6012

Libertarians? Or wingnuts depending on how extreme they are about the proper extent of those things. But those things you cited are only a small slice of conservative principles. It’s just economic conservatism.

I think I’m coming around to Scott’s side on this. If you say you are a socialist, that doesn’t mean you support every idea of everyone else who has called themselves socialist. But for words to have meaning, it does have to mean you believe in most of the things most of the other people who call themselves socialists believe in. You can lay out what you mean by “I’m a socialist” but if most of the other socialist keep promoting ideas you don’t agree with you should probably choose a different term for your own beliefs. Kind of like how people stopped calling themselves “communist” if they didn’t really mean agreeing with the Russia or Chinese communist parties.

6013

I would just like to add that liberals believe in the rule of law, since Tom keeps stating that it is a conservative position. I dont think Tom is meaning to imply that liberals do not believe in the rule of law. Which I guess means that rule of law is agreed to by both liberals and conservatives in Toms definitions. Which may be why the country worked out sort of ok (for white people) until the last 50 years.

However, I know that the current GOP only cares about laws when they are favorable to the GOP, and Id argue that has been the case throughout my life, and since the GOP through that time had claimed (and still does) the mantle of conservative, that maybe liberals are actually the rule of law party, and conservative means something different in practice over the last fifty years than it may mean in the history books or GOP talking points. Which I think is scotts point.

its not like the GOP suddenly stopped being conservative, they haven’t been for a long time, but have used the term and reaped the benefits of it for decades despite being machievelian corporatists for the most part, and yet somehow they keep getting people to vote for them because they claim to be the conservative (small government, low taxes, religious, family values) party even though they are demonstrably none of those things. Their voters dont care about the traditional definition of conservative though, and continue to call their cult of personality and sports team mentality conservative.

What we need is either an appropriate term for what the GOP and their voters really is now, or we go along with their definition of conservatism for the last fifty years. Words mean what people think they mean, and the GOP has called their policies conservative for decades, so its hard to separate how the word is used vs what it has meant in the past.

Currently conservative seems to mean tribalism and not much else. The rich GOP stick together, the poor rural GOP stick together, the evangelical GOP stick together, the corporate executive GOP sticks together, and they are each trying to get ahead for their group (or hold everyone else down). The GOP has been very effective at splitting people into groups and pitting them against each other and this is the endgame.

Is there a way to show those groups that they are actually at odds with each other? That aside from sharing an ® after their names that they are very far apart on issues? That the democrats actually are more consistent with conservative values than the GOP? Seems like a roomful of smart people ought to be able to figure that out and take back both the word conservative and the country at the same time.

6014

To whatever degree a party is driven by electoral expediency, personal power-grabs, or financial enrichment, that is the exact degree to which they have abandoned their political principles, whether liberal or conservative. Neither party looks great through this lens, but for Republicans, that ratio has been pretty terrible for decades. And Trump is the exemplar of the principle-less politician, his popularity giving succor to all the Republicans who wanted an excuse to jettison whatever principles they might have had.

6015

If you consider yourself a conservative but cannot ever support increasing taxes or ever increasing the power of the government or ever support government-funded programs, under any circumstances, then you’re not really a conservative. You’re a Republican.

Things like tax rates or government funded programs or regulations are not inherently conservative or liberal; it’s how they are used. But conservatives become Republicans when, probably out of self interest (either real or perceived) they become convinced that these levers of power are in themselves bad. Just like, I suppose, some liberals immediately assume a certain level of wealth is bad.

A true conservative can increase the size of government and increase the tax rate to pursue their conservative policies, and a true liberals can reduce the size of government and decrease the tax rate to pursue theirs. But unlike liberals, for whom after the 1970s any lingering social-revolutionary fantasies about Communism dissolved into consumerism and disappeared and today have no real uniting ideologies (although arguably things like identity politics are the social-revolution through consumerism of the young people today), conservatives have an entire information networks generating and self-generating endless slander against taxes or government interventions which it seems most conservatives essentially accepted as true and thereby “became” more like a political partisan. There isn’t much pushback yet except on the edges of the so-called Conservative world, and that’s because real life isn’t a binary, yes or no, affiliation, and many “Conservatives” may not be wholly partisan in their own minds but effectively, because of issues like taxes, simply cannot ever find themselves voting against a single party.

In other words you might think you’re a conservative, pondering weightly matters, but you’ll never ever in a million years vote for a tax increase under any circumstance nor any increase in government power nor ever for a second a single regulation. You might think you’re a conservative, but you’re indistinguishable from a “Republican” because you effectively are a Republican whatever else is going around in your mind.

6016

I think the term “conservative” is too vague to be really useful. Lots of folks might consider themselves conservative, but they likely mean different things. And someone using it as a pejorative means something else.

Trump had co-opted the term at this point, and his brand certainly bears very little resemblance to mainstream conservativism from a few years back. Rawdogging pornstars, and having that actually become widely known and just accepted, is not socially conservative. How trade policies are not economically conservative. He’s just chaos, and his followers are just following his personality, not principles.

I used to consider myself a conservative, but u don’t any more, because there are only certain specific policies that i might agree with other so called conservatives on.

At this point, I’d probably be something like a “libertarian progressive”, because i generally support progressive goals, but with more consideration towards individual liberty. But that’s just a term i made up to describe myself, not something that means anything to anyone else.

6017

If you ran on traditional family values but endorsed an adulterous lecher who’s been married three times…

…you may be a Republican.

If you love taking liberals to task for their fiscal irresponsibility, but haven’t checked the deficit numbers since Oct 2016…

…you may be a Republican.

If you’ve argued half a hundred times about how originalism is the only valid way to apply the Constitution, but think the emoluments clause is phony…

…you may be a Republican.

6018

Ooh, we could play this game all night!

6019

Completely un-self-aware, or brilliantly self-aware? Either way, nothing became forgotten Tim Ryan’s presidential campaign like the leaving of it.

6020

He’s kind of like that guest at a big party that you didn’t actually realize was there or spend any time with him. Then, at the end of the night, he kind of sheepishly announces he is leaving, and you sort of awkwardly say, “Huh? Oh, Tim. Yeah, Tim, um it was great seeing you. Glad you could come. Be sure to drive home safely!”

Then you turn back to the conversation you were in with other people.

6021

He’s my rep and I completely forgot he was still running.

6022

You can make this same argument about radical environmentalists or libertarians. That doesn’t mean they’re synonymous with Democrat or Republican (respectively?) and it certainly doesn’t mean they aren’t a political philosophy.

You didn’t like my “bro, do you even Venn?” snark? My response is that you’re conflating the party with an element that used to be a driving force and has since been marginalized.

Citation needed. I see no evidence of this. The GOP is comprised entirely of Trump supporters, and not a one of them is conservative in any meaningful sense of the word. They are vacuous rot devoid of political integrity, down to a man and woman, every one of them a coward, asshole, or moron.

“Dude, at least it’s an ethos.”

Seriously, though, if we’re going to get past the Trump years, the GOP will have to be torn down and rebuilt or replaced. Ousting Trump from the White House is just the beginning.

Ouch. Them’s fighting words. At least they would be if I were a conservative. Anyone who calls himself a libertarian is an idiot, so I’m not inclined to call anyone with intellectually honest and developed political principles a “libertarian”.

I didn’t cite them, Scott did.

I’ll go one further and say rule of law is a part of any meaningful political philosophy. Which is why the Republican party doesn’t deserve the word “conservative”. And why anyone who calls himself a libertarian is an idiot.

We’ve had one for three years! It’s “Trump supporter.” Although I like your choice of tribalism, as well.

Dude, friends don’t let friends call themselves libertarians. Veering on the individual liberty side of the spectrum is a pretty core conservative value. To paraphrase Robert Downey, Jr., “Everybody knows you never go full libertarian.”

-Tom

6023

This looks like evidence to me:

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It’s from this Pew study. They characterized the political philosophy of respondents based on their answers to ten questions, then matched that to party affiliation or lean.

6024

Well, I added another word to indicate something aside from just dogmatic semi-anarchist.

But the reality is, I believe that individual liberty is a really important thing.

6025

From that same study comes this quote:

6026

“Survey conducted 2015”

Just saying.

6027

The other thing I can see (or not as the case is) is that some of the questions seem premised on defining conservative and liberal through party views. I saw questions asking about Bush and Obama and reactions to them, but did not find the full survey questions.

So it does appear to be somewhat based on using self definition rather than ideological ones.

6028

Putin will be pleased.

6029

Obviously calling Gabbard a Russian asset drove her to become one. Clinton is to blame.

6030

These are the questions:

And here are responses over time:

6031

Thanks, for some reason I wasn’t finding those charts.

Some interesting results.