Goebbels was right. Big lies repeated often become the Truth. The Reactioanry Wacko Traitor party and their RW media acolytes / cheerleaders are very much disciples of Goebbels.
The Right cannot do without fear, loathing and stereotyping of the opposition.
Nor can the Left.
The two parties are not remotely the same.
Never made such a claim.
From what I’ve seen over the last 40 years, you have this exactly backwards. Republicans do not cut taxes on the rich in order to fulfill their goal of reducing the budget deficit; they pretend to care about the deficit to fulfill their goal of cutting taxes on the rich. Take that away and I don’t know what they believe in.
I do sometimes wonder how many of them are aware of it, and how many are fooling themselves.
Well put.
But neither of those tactics makes sense. If their (purported) goal is reducing the deficit, they should raise taxes on the rich, not lower them. And if their goal is actually just cutting taxes on the rich, they should deny that the deficit matters instead of pretending to be concerned with cutting it.
Somehow this utter cognitive dissonance has not fried the minds of their voters over the last 40+ years.
(You can’t tell me they all still believe in the Laffer curve. I’ll bet 75% couldn’t explain it if they tried.)
I would agree with this but lately conservatism seems to be the antithesis of this. Growing up in the 70’s and 80’s basic tenets of conservatism was that the Constitution is sacred, public education was the greatest invention in the world and that our form of government was the best in the world but now they want schools privatized talking about the failures in the system and need I mention the insurrection and that Democratic state legislators are being removed for daring to represent their constituents? I think what the Radical Right is now in not conservatism but rather what we long accused the liberals of doing - changing the law to read what their personal beliefs are and not what the Constitution says it is.
Used for Reagan era tax cuts, I’d say it isn’t valid.
Oh, but cutting taxes will spur the economy and the revenue will just come flooding in!
They tell their True Believers that the most patriotic thing they can do is get rich. Reality can’t compete with that.
Worth a shot at the time – maybe – but utterly disproven since.
It’ll start working any day now! You can’t expect an economic theory to prove itself in just 42 short years!
Ay, there’s the rub.
If I may digress for a moment, when did it go from guys like Eisenhower, who liked higher taxes on businesses because they would expand to receive tax deductions, hiring more people, to guys supporting themselves on donations from wealthy people whose taxes they cut?
Reagan.
I honestly think this hasn’t happened because conservative voters are actually stupid. If not stupid then really not interested in details.
Black people are poor. Black people collect welfare. They have to pay for that. Black people bad (Hispanics too).
Rich people run my company. Rich people pay me. Rich people good!
I do not think they spend time reading the Financial Times or the Economist or discussing/debating these issues over dinner.
Welfare bad. Rich people good. This is further spurred on by the prosperity gospel pushed by Evangelicals and some others. Rich people are good people. God is favoring them. Poor people are bad people. God does not favor bad people.
They never get that they are being hoodwinked on a massive scale. They are sold a line that is easy to understand…welfare comes out of their taxes so they pay for it and they HATE it. They never see how deep the banks have their hands in their pockets because it is at some remove and they simply can’t or won’t process that in their heads.
Not to mention, it is always more attractive to people to think their problems are caused by someone else rather than their own choices.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” ― Lyndon B. Johnson
“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” ― Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress
Conservatives, Republicans, whatever you call them, appeal to the desires of their electorate. Killing babies. Taking guns away so they can’t be revolutionary patriots. Stopping immigrants from taking their jobs.
The important thing is that we must stop hating and ridiculing that electorate. If we stop hating and ridiculing them, they will stop hating and ridiculing us.
One of those guys tried to pull the van of Mrs. Plant (v.2.0) out of the snow. He couldn’t manage it, so he went back and got his Daddy’s truck and got her out. She joked with another that after he cut his grass with a tractor, he could cut ours, and he did. They are normal people until we call them deplorable, and then they call us names.
We need to stop hating each other, and we liberals must begin it.
The problem with conservatism is that a lot of idiots (e.g. Trumpsters) have latched on to it, giving it a bad name.
Tha aptly-named Laffer curve.
I think it is important to point out that the majority of self identified conservatives in this country are not bigoted, racist, homophobes, and they don’t understand why liberals hate them so much. They only vote for bigoted, racist, homophobes to control the government and make the laws, so it’s not really their fault how that doesn’t turn out to the liking of liberals.
If I’m being clear about this, I am saying that kind of reasoning is something conservatism can not do without.
They say that “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” I may add that the so called “good people” do something besides nothing… they vote for those bad people.
Did your wife’s car have any Democrat/Biden signage on it?
IME lots of conservatives are normal people until they find out that you’re not a conservative.
No. Neither did his have flags on it.