Excellent Article from FreedomWorks (Old) Criticizing Hawley

[Libertas Vel Mors]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Nightcore Nationalist]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Libertas Vel Mors]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

There is more to the world than socialism and "free market".

Just because you acknowledge the need for regulation and the need to reign in captured markets doesn't make you a socialist, it makes you a capitalist because you are trying to save capitalism from the monopolistic practices that in almost every case has led to the rise of socialist movements.

I think it is very presumptuous to say "policies we know to be right". If policies are right, then they should work and yet look at what they have done. We are now pushing 40 years since the implementation of supply side economics. Over that time we have witnessed, the hollowing out of middle America, the decline of families, the opioid epidemic and one of the largest wealth gaps in the history of the country. You say productivity has grown massively and yet that is because computers and robots can spit out more per-capita production meanwhile the former factor workers sit on disability, food stamps and social security and are voting for Donald Trump over Ted Cruz. You have created your own big gov't base.

I have reached the point where gluing yourself to one set of policies regardless of context is a recipe for disaster. Reagonomics might have worked in the 1970's into the 1980's, but there are points where you also need to build new infrastructure, incentivize new industries and work to maintain and even at times preserve the ones you have. It also means ensuring that market competition works to reign in prices and where it don't, prioritize the price minimization not low regulation for the sake of low regulation even as prices for patent restricted live saving drugs shoot up 12,000% because the declining to buy is a ticket to the funeral home (that is a not a free market, that is how the mafia works).

"Know to be right". Like I said before, the established policy for this country for over a century was infant-industry protectionism. Embargo of 1807, War of 1812, Tariff of 1816, Morrill Tarrif of 1860 and so on until Smoot-Hawley, America went from an economic backwater to the largest industrial power on earth by protecting its new industries from existing-foreign competition. It failed to continue to work, because the economics changed and we were now the dominant producer hence the need for open markets and exports and a move away from protectionism.

Yet if you read the likes of the magazines and writers mentioned above, they just want to pretend that this happened because muh freedom and want to pretend as if these policies either didn't exist or it happened in spite of them. I don't think that is historically accurate and I think the big problem with Reagonomics is that it is at war with both the reality on the ground and the unbiased historical record.

Tax cuts were completely irrelevant prior to Wilson, there were no taxes to cut. Small Gov't didn't appeal to many businesses only to Western and Southern agrarians, meanwhile big business wanted those tariffs preserved, a navy to protect their foreign trade and roads, canals, railroads to haul freight. Even in the 1920's, domestic tax cuts were paired with tariff increases. Small gov't only decidedly entered the conservative language in the Wilsonian and New Deal era. Fiscal conservatism is ancient it just means you are paying for what you spend and not borrowing money. Supply side tax cutting is just 40 years old, a policy designed to respond to stagflation, a problem that hasn't existed for forty years.

Too often we exchange policy for principle, cling to policy regardless of context in the name of principle, and then are shocked when people reject it and seek answers from real lefties and even real socialists. Economic policy has to be dynamic because the economy itself is always changing. What worked 40 years ago, won't necessarily work today. It doesn't mean you are abandoning capitalism, or embracing socialism, just because you have a contextualized policy designed to fit and resolve problems as they exist now.

As for John McCain voting no on ACA repeal. Remember that there are people dependent on that program now, including a lot of rural hospitals and those with pre-existing conditions. He determined that Congress wouldn't have the balls to do the right thing to transition those people and while the rhetoric of "pull it off quick like a bandaid" and other abstract platitudes might sound great to someone who doesn't have to worry about it, it basically amounts to telling several groups of people "we are going to vote to remove your lifeline, but don't worry, we are going to come back and fix it for you later". This line coming from the same group of people that never stops saying how you cannot trust the government.

This is the problem with the whole swath of Paul Ryan Republicanism, all this think thank garbage that sounds so great in a text book, a classroom and a news article written for the investor class, it doesn't pass the smell test for the average lower middle or working class Catholic in Ohio for whom it actually has to work (and whom you are dependent on for your votes I must add). This is why I say the Republicans are a Georgetown leadership running a party heavily dependent on ex-manufacturing hubs.

ACA got tied up in the same mess. They couldn't come up with a plan to protect the hospitals or adequately protect those with pre-existing conditions. I would also note that Rand Paul objected to several bills that might have satisfied the concerns about hospitals and got Collins/Murko on board, but no one complains about his grandstanding getting in the way, it is only John McCain's failure to vote for a practically blank piece of paper that said, "ACA Sucks, repeal ffs".

John McCain is not the reason that ACA repeal failed. ACA repeal failed, because Republican politicians are a bunch of lazy, brain dead lemmings who know only how to spew talking points and couldn't legislate their way out of an out house. Everyone is too afraid to think, because the minute you think for yourself, you get nuked and replaced by another think tank shill. That is why ideological obstructionists like Paul get a pass, while blasting away Murkowski and Collins for their obstruction in the name of  daring to care more their own state's interests then whatever crap was being churned out by freedom works hacks.