too far (be it yelling fire in a crowded theater or voting to enslave people because they look different - Stephen Douglas and Lewis Cass ftr), then surely capitalism, markets and free trade can be taken too far and need to be reigned in at times.

There is no other outcome to the situation in healthcare drug prices then some form of gov't dictation. Either the left will do it via single payer, or the right can do it as a stand alone regulation as Hawley wants to do. Either way you slice it, people will only stand for this hostage style distorted market (the only way for demand to drop is for bodies to hit the floor so there is no natural restraint on prices). If you think "America's legacy" as a free country will stave off desperate people from seeking redress, the next decade or two is going to be eye opening.

If Conservatives don't adapt to this reality now, they are going to find themselves in the exact same place the New Deal Democrats found themselves in by 1985. Outside looking in, having failed to address the current economic misery.

This is all under the assumption that the U.S. is economically libertarian or even close to it. No radical libertarian on the right would argue this. In fact, no moderate libertarian economically would argue this. It would be a stretch to even say a die-hard fiscal conservative would argue this as well.  The closest instances of the U.S. having libertarian economics were in times where the family was stronger, cultural identity was in greater unison, and religious values remained strong.


If anything, the current situation we are in is exactly because we drifted away from classical liberalism. Libertarianism emerged because of the failures of government to address all the problems government created. Libertarianism became more radical when there was a greater case of businesses working with government to create unfettered corporatism that masked itself as unrestrained capitalism.

It's not really assuming anything about ideology, though the right does get very libertarian when it comes to resisting proactive preclusion of the growing left-wing tide.

Most people don't view things in an ideological lense, especially issues like drug prices. All they now is prices are rising 12,000% in some cases with no natural restraint on prices other than people dying. Classical liberalism doesn't have a good answer to that.

A classical liberal or a libertarian would point out government enabled the drug prices to rise by working with drug companies. A classical liberal or a libertarian would also point out drug companies lobby for the FDA to heavily regulate competition, resulting in higher prices due to a lack of competition. While this might be hard to sell to some people, it isn't a bad answer or no answer. It's just about wording it the correct way.

Libertarians often struggle to come across as populist, one of the things I did like about Rand in say 2013/2014 was his attempts to pull this off. "Not a dime from welfare, until all the corporate welfare is cut" was a very effective line.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The Second half here, indicates full well you understood the connection. Unemployment is disruptive and detrimental to the cohesion of society, it also leads people to seek answers in the extremes. Fascism, Socialism and Communism. It is how we got Donald Trump.

Your implication was that people only get laid off because of capitalism lol, and that "middle class jobs" wouldn't naturally arise or disappear vice versa with more economic regulation.

Its not that you don't eliminate candlemaking it is that you have some kind of an answer other than "Move" or "learn to code", both of which people will just say F you and start to look for extremes that will give them the answers they want to hear, case in point, Trump's nomination.

Again, this is what I'm talking about. Your case is not on the actual merits, it is that "if we don't do these evil things, we will lose elections" which...just isn't an appealing case to me. Principles first.

Again this is what I am talking about. There is absolutely no concern for the consequences as it relates to the growing tied of socialism, or trying to avert that. It is just about keep shouting the same things as before only louder and maybe this time they will give you a different answer, politics doesn't work that way.

You either give the people what they want or they come after you with pitchforks.

I mean to say that I don't buy the neoliberal white washing of our history, as we have already discussed. I started off learning history first with no ideology pushing me one way or the other.

As did I -- I was a history junkie first, and a political junkie only second on.

It is simple fact that we went from being a backwater to the most powerful economy in the world while having strongly protectionist policies and China has gone from the bottom of the pack to the largest while engaging in similar tactics.

But your assertion is now that those protectionist policies caused such growth, when study after study has shown that such policies actually do the opposite and hurt even industrial growth (due to the ever more complex nature of our global supply chain). This is simply wrong, and, to use a well-known concept, mixing correlation and causation.

Clearly, something is getting lost here in the narrative that free trade is the best course, at least for a developing economy. Beyond that for the sake of those industries that we want to see grow and prosper, we need to at least shield them from dumping and currency manipulation. How you do that is a matter for debate and discussion but if you cannot even have that conversation because it is being shouted down by the neo-liberal consensus then you are stuck at square one. Blindly adhering to free trade (unilateral disarmament) while China continues to take us to the cleaners with their one sided trade war they were waging for the past 25 years.

I completely agree -- if the Chinese tariff us, and we don't fight back, we are only screwing ourselves. But that doesn't excuse raising tariffs on places and countries that have no such policies, like our European allies.

I never endorsed putting tariffs on European allies, not sure where you got that from.

No, I merely established in that section that both can be taken too far, not are. Notice the word "can" appears above in relation to the economy in my words as written. In other sections though I have given examples where it is being taken too far today.

But you haven't! All you have articulated is that people get laid off in a free market economy (yes -- supply and demand exist, and if you cannot meet the needs of actual consumers you should not expect them to support you) and that China engages in unfair trade practices -- not exactly conclusive proof of the evils of capitalism.

I am not out out to prove "the evils of capitalism" because again and perhaps I didn't make myself clear, "I AM TRYING TO SAVE CAPITALISM FROM ITSELF AND THE SOCIALISM IT IS GIVEN RISE TO".

I don't give a crap about Keynesian versus Supply side, its all bullsh@%t. Its like fighting over which wing of the plane is more important and frankly both economic schools of thought should be taken out to the wood shed and killed with a dull axe.

To the extent I agree: the government should not prioritize any group economically, and should instead simply allow the free market to work naturally. At the same time, it is important for supply side economists to explain the simple reality that you cannot have the chicken without the egg.

And you cannot have an egg without the dinosaur that first laid it.

I am a fiscal conservative in that I support balancing the budget or at least getting it close to balance. I think you should promote long term both supply and demand, supply through business creation and entrepeneurship, and demand through beneficial infrastructure projects that are paid for that will generate long run economic growth.
.

That is not how economics work. You cannot just waste government funds on projects for which there is no actual economic demand for, and which are more inefficient than private projects, and which take money away from and steal from private projects, and expect them to do anything more than serve as money sinks. Supply and demand are natural equilibriums of what some individuals want and what other individuals can produce; the government cannot simply artificially create either lol.

I literally just condemned the projects to nowhere inherent in the Keynesian model and yet you come back and accuse me of supporting such wasteful projects.

the Highways created the suburban sprawl, both of which were paid for. Neither of which was an unfunded mandate, or paying people to dig useless holes like Keynes talked about.

Are you really trying to assert that suburbs did not exist before highways, or that other forms of transportation (even highways themselves, of a sort) would not have been invested in if there was demand for them?

Varies based on the area, but regardless of whether it was state based roads previous or federal highways system afterwards, it is still gov't infrastructure.

Quit trying to other me and make me out to be a leftist because I am not your kind of conservative.

Mitt Romney is not my kind of conservative. Jeb Bush is not my kind of conservative. You? You are not a conservative.

I haven't supported Mitt Romney in 8 years and I never supported Jeb Bush. Really, you need to stop putting words in my mouth.

We would do so much better, if we spent more time trying to actually do things like balance the budget instead of constantly arguing with the mirror on the wall over whose is the fairest of them all and seeking to exterminate those that don't pass muster.

If to balance the budget we must sell out to people like you and betray all other principles, you'll never have my support.

There is no greater selling out of principle, then handing victory on EVERYTHING to the other side.

This constant purity seeking is Soviet in origin and frankly I have no desire for any kind of conservatism that seeks to emulate Vladimir Lenin's tactics. They have clearly lost the plot at some point.

"Voting politicians that you disagree with out of office is Soviet in origin"

Hmmm, not really what I think of when I think Soviet.

Because Riggleman was really actually voted out by the bulk of his voters as opposed to an inside hit job by a exclusive clique of party activists. Sounds rather Soviet to me. The Soviet allusion refers to Grover Norquist who has idolized Lenin's approach to party purity and used it for a model on how to enforce the no tax pledge.

What the hell use is a conservatism that basically enables the socialist takeover of the country through its own incompetence and stupidity? My primary ideological underpinning is based on the study of Edmund Burke and how he rationalized opposition to the French Revolution, while supporting the Glorious and American (rhetorically) Revolutions. The main thing that it tells me is that the radicals of all kinds have to be stopped and the best way to stop a movement driven by building societal pressure for change is to release the steam out of the kettle. It doesn't have to be Bismarckian welfare state, but the same idea applies.

Once again, my previous statements apply. You know what you are arguing for is wrong, but you rationalize it as necessary to stop even worse actors. I reject that premise -- principles matter, and I will not sell them out for the sake of a few %s of the margin. If it truly becomes necessary, we have the 2a for a reason.

My only overriding principle is societal stability. Everything else is done to serve that purpose or done in a way that won't do harm to that purpose.

I am not interested in 2nd amendment solutions because we have brains to address these problems before it gets to that point and also that is again detrimental to societal cohesion.

Quit defining my ideology based on your set of criteria, I reject your criteria and its legitimacy as I consider large elements to be either LIBERAL in origin or SOCIALIST enabling in their ends.

There are three things that separate us from being able to win on the budgets, on life, even on guns when you think about it, that is healthcare, climate change and gay rights. Frankly, there are some people on the right would gladly see the Democrats dominate for 40 years to get us to a point where America will desire conservatism of that sort again. The problem is 40 years of Supreme Court justices, working majorities and them solving these problems "Their way" will ensure that you have lost out on far more and that the conservatism that does finally get back into power will be completely unrecognizable to what I desire, much less what you would desire.

Lol, you're so out of touch. The only one of those issues where we have an actual majority is the balanced budget, and even then it is only in name only. Once again, you try to rationalize away selling out our principles as "necessary," failing to recognize that this is total warfare, not a skirmish. We cannot simply offer up our principles as sacrifices and expect mercy.

In a way, this actually reminds me of why I respect someone like Grassroots, who is simply an unabashed communist on fiscal issues and conservative on social issues, more than a sell out such as you. At least he argued for what he actually believed as a way to achieve it, not just to surrender like a coward.

Its not a good idea to result to personal insults, especially when talking with a moderator. Lucky for you, I am notoriously restrained and "conservative" in my approach. Others won't be.

You cannot sell out something you don't agree with. You keep acting as if your viewpoints are the starting points for me they aren't. I am a Burkean Conservative. I would have been perfectly content were I alive in the 1790's, to be a Federalist, and then a Whig after that. Size and scope of government are means to end, they are not the principles or values, they are tactics.

Once the left enacts single payer, there is no going back, it will be in place forever. If it means averting the single payer outcome, there is nearly nothing I wouldn't condone, because nothing would be as damaging to the health care sector and to the drug market as the gov't literally setting prices, dictating prices on everything. Compared to a regulation limiting price increases, that is on a whole different planet and if it alleviates the societal pressure for single payer then it will have done a service to conservatism on a range over other issues from life, to the constitution, to balanced budgets and especially on health care.

Bro, pro tip: you don't need to type out so many words each time. You can just copy paste it, like this (here's a helpful draft)

"If we don't do (BLANK, insert morally evil thing that betrays our principles here) then the left will pass (insert even more morally evil thing)."

I don't need your permission to type what I want. I have been typing what I want for twelve years on this forum, and I never let the left stop me back then and I am not going to let you stop me now.

What you fail to recognize, however, is that they never stop. First it is "just" Medicare, expanding government yet again. Then it is "just" Medicaid, expanding government yet again. Then it is "just" Obamacare, and "just" price ceilings, and "just" a public option, and then it's "just" single-payer, and it never f**king stops.

For years, you have been use to conditioning everything on an us versus them plane, and everyone that disagrees with you is either a liberal, a traitor or a coward.

No. I disagree with many people. But at least someone like AOC or Grassroots has the courage to stand for what they believe in. You -- you -- are just a coward.

I have not violated any of my principles, because I don't define my conservative principles on the basis of martyrdom and suicide on every last point.

Yes, just to the point that they become unpopular in Washington breakfast nooks.

I am almost 30 years old, I work for my upkeep, I pay my taxes, and I watched my mother wither away and die from long term chronic illness left untreated for years. I have been following politics since the end of the Clinton years/beginning of Bush's term. I have read Locke, Burke, Smith, Ricardo, Federalist Papers, Anti-Federalist Papers and so on, as well as numerous supreme court cases, briefs and opinions.

I have never backed down from a fight, and I have never, NEVER, condone kowtowing to Washington insiders and I resent you claiming otherwise. Most of them are the same out of touch fools who have gotten us into this mess and they are the reason why I voted for Trump in 2016 both times. What you don't grasp is that the conservative movement itself is now a part of that Washington establishment and is still operating as if it is 1985 with policies geared towards ending stagflation and aimed a voter base in Orange county that now largely resides six feet under.

You have the gall to say I am out of touch. Ridiculous, I am in touch with reality on the ground because I live it everyday. I don't have the luxury of getting paid millions of dollars by corporate special interests to give some worthless speech to a think tank that two people will watch and few alive today will reap any benefits from the ideas suggested.I spent most of 2013 - 2016 looking for a candidate would burn down the think tank/consulting class and I finally settled on Trump because he seemed more likely to do that then the Think Tank poster boy Ted Cruz.

I will never let you get away with trying to claim my priorities are pleasing the Washington insider class.

I am not selling out Supply Side economics because I don't believe in supply side economics as being suitable to our current times. Conservatism has existed for hundreds of years, supply side economics has existed for just 40.

Sure, the exact doctrine of "supply side" economics has just existed for 40 years. But the principles it rests on, of free markets and an opposition to government regulation and control, have existed from the very moment of creation.

Principles are timeless, policies have to evolve.

Are you really going to write off everyone who came before Reagan as a socialist? Calvin Coolidge?

One of my all time favorite Presidents -- certainly the best in the 20th century.

Robert Taft?

Too protectionist, but still a FF. Would be aghast to see you arguing for big government and price regulation.

Even Barry Goldwater?

Barry Goldwater was the freaking man who introduced me to the conservative movement, of course he's a hero of mine. I am not nearly the purist you think I am -- Goldwater was pro choice, and Coolidge and Taft were racist protectionists, but I still support them anyway. But what I really can't support is your brand of socialist cowardice.

You are the one who wants socialism, you said yourself you would rather the country be socialist then compromise on single point. You can talk all you want, but at the end of the day you are facilitating socialism. I wouldn't even be surprised if you become a socialist yourself, meanwhile, I will still be here trying save some form of capitalism only having to fight you from the other side.

Finally, the last thing I want to happen is see conservatism bend the knee for 28 to 40 years, because some people couldn't leave the gays alone and some others just couldn't get bast their ideological blinders for long enough to address the pressing economic despair.

You just keep saying that, as if the cycle won't repeat, or as if free markets are not the only proven and practiced way of genuinely helping people and supporting economic growth.

You are right the cycle will repeat because people are too set in their ways and the Democrats will have their multi-decade run of power. And any semblance of a pro-life movement will be dead, along with the second amendment.

What the GOP really needs is someone that can meld Hawley and Rand Paul together. Trump kind of achieved the same concept when you consider his FP positions and how he handled bathrooms while running against Cruz in Indiana and of course the real main course on Trump, which was immigration and trade.

You say that, as if we do not make up 95% of the party and the Hawleyites 5%, and as if even your boys like RINO Walter Jones are not regularly being replaced by real conservatives across the board lol.

That only lasts as long you control the money. Once you fail to deliver wins and their precious tax cuts, they will abandon you and start throwing money at anyone that can get back into power. They are corrupt and their only principle is the bottom line, but you don't have any qualms about harnessing its power for the sake of control and you know what, it makes your arguments ring hollow.

It had been my hope that John Kasich could pull this off as far back as 2013, a kind of combination of libertarianism on some areas and populism on others, but he fell into the Midwest McCain vibe and nobody really wants that at this point. I was the lone Kasich supporter on this forum for 2 years almost, when he was at like 1%, only to be horribly disappointed by late 2015.

John Kasich expanded Medicaid, advocated for big government, betrayed the cause of traditional marriage, and stands for...well, essentially nothing. He is a pathetic, feeble, loser, who lied to Ohio voters.

[/quote]

That is beyond well established by now, but that wasn't the case back then. At the time he was a fiscal hawk with a blue collar background.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Hawley terrifies me and I am convinced that he will become President. His record isn't spotless (e.g., being anti-RTW and signing onto ACA lawsuits) but he knows rhetorically how to paint himself as a worker friendly trad-con. He's been in the Senate for a year and a half and he's already become basically the Senate figurehead for the "traditional" social conservative movement. My sense is that there are plenty of people in the intellectual trad con world who already adore him (e.g., the press they've given him after the Bostick case).

I think he has much better odds of capturing the post-Trump GOP mantle than someone like Haley or Cotton. Haley is basically an establishment-foisted stiff who is squishy on Trump and will reek of an unpopular establishment. Cotton is hawkish, disdainful of the WWC outside of culture war red meat, and uncharismatic. If he didn't light himself on fire in 2016 I could actually see the Rubio of 2019/2020 being competitive in a national primary but people's memories aren't that short.

I think Haley has done a good job appealing to both sectors and represents a Nixon to Trump's Goldwater in the form of triangulated policies which may be necessary to win a primary and general. I'm not convinced the GOP is ready to go full Hawley yet since the party clearly hasn't let go of their traditional economics. It'll take a little longer. Hawley could still win but it's a much riskier choice, like Reagan in 1968 over 1980.

Haley just doesn't seem like a candidate the base will like at all. Maybe she could have been a more effective Rubio in 2016 but like a lot of other people in the GOP she got sucked into and shredded by the Trump administration. She has a stench of weak and effete party elite about her when the base wants a brawler. I am sure she will have a ton of institutional support when she runs, but I don't think that's enough to win a GOP primary anymore.

The GOP is clinging to economic conservatism now; we'll see how long that lasts. Trump was the first breach in the wall, but he's too lazy and self-serving to see a lot of his 2016 campaign to fruition. This means he basically left it up to the people around him, which is why you have a Ryan/Reince 2017 tax bill. Turns out the GOP base was really only rhetorically interested in the fiscal conservatism now (e.g., moralizing about welfare cheats rather than actually being opposed to welfare itself). But I think once Trump has laid out a blueprint for how a politician can differentiate himself from a despised party establishment, Hawley is already showing signs that he is interested in exploiting it while pulling a "no true Scotsman" against people associated with Trump (like Gorsuch).

If anything the opposite of what Haley/Ryan said above is now true. The GOP is now very dependent on ex Bill Clinton voters or their children based on the demographic trends. Already in the 2000s you saw a clash over wills over this manifested in the fight over pork. I often cite Mark Sanford, something of a mentor to the real Haley, and his words in the mid 2000s. Talking about how a lot of social conservative Democrats joined in the Bush era because of life, guns and gays, but continued their big spending ways as Republicans.

The problem for this old school Southern fiscal conservatism is that the base for it is narrowing as college educated whites shift Democrat, and those areas become increasingly diverse, they are trending heavily Democratic. For both Newt Gingrich and Mark Sanford, their former house seats are now in Democratic hands, a similar story in Texas. This means that by extension Nikki Haley is losing her base as well. They won the battle on pork but lost the war because of demographic change.

What Trump demonstrated is that the base of the GOP has been fundamentally altered by 2016, the culmination ironically of both Newt Gingrich and Bush's strategies from the 1990s and 2000s, which was to make the GOP a heaven for the Christian Right, including the more populist among them while alienating non-socially conservative elements of the fiscally conservative base. Yes people like Newt, Sanford and so forth were Reaganites and conservative on both, this strategy had the effect of tipping the balance away from the Reaganite balance.

The next GOP President is likely to be possibly even a product of said populist elements or at least has his base primarily compose of such voters, who then manages to somehow augment that coalition enough to win a majority.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Hawley is a neo-communist who favors big government regulation and intolerable left wing radicalism. I would vote for Donald Trump JR over him.

Hawley is the exact opposite of a communist or a radical.

In fact Hawley is operating as a Traditionalist Conservative, which is why he favors government action on some points. By doing so, he is hoping to release the societal pressure that absent action will just keep building and building until the other side gets to dictate the results on everything. That is how politics works in reality.

Hawley's premise is that you concede and co-opt the left on one or two points to save the rest of the conservative pie from complete annihilation.

What is radical is the radical adherence to economic libertarianism, which will cause an equal and opposite reaction in favor of socialism. It is worth remembering that Capitalism itself is a liberal concept and as such its creative destruction is naturally contrary to the interests of societal stability, family cohesion and religious faith all of which are tropes ingrained in the concept of Traditional Conservatism. Therefore a trad con would want to reign in capitalism and restrain it to serve the interest of preserving those three priorities: Stability, family and faith.

Just because someone isn't your kind of conservatism, doesn't mean they are socialists. There is more to politics than a simple linear spectrum based entirely on one's views of how big government should be.

No, economic freedom is not a radical ideal. It is traditional Americana, straight from the very start. From Washington and Jefferson to Goldwater and Reagan to Cruz and Walker, freedom has been paramount in American values. And to assert that capitalism, which has created the actual nuclear family and delivered prosperity for so many people worldwide, is harming the family, is ridiculous -- it is only with capitalism have we managed to achieve such standards of living as for the nuclear family to even become possible. Instead of digging ditches from sundown to sunset, the natural productivity of free markets allows for increased prosperity and economic growth. No, perhaps Hawley is not a socialist. I am used to speaking to those who are not very well politically informed, for whom more distant concepts are not best used in explanations. But Hawley is a freedom hating, wealth redistributing, distributist, and his success would come at the expense of all that makes America great.

The market seeks its own equilibrium, even if at the expense of ten million middle class jobs. Husbands who go home, fight with their wives in front of the kids, turn to drugs in despair, leading the wife to seek a divorce. Meanwhile the schools have lost their tax base, and the kids start hanging out with the wrong crowd.

Throw in the fact that said equilibrium is being skewed by the simple fact that we play by free market rules while China lives by neo-mercantilism, and essentially turning free trade into the unilateral disarmament of the previous cold war.

Anything good can be taken too far and that includes democracy itself. The Constitution was written to reign in "excess of democracy" and that was IIRC, Washington's words in the lead up to the convention. That is why diehard libertarians reject the Constitution as an illegal, reactionary counter coup by authoritarian elites to repress the freedoms won in the revolution, a view I don't share but it is out there.

If democracy and freedom can be taken too far (be it yelling fire in a crowded theater or voting to enslave people because they look different - Stephen Douglas and Lewis Cass ftr), then surely capitalism, markets and free trade can be taken too far and need to be reigned in at times.

There is no other outcome to the situation in healthcare drug prices then some form of gov't dictation. Either the left will do it via single payer, or the right can do it as a stand alone regulation as Hawley wants to do. Either way you slice it, people will only stand for this hostage style distorted market (the only way for demand to drop is for bodies to hit the floor so there is no natural restraint on prices). If you think "America's legacy" as a free country will stave off desperate people from seeking redress, the next decade or two is going to be eye opening.

If Conservatives don't adapt to this reality now, they are going to find themselves in the exact same place the New Deal Democrats found themselves in by 1985. Outside looking in, having failed to address the current economic misery.

This is all under the assumption that the U.S. is economically libertarian or even close to it. No radical libertarian on the right would argue this. In fact, no moderate libertarian economically would argue this. It would be a stretch to even say a die-hard fiscal conservative would argue this as well.  The closest instances of the U.S. having libertarian economics were in times where the family was stronger, cultural identity was in greater unison, and religious values remained strong.


If anything, the current situation we are in is exactly because we drifted away from classical liberalism. Libertarianism emerged because of the failures of government to address all the problems government created. Libertarianism became more radical when there was a greater case of businesses working with government to create unfettered corporatism that masked itself as unrestrained capitalism.

It's not really assuming anything about ideology, though the right does get very libertarian when it comes to resisting proactive preclusion of the growing left-wing tide.

Most people don't view things in an ideological lense, especially issues like drug prices. All they now is prices are rising 12,000% in some cases with no natural restraint on prices other than people dying. Classical liberalism doesn't have a good answer to that.

A classical liberal or a libertarian would point out government enabled the drug prices to rise by working with drug companies. A classical liberal or a libertarian would also point out drug companies lobby for the FDA to heavily regulate competition, resulting in higher prices due to a lack of competition. While this might be hard to sell to some people, it isn't a bad answer or no answer. It's just about wording it the correct way.

Libertarians often struggle to come across as populist, one of the things I did like about Rand in say 2013/2014 was his attempts to pull this off. "Not a dime from welfare, until all the corporate welfare is cut" was a very effective line.

I agree if we talk about libertarians running in general, but the most successful libertarian was Ron Paul, who used populism to create the new liberty movement. As a result, Ron had a hand in the Tea Party Movement (I consider him the founder/godfather), the alt right movement, and at least some hand in the growing movement to criticize Neoconservatism and Liberal Internationalism. Ron effectively was the bridge between Buchananites from the 90s, libertarians, and people dissatisfied with the Bush era. Rand distanced himself from the movement so I won't agree he did a decent job at being a libertarian populist, but it's definitely possible to do it. There's a bunch of articles about it.

I think the shift on foreign policy is certainly in large part because of Ron Paul and if nothing else that will be one of the liberty movement's lasting legacy at least for now.

Rand was always a mixed bag in that sense. You would think he was on to something and he would do something that just left you scratching your head. He has certainly used his influence to push several things in that direction though, such as surveillance.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Hawley is a neo-communist who favors big government regulation and intolerable left wing radicalism. I would vote for Donald Trump JR over him.

Hawley is the exact opposite of a communist or a radical.

In fact Hawley is operating as a Traditionalist Conservative, which is why he favors government action on some points. By doing so, he is hoping to release the societal pressure that absent action will just keep building and building until the other side gets to dictate the results on everything. That is how politics works in reality.

Hawley's premise is that you concede and co-opt the left on one or two points to save the rest of the conservative pie from complete annihilation.

What is radical is the radical adherence to economic libertarianism, which will cause an equal and opposite reaction in favor of socialism. It is worth remembering that Capitalism itself is a liberal concept and as such its creative destruction is naturally contrary to the interests of societal stability, family cohesion and religious faith all of which are tropes ingrained in the concept of Traditional Conservatism. Therefore a trad con would want to reign in capitalism and restrain it to serve the interest of preserving those three priorities: Stability, family and faith.

Just because someone isn't your kind of conservatism, doesn't mean they are socialists. There is more to politics than a simple linear spectrum based entirely on one's views of how big government should be.

No, economic freedom is not a radical ideal. It is traditional Americana, straight from the very start. From Washington and Jefferson to Goldwater and Reagan to Cruz and Walker, freedom has been paramount in American values. And to assert that capitalism, which has created the actual nuclear family and delivered prosperity for so many people worldwide, is harming the family, is ridiculous -- it is only with capitalism have we managed to achieve such standards of living as for the nuclear family to even become possible. Instead of digging ditches from sundown to sunset, the natural productivity of free markets allows for increased prosperity and economic growth. No, perhaps Hawley is not a socialist. I am used to speaking to those who are not very well politically informed, for whom more distant concepts are not best used in explanations. But Hawley is a freedom hating, wealth redistributing, distributist, and his success would come at the expense of all that makes America great.

The market seeks its own equilibrium, even if at the expense of ten million middle class jobs. Husbands who go home, fight with their wives in front of the kids, turn to drugs in despair, leading the wife to seek a divorce. Meanwhile the schools have lost their tax base, and the kids start hanging out with the wrong crowd.

Throw in the fact that said equilibrium is being skewed by the simple fact that we play by free market rules while China lives by neo-mercantilism, and essentially turning free trade into the unilateral disarmament of the previous cold war.

Anything good can be taken too far and that includes democracy itself. The Constitution was written to reign in "excess of democracy" and that was IIRC, Washington's words in the lead up to the convention. That is why diehard libertarians reject the Constitution as an illegal, reactionary counter coup by authoritarian elites to repress the freedoms won in the revolution, a view I don't share but it is out there.

If democracy and freedom can be taken too far (be it yelling fire in a crowded theater or voting to enslave people because they look different - Stephen Douglas and Lewis Cass ftr), then surely capitalism, markets and free trade can be taken too far and need to be reigned in at times.

There is no other outcome to the situation in healthcare drug prices then some form of gov't dictation. Either the left will do it via single payer, or the right can do it as a stand alone regulation as Hawley wants to do. Either way you slice it, people will only stand for this hostage style distorted market (the only way for demand to drop is for bodies to hit the floor so there is no natural restraint on prices). If you think "America's legacy" as a free country will stave off desperate people from seeking redress, the next decade or two is going to be eye opening.

If Conservatives don't adapt to this reality now, they are going to find themselves in the exact same place the New Deal Democrats found themselves in by 1985. Outside looking in, having failed to address the current economic misery.

This is all under the assumption that the U.S. is economically libertarian or even close to it. No radical libertarian on the right would argue this. In fact, no moderate libertarian economically would argue this. It would be a stretch to even say a die-hard fiscal conservative would argue this as well.  The closest instances of the U.S. having libertarian economics were in times where the family was stronger, cultural identity was in greater unison, and religious values remained strong.


If anything, the current situation we are in is exactly because we drifted away from classical liberalism. Libertarianism emerged because of the failures of government to address all the problems government created. Libertarianism became more radical when there was a greater case of businesses working with government to create unfettered corporatism that masked itself as unrestrained capitalism.

It's not really assuming anything about ideology, though the right does get very libertarian when it comes to resisting proactive preclusion of the growing left-wing tide.

Most people don't view things in an ideological lense, especially issues like drug prices. All they now is prices are rising 12,000% in some cases with no natural restraint on prices other than people dying. Classical liberalism doesn't have a good answer to that.

A classical liberal or a libertarian would point out government enabled the drug prices to rise by working with drug companies. A classical liberal or a libertarian would also point out drug companies lobby for the FDA to heavily regulate competition, resulting in higher prices due to a lack of competition. While this might be hard to sell to some people, it isn't a bad answer or no answer. It's just about wording it the correct way.

Libertarians often struggle to come across as populist, one of the things I did like about Rand in say 2013/2014 was his attempts to pull this off. "Not a dime from welfare, until all the corporate welfare is cut" was a very effective line.

I agree if we talk about libertarians running in general, but the most successful libertarian was Ron Paul, who used populism to create the new liberty movement. As a result, Ron had a hand in the Tea Party Movement (I consider him the founder/godfather), the alt right movement, and at least some hand in the growing movement to criticize Neoconservatism and Liberal Internationalism. Ron effectively was the bridge between Buchananites from the 90s, libertarians, and people dissatisfied with the Bush era. Rand distanced himself from the movement so I won't agree he did a decent job at being a libertarian populist, but it's definitely possible to do it. There's a bunch of articles about it.

I think the shift on foreign policy is certainly in large part because of Ron Paul and if nothing else that will be one of the liberty movement's lasting legacy at least for now.

Rand was always a mixed bag in that sense. You would think he was on to something and he would do something that just left you scratching your head. He has certainly used his influence to push several things in that direction though, such as surveillance.

Rand definitely angered a lot of the Paul coalition. He was right about spreading ideas to minority voters but he nearly abandoned his libertarian base by doing that.

Attempting something novel is great, how you actually put it into practice now that is the real difficulty.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Again this is what I am talking about. There is absolutely no concern for the consequences as it relates to the growing tied of socialism, or trying to avert that. It is just about keep shouting the same things as before only louder and maybe this time they will give you a different answer, politics doesn't work that way.

You either give the people what they want or they come after you with pitchforks.

We can't beat socialism by imposing policies that don't work. Giving into the mob, giving away our principles -- we've seen how it works. If we know raising taxes and hurting economic growth reduces opportunity and will just hurt the very people you're trying to convince to stay away from socialism, why are you endorsing that?

Where did I endorse raising taxes? I oppose deficit funded tax cuts, because interest and inflation also function as a tax and hurt economic growth, but I have not supported tax hikes for the sake of tax hikes. Though I would entertain taxes for the simple purpose of painfully showing people the hard way that the programs they want aren't free and that they can't just "cut foreign aid" to cover it all. If we had a balanced budget amendment, they would be far more discerning.

I never endorsed putting tariffs on European allies, not sure where you got that from.

Considering every single politician you endorse is advocating for exactly those tariffs, perhaps you ought to rethink that.

Who?

I am not out out to prove "the evils of capitalism" because again and perhaps I didn't make myself clear, "I AM TRYING TO SAVE CAPITALISM FROM ITSELF AND THE SOCIALISM IT IS GIVEN RISE TO".

Bullsh**t. You spend half your time talking about how capitalism and free markets causes husbands to beat their wives, then claim to be defending capitalism? High tariffs and taxes and government regulation and control are the opposite of what you're now claiming to support.

I support regulated capitalism, I do not support laissez faire. Economic dislocation does destroy families, I have seen it first hand. Perhaps you should get out of your high end suburb and see what reality is like in the ex mill towns right here in NC.

Classical Liberalism and Capitalism are a form of liberalism and therefore it tends to be disruptive. The fact that growth and improvement requires such dislocation and that such a system does better than any alternative in creating said wealth means that such disruptive forces become necessary evils, but then it is incumbent on policymakers to mitigate said disruptive forces so families can grow and prosper and children have a stable environment to be raised in.

This is not a hard concept to accept, nor is it a stretch to understand why a conservative alarmed by the destruction of the family, society and the community would turn their guns on all forms of liberalism including the classical one, for all of the disruptive effects that liberalism as a unit has caused to traditional societal bedrocks.

Most every anti-gay conservative has identified the same problem as real, they have just misidentified the primary cause of the decline of the family. It is not the gay agenda, it is the decline of stable middle class jobs. And you know what naturally occurs as a result of these trends, dependency on Government entitlements. It is no accident that New Deal Democrats combined free trade support with mass wealth redistribution. Rather a regulation that preserves 20 million high paying jobs, then 20 million people going on welfare.

And you cannot have an egg without the dinosaur that first laid it.

Yes, and you can't have a dinosaur without the egg. The point is both cycles work together lol.

So you acknowledge that the economic is constantly evolving. We finally agree on something.

I literally just condemned the projects to nowhere inherent in the Keynesian model and yet you come back and accuse me of supporting such wasteful projects.

Because the two projects you listed are wasteful too lol.

How so?

Varies based on the area, but regardless of whether it was state based roads previous or federal highways system afterwards, it is still gov't infrastructure.

You just totally ignored the question lmao, which was "Varies based on the area, but regardless of whether it was state based roads previous or federal highways system afterwards, it is still gov't infrastructure."

No I didn't. In some areas suburbs existed but were expanded afterwards, in others they were created fresh. This is a long post, so I shorted it to "varies by area", which is the correct answer.

I haven't supported Mitt Romney in 8 years and I never supported Jeb Bush. Really, you need to stop putting words in my mouth.

Are you incapable of reading what I actually said? My point was that while neither Romney nor Bush is my kind of conservative, I still accept them as part of the conservative movement because they are genuine conservatives -- unlike you.

"Mitt Romney is not my kind of conservative. Jeb Bush is not my kind of conservative. You? You are not a conservative."

You are not a conservative, you are a liberal. You just think that because it is a liberalism from eons ago that it gives you a get out of jail free card.

There is no greater selling out of principle, then handing victory on EVERYTHING to the other side.

But your plans would unintentionally do exactly that, by giving up half the game before we even start and then surrendering once the battle has just barely begun. And hell, even if you succeeded, your corporatist policies would just attack the very people you're trying to help and harm our cause.

First you accuse me of boot licking to Washington insiders and now you accuse me of corporatism, I have been railing against favorable tax treatment for corporations and many other forms of corporate welfare for nearly a decade. I endorsed most of the tea party candidates because of this very point. Who were you supporting in 2006 and 2010, might I ask?

Because Riggleman was really actually voted out by the bulk of his voters as opposed to an inside hit job by a exclusive clique of party activists. Sounds rather Soviet to me. The Soviet allusion refers to Grover Norquist who has idolized Lenin's approach to party purity and used it for a model on how to enforce the no tax pledge.

Are we talking about Denver Riggleman? No. We are talking about how I think you and politicians who share your beliefs ought to be voted against up and down the ballot, and that I think Josh Hawley ought to be primaried right back to the AGs office. And PLEASE don't compare yourself to Riggleman, a man who, while I opposed him, had real principles and courage instead of cowardice.

Obfuscation of the original point and I never compared myself to Riggleman. Also I have never endorsed Hawley, I have just have been trying to explain the motivations for his points and approach on certain matters. I actually disagree with statist turn on some other of his policies so it is a mixed bag, but he is better than Cotton in my opinion who is a complete basket case.

My only overriding principle is societal stability. Everything else is done to serve that purpose or done in a way that won't do harm to that purpose.

I am not interested in 2nd amendment solutions because we have brains to address these problems before it gets to that point and also that is again detrimental to societal cohesion.

Quit defining my ideology based on your set of criteria, I reject your criteria and its legitimacy as I consider large elements to be either LIBERAL in origin or SOCIALIST enabling in their ends.

You are the danger our Founders warned against -- the man who would sacrifice not just his, but all of ours, liberty for a little temporary safety.

What the hell are you talking about, I support reigning in the surveillance state, and avoiding foreign wars, which in every case enlarges the government by nature?

Its not a good idea to result to personal insults, especially when talking with a moderator. Lucky for you, I am notoriously restrained and "conservative" in my approach. Others won't be.

Threats for the truth? Abuse of position? Disgusting.

Ah the martyrdom complex again. I am trying to give advise that you should take. Quit with the name calling and the personal insults before you do it to someone who won't hold back.

I don't need your permission to type what I want. I have been typing what I want for twelve years on this forum, and I never let the left stop me back then and I am not going to let you stop me now.

"the left"

Put those compass results up there. Please.

I don't get my principles from an online test.

I am almost 30 years old, I work for my upkeep, I pay my taxes, and I watched my mother wither away and die from long term chronic illness left untreated for years. I have been following politics since the end of the Clinton years/beginning of Bush's term. I have read Locke, Burke, Smith, Ricardo, Federalist Papers, Anti-Federalist Papers and so on, as well as numerous supreme court cases, briefs and opinions.

I have never backed down from a fight, and I have never, NEVER, condone kowtowing to Washington insiders and I resent you claiming otherwise. Most of them are the same out of touch fools who have gotten us into this mess and they are the reason why I voted for Trump in 2016 both times. What you don't grasp is that the conservative movement itself is now a part of that Washington establishment and is still operating as if it is 1985 with policies geared towards ending stagflation and aimed a voter base in Orange county that now largely resides six feet under.

I am sorry to hear to about your mothers passing.

I strongly disagree however, with your assertion that you do not back down from fights. You may not think of it in those terms, but that is clearly what your ideology about. Its even clear in how you speak about it -- not in terms of right and wrong like Grassroots does, but in terms of how we will lose if we don't side with you.

Of what good is it to shout how pro-life you are louder than the next guy. Until you get into power the killing of life continues unimpeded, but hey at least you can pat yourself on the back that you stood by your principles and didn't waver, meanwhile another 40 million die. I hope when it is all over, you guys are satisfied with your only accomplishment, grand standing.

You have the gall to say I am out of touch. Ridiculous, I am in touch with reality on the ground because I live it everyday. I don't have the luxury of getting paid millions of dollars by corporate special interests to give some worthless speech to a think tank that two people will watch and few alive today will reap any benefits from the ideas suggested.I spent most of 2013 - 2016 looking for a candidate would burn down the think tank/consulting class and I finally settled on Trump because he seemed more likely to do that then the Think Tank poster boy Ted Cruz.

I will never let you get away with trying to claim my priorities are pleasing the Washington insider class.

Yes, you are out of touch. You may not be out of touch in the same way that some Washington insider is, but you and your beliefs are completely out of touch. You speak of economic despair -- but when (pre-Corona) 68% of people say it is "a good time" to find a job, just 19% think the economy is the most important problem we face today, 62% say economic conditions are good or excellent, and 59% still think it's even getting better on top of that, that's just totally out of common with the average American. You have an unrealistic conception of what Americans actually think today.

People said the same in 2007 and in 2000, then the bottom fell out then too. For people like you the economy is doing well, for people like my family, we are making the same pay we were in the 1990s, with much higher prices. The current GOP establishment's policies serve to benefit people who are largely either Democrats or becoming Democrats in high end places like San Francisco, meanwhile the actual base of the GOP hasn't seen a pay rise in 20 years. They said go to college and people ended up loaded up with debt and making peanuts with fields now saturated beyond support with degrees (I didn't borrow a dime to get my degree). They said move and then you move and you find the same problems that you moved away from. Then they tell coal miners to learn to code.

It is no wonder that these people voted for Trump, a problem I warned about in 2012: https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=146557.msg3145166#msg3145166

The only people I am out of touch with, is rich suburbanites.

Principles are timeless, policies have to evolve.

But you aren't just abandoning policies, you're abandoning principles too.

Not my principles of societal stability, responsible finance, constitutionalism and protecting the unborn.

You are the one who wants socialism, you said yourself you would rather the country be socialist then compromise on single point. You can talk all you want, but at the end of the day you are facilitating socialism. I wouldn't even be surprised if you become a socialist yourself, meanwhile, I will still be here trying save some form of capitalism only having to fight you from the other sid

Lmao, what?

I am 100% okay with compromise if it is necessary to save capitalism. I intend to run for office one day, and when I do you will not catch me calling for all the same policies I might personally believe in. But there is a difference between surrendering unwinnable fights and winnable ones, and it is one you seemingly fail to comprehend.

So you are a hypocrite. Balls up and put your money where your mouth is.

You are right the cycle will repeat because people are too set in their ways and the Democrats will have their multi-decade run of power. And any semblance of a pro-life movement will be dead, along with the second amendment.

The "cycle" I refer to is the cycle of political defeat and surrender you would usher in just as it was in the 1950s and 60s with your forefathers, the men of the dime store new deal, not some vague idea in your head. I am Barry Goldwater; you are Nelson Rockerfeller.

The Rockefellers supported interventionism, I favor restraint. They favored the police and surveillance states, I don't. They were largely pro-choice and supported banning Assault Weapons, I oppose abortion and oppose AWB. The Rockefellers supported the neoliberal consensus on trade, I don't.

You guys are the new Rockefellers, and Supply Side economics is the new Keynesianism. That is the real cycle, you win the revolution and you become the new establishment for the next revolution to topple when your answers fail to address the current economic misery. Welcome to the next revolution. That is the real cycle.

That only lasts as long you control the money. Once you fail to deliver wins and their precious tax cuts, they will abandon you and start throwing money at anyone that can get back into power. They are corrupt and their only principle is the bottom line, but you don't have any qualms about harnessing its power for the sake of control and you know what, it makes your arguments ring hollow.

Are you really calling 95% of the Republican Party corrupt? Are you seriously accusing me of being corrupt? And you have the gall to raise a stink about personal issues elsewhere? I favor the total abolition of corporate welfare. I favor the ending of all tax loopholes. I favor a constitutional ban on (already unconstitutional, but sadly not explict enough) bailouts. I stand for my principles because they are right, not for the very power I want to RID the government of but that you want to expand. Men who live in glass houses should not throw stones at men who live in steel ones.

You are not 95% of the Republican Party, you are the former base, which is dwindling in influence and control and that is why Trump beat Cruz in 2016. If that weren't the case then Josh Hawley would be positioning himself as Cruz 2.0. The only reason he is taking this path is because that is where the fresh meat is. Put Paul Ryan or Nikki Haley up for the nomination and they would get destroyed by whoever the Trumpist faction endorses.

I am talking about corporate donors who are propping up, you Paul Ryan type guys. Once you can no longer deliver victory with your model, they will abandon you for whoever can win. Money chases power always. Money heavily backed the Rockefellers until they realized they were doomed and then it flooded toward Reaganism.

That is beyond well established by now, but that wasn't the case back then. At the time he was a fiscal hawk with a blue collar background.

That is true -- I once had high hopes for him as well. I wonder what changed.

He hired McCain's reject staffers and tried to rebrand himself as the Midwest John McCain.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Then, I guess, I am going to surely leave my sympathies to GOP aside. I simply don't want to be a part of party cruicial part of which consists of WWC and Blue Collars. I just despise those people for their social and economic stances. Being myself from upper-middle class family by standards of my country and a freshman college student who plans to live in suburb and being middle-class like my parents, I just don't want reach out to them. It's above me. Me and some miner HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO JOINT INTERESTS. And that's not changing.

If I ever end up in USA I will be voting for Libertarian Party. Sadly neoconservativism and Reaganism are dying  and I won't find a place for me in both parties in a decade or even less

Why, though?  I mean, it doesn't bother me if you feel that way, but that's not a wise stance for any political party to make.  The US isn't like most of Europe which has several smaller parties with narrow, even niche coalitions.  The GOP has to work within the confines of the 2 party system.

Also, it would be a brazen mis-characterization to assume that the vast majority of 4 year degree voters are staunch supply siders and budget hawks.  The keynesian neo-liberalism that is the establishment norm (which most of these voters and the majority of the country supports) is not some right-wing view.  They probably heavily supported Reaganomics in 1985, and maybe even 1995, but the economics of Sowell/Friedman/Rothbard (which I've read alot in 2013-2015) are a minority position in the US, and has been for some period of time.

Just it hurts me to realise that in 10-year time  people with views like me (I am looking at you, OSR and Mark Meadows) will be a minority that won't have any political representation.
And nothing can be done to stop this tide at all this time. Reagan Revolution era in Conservativism unfortunately nears it's end.

Well, I guess Libertarian Party would be cracking around 6-8%  by 2036.  

OSR will be just fine, he understands Reagan the man and how he was able to build a strong winning coalition. You have to bring everyone along for the ride and work to make sure they all benefit. Once you start engaging in this game of I don't understand miners therefore I cannot share a party with you, the game is already up. Reagan figured out how to get both suburban bankers and the small town factory worker under the same roof. I might be out of touch with yours and Haley/Ryan's mentality, but I would never be caught dead refusing to share a party with you guys.

The funny part is I am not actually a populist, truth of the matter is populism scares the hell out of me as a Burkean Conservative and a believer in responsible finance. But if you don't address pressing needs, the people will find someone who will. Because conservatives failed to answer the dislocations caused by Free Trade, we ended up with our first protectionist President in decades and it can always get worse. If you really want to avert the next Trump, you have to make sure that your economic policies benefit the whole base, not one part (which is being squeezed by demographic change and liberalization) while telling the larger one to "suck it up" and learn to code.

Reagan understood how to do that. He put quotas on Japanese automakers, compromised with the Democrats to extend the life of social security and at the time ending stagflation benefited everyone not just suburbanites.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Just it hurts me to realise that in 10-year time  people with views like me (I am looking at you, OSR and Mark Meadows) will be a minority that won't have any political representation.
And nothing can be done to stop this tide at all this time. Reagan Revolution era in Conservativism unfortunately nears it's end.

Well, I guess Libertarian Party would be cracking around 6-8%  by 2036.  

I know that feeling.  I was PO'ed for a long time at the GOP from around 2012-2015 for failing to follow Rand Paul's path in taking Tea Party conservatism, and taking a stance against the Bush/Obama surveillance state, the war on drugs, and the Bush/Obama interventionist foreign policy.  That could have turned the GOP post-Bush into a real juggernaut, what the hell were they thinking?  FTR, I voted Johnson in both 2016 and 2012 (I had only turned 18 7 months before that election.

I am fairly confident that those three things will gain strength, we have already seen part of that via Trumpism at least on the surveillance state. It is difficult to remake a party overnight. Usually you have to capture the zeitgeist of the younger members of said party and then wait a few decades.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I'd  say simply. If Hawley manages to get nomination and his brand of populism takes over GOP, I will probably stop recognizing  myself as Republican. For me it's  economics or bust. I don't  think that surrendering economical issues for social is a viable path to go forward.

Although I am a foreigner, so, my word isn't  that much of say in this debate.

I understand your point of view (I was a libertarian from 2012-16 and a classical liberal up till a year ago), but to the point that NC Yankee has been saying this entire thread- The GOP has no path forward if it clings to tea-party supply side doctrine, as so many educated, suburban middle and upper middle class voters have left the GOP*  (most of whom aren't coming back) The GOP has to adopt more pro-worker stances to have a chance of building a coalition that can actually win elections and win over new voters who would otherwise refuse to vote for "the wall-st party" (which is a very silly narrative, but lots of people still believe it).

You don't have to go into hardcore Hawley-Tucker territory.  But the party has to move in that direction (which Trump mostly failed to do) in order to construct a winning coalition.


*Many nevertrumper republicans like to infer that Trump is 100% responsible for this trend and that until 2017 the GOP had rock-solid Suburban support.  Although Trump certainly accelerated this trend and deserves much of the blame, the trend has been happening since at least Obama's first term and can probably be traced back to the last days of the Bush era, in no small part due to social issues, the drug war, and the wars in the middle east.  The GOP didn't get the message after Obama won in 2008, and the 2012 autopsy failed to reign in the neoconservative foreign policy.  

Then, I guess, I am going to surely leave my sympathies to GOP aside. I simply don't want to be a part of party cruicial part of which consists of WWC and Blue Collars. I just can't bear those people for their social and economic stances. Being myself from upper-middle class family by standards of my country and a freshman college student who plans to live in suburb and being middle-class like my parents, I just сan't reach out to them. It's above me. Me and some miner HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO JOINT INTERESTS. And that's not changing.

If I ever end up in USA I will be voting for Libertarian Party. Sadly neoconservativism and Reaganism are dying  and I won't find a place for me in both parties in a decade or even less

Honestly man, that's a really bad attitude. You don't have to be snobbish to be a conservative -- miners and other blue collar workers can advocate for and believe in free market and oppose government regulation (which actually disproportionately affects them by hurting them and killing their jobs) just as much as suburbanites can.

Regulations harm all energy production for obvious reasons, but the real killer for coal is not regulations it is natural gas.

You will have noticed, that Trump has at various instances tried to prop up the coal industry with the support of both the owners and the miners. I do not support this action.

What should be done is an economic development program for Appalachia that combines tax, trade, infrastructure and skilled trades, without favoritism to specific firms.  The problem is this is considered "Industrial Policy" and even industrial planning and anything that doesn't fit the standard movement conservative boiler plate is off the table, leaving only wild men with extreme ideas to cater to this region and its votes. Which means they are going to keep voting for unstable, incompetent renegades as opposed to qualified Conservatives who if they need to break something at least understand how to minimize the damage. Trump, he just takes a sledge hammer to everything in his way.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

On Free Trade: He was  free trader but in the mid 1980s his tarrifs on Japan actually saved the free trade ideology as the I beleive congress was about to pass bill that would have overridden reagan on trade and implement protectionism and Reagan understanding what that would do for free trade he eventually decided to put tarrifs on Japan

This is what I called preventive co-option, taking control of the issue yourself to prevent the other side from handling it "Their way" and thus saving the underlying issue.

This is why Conservatives today, are terribly ineffective compared to Reagan back then. Reagan knew how to function and maneuver a situation to his benefit and to his long term point. To people like Haley/Ryan this is just a socialist, traitor, RINO who needs to be hauled out into the street and lynched.

The Conservative Movement and its Soviet style purification has made conservatism stupid and ineffectual, relying on sticks in the mud that everyone just wants to take an axe or a chain saw too. Reagan knew what he was doing, Ted Cruz doesn't.

Its like the difference between John Bell Hood at Atlanta and Robert E Lee at Chancellorsville. Cruz is Hood, Reagan is Lee. Hood was even picked because Johnston was considered to be too cautious, so the first thing Hood did was charge out and attack Sherman. He got destroyed allowing Sherman to take Atlanta and burn the state to the ground in the march to the sea. But hey rather lose than war than be a "coward", am I right? At Chancellorsville Lee pulled back along the front, and only sent probes to keep Hooker in place, while he sent Jackson around their right flank and cut them to pieces.

That's smart strategy, we cannot do smart strategy because we are so concerned about finding the next Benedict Arnold, we can't trap British at Yorktown.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Reading the exchanges between Yankee and H/R, I wonder what both, but especially Yankee think about the general Marxist principle that capitalism will inevitably lead to a proletarian revolution and the establishment of a socialist/communist society.

I personally think said point has actually been debunked fairly easily (the USSR has not been around for almost 30 years now; and even something like Hugo Chavez pales in comparison to people like Lenin or Fidel Castro). Still the inevitability of socialism is a big point of Marxist philosophy

Anyways, is Socialism/Communism inevitable under capitalism? Or can it be stopped? (And if so how?)

No it is not inevitable and the reason why they think it is inevitable is because they reduce all of history to class struggle and that is not accurate and thus the falacy is born.

What I will say is that chaos of any kind creates the impulse for authoritarian solutions, and likewise despair leads people to make desperate choices, but that could lead to any number of bad outcomes. Communism/Socialism is just one, it could also lead to fascism, to nazism, to populism (Which can be just as dangerous look at Andrew Jackson or more recently...). Therefore it is incumbent on the establishment, on the elites to operate on a basis of resolving existing problems rather then let them fester to the point where radicalism comes on the table and they start looking to the crazed men to solve the problems that the establishment won't.

I have often said if there was just one establishment candidate who had the balls to run on the same general combination as Trump (trade skepticism, border security and foreign policy restraint), Trump would not have been nominated. Because no establishment candidate did that, we now have the constitution being rung through a cheese grater and facing a decade or more in the wilderness. Populism is dangerous, you thwart populists by coopting them, not pretending they will just go away like the GOP did on immigration in 2013.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I'd  say simply. If Hawley manages to get nomination and his brand of populism takes over GOP, I will probably stop recognizing  myself as Republican. For me it's  economics or bust. I don't  think that surrendering economical issues for social is a viable path to go forward.

Although I am a foreigner, so, my word isn't  that much of say in this debate.

I understand your point of view (I was a libertarian from 2012-16 and a classical liberal up till a year ago), but to the point that NC Yankee has been saying this entire thread- The GOP has no path forward if it clings to tea-party supply side doctrine, as so many educated, suburban middle and upper middle class voters have left the GOP*  (most of whom aren't coming back) The GOP has to adopt more pro-worker stances to have a chance of building a coalition that can actually win elections and win over new voters who would otherwise refuse to vote for "the wall-st party" (which is a very silly narrative, but lots of people still believe it).

You don't have to go into hardcore Hawley-Tucker territory.  But the party has to move in that direction (which Trump mostly failed to do) in order to construct a winning coalition.


*Many nevertrumper republicans like to infer that Trump is 100% responsible for this trend and that until 2017 the GOP had rock-solid Suburban support.  Although Trump certainly accelerated this trend and deserves much of the blame, the trend has been happening since at least Obama's first term and can probably be traced back to the last days of the Bush era, in no small part due to social issues, the drug war, and the wars in the middle east.  The GOP didn't get the message after Obama won in 2008, and the 2012 autopsy failed to reign in the neoconservative foreign policy. 

Then, I guess, I am going to surely leave my sympathies to GOP aside. I simply don't want to be a part of party cruicial part of which consists of WWC and Blue Collars. I just can't bear those people for their social and economic stances. Being myself from upper-middle class family by standards of my country and a freshman college student who plans to live in suburb and being middle-class like my parents, I just сan't reach out to them. It's above me. Me and some miner HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO JOINT INTERESTS. And that's not changing.

If I ever end up in USA I will be voting for Libertarian Party. Sadly neoconservativism and Reaganism are dying  and I won't find a place for me in both parties in a decade or even less

Well, you can think what you will, but you really sound like a dick. Sorry.
Ironically, in that post you embody one stereotype about Republicans (snob out-of-touch elite who only cares about shrinking the government and not about other people) while reciting another stereotype about Republicans (ignorant hick redneck).

I prefer to be elitist than a redneck.

Elitist or redneck, we all walk the same earth, breath the same air and desire peace, prosperity and freedom. The only way for one or the other to survive is for both to reach some level of understanding and work together for the good of everyone. Otherwise, the politics of confusion, chaos and extremism will not end, it will get worse. Ultimately, if you want to prevent the next Donald Trump, that is the only way to do it.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Those military bases exist where they are because of congressional involvement. It is also no accident that many military bases built in World War II and World War I, bear the names of Confederate leaders. Both times, Democrats were in the majority and owing to GOP landslides in years like 1894, 1904 and 1920, the only Democrats with seniority were the ones who didn't face competition, ie Southerners at a time when the lost cause was at its zenith, hence the names and the locations.

Though admittedly weather and climate make them appealing, but this does mean that a number of economic dependency are created, that with the move to the sunbelt for the GOP, the GOP thus inherited. So the Pentagon will say what it will, the Congress will likely not do anything to change it.

The Republicans have always been the vehicle for big business. That is why they favored big government prior to 1896, and have been inconsistent and hypocritically in favor of small government on paper while still desiring large spending on sectors that they like (oil, defense contractors etc) and opposing efforts to reign them in like all the corruption with they defense contractors in the Bush years.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Put like that, I'm totally fine with that -- because it preserves the two things I care about (fiscal/social conservatism) and keeps it alive without giving up on our values. That's completely different from what Yankee whats, which is simply giving into the left and supporting expansions of government and abandoning our principles on healthcare, marriage, taxes, free markets, etc.

This is bullsh**t. I oppose single payer, I support market competition and I think taxes should be kept "as low as practical" while still being able to pay down our enormous debt to places like China, before they use it to start dictating policy to us. I support the right to self-defense/oppose the Assault Weapons ban and I am pro-life.

Frankly, I think Rand Paul was onto something in 2013 when he was trying to sell minorities on a consistent small government platform that runs the gambit of opposing foreign war, minimizing the policy/surveillance state, and scaling back the war on drugs. These policies are all BIG GOVERNMENT whether you want to admit it or not, excuse it or not, and they have all done horrendous damage to minority communities and families (we are suppose to be the small gov't and pro-family people, yet we condone violations of small gov't orthodoxy when it does tremendous damage but never when it might help said family structures. There is a clear double standard here).

Why is it you get to lecture me on deviating from small gov't principles on drug prices, but you get a free pass on big government when it comes to war, and the police?

https://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/05/recalling-the-days-when-democrats-cut-taxes.html

When JFK's tax legislation came before Congress, Democrats in the House voted for it 223-29 and in the Senate 56-11, while Republicans voted against it in the House 126-48 and for it in the Senate 21-10. The GOP candidate for president in 1964, Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, voted against.

This article was composed by Larry Kudlow by the way.

Fiscal conservatism is not the same as supply side economics, and in fact you could argue they are at contrary purposes. Fiscal conservatism is not spending more than what you have, and working to pay down the national debt. Supply side economics calls for deficit funded tax cuts to grow the economy as a stimulative measure. There are two problems with this, 1) unless you have the political capital to actually restrain spending and lets face it, they don't as Rover and Deadprez pointed out, it will always increase the debt and 2). The benefits always flow to those areas that are already doing well, namely those places that are at the vanguard of social liberalism these days for the most part. If you think about it, you are subsidizing the destruction of traditional marriage this way.

I am a market conservative. I believe in abolishing the income tax, entitlement reform, reducing the size of government, and repealing and replacing Obamcare.

But I am also a social conservative. As I have said on other occasions on this forum, I believe in punishing abortion with the death penalty. I believe life begins at conception. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I support school prayer.

Those two things are not contradictory, and I don't only care about one or the other. I care about them both very deeply, and I know that at least some of our Congressmen do as well.

They are not contradictory to you because you live in a sheltered situation in which you experience none of the negatives of the policies and thus cannot comprehend how it can be inconsistent in practice. How economical neoliberalism, incentivizes social liberalism. How a no knock raid on an innocent man suspected of drug possession that turns bad, can ruin a black family's world. How an unnecessary foreign conflict can break up and destroy a family. Hell, I even laid our a scenario, real life scenario that I practically experienced first hand as to how outsourcing can lead to financial strain, marital problems, abuse and drug/alcohol use and you rejected it and twisted it to claim I was a communist. Instability causes family decay, it is a simple concept and one that is all to real among those non-college whites you want to expand among.

At the end of the day, for all the lecturing me about being out of touch, you don't seem to grasp how these policies interact with real people, or the real damage that they can cause.

Just what do you think will happen when you expand among "non-college whites". I lived up north, I was born there, I can tell you how non-college whites look when you get out of the bible belt.
1. They are very secular, perhaps at most low frequency Catholic
2. They might be pro-life and pro-gun
3. They are most certainly protectionist and want the factories back
4. They want Social Security and Medicare protected
5. A large number of them would probably support Medicare for all when the rubber meets the road, or at least the concept in in a vacuum without consideration for the problems that would cause.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

This is bullsh**t. I oppose single payer, I support market competition and I think taxes should be kept "as low as practical" while still being able to pay down our enormous debt to places like China, before they use it to start dictating policy to us. I support the right to self-defense/oppose the Assault Weapons ban and I am pro-life.

In your opinion, where should the GOP go in terms of healthcare?

This may come as a surprise to Haley/Ryan, but I don't think America is well suited to a single payer system based on its system of gov't as a Federal Republic and its traditions of states rights and so forth.

Very few countries have single payer, a lot of people love to put up a map of countries with "national healthcare" and then claim "we are the only country in the world without single payer", this statement is factually wrong. We are the only one without a working national healthcare system, but we are not the only one without single payer.

In fact most either have multi-payer systems like Germany, locally administered systems like I think Finland or some combination thereof. The countries with single payer are typically in the Anglosphere and follow the lead of the UK. The UK is a unitary state and thus while Canada and Australia are Federations, they are following the lead of a non-federal centralized country. Japan is another and once again another centralized gov't. With a few exceptions most of the rest of the national healthcare systems aren't single payer (and yes I am discounting the whole supplemental insurance/and those aspects of UKs system that technically would take it out of the definition as well because I think it is safe to say that the marketshare held by NHS makes it nearly single payer in practice).

Whatever system we have, needs to respect the states, needs to preserve choice and competition of some kind and needs to avoid monopolization. I am against monopolies whether natural or unnatural because once you are the only provider of something, you lose the competitive forces that cause reductions in price and improvements in quality/service, if it is then a service that people cannot go without, then you essentially have turned the consumer into a slave. That applies to government though just as much as it does to the private sector.

At the same time we have the dynamic of 1) allowing people with no insurance to get emergency room care, which you kind of have to do for multiple reasons, 2) that cost then gets spread throughout the rest of the system as healthcare inflation and 3) it would be cheaper and more effective to insure them up front and cover the cost of preventative medicine.

Preventative medicine is much cheaper in the long run then constantly treating poor people after they have been debilitated by illness to the point where they cannot work and end up a dependent on the gov't dole. This ironically is yet again another area where Conservatism has been working at cross purposes, by resisting direct help to poor people for healthcare, they help to create more dependency, reduce work and productivity.

This was the point I was trying to make with Haley/Ryan about preventative co-option, create a program that respects state's rights, respect choice preservation and works to minimize long term dependency by covering preventative medicine (all three of those are victories for the right) , otherwise you eventually end up with single payer a loss across the board. And to answer his point before he makes it, I don't support this to prevent single payer (though I consider that a hell of a good motivation if you ask me), I support them because I think it is itself good policy when structured in that fashion.

His slippery slope argument is wrong because at the end of the day, the support for radical change comes from desperate people. Radicals would not get entryism to the mainstream if people were content and could get ahead. The very fact that radicals are gaining steam is proof positive that large segments of society are being left behind and they see socialism as the only way out. Conservatism has answers to these problems, or rather alternatively, there are answers to these problems that respect what I would consider conservative values (state's rights, market competition, minimizing gov't dependency, strengthening families etc), yet it doesn't happen largely because of special interest money and also because of the Conservative movement has been trained not to think and to stamp out anyone that doesn't take spoon fed marching orders from the Georgetown think tank elite crowd.

The same arguably applies to drug prices. If you can solve the problem just be removing regulations and reforming patent law, then pray tell do so. Of course that is not the reason why it is not happening and why we are stuck in this place, the real answer is once again special interest money. I have said this point again and again, Business does not care about small gov't, they only pretend to care when it benefits them, aside from that every issue is transactional, with positioned determined based on the benefits. That is why a small gov't party will speak lip service to market competition, then quietly block the bills or the Democrats will block the bills, that will actually end the regulatory capture or whatever else may be causing the monopoly and the price increases.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

@DeadPrez
You raise good points, but regarding balancing the budget, I don't think the GOP are interested in balancing the budget.
I was born in 1990, in my lifetime the budget was balanced under Clinton in the 1990s. Then Bush came the surplus turned into a deficit. Obama reduced the deficit, Trump came and the deficit went up again.
GOP tried to cut spending, Bush seriously tried to privatize social security but he failed. The military eats up a large portion of the budget and for the GOP cutting the military budget is a big no-no.
Trump introduced unpaid-for tax cuts, that saw the deficit go up again.
Ironically for all talk of fiscal responsibility from the GOP, the Democrats have been more fiscally responsible than the GOP in the past 30 years.

If the GOP are serious about balancing the budget, then the party needs to embrace raising taxes on the wealthy and the upper-middle classes.
The military budget needs to be cut. Pentagon more than once recommended the number of bases in the mainland should be reduced, but many congress members been resisting such cuts, those cuts would save billions of $$$.

Pentagon Proposes Closing Almost 180 U.S. Military Bases
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/pentagon-proposes-closing-almost-180-u-s-military-bases

Base closings ‘hot potato’ issue again as Pentagon insists new round could save tens of billions
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/14/base-closings-hot-potato-issue-again-as-pentagon-insists-new-round-could-save-tens-of-billions.html

Plans for a new base closing round may be running out of time: Report
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2019/08/15/plans-for-a-new-base-closing-round-may-be-running-out-of-time-report/

Neither are gonna be easy choices. But cutting things like education, healthcare, or disability benefits are deeply unpopular with the public.

GOP obsession with tax cuts has become a problem. Tax cuts aren't as popular as they used to be, Trump tax cuts didn't change public opinion and they're blowing up the deficit.

I agree with what I bolded. It's the unholy alliance between the left and right in order to prevent budget cuts. Both get what they want: entitlement spending and military spending.

I don't agree Dems are better at balancing the budget. With Clinton, i must be stressed that the GOP forced him to balance the budget. The GOP rejected every budget Clinton proposed that would have increased deficits. And Obama didn't cut spending. Check the numbers again. Even when you ignore the stimulus, he increased spending.

Certainly, I'd agree with you that the Republican congress was responsible for balancing the budget, It's one of the reasons why I voted for John Kasich in 2016 primaries, he was the house budget committee chairman. Of course, it was much easier to balance the books when the economy was booming in the 1990s.
Regarding Obama, the deficit did in fact go down, he didn't impose major cuts, but he did raise taxes. And the economy was growing hence budget revenue increased. The graph shows the budget deficit since 1981.

Look at the actual numbers. Remove the fact that the stimulus occurred and you will see deficits rose under Obama. The first deficit he had was over 600 billion. That's more than any year for Bush

That is true but the deficit went up due to many factors, including decisions taken by Obama during 2008-2010 but it also increased due to the fallout of the recession.
In all fairness to Obama he did inherent a dreadful economic situation from Bush, many tough decisions had to be taken during obamas first term, the stimulus package sadly wasn't successful.
I honestly believe had McCain won he would've bailed out the auto industry and passed some form a stimulus package. Such decisions would see the deficit increase.
North of the border in Canada the Canadian Prime minister Stephen Harper bailed out the automobiles, even though Canada wasn't hit hard by the 2008 financial crisis like us.

Clinton is as much to blame as Bush as is both parties in Congress for the 2008 Financial crisis. The derivatives that caused the exposure financially to so many firms were legalized in the late 1990s via the Commodities Futures Modernization Act. Passed in the dead of night by voice vote and signed into law by Bill Clinton. The legalization of Mortgage Backed Securities, the repeal of glass steagal, the pushing of bad mortgages by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, all had their beginnings in the 1990s. It is true that Bush's ownership society push combined with Greenspan's low interest rates played a role in stoking the blaze, but as far back as 2003 Bush, McCain and others tried to reign in Fannie and Freddie only to be blocked by Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and Hillary Clinton. Then in 2008 they turn around an demand to know why Bush hadn't acted sooner. Dodd was also implicated in the Countrywide Financial scandal at the same time, where had received a loan at sub market rates, along with a few others. This combined with his essentially abandoning Connecticut in 2007 to camp out in Iowa, iis why for most of 2009 Rob Simmons was considered a likely pickup in CT for the Republicans. But Dodd dropped out and Simmons got outspent by Linda McMahon in the primary.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Put like that, I'm totally fine with that -- because it preserves the two things I care about (fiscal/social conservatism) and keeps it alive without giving up on our values. That's completely different from what Yankee whats, which is simply giving into the left and supporting expansions of government and abandoning our principles on healthcare, marriage, taxes, free markets, etc.

This is bullsh**t. I oppose single payer, I support market competition and I think taxes should be kept "as low as practical" while still being able to pay down our enormous debt to places like China, before they use it to start dictating policy to us. I support the right to self-defense/oppose the Assault Weapons ban and I am pro-life.

Frankly, I think Rand Paul was onto something in 2013 when he was trying to sell minorities on a consistent small government platform that runs the gambit of opposing foreign war, minimizing the policy/surveillance state, and scaling back the war on drugs. These policies are all BIG GOVERNMENT whether you want to admit it or not, excuse it or not, and they have all done horrendous damage to minority communities and families (we are suppose to be the small gov't and pro-family people, yet we condone violations of small gov't orthodoxy when it does tremendous damage but never when it might help said family structures. There is a clear double standard here).

Why is it you get to lecture me on deviating from small gov't principles on drug prices, but you get a free pass on big government when it comes to war, and the police?

https://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/05/recalling-the-days-when-democrats-cut-taxes.html

When JFK's tax legislation came before Congress, Democrats in the House voted for it 223-29 and in the Senate 56-11, while Republicans voted against it in the House 126-48 and for it in the Senate 21-10. The GOP candidate for president in 1964, Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, voted against.

This article was composed by Larry Kudlow by the way.

Fiscal conservatism is not the same as supply side economics, and in fact you could argue they are at contrary purposes. Fiscal conservatism is not spending more than what you have, and working to pay down the national debt. Supply side economics calls for deficit funded tax cuts to grow the economy as a stimulative measure. There are two problems with this, 1) unless you have the political capital to actually restrain spending and lets face it, they don't as Rover and Deadprez pointed out, it will always increase the debt and 2). The benefits always flow to those areas that are already doing well, namely those places that are at the vanguard of social liberalism these days for the most part. If you think about it, you are subsidizing the destruction of traditional marriage this way.

I am a market conservative. I believe in abolishing the income tax, entitlement reform, reducing the size of government, and repealing and replacing Obamcare.

But I am also a social conservative. As I have said on other occasions on this forum, I believe in punishing abortion with the death penalty. I believe life begins at conception. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I support school prayer.

Those two things are not contradictory, and I don't only care about one or the other. I care about them both very deeply, and I know that at least some of our Congressmen do as well.

They are not contradictory to you because you live in a sheltered situation in which you experience none of the negatives of the policies and thus cannot comprehend how it can be inconsistent in practice. How economical neoliberalism, incentivizes social liberalism. How a no knock raid on an innocent man suspected of drug possession that turns bad, can ruin a black family's world. How an unnecessary foreign conflict can break up and destroy a family. Hell, I even laid our a scenario, real life scenario that I practically experienced first hand as to how outsourcing can lead to financial strain, marital problems, abuse and drug/alcohol use and you rejected it and twisted it to claim I was a communist. Instability causes family decay, it is a simple concept and one that is all to real among those non-college whites you want to expand among.

At the end of the day, for all the lecturing me about being out of touch, you don't seem to grasp how these policies interact with real people, or the real damage that they can cause.

Just what do you think will happen when you expand among "non-college whites". I lived up north, I was born there, I can tell you how non-college whites look when you get out of the bible belt.
1. They are very secular, perhaps at most low frequency Catholic
2. They might be pro-life and pro-gun
3. They are most certainly protectionist and want the factories back
4. They want Social Security and Medicare protected
5. A large number of them would probably support Medicare for all when the rubber meets the road, or at least the concept in in a vacuum without consideration for the problems that would cause.

The right has a tendency to blame the social instability and lack of traditional values on cultural marxism, fatherless homes, drug use, and welfare, but in a lot of ways the neoliberalism and warfare state are just to blame. This is another reason I was easily influenced by Paul in 2010. It was easy to see how everything tied together when you aren't sheltered.

Dependency is a problem that needs to be disincentivized but treating that in isolation from the things that cause dependency just grinds people into dust and leaves them even more dependent. It is a big reason why I have gravitated towards the Paul view on FP over the last ten years, at least to the extent of avoiding wars unless absolutely necessary. Wars create years of dependence and no one in good conscience would kick vets or their dependent children off, so it is best to just avoid the war to start with.

We were still paying out Civil War Pension to the disabled child of a civil war veteran as recently as a few weeks ago. Still several being paid out for the Spanish American War. Over 100 years later and we are still paying for the aftermaths of these conflicts in one form or another.