Quote (bogie160 @ Apr 27 2021 10:34am)
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.
I'm not convinced that Republicans in the Senate are acting in good faith given but I'm willing to give
some of the senators the benefit of the doubt. I think the current strategy for Democrats is wise: their ideal scenario where they can whip 50 votes via budget reconciliation and the scenario where they work with Republicans. Unfortunately, the packages are just way too far apart at the moment for there to be any hope of bipartisan legislation. I have a feeling that the "infrastructure bill" is going to cut eldercare and a few other things and we'll end up with a ~1.6 trillion dollar package.
I'm not sure why you're trying to justify the meat ban rhetoric lol. It's fear mongering that has no basis in reality and it's actively hurting the conservative cause. When you are shoveling so much bullshit, people aren't going to listen when there are legitimate issues.
Politics have always been racial so I'm not exactly sure what you're referring to here. Yes, some groups are going overboard but I think that's expected. Law enforcement is in dire need of reform b/c they've lost the trust of the general population. We MUST rebuild that trust or things will get worse. I agree that we're treading into dangerous territory when it comes to attacks on free speech. People are WAY too intolerant of opposing views and it's damaging our country. Tech censorship is also an issue but you need to understand that the right is far more abusive than the left when it comes to rhetoric, belief in conspiracy theories, etc. The intellectual right has lost complete control over its coalition. We had a chance to clean up the house and we failed miserably. You reap what you sow!