Quote (bogie160 @ Apr 27 2021 01:34pm)
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.
Sure, American conservatism is more than just low spending and smaller government, but to abandon those core ideas under Trump, and continue to ignore them under a Democratic president who is passing trillions of new spending, represents a fundamental break with the past.
Right-wing media is not focused on the efforts of some Republicans to craft an infrastructure bill. Politicians who actually try to get meaningful legislation done do not get invited on Tucker or Hannity. Are you trying to argue that Fox News and others on the right are fairly representing the meat ban story? All the Daily Show did was splice up some clips, which is consistent with other right-wing reaction to the story.
Cancel culture, Big Tech platforms enforcing the rules people agreed to signing up, a more racially sensitive and aware politics and society, a concern about bad law enforcement. These things do matter, but I don't know that they matter more than a massive increase in federal spending, and I'm not sure how Republicans are supposed to effectively respond legislatively to these issues. It seems like they just play pundit. People applauded Trump for standing up to the darkies kneeling during the anthem... did that manage to limit the behavior? They've brought up the Big Tech guys in front of Congress to yell at them for years... what got done under Trump? What can Josh Hawley do to change people's minds about not wanting to see darkies get murdered by police? I'm sure your response will be "well, they can do X, Y, and Z", but you'd have to explain why they didn't under Trump, how they can do these things now, and whether those actions will change the direction of these issues in any significant way.
I don't know where you get your news or commentary from, but the idea that everybody, or even the majority of people on the center or left, accepts liberal media bias and "tech censoring conservatives" is simply not true.
Quote (ofthevoid @ Apr 27 2021 02:34pm)
It's hard to argue with someone that doesn't want to acknowledge basic civics such as that Congress is responsible for spending and creating budgets.
The only thing we've solidified today is Trump is still the focal point of your existence and regardless of issue or topic, you gravitate towards talking about him.
Quote (Thor123422 @ Apr 27 2021 02:47pm)
It's hard to argue with someone that doesn't want to acknowledge basic civics such as that Congress cannot pass spending or create a budget without the president's signature unless they secure a veto-proof majority.
This.
Do you not follow American politics at all? You think the president has nothing to do with spending, that they're just sitting in the White House passively awaiting Congress to send them whatever it feels like?
Trump was president for 4 years, so when people on a political forum discuss which party is more fiscally conservative, the guy who signs the bills gets brought up. If you're triggered by that, you should probably go to a different forum.
Quote (ofthevoid @ Apr 27 2021 02:51pm)
It's like we live in dual realities.
One party is saying spend 600b another 2T this is the modern reality I see.
Fiscal conservatism = low taxes, low spending. Both of these are consistent with what we've seen in the last couple of years being pushed by republicans.
Fiscal conservatism may want to achieve a balanced budget by lowering both those things but that's not the central goal.
If that was the central goal we can have 80% taxes with matched spending and end up with a balanced budget but that would be literally the antithesis of what fiscal conservatism is trying to do.
1. Republicans do not want low spending. They just want to increase spending less than Democrats.
2. I'm not sure I've ever heard conservative intellectuals speak about fiscal conservatism without concern about the deficit and national debt.