Quote (IceMage @ Apr 27 2021 12:24pm)
Fiscal conservatism, and the notion of small government, have been central planks of American conservatism. Those issues mattered most to Tea Partiers in 2010. If those things are basically irrelevant in the midst of a Democratic president and Congress who are running up trillions of dollars of debt, the conservative movement is essentially dead. If culture wars are all that matter, and right-wingers never seem to win those fights, what's the point of the Republican party anymore? There's no governing philosophy, it's simply a party of pundits who complain about what's going on in America but can't seem to do anything that makes a difference.
Trump supposedly represented the backlash against liberals overrunning conservatives in American culture. What were the results? Is CRT more or less prominent? Did the border get secured? Is Big Tech censoring more or less(here's a hint: Trump is banned from multiple platforms)? You guys are the "old man yelling at clouds" party, nothing more.
The Tea Party was a ~3-4 year movement that encompassed one wing of the Republican party. You are extrapolating that to a half-century or more of political thought. American conservatives, historically, have been pro-growth and pro-business. Pro-growth has meant an opposition to regulation and opposition to tax increases. Reagan, for instance, did not oppose either Social Security or Medicare. Both programs are popular (unfortunately so, given their long-term financial short-falls) with Republicans and Democrats alike.
Republicans have spent the last few weeks working with Manchin and others on achieving realistic, measured infrastructure investment. They've spent a great deal of time criticizing Biden's spending plan for what it is, large, irresponsible, and indiscriminate pay-off to Democrat-aligned "green" business interests. They've spent a great deal of time identifying the real world economic costs to handicapping American access to energy. The current "meat ban" debacle is the result of a study which indicated that meat consumption would have to fall precipitously in order to achieve significant (~50%) reductions in carbon emissions. Biden supports a 50% reduction in carbon emissions, and so its reasonable to hear how Biden plans to achieve the latter without the former. I doubt you are getting this context from the Daily Show, so perhaps you need to reevaluate your news consumption.
I don't like the term "culture war". We are talking about the chilling effects of censorship on public and private speech. The racializing of American politics. Fundamental attacks on the legitimacy of the government to enforce the law and maintain order. These things clearly matter, have mattered, and will continue to matter.
A few years ago, there was a debate on whether mainstream news had left-wing bias. Allegations that Twitter and other social media outlets were "shadow-banning" were decried as conspiratorial. It is now commonly understood that the mainstream outlets are hopelessly compromised, their repeated editorial failures have been well-documented, and social media censorship is acknowledged as a matter of course. Moving from denial towards acceptance is progress. Too many conservatives were, and some still are, in denial about the reality of the situation they face. As the administration said a day or so ago, "words matter", and it is not a light or trivial thing to undo, undermine, and destroy the centuries of intellectual thought and history upon which this country has been founded.
This post was edited by bogie160 on Apr 27 2021 11:35am