# GOP TP wing seems to be doubling down on being even more extreme - Successful long term strategy? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [February 1, 2014, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302 "2014-02-01T21:14:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 15
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2014, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302/281 "2014-02-15T09:05:05Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > The market is already setting prices. You want an environmental cost added to it, which would not be determined by markets, but by government regulators. If all you’re asking for is a carbon tax, that’s fine, but it’s not market pricing and it wouldn’t stop Keystone. When places like the west get into mega drought conditions a lot of businesses will be affected, I do think that you are even wrong on the market, they will even pressure government to get into the act. > [@adaher](#): > > That’s why I was referring to you wanting to restrict supply by a) not building Keystone, and b) not having the Canadians tap the oil and send it somewhere else. :rolleyes: That makes no sense, the opposition of the Tea Party is a reckless one, even Republicans in the past noticed that cap-and-trade and some taxation does include the market forces to make the change a more efficient one, the tea party of today denies even that (even regulations). And once again, my point is not specifically opposed to the pipeline. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2014, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302/282 "2014-02-15T09:20:02Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > The market is already setting prices. You want an environmental cost added to it, which would not be determined by markets, but by government regulators. If all you’re asking for is a carbon tax, that’s fine, but it’s not market pricing and it wouldn’t stop Keystone. Just out of curiosity, what tools does “the market” have that would be used to add the environmental cost to the price which it sets, and how would “the market” go about calculating and adding that environmental cost? This presumes that your chief objective is to deny “the government” a role in the process. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2014, 9:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302/283 "2014-02-15T09:47:25Z")
The market can’t price externalities. The government can’t either, but it can try. I don’t actually oppose a revenue neutral carbon tax, but I also recognize that there are two ways it can work: First, it could reduce carbon emissions a lot, or, it could not, and raise a lot of revenue. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2014, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302/284 "2014-02-15T10:45:38Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > The market can’t price externalities. The government can’t either, but it can try. I don’t actually oppose a revenue neutral carbon tax, but I also recognize that there are two ways it can work: First, it could reduce carbon emissions a lot, or, it could not, and raise a lot of revenue. So, no support for a carbon tax unless you get a guarantee of lower emissions? Sounds eminently reasonable, if you ask – no, wait, it’s the other thing. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2014, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302/285 "2014-02-15T10:53:25Z")
No, my condition for supporting a carbon tax is that it be revenue neutral. That’s it. As far as I’m concerned, either result is fine: higher revenues or reduced carbon usage. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2014, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302/286 "2014-02-15T12:32:39Z")
Sorry, I kinda thought “revenue neutral” implied that it would not result in higher revenue. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2014, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302/287 "2014-02-15T12:36:27Z")
Revenue neutral as scored by the CBO. If it reduces demand less than forecast, that would mean higher revenues, and that’s an okay result. If it reduces demand more than forecast, that would mean lower revenues, and that’s okay too. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2014, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302/288 "2014-02-16T18:28:32Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > No, my condition for supporting a carbon tax is that it be revenue neutral. That’s it. As far as I’m concerned, either result is fine: higher revenues or reduced carbon usage. Why should it be revenue neutral? ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2014, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302/289 "2014-02-16T20:33:04Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Why should it be revenue neutral? And from what baseline; is it revenue neutral compared to right now, or from when the tax is first instituted? ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2014, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302/290 "2014-02-17T04:08:11Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Why should it be revenue neutral? The government doesn’t need money, and a carbon tax would be regressive. So you’d want to cut payroll taxes to compensate. Otherwise you’re giving people giant energy bills on top of their tax burden. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2014, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302/291 "2014-02-17T16:03:28Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > The government doesn’t need money . . . There is a budget deficit, you know. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2014, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302/292 "2014-02-17T21:43:54Z")
BTW, [it appears Tea Partiers and liberals agree on at least one issue: NSA surveillance.](http://www.salon.com/2014/02/17/by_the_numbers_where_tea_partyers_liberals_agree/) ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2014, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302/293 "2014-02-18T16:25:51Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > The market is already setting prices. You want an environmental cost added to it, which would not be determined by markets, but by government regulators. If all you’re asking for is a carbon tax, that’s fine, but it’s not market pricing and it wouldn’t stop Keystone. You have it backwards. A carbon tax (ideally) represents the cost imposed by the industry on all of us for that industry’s consumption of our resources (fresh air, which is “consumed,” as economists say, by taking it and converting it to polluted air). It’s the cost of people dying early, and of treating disease, etc. Currently, polluters get to consume air that belongs to all of us for free. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2014, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302/294 "2014-02-19T17:07:51Z")
I agree with that, but it’s not a market cost. The market doesn’t price externalities well. One reason a few conservatives love carbon taxes is that you shift the tax burden away from work, something we want more of, in favor of consumption of greenhouse gases. So you should see more work and less driving. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2014, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302/295 "2014-03-31T04:50:48Z")
> [@astro](#): > > From a 20,000 foot view history and the demographic composition of the electorate seems to be moving away from many GOP positions. Why are they doubling down on these unpopular positions? It seems irrational. In the end it will cost them their power. > > Is there something I am not seeing going on in the background to explain why they are taking these extreme positions? Part of the reason is that the Tea Party is pumped by the factually challenged Fox News. Fox News in turn has a 50% profit margin, despite an elderly demographic that advertisers tend to eschew (because the young buy stuff) and ratings below that of any of the 3 networks. They do it with One Weird Trick. 😃 Sixty percent of Fox News’ revenue ($1 billion, about the same as their profits) comes from _ **payments by cable companies** _ for the privilege of airing Fox News. Relative to their ratings this is high. Roger Ailes has a strong negotiating position with the cable companies because he knows there will be a veritable shitstorm if Comcast or Time Warner drop Fox News: some customers will stop paying cable fees under such circumstances. The key aspect is that Fox News seeks to mold an audience that is _intense and fanatical_. Think Bill O’Reilly and his phony outrage stories. From Steve Coll’s review of a Roger Ailes bio by Gabriel Sherman: Here lies the problem in the alliance between Fox News and the Republican Party that Ailes has constructed. Fox owes its degree of profitability in part to its most passionate, even extremist, audience segment. To win national elections, the Grand Old Party, on the other hand, must win over moderate, racially diverse, and independent voters. By their very diversity and middling views, swing voters are not easy to target on television. The sort of news-talk programming most likely to attract a broad and moderate audience—hard news, weather news, crime news, sports, and perhaps a smattering of left–right debate formats—is essentially the CNN formula, which Fox has already rejected triumphantly. According to Sherman and to an earlier book, based on interviews with Murdoch, by Michael Wolff, Murdoch, Ailes’s boss, has been embarrassed at times by Fox News’s more demagogic talk show hosts.\* Yet Fox News is such a cash spigot that Murdoch has been unwilling to impose his reported qualms on Ailes, and has instead extended his contract through 2016. As the chief of Fox News, his compensation runs into the tens of millions of dollars. Karl Rove can yell at Ailes all he wants; Fox News’s profitability and the value it creates for News Corporation is a force distinct from electoral politics. Fox News and talk radio feed off of a jizzed up audience of credulous rubes. Unlike most television which pursues a wide base of warm bodies and the lowest common denominator, Fox subsists on committed fanatics. This is electorally problematic. Normal people roll their eyes at dubious claims. If the US stays out of recession bogus Bengazi obsessions produce real problems for the Republicans during Presidential elections. But during off-year elections… well, less so. More at the article, including 4 ways Ailes outmaneuvered CNN. The author buried his lead though, the good stuff is in the 2nd half of it. > **[The King of the Foxes | Steve Coll](https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/04/03/roger-ailes-king-of-foxes/?pagination=false)** > > Since its creation in 1996, as an arm of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, News Corporation, Fox News has made a killing by providing ideological reinforcement to like-minded conservatives. Although the audience for Fox News is aging and leveling off in... ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2014, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302/296 "2014-03-31T12:06:50Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > I don’t actually oppose a revenue neutral carbon tax … “… don’t actually oppose …” If that’s code for “enthusiastically support” I’d ask for more clarity in future. I realize GOP incumbents who hint at carbon tax are booted out of their seats by the Tea Party, but you’re among sane people here. I assume “adaher” is an alias and you won’t need to defend your admissions among your own kind. > [@adaher](#): > > That’s precisely what Republicans aren’t doing this time, and you are pissed about it, but complaining about what they did last time to justify being pissed. Is this the new GOP marketing campaign: _Vote for us! Faced with five opportunities to cripple the American economy or drive down its credit rating we only took advantage of four of them!_ ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2014, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302/297 "2014-03-31T12:20:11Z")
The “revenue neutral” stuff just shows how unseriously many modern conservatives treat the deficit and debt. The deficit/debt is a mantra (to them), but not something that actually needs to be addressed with a realistic solution. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302/298 "2014-04-02T09:55:41Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Neither of these cases is true today. What is true is that times are good as compared to 2008, but the rich have gotten almost all of the benefit. > It is also not the case that the rich are doing a lot better, the middle class is doing a little bit better, and the poor are doing worse. Both the poor and the middle class are stagnating - in fact everyone but the top 10%. > During the bubble years inequality increased because the rich did so much better, but hardly anyone cared because nearly everyone was doing better. Very true. If only advocates of a bubble economy like Krugman and Summers would stop pretending they are for the poor and middle class, and admit they are for putting propping up the rich through “wealth effects” and hoping it trickles down. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302/299 "2014-04-02T11:34:17Z")
Got any evidence that these guys advocate a bubble economy? Or did you just pull some words out of thin air, decide they sound bad, so they must apply to people you don’t like? ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302/300 "2014-04-02T15:45:32Z")
> [@](#): > > Mr. Summers went on to draw a remarkable moral: We have, he suggested, an economy whose normal condition is one of inadequate demand—of at least mild depression—and which only gets anywhere close to full employment when it is being buoyed by bubbles. -Paul Krugman. This makes sense because why else would Krugman have famously called for a housing bubble? Do you follow economics at all or do you just assume that since you are supposed to like Krugman he must not advocate things that are obviously bad to anyone with common sense. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302.md?page=14) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gop-tp-wing-seems-to-be-doubling-down-on-being-even-more-extreme-successful-long-term-strategy/680302.md?page=16)