In the past, whenever there were “What do Trump voters think about _______?” threads, about 70% of the comments wouldn’t be from Trumpers, but rather, from Trump opponents trying to project what they thought Trumpers were thinking, onto Trumpers (kind of like the “What do women think about __?” threads; usually, the comments weren’t from women, but from men trying to project what they thought women thought, onto women - not that I’m comparing women to Trumpers, but you get the idea.)
We also frequently hear:
“Republicans hate minorities, women, Muslims and gays”
“Democrats hate white men”
“Trump voters want to take America back to the 1950s”
“Liberals support open borders”
“Republicans are trying to disenfranchise minorities with voter-ID laws”
“Democrats want to take your guns away”
“Pro-lifers are trying to force women into back-alley abortions”
Etc. etc. etc.
So what I wanted to ask in this thread was: What are beliefs that liberals and conservatives hold about each other, ***that the other side would agree are an accurate description of their views? *** In other words, what do Republicans say about Democrats, that Democrats would agree, “Yep, that’s what we think” and vice versa?
Some certainly do, no doubt. The single issue voters (e.g. guns) don’t necessarily.
I would say, if you had to put a more accurate time on it, it’s probably closer to the 1980s. And, obviously, not everything from the 1980s. Republicans love Reagan, nobody talks about Eisenhower, though he is highly respected.
Personally I don’t understand why I, in a northern blue state, 26% African American, am asked for my ID, nobody bats an eye, that isn’t disenfranchisement, but other places it is. I honestly don’t care how they do it, but dammit, be consistent.
I think at this point a lot of Pro-lifers would be happy with 3rd trimester bans. I am somewhat pleasantly surprised that Tulsi Gabbard wasn’t booed off the stage for basically that position.
Statements that both sides agree on. Such as: Repubicans want to reduce/eliminate abortions. Or Demcrats want stronger gun control laws.
Statements from the perspective of the opponent. Such as: Republicans want to control women’s bodies. A Republican would say that they don’t want to control women, it’s about protecting the life of the unborn child.
Made of views. Liberals want to go door to door and confiscate guns.
Yeah, I sort of agree. If one makes a specific statement about conservatives, I feel like I can give a take on it as an individual conservative, speaking for myself, not all conservatives. I regularly skip over posts with the typical “scum of the earth” descriptors, that’s fine, they’re entitled to their opinion, and I’m entitled to skip it.
I can demonstrably prove that some democrats want to take away guns, but I don’t believe that all, or even most, want to take away guns. So this is going to be somewhat individualized. You can’t neatly fit either side into boxes.
I’m a liberal democrat and I don’t agree with this though.
one of the most effective way to reduce abortions is to have universal sex education, easy access to free contraceptives, etc will reduce abortions and conservatives are opposed to these things.
I think a lot of conservatives have sort of given up the fight, so to speak, and taken a libertarian “leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone” view on recent social changes (e.g. legalized pot, same sex marriage). Few conservatives realistically believe that same sex marriage is going to be reversed regardless of how they think about it, so why expend the brain power thinking about it? Polls are reflecting this too. Obviously many are still on a gradient of opposition, but I think that is and will continue to lessen over time.
AIUI, it can be rephrased as, “Conservatives want to reduce abortion, but only by certain means.” For instance, many believe that birth control is wrong, or sex education encourages premarital sex.
There is a difference between what each side wants, and how to accomplish it. Conservatives want to limit abortions and focus on making it illegal, closing down places that provide it, punishment for doctors who perform abortions, etc.
Both sides want to cut down on school shootings. Democrats talk about gun control. Republicans will bring up things like it’s because of mental health issues, we removed God from schools, or unarmed teachers.
Someone had “I think that conservatives believe that…” and that may be the best way to answer the question. For example,
Liberals believe that gun control laws will reduce gun violence.
Conservatives believe that “good guns” will reduce gun violence.
Conservatives believe that a (competitive) environment with a fair (if not absolutely guaranteed-to-be-equal) opportunity will reward diligence, intelligence, skill, and other useful attributes, and that therefore giving everyone an opportunity to enter the economic fray is the best way to give marginalized people a shot at success. Far better than special programs or ameliorative policies of any sort, which they perceive as handouts, and they see handouts as breeders of malaise and loss of dignity. They see all social movements that seek redistribution of resources or urging special protection for marginalzied special-interest groups as likely vehicles for external influence aimed at disrupting the American system, even if that’s not how those groups originate: that they are useful for America’s enemies to infiltrate.
Liberals believe that the market economy unfairly rewards the wealthy with ridiculously large advantages in economic competition, so that it is grossly unfair to let it operate without redistributive fixes, specific protections for the impoverished, and, on top of that, specific protections for certain classes of people who have historically been disenfranchised and had even less of a fair shot than similarly economically deprived people. They see individual Horatio Alger success stories as exceptions to a general rule by which the poor get poorer because they pay more and have fewer opportunities to preserve what they earn; and they see the rich as undeserving of their wealth, not so much because they are greedy selfish pigs or anything but because, in a world where some people are paid minimum wage for backbreaking work, it isn’t conceivable that anyone could “earn” what the wealthy bring in.
Some years ago, the Republican legislature passed a very strong voter ID law and some Republican politician remarked that this would guarantee Republican control of the state for the foreseeable future. The law was thrown out. In Canada we have voter ID laws, but everyone has the necessary ID (a health card) and I never had to show a birth certificate get it. What makes the ID laws inimical is that their purpose is to deny voting to eligible voters.
I think we all agree that Dems would take away assault weapons. I cannot think think of a single acceptable civilian use for such weapons.
Democrats believe that health care is the government’s legitimate business. I think Republicans believe it isn’t.
Republicans believe that life starts at conception. Dems that it starts with quickening.
Dems believe that global warming is real, is human caused and we are running out of time to do something about it. Reps think it is a fiction and, in any case, not our responsibility to do anything about it.
I don’t think all dems would take away assault weapons. semi auto rifles aren’t really the cause of our gun homicides, handguns are.
As far as health care, its a little more nuanced. There are already about ~150 million Americans on government health care. Even republican tea party types tend to defend medicare and medicaid (at least for themselves). And since the GOP’s voters tend to be elderly white people who enjoy medicare and poor white people who enjoy medicaid, I don’t see them opposing these programs wholesale even though they opposed the ACA and medicaid expansions.
The GOP ran on the platform that the ACA would harm medicare (not true) and they passed medicare D back under Bush.
Yeah, but Mass shootings are the ones that get all the press. In other murders, if they get national coverage at all, nobody talks about makes and models, as if that makes a difference.
When was the last time you heard about someone killed by a “Glock-styled assault pistol”? Or that pistols, literally being carried by soldiers in standing armies, with no distinction in form or function from something you can buy off any gun store shelf, is a “weapon of war”?
You won’t, not until semi auto rifles are banned anyway. The only reason AR-15s are popular in Mass shootings is the media publicizes it and the moron copycats (that in some cases never owned a gun before, and, thank God don’t know how to prevent or clear jams) figure their sick heroes already did their homework for them. There are more effective ways to kill a lot of people than with an AR-15. Maybe slamming a truck into pedestrians isn’t as satisfying?
It’s tricky. I’m not sure liberal principles have changed over recent decades, but conservative ‘principals’ (if any) sure have. Are we asking people who consider themselves conservative NOW? Can ‘honest’ conservatives (if any) admit to flipping views on government intrusion and scope, alliances, trade, Russia, conservation, etc?
I see this POTUS as a dark star sweeping into the political system and sucking former ‘conservatives’ into its toxic gravitational field. Will that debris follow as it swings into the interstellar void?
I know on this board we usually just end up with leftists trying to speak for the right, but personally I think people like Trump are just taking the veneer off what the GOP actually stands for.
The GOP at root seems to stand for 2 things. Plutocracy and white identity politics in that order. Everything else is negotiable or a tertiary concern at best. I think Trump is just taking the veneer of what the GOP pretends to stand for off.
However I do wonder if there will be some kind of civil war within the GOP between the business class who call the shots and the rural whites who vote GOP because of identity politics. The voters seem more open to trade wars, social safety nets, etc. than the business class.
I don’t see how you can say liberal views on Russia haven’t changed. In 2012 Obama mocked Romney for calling Russia our “number one geopolitical foe”, to a great deal of liberal applause. In 2009 Hillary Clinton gave Russia her famous “reset button”. Now she’s accusing all sortsof people of being Russian assets.
If you say that you would like to eliminate recidivism, and I agree with your goal, and I propose the mechanism of doing to by executing every single person convicted of any type of crime–
Are you for or against that goal if you oppose that particular mechanism?
You have to admit that that mechanism would be spectacularly effective. But would it be morally right? Is effectiveness the ONLY consideration when determining a course of action?
To build on this: from what I’ve read, and heard from more conservative friends of mine (yes, I do have some), I think that most* conservatives feel that the U.S. has lost its way, from a moral standpoint, and this loss of morality is threatening to doom the country.
This is, from what I can see, particularly visible in how they view sexuality and gender roles. Most of them feel that sex outside of marriage is sinful, that homosexuality is sinful, and that transgenderism and all other non-traditional expressions of gender or sexual preference are somewhere between “sinful” and “the product of a sick or insane mind.”
Additionally, they also often believe that traditional gender roles (including a wife being submissive to her husband) are what God had intended, and to behave otherwise is sinful.
And, since many of these sinful ideas and behaviors really began to come out of the shadows in American culture in the 1960s (which saw the sexual revolution, the women’s liberation movement, and the beginning of the gay rights movement), I do agree with the OP that many conservatives long for a return to the 1950s, or at least the sexual and gender mores from that time.
I use this qualifier because any blanket statement about conservatives, or liberals, is almost undoubtedly not going to be universally true.