Conservatives only: Which of the following 1956 GOP platform do you support?

[Vice President Christian Man]

Which of the following of my favorite GOP platform, at least of the recent era. do you agree with?

[MarkD]

Just protect SS.
To heck with the rest of it.
Party platforms, in the US, are not worth the toilet paper they're printed on.

[Vosem]

Providing federal assistance to low-income communities. Depends what kind of assistance, I suppose? Some kinds of issues are most easily fixed at the federal level, like environmental degradation, and it's tough to be against things like job training programs that will pay for themselves in the long run. I lean 'no' here because 'federal assistance' tends to be a code-word in practice for reckless and corrupt spending which helps few actual people (although I think this was less the case in 1956), but it really depends on what is meant.

Protect Social Security. Ultimately Social Security is unsustainable unless privatized, and privatized programs would deliver more benefits to the overwhelming majority of recipients over the long run anyway. (Although you could keep it nationalized and merely allow it to invest in private assets, too -- although this would introduce lots of opportunities for corruption). I suppose 'yes' here, but I don't mean this yes in the way that 1956 would've read the sentence, or that most people would today.

Provide asylum for refugees. Sure; I would pick 'yes' here. I think immigrants can broadly be divided into three categories (high human capital ones, who should always be welcome because high human capital individuals invariably assimilate and contribute to society; low human capital ones with a similar culture, coming from democracies or mostly-Christian societies such as Latin America, or even countries which are neither but have strong traditions of anti-communism such as South Vietnam, who should generally be welcome but where there is room for debate regarding appropriate levels, since large sudden influxes might bring down wages in the short term; and low human capital ones from dissimilar cultures, who may not assimilate and would probably encourage divisive sentiments in society (see many European countries for examples of how this can go wrong). So I would say 'yes', but it sort of depends on which refugees.

Extend the minimum wage. Yeah, sure. It makes very little sense to have a minimum wage which is not at least pegged to inflation, and there's substantial evidence that minimum wages at least don't hurt businesses as much as many would fear. I'd vote 'yes'.

Improve the unemployment benefit system so it covers more people. Why would we want this unless there were suddenly many more unemployed people? Unemployed rates are very low right now, and government entitlements are inherently bad things which stifle society in zillions of ways and should be avoided except where utterly unavoidable. No, and if anything it should cover fewer people.

Strengthen labor laws so workers can more easily join a union. I can see this being necessary in some societies, but I feel like in the US most controversy (eg, right-to-work) is about people feeling pressured to join a union they don't actually want to join? (Once again, my own experiences come with significant selection bias, but I've encountered this in the context of the school district I attended, whereas I've never actually met someone who wanted to start or join a union but felt pressure not to. I think the former is more of an issue). Probably 'no' here but this isn't something I've read about too deeply and my answer here is based on knee-jerk tribalism and reliance on anecdotes; I generally try to avoid reaching broad answers to societal questions based on anecdotes because I think everyone lives in strange bubbles.

Assure equal pay for equal work regardless of sex. I think we're basically there as a society, and studies suggest most wage disparities are the result of people with different characteristics going into different industries, but 'yes', of course pay for truly equal work should be the same.

All of it. No. Some of these I had to kind of strain to read in a way I like, and 'cover more people with unemployment benefits' is a straightforwardly bad goal.

None of it. By contrast, 'equal pay for equal work' is a legitimately good goal, and would've been an important societal issue back in 1956.

Not a conservative. I rather dislike the moniker 'conservative' and don't normally self-identify tht way, though I'm definitely on the American right (I'm more comfortable with just 'right-wing', in fact) and probably included in the category of people you were asking the question to. I did tick this box, though, even though I filled out the poll.