One could suggest that the tobacco industry was sort of founded on a lie, of which the industry persisted in raising the ante, making the lie becoming bigger and uglier with each further permutation. It took most of a century for that lie to catch up with them, and they are still far from done dancing.
The scam of the norquistadors is seductive and compelling to those vulnerable to its charms. Add in the alt-White component and you have something with some serious legs – almost as resilient as quasi-theology, with a ShitGibbon for its messiah.
There have been some valid ideas that I think can fairly be called “conservative” that have sometimes been embraced by American conservatism. Devolution and decentralization of government to the lowest effective level, the federalist approach allowing the states to operate to some extent as separate political “experiments”, environmental conservation, and so forth. In practice, though, these are just as likely to be supported by liberals as conservatives, if not more so.
There are also IMHO some valid ideas that have been promoted by conservatism that I would describe as “libertarian” rather than conservative, such as free-market principles, civil liberties, and so forth. Again, it’s not only conservatives who support these in practice.
I don’t necessarily agree with all the conclusions drawn from such ideas, but it is possible to have a reasonable debate with intelligent and honest conservatives about how best to balance them with liberal principles.
But sadly, conservatism as a movement has largely been about, as you say, trying to bamboozle majorities into espousing the essentially minoritarian interests of the wealthy and powerful, at the expense of the majorities’ own interests. And as it’s become clearer and clearer that these minoritarian policies aren’t serving the majority well, conservatism has sunk deeper and deeper into deflection, distraction and delusion, until we now have tens of millions of conservatives believing that a soundly defeated reality-TV incompetent grifter is their last best hope as a Princess Leia.
Four House Republiopaths have accused the Speaker of failing to secure the Capitol from attack, failing to get the Guard mobilized in a timely manner, and of turning the aftermath into a partisan issue. Because, you know, there were lots of staunch Democrats involved in the assault.
One thing that seems to be lost in this debate is that there are two kinds of conservatism - social conservatism and … well, I was going to say “fiscal conservatism”, but that wouldn’t include many of the ideas that @Kimstu included in their post. So, shall we call it “social conservatism” vs. “governmental conservatism”?
The Republican party has hit hard on the social conservatism - that’s what they project to the masses. Do you think that the majority of voters in Alabama care whether the federal judges are members of the Federalist Society? No, they care that the judges are going to rule against abortion. MOST VOTERS IN AMERICA (regardless of party affiliation) care more about the social message than the governmental message. The two can cross, but they are not exclusive. The Republicans have been so successfull not because of their fiscal ideas, not as much from their governmental ideas, but from their social ideas. Trump probably got a few votes from people who thought his fiscal responses were on target; he got most of his votes from people who were afraid of catching teh gay and thought Biden would be actively killing babies.
And, let’s face it - the Republican party has proven that it only cares about fiscal conservatism when Democrats are in control - if Republicans control 2/3 of Pres / Senate / House, then fiscal goes right out the window.
If I was Merrick Garland, I would assure them that the Justice Department would be no more politicized than it was under my immediate predecessor. Throw that bullshit right back in their laps.
Whenever bad shit happens, THEN it’s always the Speaker’s fault. But if it looks like bad shit is coming down the pike and the Speaker warns about this or tries to do something ahead of time, then the Speaker has no authority and is overstepping. Until the bad shit hits the fan. See how that works?
He’s trying to hurt the people who need to be hurt; minorities, gays, transgenders and other “unworthies”. They like that he openly despises them, as they do.
That depends on the source of the bad shit. If it is MAGAts waving all manner of RW-themed flags, those are the good Americans against whom no measures should be taken. But if the ShitGibbon had some 80K votes turned in his favor and had prevailed in the EC while still losing the PV by 10M, the Capitol would be steel girded to face the inevitable antifa assault. It is only a scandal if a Democrat can be blamed.
Just in case anyone doesn’t remember; that’s a real quote!
“I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” Minton told Mazzei. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”
When did it become HER job? Isn’t that what the Sergeant Majors are supposed to do, in concert with the Capitol Police? And if she’s at fault, why isn’t McConnell as then leader of the Senate?
But I forget. Rationality and logic are absent from these putzes.
CPAC in an effort to not just be a bunch of whiney white men invited a whiney black anti-semitic flat Earther - things they didn’t learn before they invited him to speak due to the great difficulty they apparently have with reading his social media and watching his YouTube channel.
