Yes. here’s a poll from the same time as the one you cited, showing Trump’s support at 38%, which is the same as the level of military support he had in your cited poll. Here’s another from the same time period showing him with 39%.
Further to my point about comparing polls, though, is that the military poll approval/disapproval numbers add up to 88%, which is a lot less than the ones in the typical polls. Trump’s net approval rate in the military poll was -12% (38% - 50%). In the poll I cited from that same time, Trump was -20% (38% - 58%, or 39% - 59%), which is a lot worse.
And that’s of course after ignoring the other evidence that the military objected to Trump specifically but otherwise tended very conservative, as noted in my prior post.
Once again, I’m uncertain that you can draw a direct line between “leans conservative” and “willing to desert and go AWOL”. Doesn’t the military frown on that, to the tune of prison time or something? You’d think that would act as a deterrent.
Of course recruitment and reenlistment would be a bit down, which would cause attrition to the numbers over time, but that wouldn’t be an immediate problem and the military could presumably adapt.
Hmm, I should have been more specific: I was asking about levels of voter declaration for Trump, which is what the 37% number I quoted was referencing, rather than just general favorability rating. I know that Trump’s favorability/approval ratings have been consistently low, but he’s received higher levels of support in declared and actual voting tendencies.
Well, the R/D/I breakdown of 40%/16%/44% that you quoted is what I’d call “very independent” at least as much as “very conservative”. The difference between that and typical breakdowns for the general population is a swing of about 15 percentage points from D to R. I don’t think that that makes the military so disproportionately conservative as octopus’s post was trying to make out.
It’s likely I could find similar in voter declarations as well, but it’s not worth bothering because your own cite undercuts you on that as well. Per your linked cite in post #176, Trump had 42% as you say, but Biden had 52% in that same poll. IOW, Trump trailed Biden by 10% in that poll. By contrast, in the military poll, Trump only had 37%, but Biden only had 41%, a gap of only 4%. So Trump was more popular among the military than among the general population even using your own cites and polls. (I made this point earlier, BTW.) The military polls showed a high percentage of undecided/other people as compared to other polls, but it’s misleading to take advantage of that aspect and ignore the overall story.
I’m not octopus, and I was responding to your claim that your cite shows that “support for Trump among members of the military ended up lower than in the general population shortly before the November election”. My point was and is that “your cite does not support this claim”.
I would also add the following (also from your cite, and noted in a previous post):
Feaver said those policy disagreements “do not necessarily show that troops are beginning to think more like Democrats, but instead that they aren’t thinking like Trump Republicans.” He also cautioned that the stronger support for Biden in the poll than Trump may be more a reflection of dissatisfaction with the president than a political shift within the ranks.
Still, he called the numbers showing a close race in military voting between the two surprising.
In the 2016 Military Times Poll, nearly twice as many respondents said they planned to vote for Trump than then Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Exit polls from the election showed a similar margin after election day.
A 2012 Military Times Reader Survey — conducted in a non-scientific fashion — showed respondents favoring then Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney by a 2.5-to-1 margin.
I find it odd that you think people who join the military are different from the normal people around them in their love for a part of what is currently the USA. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of people who no longer want to be associated with the OUS. As demonstrated in this thread 38% of them supported trump if most of the other trump supporters jumped off a cliff why do you think military trump supporters wouldn’t jump with them?
As for the bases I think I’ll drop that line of conversation. It seems unlikely we’ll convince the other but it seems unlikely that the RUSA would take any federal debt without getting things that the debt paid for. Maybe that deal would be a win for everyone since the weapons, bases, tanks, and other stuff would be replaced by Russia and China in a matter of months.
While it is certainly possible the the OUS would conscript these trump supporters into staying in the military it, at a minimum, violates the freedom for people to chose which nation to be a part of. I assume that most of the people in the RUS aren’t going to want to keep their OUS citizenship since they wouldn’t want to have to pay taxes to RUS and OUS since that defeats the point and I’m pretty sure, thought I have double checked, you can’t be in the US military after renouncing your citizenship.
So anyway, let’s make the assumption that the RSA isn’t going to get a bunch of freebie military equipment from the USA, and that the RSA is indeed going to want to start a war because they can’t so much as tolerate the existence of decent people. To do this they’re going to have to break whatever nonagression treaty they would have doubtlessly been forced to sign, and smuggle in loads of arms that the US will detect coming a mile away, and they will have to pay for those somehow. Which raises the question of how good Conservatopia is going to be at taxing their citizens.
We all know how much conservatives love to be taxed.
Nope, Neocon would end up with a gold-backed Real Dollar.
Too many Neocon citizens would be rootin’ tootin’ goldbug hyper-libertarians who constantly and wearyingly refer to what normal people call money as “fiat money”. (If they think it’s so worthless, send it to me!) They would favor using only actual physical gold as money. But the (relatively!) saner businessman types would have the ultimate say in the Neocon “central” government, and the compromise would be gold-backed paper money, called Real Dollars as a propaganda tool against the OUSA’s “fiat” dollars.
The fact that no other nation uses gold-backed money would be a point of pride (American exceptionalism distilled to its strongest with nothing to dilute it; “shining city on a hill” minus the city part), consequences to the Neocon economy be damned. I can easily picture Neocon talking heads attributing the economic effects to sabotage by the evil fiat-money non-Neocon world led by the OUSA, the photo-negative of Cuban officials attributing every economic shortcoming of Cuba to the US embargo.
Plus if the Neocon government even dreamed of a hyperinflation, the goldbugs would quickly rebel against the Neocon government. They wouldn’t even try normal politics to oppose the policy, because the basic precedent and whole founding principle of the country – “Don’t like what the government is doing? Secede! Rebel!” – would mean that any but the most minor disputes with “central” government policy would result in a resort to open rebellion.
Nobody in America is ever going to try to enforce “Christian Sharia law.” Even in the reddest heartland of Trump Country, people are way too interested in drinking, fucking, and gambling. That is not going to change. Trumpism only paid the most minimal lip service to Christian fundamentalists. It’s a hedonistic movement at heart.
In addition to the issue of the military bases, there would also need to be agreements on how to divide all the other Federal properties (including all the public lands in the western states), and important agencies such as the FBI. I would expect that the various Indian tribes would want some say about their remaining land and governance being taken over by Neocon state governments.
Exactly, what I said a currently serving member of the US military who has renounced their citizenship and no longer has a home in the OUSA. Who the military would be holding at gun point to force them to finish their service time. If it makes you happy use a different word than conscript.
I think that RUSA would turn into a petrostate they would have all of the oil in the gulf of Mexico, most of mid con except for the DJ basin and all of Alaska without any pesky regulations to stop the drill baby drill. With the increased drilling and lower population they might be able to take the Alaska model nation wide.
Do you think the reasons no large refinery has been built in 40 years will be the same worse or better in the new non red USA. Even for small refineries currently it is a 4 year process.
With free international movement of fuel stocks between OUSA and Neocon there’d be no reason at all for any new capacity build in OUSA.
In which case …
What is the OUSA going to do when it is importing 80+ percent of its crude and has lost most of its refining capacity?
… is totally moot.
Conversely, if there were bans, supply restrictions, interruptions or price gouging especially if there was any feasible prospect of hostilities then OUSA would switch to sourcing fuel stocks from other sources and build capacity quicksmart.
Of course, I’m making the broad assumption that the majority of our army members were actually trained to have some semblance of esprit de corps, or loyalty to their army and unit, or perhaps have enough dregs of honor to honor their oath, despite being conservatives. Yes, I know, a hard ask. But those that aren’t decent honorable folk are probably cowards instead, and thus mostly won’t seek the avenue that will get them a deserter’s reward.
As I said, there’s not a chance in hell that the US is going to let every conservative state leave - especially since, by the terms of the scenario in the OP, they have no reason to. So I don’t know that I’d count on them getting Alaska.
But sure, they could sell oil, to the USA, for a while. Or rather the private corporations who own the oil wells will while, following the republican model, paying next to no taxes. Resulting in the standard oil prince model where the money mostly remains in the hands of the oil barons, who will have no interest in attacking their best customer. War over.
Well, until the mass of non-barons notice that they are getting literally no support from the state. That’ll be fun.
Again where is this martial, law and order spirit going to come from? The new US is going to believe in secure borders? The new US is going to safeguard cities from violence? The new US is going to subjugate its neighbors?
The new US is going to dominate the so-called red US when the US doesn’t have the stomach to fight that sort of war in Iraq or Afghanistan?
I don’t see it.
What would prevent migration? What would prevent infiltration? You worry about who owns the tanks? COVID demonstrates you need to worry about who owns the smallpox.
Say that Blue America goes to war against Red America (after secession,) as some have suggested. What would be the goal? To…reannex Red America? Then you’re right back at Square One, only with a much worse headache than before.