Tha why are we asking where the better conservatives are? Is your answer to the OP that there aren’t any?
No, no, wait. Back up.
Somebody tell me what Hillary is guilty of. I don’t care if it is not the guy who swore a political oath of silence until 2020. Somebody.
If it is, “She is annoying, awkward, and has a nasally voice”, then all that Lock Her Up stuff was bs.
Remember that bit about how Republicans voted the way they did because Democrats didn’t treat them with respect?
Fuck You, you hypocritical piece of shit.
Ok, let’s back waaaay up:
[I have changed my mind about the Clinton email scandal (and so should you) - Politics & Elections - Straight Dope Message Board
Trump’s own asinine commentary after Charlottesville proved what he is, showed his true color.
So, that’s your answer to a direct question? Color me unimpressed. By the way, I asked you two questions, one about Clinton and one about Trump. Have the courage to back up your assertions with facts.
Nah, it was just a set-up for me to make a humorous statement of fact about your posting.
If it’s not worth arguing, why did you bring it up? One could be easily persuaded that’s a trolling move.
Horse apples. It barely squeaked into the top quarter for overall freedom, and is #35 for personal freedom. That report is from the Cato Institute.
When the leader of your party stands up and says, “There were decent people on both sides” at a white supremacist neo-nazi rally, and when he later, in private, calls course correcting that statement the “worst mistake of his presidency”, it’s not simply a matter of awful, intolerant people sharing some of your views. Rather, it’s a matter of the people you put forward to represent you sharing those views.
You have a choice to make: “Is this worth it?” Is it worth supporting conservative fiscal policy if it means supporting a party whose leader is willing to play nice with neo-nazis (in the direct aftermath of a riot where a neo-nazi drove his car into a crowd and another mob of neo-nazis nearly beat a black man to death)? Is it worth supporting conservative fiscal policy if it means supporting a party whose leadership is exactly the kind of far-right nationalist populists that would espouse those awful views?
And y’know what? They’re wrong. I’m sorry, I hate to be that guy, but there is such a thing as objective fact. Policy discussions are sometimes difficult, with competing values and goals, but they aren’t completely impenetrable. Sometimes, we can say with certainty that something was the wrong call, and “Trump vs. Clinton” was one of the easiest policy discussions in history! A well-established secretary of state with a clear vision of how to help a lot of America’s problems vs. a fraudster businessman who first came to political prominence by spouting racist conspiracy theories and lies as if coached by Russian propagandists… There is no excuse for getting that one wrong, even before we get into the “Not all nazis are bad people” shit.
Y’know what happens when I find myself at a protest or a rally and I notice that a whole bunch of the people there are openly identifying as Nazis?
First, I go to whoever’s organizing it and ask, “Hey, what the fuck is up with the nazis?! Can we get rid of them?!” Well, in Charlottesville’s case, the organizers were Jason Kessler and Richard Spencer. Both of those people are Neo-Nazis. Whoops!
Secondly, if the organizers are unwilling to do anything about it, I leave or join the counterprotest. Any decent person who finds themselves marching with Nazis has a moral duty to fucking stop. It’d be the same thing if it was, say, a convention, and there was a neo-nazi booth there - no, sorry, I refuse to tacitly endorse this shit. Y’know what you call a group of 100 people marching together if one of them is holding up a Nazi flag? 100 Nazis. :mad:
Are we seriously pretending that this rally wasn’t a white supremacist rally from start to finish? Because no, fuck that noise. Charlottesville was always about white supremacy. Nazis showing up to that ain’t exactly a shocker. The most charitable claim of what happened there is that two white nationalists staged a rally to protect monuments of confederate history - y’know, that group of people who rebelled against the united states explicitly for the sake of keeping black people as property - and it happened to draw a massive number of neo-nazis. But in reality, the organizers were nazis, the participants were nazis, nobody was surprised or worried when they realized they were walking next to people holding up confederate flags and nazi flags. “Members of the right”, sure, but if you’re trying to act like they’re your people, then you’ve got some real fuckin’ problems.
(And the fact that these conservative monuments have become a significant republican wedge issue should also be a bit of a wakeup call.)
Again, when your leader endorses those people, you have a choice - is conservative fiscal policy really worth this?
I’m still waiting for a well-reasoned, well-articulated explanation of exactly how Ms. Clinton was (a) more evil than Trump, and (b) evil in the fist place.
Wow! With a capital W.
- Is your schtick about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, opposed to the influence of intellectuals? Yes, that fits one of our two political parties. Check.
- Is it about the National Socialist Party, built on racism and pandering to the lower classes while supporting kleptocrats? Yes, that fits one of our two political parties. Check.
- Is it about Stalin or Mao with their stern moral values, controlling sexual and reproductive rights, and discriminating against some ethnic groups? Yes, that fits one of our two political parties. Check.
- Is it about countries like North Korea, with jingoism, authority worship, infatuation with military? Yes, that fits one of our two political parties. Check.
When come back, bring brain. 
She’s guilty of being Hillary Clinton, wife of William J. and mother of Chelsea. There are plenty of criticisms to make of Hillary, but none rise to the level of obvious criminality (or that she was insufficiently experienced to run for the presidency, or that she was just coasting on name recognition, et cetera). In fact, her most glaring flaw is that she is actually too obviously a good politician with a carefully crafted public persona and entrenched in the Democratic establishment for whom she has raised a lot of money and gotten a lot of credibility in getting bipartisan support back when that was a thing. It makes her look insincere even though she isn’t doing anything a good male politician like her husband coundn’t get away with without attracting comment. And that, as much as anything, is why Trump won (the Electoral vote…and the popular vote if you discount those “three to five million illegal votes”).
I actually think beneath that image there is a sincere leaning-toward-progressive competent administrator there that experience with the cottage industry of Clinton conspiranoists over several decades have taught her to plaster over. E-mails (“The e-mails! Blackberrys! My, oh my!”) aside, my biggest actual concern about her is the missteps made with a hawkish foreign policy during her tenure as Secretary of State and that she would continue those as president, but it is hard to imagine a foreign policy less effective and more ill-considered than what we have currently. Ditto for pretty much any aspect of the presidency; Clinton certainly wouldn’t be pissing off close allies and dismissing long-held strategic partnernerships to cozy up to tinpot strongmen and sit on Vladimir Putin’s lap, nor nominating inept and openly corrupt people to her cabinet.
Stranger
Nope. There are many. My sister. Some of my neighbors and coworkers. Me in the past. You. They are out there, and are more likely to be convinced by gentle persuasion, seeing more of life, the continued development of empathy for others, and rational discussion. And it usually needs to be done by people close to them, people they like and trust. It isn’t easy and you’re fighting an uphill battle the entire time, because, by and large, you’re fighting years, even decades of ingrained beliefs, echo chamber propaganda, and out and out lies from people they seem to trust. But they’re out there, and, if you have the patience and time, they are interesting to debate and maybe, just maybe, willing to change their mind. Most of the time, it comes down to a difference in their political priorities. They believe that the benefits of fiscal conservativism, a judiciary that agrees with Republicans, and tax breaks outweigh the costs of the disparity in wealth distribution and policies that benefit only the rich, social justice, discrimination, unnecessary wars, being lied to repeatedly, and all the other stuff that comes from allying oneself with the more troubling members of the Republican base.
But those kinds of conservatives, the good ones, the ones who are willing to change and have their beliefs challenged in a peaceful way, are a distinct and dare I say disappearing minority. They are greatly outweighed by a Republican voting base who believe the lies, do what they’re told by talking heads, harbor hatred and spite for anything “liberal”, and have absolutely no interest or possibly even capacity, to change their mind. Those are the ones who elected, and still support Trump, and no amount of rational discourse, soft words, or changing priorities is going to work. They still may identify as “good conservatives” and many are “good people”, but they’re like 2 year old children in the throes of a tantrum. And they’re the vast majority of the Republican voting base. Worse, they’re the ones that the “good conservatives” are in bed with.
One thing I’ve noticed from many decent conservatives these days – they spend a lot more time complaining about how decent conservatives are ignored and treated poorly than complaining about the immoral and dangerous things that this President and administration have said and done.
And, before you pull a Bricker, there are many “bad liberals” too. Ones who have no interest in genuine debate, who are so utterly convinced they are right that they’ve moved past questioning their own beliefs, ones who incite violence, ones who want to overthrow the whole of the government, ones who are so judgmental that any chance for gentle persuasion is thrown out the window. Ones who automatically and instantly hate the police and other authority figures. Ones who refuse to take showers despite repeated requests from concerned roommates (that one might have been a bit personal to me). But they’re nowhere near the majority of the party base and they’re nowhere near as powerful as the Republican base.
Yeah, if you want to protest how decent and moral you actually are, you should be rooting out the bad actors in your midst instead of excusing or ignoring them. Democrats lost little time in booting Al Franken once it was clear the allegations against him valid and not limited to a single incident or contextual misunderstanding, and Franken is about the closest thing they had to a beloved celebrity in the Senate.
Stranger
The “better conservatives” that have supposedly been forced out of here: Who were they?
You can’t be a good person and support this administration, it’s that simple. It’s why the Trump supporters here are so often accused of trolling: they’re terrible people and their sincerely held beliefs are the same things a troll would say.
This thread though has confused conservatism with Trumpism. What’s left of mainstream conservatism in American politics exists in the right wing of the Democratic Party, for all the scare quotes from the GOP, the Clintons were pretty much George H.W. Bush era Republicans.
Trumpism is at its core a white nationalist movement and is incoherent in its other policies. It shouldn’t come as a shock that white nationalists are not nice people, nor that they come into conflict with decent people when they interact with them on this message board. Bad people say and do bad things and decent people react negatively to them.
That’s just not true. There are many good reasons for someone to vote for Trump. Supreme Court is top of that list. Maybe there is at least one good reason.
Trump wasn’t thrust upon Republicans from up on high, they fucking chose that asshole to represent them. They CHOSE a racist, sexist, incompetent piece of shit to be THEIR representative for the highest position in the land. This worthless lump can’t even craft a grammatically correct sentence that isn’t pumping up his own ego.
Now they’re going to vote for a Supreme Court justice who openly lied to the Senate over and over again about himself. The guy made up ridiculous, obviously fictional, answers to uncomfortable questions, and these shitbags will vote for him, and their shitbag supporters will cheer.
The Republican party is defined by the rank and file, not the other way around. They want it this way, a party run by assholes and bigots, because thats who they choose to run it. They’ve told me who they are, and I choose to believe them.
Yeah, that Kavanaugh was a great pick, wasn’t he?
“I LIKE BEER! I DRINK BEER! THE CLINTONS ARE HUNTING ME AND MY FAMILY! IF YOU DON’T CONFIRM ME IT’S BECAUSE OF A MASSIVE CONSPIRACY! ‘BOOFING’ IS JUST FARTING AND ‘THE DEVIL’S TRIANGLE’ IS A DRINKING GAME! I WAS A VIRGIN UNTIL I WAS TWENTY-FIVE SO I COULDN’T HAVE RAPED ANYONE! LOOK AT MY CALENDARS! LOOK AT THEM!”
Stranger
Yes. I agree with this.
The question that I think should be asked though is “why did they do this?”
You can say that they did this because they are stupid and worthless and bad, but then the conversation ends there.
I propose a thought experiment:
Assuming all of the above is true, readily apparent and well known, why would somebody choose Trump and Republicanism, over the Democrats?
Whatever it is that they see or are afraid of from the left must be pretty bad if Trump is an acceptable alternative, mustn’t it.
Since you brought up Kavanaugh, it seemed like the Dems were looking really good going into the midterms. They’ve suddenly lost half their lead in in a week, according to some polls.
Why?
What do people see in the left that is worse than Trump?
What they’re told to. Their opposition is not to the things that Dems actually stand for but rather than to the fun-house mirror version that’s present in their preferred media.