It’s a matter of degree, @D_Anconia.
I would say that’s what the party used to be but I don’t think that is true anymore. A large percentage of their voters are “have-nots”, or at the least and very potently, “have-a-little-but-used-to-have-a-lots”.
A perennial problem for the economic Right is that wealth does not fall on a normal distribution but instead on an (extremely) lopsided distribution with about 70% of all wealth held by 10% of the population, and 2% of all wealth held by the least wealthy 50% of the population.
On the face of it, you would think that in a democracy a party with policies that benefit the wealthy wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of ever winning an election and yet it does. It has traditionally done this by having social policies that appeal to lower socio-economic groups, and by lying massively about the effect of its economic policies (e.g. the “trickle-down” and “job creator” lies that are entirely discredited by the data but which are religious tenets to Republican supporters).
The problem the Right has is that the lopsided nature of the economy is getting worse which means that their job is getting harder all the time and consequently the Republicans have drifted into more and more extreme measures. Trump was a man for the times because he was prepared to follow the tradition of social policies appealing to lower socio economic groups right down the rabbit hole into outright racism and virtually open attacks on separation between church and state. And on economics, the “trickle down” stuff was getting old but Trump appealed because he was prepared to promise anything and he had credibility because he had played a successful businessman on TV. And of course voter suppression and gerrymandering has become almost open.
This is in my view the underlying reason for the OP’s observation – the Democrats can say they support the masses and mean it, and garner votes by so doing. The Republicans always need to lie or appeal to humans’ worst instincts or cheat to win. They can never simply say “we are here to advance the interests of rich people” and hope to win. And the worse economic imbalance gets, the more this is true.
Friend AOC doesn’t appear to agree.
“This is not okay, never has been okay, never will be okay - no matter the administration or party.”
You seem a bit mixed up about the point Ocasio-Cortez was actually making. No, of course she doesn’t support detention of undocumented aliens who are minors, or any others for that matter. But what she was saying in the very remarks that you partially quoted was that the problem is with the entire US immigration system, which a scant two months of a Biden administration can’t be expected to have already fixed (especially with the added complications of the current pandemic):
In any case, your attempts at trying to claim a false equivalence between the Biden administration temporarily detaining unaccompanied minors, and the Trump administration deliberately instituting the “family separation policy” to take accompanied minors away from their parents, are still not a persuasive argument.
You are only making it all the clearer that pretty much the only way Republicans these days can make any kind of tu quoque accusation against Democrats is by blatantly misrepresenting either what Democrats do, or what Republicans do, or both.
more accurately, “I’ve got mine, Jack, and all the dreamers that want a 10% tax bracket when they become Beverly Hillbillies too.”
SEriously, welfare queens that think the top 1% should have big tax breaks in the event Lotto pays out big time. I don’t get it.
This is one of the best quotes about conservatism I’ve ever seen:
- “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
– John Kenneth Galbraith, 2002
When the relatively-sensible conservatives start their new Conservative Party, what will prevent the rabid radical loons of the current Republican Party from immediately taking it over?
If John McCain was running the Republican party, and condemned racists on the right, we wouldn’t be saying Republicans are evil. I lived through the '60s and the bombers were not Democrats. In fact they thought Democrats were as bad as Republicans.
As for LBJ, he was complicated, but he got the Civil Rights Act passed understanding it would hurt his party. The looks pretty moral to me.
If it was no voter id versus voter id and we’ll do everything possible to make sure all valid voters get an id, I’d agree with you. In this world it is no id versus everything they can do to keep potential Democratic voters from voting. That’s evil.
Poll watching on both sides is good, calling out any fraud found is good. Making up claims of fraud to try to win an election you lost, that’s evil.
Having unsavory people on your side is unfortunate, but you can condemn them. Embracing them is evil.
I don’t think it’s that hard to tell the difference these days.
Definitely. I’ve tried arguing with people on the left and on the right and found both sides equally unreasonable and equally willing to ignore evidence when it suits them. And both are convinced the other side is evil. You can tell a group lack convincing arguments when their response to disagreement is to ban, cancel, and deplatform the dissenters rather than debate them.
Well, you Brits are lucky. What we wouldn’t give over here in the US for a right wing that was only equally unreasonable and willing to ignore evidence as the left!
I’m not sure the UK right is any more reasonable than the US one, though they are more moderate in many ways. There’s a bit more consensus on social issues in the UK, so it’s harder for the parties to use that to distract from their agenda of supporting big business/big donors at the cost of ordinary people. (That’s what Brexit is for.)
Still, the US is doing a good job of exporting the harmful and divisive culture war here. 
In any case, I wasn’t only talking about British people, most of that arguing was online.
Let’s not forget that McCain ran with Sarah Palin, once sang Bomb Iran at a campaign rally, and some of his campaign events featured ugly racist incidents.
Who was the last US president not to bomb another country?
It could in theory exist just by having constituents and leaders who were moderate.
But the simple nature of US voting means all it could do is split the conservative vote and cause neither conservative party to win.
Not Trump he bombed Syria, but tipped off the target first.
Are you capable of arguing in good faith? Not removing context? Not lying by omission? Or, is that simply impossible for you? Why don’t you try and add some fucking value to this board, with reasoned arguments, rather than bullshit partisan drivebys?
I disagree. It’s you who is dogmatic. It’s “my side poops rainbows, the other side is inherently evil”. It’s dangerous. Part of your dogma is to equate opinion and morals with facts. You compared “flat earth” with Republican opinion, which is silly. I can prove (to most people) that the earth isn’t flat. Nobody can prove, for example, that abortion is murder or not. Nobody can prove that rent control helps or hurts poor people (although people have tried). Being against abortion and rent control is not factually wrong or evil but that’s the position that a lot of Dopers take.
I also think it’s lazy. It’s easier to decide that one’s political opponents are wrong in everything rather than try to understand the nuance of their positions or learn from where they are coming from.
Right now I think the Republicans have the better policy in a few areas but I find myself more aligned with the Democrats overall. I don’t think that makes me immune to reality.
This is an example of the problem with “the other side is always wrong”. You chastise conservatives for not understanding the complexity but then attribute their opposition as simpleton “free markets” justification. You do not understand the nuance of conservative opposition and it’s easier to just assume they are stupid and greedy.
I’ve been following conservatives closely for over 50 years. I’m making my judgements based on their actions over my entire adult lifetime.
And yes, they have been on the wrong side of history for every one of those 50 years.