Come on- do you think it’s a Republican policy to be deferential to every dictator on the planet? How long have trade wars and tariffs been Republican policy?
Single biggest change in the parties was the Republicans winning the Dixiecrats away from the Democrats. In doing this Reagan planted the seeds that led to current Republican party.
So when Reagan was called trigger happy, that was too much. Bush 41 was out of touch and in bed with Nazis, that was too much. Bush 43 was an actual Nazi warmonger, that was too much. But Trump, well now everything is different, of course he’s a racist, every one that is a racist supports trump, his supporters are stupid, hate America, and revel in the suffering of others. Yeah, that’s totally reasonable!
So, how is that Grenada Memorial coming along?
This would appear to excuse Trump from literally any harsh criticism. That doesn’t seem reasonable to me. Do you really think that Trump has never said or done anything publicly that can reasonable be characterized as racist?
I was going to preface my remarks with “to be fair” but I don’t really feel like being fair these days.
But nonetheless I must remark that foreign policy, trade policy, and national security are the issues where there is the most similarity between the parties. Not all politicians agree but there are examples of people from both parties on many sides of the issues at least in the past 15 years.
Maybe it was the Fifties, you know, I Led Three Lives, Herbert Desanex, FBI, infiltrating the Communist Party USA. Used to be a joke among Commies, that the best way to tell if someone was an FBI agent was whether or not they paid their Party dues, in full and on time.
So, maybe that’s when the FBI began to shift to the radical lefty org it is today? Those FBI guys listening to Communist stuff and thinking “You know, the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat led by the revolutionary cadres’, that kinda makes sense!”. From then on, it was downhill all the way.
It’s meant to highlight three things:
First, this is accurate:
Second, to illustrate exactly this point, there’s this where it’s not quite clear if Poe’s law is in place: (my bold)
And third, the absurdity of the word “reasonable” and “unfair” in this context. It can be used and defined in whatever way is desired by the user. Apparently just like the words racist, white people, and whiteness.
This appears to be a very broad sort of whine, and doesn’t actually answer my question.
Republicans have gotten away with this notion for ages and I am hard pressed to find how this meshed with reality. Certainly there were differences in budget priorities so perhaps you thought buying a tank was better than spending on welfare but that is more opinion than a definite one is better than the other.
You added the caveat that this was true till Reagan and I agree republicans completely gave up on fiscal responsibility at that point too. That was nearly 40 years ago though so the idea of conservative fiscal responsibility is a meme that needs to be thoroughly done away with.
Another one republicans like to own and another one I do not think they deserve so I’ll ask. How were the democrats more intrusive than republicans?
To me the final straw noting that conservatives abandoned anything like honest discourse within their party was when Christopher Buckley was forced to resign from the National Review (the magazine his father founded). He had the temerity to criticize John McCain and declared Sarah Palin to be unfit to be vice president of the United States. For that he had to fall on his sword.
I agree that Republicans have not held the line on responsible spending like they should. However, most of the blame can be laid at the feet of your side because anytime we want to cut the growth of a program (not the program, but the growth) we are accused of wanting old ladies to die in the street and for poor people to eat dog food.
To expand on this, every single president has been attacked with hyperbole (as well as reasonable criticisms). It’s nothing new, but it doesn’t mean that harsh attacks against Trump can always reasonably be dismissed.
The hyperbole itself is the problem because it requires about another half an hour of conversation to debate the actual issue (example):
Person 1: Obama is a Muslim who wants to take away all of your guns!
Person 2: He’s not a Muslim, but I’m more interested in why you believe he will take away your guns.
Person 1: Because he favors an assault weapons ban!
Person 2: So, he’s not proposing to take away all of your guns, just some guns?
Person 1: It’s a trick. It is just getting his foot in the door!
Person 2: What makes you think that?
At this point, person 1 might talk about how he supports registration, the Australian ban, etc. We would then jockey back and forth about how the slippery slope may or may not be accurate in this case. But the real debate is “Should we ban assault weapons?”
Likewise, calling Trump a racist or the new Hitler does nothing to get to the real question of what should be done with the children of those caught crossing illegally. The statement about Hitler just throws a bomb into the conversation and helps nobody.
Like others, and maybe it is because of my age, but the last four presidents have been to their opponents to be the Worst Ever and the Coming of the AntiChrist: Clinton, Bush II, Obama, Trump.
Prior to that, the other side would disagree with the President, but never make such inflammatory remarks as a general rule.
ETA: The vitriol increased with each one. Clinton was attacked, IMHO, unfairly harsh. Bush II moreso. Obama even more. The attacks on Trump are off the scale.
Trump is different than prior presidents. I think that much is very clear to anyone who observes what he says and what he does. So yes, I think previous president who were Republicans were treated more harsh than they deserved. Trump has not been treated more harsh than he deserves.
There was an article about this during the 2016 election - might have been NY Times. The article pointed out that by portraying reasonable centrist moderates such as McCain and Romney as radical racist extremists, the Democratic Party cried wolf and then its verbal ammunition was useless against someone like Trump.
When you use your strongest antibiotics on moderate germs, you find antibiotic resistance by the time something really scary like MRSA comes along.
Yes?
I feel like there’s supposed to be a “gotcha” here…
I think we are supposed to conclude that it isn’t reasonable, and that because it isn’t reasonable it can’t possibly be true.
BTW let me take the opportunity to note that I feel you have provided a very good presentation of what led to the eventual fall of the “conventional Republicans” inside their own party. By now people who have been promised all that their whole lives ARE in a position to demand that it happen already, and if it takes being seen as radical, or associating with someone unpleasant, so be it.
No gotcha. It’s an illustration of the idea that Republicans are always demonized, until the next target comes along who is certainly worse than the predecessors. When Bush 43 was compared to Hitler, there’s not much left on the outrage meter. Whoever comes after Trump will probably be called a baby eater or some actual demon like Baal or something.
Or what Velocity said. Here was the article in the Atlantic:
I haven’t voted for a Republican candidate for President since Dole, and Trump is awful. But as UV says, he’s not pushing policy ideas that different than the party has been doing for decades. His non policy stuff, Twitter use, ego mania, etc are different. But on policy it’s more of the same.
It’s totally unfair that Democrats are never demonized, isn’t it?