Not Your Father’s GOP
Beyond politics, there's culture.
Two pieces in today’s NYT highlight the contrasting culture of the Republican Party I grew up with and the one that it has become.
First, opinion columnist David French explains why “To Save Conservatism From Itself, I Am Voting for Harris.”
I believe life begins at conception. If I lived in Florida, I would support the state’s heartbeat bill and vote against the referendum seeking to liberalize Florida’s abortion laws. I supported the Dobbs decision and I support well-drafted abortion restrictions at the state and federal levels. I was a pro-life lawyer who worked for pro-life legal organizations. While I want prospective parents to be able to use I.V.F. to build their families, I do not believe that unused embryos should simply be discarded — thrown away as no longer useful.
But I’m going to vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 and — ironically enough — I’m doing it in part to try to save conservatism.
Here’s what I mean.
Since the day Donald Trump came down that escalator in 2015, the MAGA movement has been engaged in a long-running, slow-rolling ideological and characterological transformation of the Republican Party. At each step, it has pushed Republicans further and further away from Reaganite conservatism. It has divorced Republican voters from any major consideration of character in leadership and all the while it has labeled people who resisted the change as “traitors.”
What allegiance do you owe a party, a movement or a politician when it or they fundamentally change their ideology and ethos?
There’s a whole lot of explanation in the paragraphs that follow, but none will be needed for the sort of people who read political blogs.
Contrast this with Richard Fausset‘s report “Kid Rock Threw the Party. MAGA Faithful Brought the Joy, Rage and Smirnoff Ice.” It’s a typical feature piece, long on anecdote.
Alan Jeanetti, a 73-year-old retired barber, was tailgating with friends before Rock the Country, a touring music festival headlined by the pro-Trump musician Kid Rock. Mr. Jeanetti’s head was wrapped in a star-spangled bandanna. His T-shirt declared, “I Don’t Care.”
Mr. Jeanetti actually cares about many things, including the toll that his political leanings have taken on his personal life. “I have lost so many friends because I was a Trump lover,” he said. “I wouldn’t do that to them.”
On this broiling July day in Anderson, S.C., however, Mr. Jeanetti had a safe space. A tribe. All around him were fellow fans of former President Donald J. Trump, many with big trucks lining the green fields around the outdoor concert venue. Trump flags fluttered above R.V.s and tents, alongside American flags and a few of the Confederate variety.
Some 22,500 people would come on this first day of the two-day festival, according to the local sheriff’s office, drawn by Kid Rock and an abundance of country performers. “It’s going to be another Woodstock One,” Mr. Jeanetti said.
Starting in April in Gonzales, La., and stopping in six other midsize Southern cities through late July, Rock the Country offered a vision of the MAGA movement in pure party mode.
The shows felt like Trump rallies without the former president, unburdened by policy talk, speeches from lesser-known G.O.P. players, and the buzz-kill tendencies of Mr. Trump himself, who tends to noodle at the lectern like a jam-band soloist.
What remained was a snapshot of a maturing American subculture, with unwritten conventions rivaling those of Deadheads or Swifties, and a dizzying mash-up of hedonism and piety, angry rebellion and beer-guzzling pursuit of happiness.
It was also more evidence that Kid Rock, the 53-year-old Michigan entertainer and festival co-owner whose real name is Robert James Ritchie, has emerged as a chief cultural standard-bearer of Trumpism. At the Republican National Convention in July, Mr. Ritchie, who says he golfs regularly with Mr. Trump, performed shortly before the former president’s speech accepting the nomination, leading the crowd in chants of “Fight! Fight!” and setting a defiantly salty tone with his anthem, “American Bad Ass.”
In a phone interview last week, Mr. Ritchie said that Rock the Country had been designed to appeal to the conservative demographic that had made TV shows like “Duck Dynasty” and “Yellowstone” so popular.
I’m sure a lot of these folks voted for Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, too. But the sheer vulgarity and hedonism of the crowd—in terms of the music, the slogans they chose to wear, and the like—are the things for which Republicans used to chide and ridicule the left. I’m too young to have first-hand recollections of the anti-hippy days but certainly recall the outrage and disgust over the excesses of hard rock and, certainly, “gangster rap.”
Then again, I find the juxtaposition of “Duck Dynasty,” which I consider trash television, and “Yellowstone,” which is an excellent updating of the Western genre, odd. It doesn’t seem like they’re remotely aimed at the same audience.
Mr. Ritchie, who began his career as a rather apolitical party rapper, has not only ridden the wave of working-class anger that propels the MAGA movement, but he has also done much to shape it. His 2023 protest of Bud Light, after the beer brand partnered with a transgender influencer, sent its sales plummeting.
After the November election, Mr. Ritchie said, he would try to “lower the tone” politically, “and go back to trying to make good music that anybody can enjoy.” But for now, he said, “I’m going to go hard in the paint through this election for my guy, because I believe in his policies.”
[…]
In South Carolina, Kid Rock was the biggest act on the first day of the festival, with the country star Jason Aldean headlining on the second. By late afternoon on Day 1, thousands of people — young and old, overwhelmingly white — had crowded into the open field in front of the stage. Young women clopped across the grass in cherry-red cowgirl boots and Daisy Dukes. Men tried to outdo each other with T-shirts with politically incorrect remarks (“Taxes are Gay”; “Ammosexual”; “I’m voting CONVICTED FELON 2024”).
[…]
It had also been two weeks since a gunman had tried to assassinate Mr. Trump in Pennsylvania, and one shirt seemed to set the tone more than others: It showed Mr. Trump raising his middle fingers, with the words “YOU MISSED,” followed by an expletive.
Again, the reveling in being low class just astounds me.
The conservative movement once proudly defined itself in opposition to the recreational drug use of the leftist counterculture. At Rock the Country, a cannabis tent did a brisk business in prerolled joints and Delta-9 space pops. Another company sold gummies containing a “proprietary mushroom and nootropics” blend, the packaging said, for a “mind-bending experience.” Bud Light was the conspicuous sponsor of a two-story outdoor bar.
A lighting rig facing the stage had been designed, an organizer told the crowd, to resemble a cross, a reminder that “the true hope for the United States is Jesus Christ.”
The juxtaposition just makes my head hurt.
Before Kid Rock’s set, Shane Quick, one of the festival organizers, took the stage and asked the fans to join him in prayer. He thanked God for the military, the police, barbecue and Southeastern Conference football. “Dear God,” he said, “we thank you that just a few days ago, you kept the future president Donald Trump safe from the assassination attempt.”
The crowd went wild. Moments later, Kid Rock took the stage, flanked by dancers who gyrated on poles topped with American flags. He danced and rapped about his rough and rowdy ways. He performed his signature song, “Cowboy,” with its provocative line, “I can smell a pig from a mile away.” At one point he sang in a bluesman’s voice about the nefarious cultural imports of soccer and tofu.
Late in the show, Mr. Trump’s face hovered above the stage in a prerecorded video. He told the crowd they were the “true backbone” of the country.
“Let’s make America rock again,” Mr. Trump said in the video.
Mr. Ritchie said that he hopes Rock the Country will become a regular fixture on the American festival calendar, and predicted that Trumpism would live on as a cultural phenomenon beyond Mr. Trump’s time in politics, like Grateful Dead fans after Jerry Garcia died.
“I think the MAGA movement is probably bigger than Trump at the end of the day,” he said. “Whatever this is, I think it will continue without him.”
I don’t know whether I would call this a “movement,” in that it doesn’t seem to be united by any ideology. Unless “fuck you” counts. I’m not really sure what the hell to call it.
There’s certainly a cult of personality around Trump. But there is also something bigger than Trump. It’s how low-lives like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert get elected to high office.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously declared, “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.” While both are true, culture seems to dominate politics right now. Certainly, in the MAGA GOP.
Let’s not forget that David French (then senior counsel fir the ADF) was a drafter of the amicus brief arguing the government had not only the power, but also the obligation to use force to violently suppress homosexuality.
His complaints about MAGA are purely about aesthetics, and he’s just as fascist as they are.
For my mother, the war in Iraq was the last straw. Before she died in ’06, she said she would never again vote for a Republican. The old man was too far gone to vote well before then but if he’d been able to I’m pretty sure he would have voiced similar sentiments.
And the GOP has only gotten worse since then.
I think it’s worth repeating something I’ve said since 2015: It’s not that Trump changed the Republican Party, it’s that Trump perfectly manifested what the majority of the Republican base craved, and gave them license to become the worst versions of themselves.
There are always Trumps hovering around, whether it is Rush Limbaugh or Josh Rogan or Tucker Carlson, populists from the entertainment world that combine anger and rage with toxic politics. The Republican base picked Trump as the Golden Idol they worshipped, but if it wasn’t him it would have been someone in the same vein.
My allusion to Moses is flawed, because when the Republican Party leaders saw what was going on and tried to banish it from the party, it was far, far too late and they either joined in the revelry or got vilified and driven out into the wilderness.
I don’t know, James.
You have experience in the Deep South, as do I. French was born in Opelika, for heaven’s sake. I may have grown up in Sowega, but I am not of the South. (I was only six when I moved from the Bay Area, I spent most of my childhood in the Deep South, but I never really adopted the culture or developed the accent.)
It’s odd to me that any of this surprises you or French. It’s easy to point fingers at the ‘excesses’ in ‘gangsta rap’ and hard rock, but are we really going to act as if Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Jr., and other Outlaw Country acts were not hugely influential on subsequent rural Southern culture? Those were not exactly wholesome acts.
That is why I raise my biographical profile. I was not of the South, so maybe it was easier for me to see that the disconnect between Southern culture and Conservative Republican culture was stark.
Sure, there was a good bit of genuine piety, but there was far more conspicuous religiosity without behavioral adherence to principle. Talib Kweli put it best in “Get By”:
Let that sink in-he wasn’t talking about rural Southern whites-but it exactly describes those I grew up around. The point is, everything you are seeing now, was already there. Trump didn’t cause it. All of this was already there.
This is the political class adopting a culture that was previously relied on for votes, but would never have claimed.
“Pro life” – like “illegal immigrant” – is a phrase coined by wordsmiths to give a protective veneer to the user’s actual motivation. No legitimate “pro life” believer would oppose school lunch and breakfast programs or Medicaid and other health insurance programs that are literally life saving. David French and his ilk are anti-abortion. Full stop. And Kid Rock is a mediocre musician who revived his career by climbing onboard the MAGA bandwagon. He says he likes Trump’s policies, but, like Trump, he couldn’t explain those policies beyond whatever fits on a bumper sticker.
“go back” implies something that isn’t true, Mr. Ritchie.
@Kurtz:
“Saturday sinners, Sunday morning at the feet of the Father”
Or as a college buddy of mine put it, “Every Saturday night, you sow your wild oats. And every Sunday morning, you pray for crop failure”.
When I was a Reagan conservative in the 80s, I honestly believed that smaller government, lower taxes, and moral piety would yield benefits for all Americans, of all faiths and races and ethnic backgrounds.
Somewhere in the 90s I started to question, then one by one changed my beliefs as I grew to understand that other people experienced the world differently and my old beliefs didn’t fit their lives or aspirations.
Trumpists don’t do this. After their beliefs are rejected, they don’t question them or adapt, but instead become resentful and embittered to where now they openly desire minority rule, to force their beliefs on others by whatever means possible.
Southern, Southern and more Southern. And nary a word about evangelical Christianity, which is the culture of the South. If there were no Southern Baptist religion, there would be no MAGA. Christianity trains you to disregard facts in favor of fantasy, to accept as true things for which no evidence exists. It is the bedrock of MAGA. But we’re not supposed to say that because we all have to pretend there’s nothing toxic in religion. Other people’s religions, sure, but not ours.
So Lutherans had nothing to do with Naziism; the Russian Orthodox church had nothing to do with serfdom and nothing more recently the Putin regime; Roman Catholicism had nothing to do with the slave trade and child rape; and evangelical Christianity has nothing to do with these swamp creatures despite the fact that the Southern Baptist church was created explicitly as a racist denomination.
Now, Islam, well sure we can see the cultural effects there, amiright? And Shinto was a factor in Japanese war atrocities. And of course those darn Jews being all Jewish about promised land. But not Christianity. Never Christianity.
You cannot accurately diagnose when you simply refuse to see what is right in front of your face. None so blind as those who will not see.
There is also a good bit of “LOL, nothing matters, so why not get what I want.”
Of course, the interesting thing is that this isn’t exactly a low-class phenomenon. I give you David French:
Murdering babies is wrong, but life-long ice prison is somehow OK? How?
I guess the lowlifes (if you want to call them that) saw the hypocrisy and vacuity of the conservative movement and thought “I want some of that, too!”
And now the conservative “intellectuals” are clutching their pearls. Funny how that works. I guess the revolution eats its own.
@Michael Reynolds:
No, not at all. Religion is very much part of it. But you do tend to go well over the top in your descriptions.
BTW, the reference to Sunday above by Kurtz was a reference to religion, quite plainly.
@Steven L. Taylor:
In the original post, a discussion of the MAGA culture, there is a single reference to ‘Christ’ and that was on a sign. There are eight references to Kid Rock.
@drj:
ETA: I guess that French et al. failed to see that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Look, if you’ve spent decades immersed in abortion and all you can come up with is life begins at conception, you’re a political hack. It’s the same mode of thinking that leads to being an ‘ammosexual’. Being dumb and not questioning anything is actually not good. Just reciting mindless slogans for twenty years while you are allegedly an expert in what you are doing is even worse.
I would love to read an actual pro-life person try to come to terms with why their views are not only completely unpopular, but considered far outside the boundaries of science. Show us the philosophers, doctors, and scientists who find ‘life begins to conception’ to be a useful ethical guide. Instead, the Times blows all of this space on stuff an AI could regurgitate.
@Michael Reynolds:
Personally, I think you have the roles reversed. At least, sort of. But
I wish I had time to go through it, because it would be an interesting conversation. But I’m on the middle of training for a new job, and it’s pretty intense. I will try to circle back at lunch or after the training session is over.
But I plan on studying after, so…
Just adding–the great lie behind Reagan and the supposedly good GOP was that free-market moralism was the enemy of bureaucracy. Totally utnrue. French is just a guy who dislikes the 2024 updates to form 1004-F . HIs entire ideology is built upon Form 1004-F. The same with the libertarian wing of the GOP. They’re devoted to Form 2004-F. That’s it. Nothing more. They love forms and the rules, and punishing anything in their way. All of the moralism and conviction in markets, the Bibles and the hatred of being stifled by academics, experts, and scientists, is just cover for bureaucratic crank-turners eager to stifle everything.
The GOP reaps what it sowed. Period.
It was clear decades ago that this is where the party was naturally headed. The question wasn’t whether the collapse would be swift, only when the collapse would be triggered.
@Michael Reynolds: This is true. But I also think it is unfair to assume that a 500 word blog post is going to comprehensibly address complex social phenomena.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I kind of regret not putting the full couplet from the Kweli song:
Do with that what you will.
OT: one of the remixes of that song has quite the roster: Kanye produced the track, but has a verse on the remix. He shows flashes of talent, but the confidence is not quite there. Mos Def, Jay-Z, and Busta Rhymes L.
W. was on the platform for Trump’s 2017 Inaugural. Anticipating Tim Walz, he described Trump’s American Carnage speech as, “some weird shit”. (Courtesy of Digby.)
Of course, like French, W. was an enabler of that shit.
Both my home FL county and the adjacent county are having huge cat fights within the Republican Party. In the adjacent county a MAGA splinter group split from the County Committee and claimed the office supplies and bank account. Court cases continue. Michigan had, for all I know still has, a big fight within their GOP.
Are others seeing this in their local GOPs? Is this perhaps presaging a schism in the Party if Trump loses? Are the recriminations about “Trump led us to defeat again” v “we weren’t Trumpy enough” likely to get out of hand? MAGA cannot fail, MAGA can only be failed.
I have a friend who lives in Georgia, and spent maybe 20 years as a paid ringer in a larger church choir. I think it was Southern Baptist. He remarked to me just this last week that to so many in the congregation church was what you went to on Sunday to get forgiven for what you did on Saturday Night.
This is not to say it isn’t taken seriously by some. I think it is. Taking it seriously presents a hard road to follow. Loving your neighbor isn’t all that easy. Loving your enemy is a lot of work. To me, there’s a payoff, but it’s hard work, and lots of people don’t really connect with that.
But the culture is that you go anyway, and you are loud and proud about it in a way that ends up, to me at least, coming off as insincere.
As regards David French. I have every reason to think he hasn’t changed his mind about abortion. AND, I would guess that abortion was the wedge issue between him and the Democrats. Maybe that and gay rights, too. On the big-money issues, he probably is compatible with Democrats.
I have observed other traditional Republicans who strike me as similar. I read what they write and ask myself “why aren’t you a Democrat?” Because abortion.
And now the abortion thing has changed. They got what they wanted. That plus Trump has taken them to a crossroads.
It’s tempting to say that people never change, but that’s too binary. Sometimes they do change. Not often, but it happens. Maybe it’s happening now.
@Jay L Gischer:
Indeed. The two main authors of this blog used to reliably vote Republican.
FWIW, I have changed my mind, over time, on drug legalization, same-sex marriage, and abortion (to name three big ones).
The parties, they are achaingin’. The Republican party, pushed by Trump’s 2016 run, is ahead in the new adaptation. Republican, Inc., the old ones, is waning. Big business CEOs have gone Democrat, the social Christians are waning in influence. The Paycheck-to-paycheck faction is growing. You lump these people under MAGA. They are working class of all colors, much to the consternation of Democrats over losing their People of Color. And rising are the New Tech, those like the entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley who are waking up against the feudal ideas that prevailed there in 2016.
I don’t really know the factions in the Democrats, outside the college credentialed/activist women. Old factions remain, but this election may reveal dramatic changes among black and Hispanic voters from past Democrat voting. Will it be majority shifts, no, but Democrats only have to lose 5-10% of their past minority voters to fair poorly overall. But hey, Democrats have late term abortion and media-driven vibes going for them. Hot issues for the conformist recent college grads
@Michael Reynolds: The majority of Americans opposed to Trump are also Christians. And they often oppose him for very religious reasons.
And when you look worldwide, you discover that the vast majority of humans believe one religion or another. It’s like humans have a god shaped hole that they need to fill to function.
The nonbelievers are a tiny fraction, and all too many find something like Marxist theory to fill that hole so they still don’t have to think.
But, yes, if humanity was fundamentally different the world might be a better place. Or our atrocities would then be committed in the name of corporations and sports teams. Not that we don’t commit lots of atrocities in the name of corporations now.
(It would likely be unethical, but if we could take a few hundred infants, and raise them in a protected space where they get fed and cleaned but never spoken to, I would be really curious to see if they formed a religion.)
I bet he did do that to them.
If someone was as into Star Wars as these people are into Trump, with giant flags on their pickup truck, and always talking about Star Wars, harassing Star Trek fans, and wearing shirts that read “I am your father, motherfucker” or “fuck your Ferengi”, and having big boat rallies with their Star Wars themed boats, and showing up at city council meetings to scream about Star Wars… people would run the hell away from them.
They’re a toxic fandom that has chosen to embrace a property that is itself toxic. No one else wants to be around that.
@JKB:
I’m curious, other than the tip thing (an idea long pushed by the Service Workers Union and now adopted by both candidates), what Trump policies do you see as directed at this group?
I realize that Trump did make space for someone from organized labor to speak at the RNC. Then just two days later Trump attacked the Auto Unions. During Trump’s first administration he greatly weakened the NLRB and continuing that work is a major part of the 2025 approach on labor.
Likewise his plan to expand tariffs and mass deportation is only going to greatly increase inflation on both food and consumer packaged goods. So that won’t help those folks in the short term.
Call me crazy, but I’ve yet to see the “there there” around targeting those folks.
I’ll note that we are still waiting to see what Harris’s expressed policies are. To the degree they are continuing existing Biden policies, we know they will most likely be pro-organized labor (who, with the exception of law enforcement unions, are all but exclusively backing Harris).
@JKB:
You know those TV segments before sporting events wherein individuals on the show give their predictions for who wins and loses? Those are skippable, other than mild amusement at former players and coaches boldly declaring things and getting them wrong.
Worse than a regular game, is the Super Bowl, wherein everyone from Kesha to my neighbor’s cat gives predictions based on, nothing.*
You are the latter.
*Unless Travis Kelce is playing–then we know the process if Swift-related.
@JKB:
Also, can you remind me whether you have argued around here that the Democrats are the slavery party? If so, your assertions (deliberate usage) are best ignored.
@Kurtz:
Yes. Yes he has argued that multiple times.
And this:
Are they being inconsistent, or has Bud Light groveled enough that they are acceptable to the right wing again? Is this part of the groveling?
I really wonder if the “fine people” at this little shindig were angry that Bud Light was there, or gleeful that they have forced the brand into submission.
Alas, the NYTimes article only mentions Bud Light in those two spots. They are ignoring the big issues — sure, these people are freaks, but how does the rest of the world adapt to these freaks?
This is just the Joe Roganification of the Republican Party. I think that will have a longer (but less dramatic) effect on the party than Trump, if only because Rogan will live longer.
David French’s position is interesting to me in that I’m inclined to say that conception is as good a place to start the clock as any other, but I would not support the Florida laws because it’s not my job to decide for others how they should live. I would advise French to be careful about what laws do because “forgive us our trespasses [in the same manner that] we forgive those who trespass against us” is an aspiration and a precept but also a potential threat. I’ll let our staff Biblical scholar/ fruit of others inspectors find their preferred passages for the last idea. I’m sure they’ll be able to if they apply themselves.
@Jay L Gischer: But that’s his point: He’s voting for Harris, despite his deeply-held beliefs on what has long been a central part of his partisan identity, because Trump is so awful in so many ways.
Nothing is exactly parallel but if you go back 100 years to 1920s Germany, you’ll have found that in the aftermath (and disaster) of WWI, the German working class overthrew the monarchy. From then on the German society polarized between left and right with the Weimar Republic trying to hold the middle. The demagogue Hitler gained notoriety and some power but was put over the top by the Prussian aristocracy and the Lutheran establishment. I think everyone can see the parallels today.
@Gustopher:
Sure, I get your point and it’s correct, but it’s worth pointing out “one religion or another” encompasses a huge range of beliefs. Basically, no group of humans has ever come up spontaneously with the same religion as another. Most (but certainly not all) believe in some kind of afterlife, but there are so many radically different variations.
This varies wildly by demographic area. For example, according to Wiki:
I mean, how do you even process that? But in the US and European countries, at least, it’s not accurate to say that the percentage of non-believers is “a tiny fraction”.
@Matt Bernius:
So you can’t envision the 94% of private sector “working class” workers who aren’t a member of a union? Workers who saw real wage increases (8.4%) under the previous Trump administration. Real wages have declined by 5% under the Biden/Harris admin.
But the paycheck-to-paycheck people voting Republican are voting Make America Great Again, not just for some fleeting “Curley Effect” promise by Democrats and perhaps even Harris when she she decides what policy flops she thinks she can sell. Perhaps something of substance will come out of the DNC next week?
BTW, Vance headlined three of the Sunday shows, ABC, CBS, CNN. No Harris/Walz people at all. Best they could do was Klobuchar on ABC, Sanders on CNN. (NBC had the Olympics)
And tonight Elon Musk is talking with Trump live on X
What’s the Harris campaign doing today? Well, spreading news so fake even Snopes has debunked
@JKB:
I mainly asked about organized labor because a few weeks ago, you were talking about Trump’s outreach to them, I admittedly have a vested interest as I’m part of a union.
Can you provide a citation to that? I tried to google it and couldn’t find anything beyond the (partisan) Congressional Budget Committee using those numbers.
https://budget.house.gov/press-release/fiscal-state-of-the-union-bidens-real-wage-decline
The St Louis Fed shows ongoing increases, but doesn’t appear to factor in inflation:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
And the fact-checked articles I found suggest that there are many different ways of calculating this that will yield different results:
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/jun/06/joe-biden/have-wages-exceeded-inflation-under-joe-biden/
https://www.factcheck.org/2024/06/competing-narratives-on-real-wages-incomes-under-biden/
BTW, for transparency, the last article in particular does stress that they have not really grown under Biden due to the larger economic issues. But there wasn’t a specific mention about decline.
First, I’ll note that you didn’t address all the inflationary aspects of Trump’s proposed economic policies.
Second, to date, no one is voting on anything. So it feels like you’re being a bit presumptive here. And additionally, “the paycheck-to-paycheck people voting Republican are voting Make America Great Again” seems just a voting on vibes as “some fleeting “Curley Effect” promise by Democrats” unless you are suggesting that Trump can magically return us to pre-Covid days.
So I don’t see how you’re standing on particularly well reasoned economic policy grounds either (against see all the inflationary aspects of Trump’s promised policies).
@JKB:
This is untrue. Both wages and prices are up, but wages are up more than prices.
The problem — and this is a very real problem for a lot of people — is that wages are up in a very spotty and inconsistent way, making a lot of “winners and losers” rather than everyone being a little bit better off. And prices have weird spikes and certain products have gotten much more expensive, which really sucks if those products are a staple of your household.
And we have a looming housing crisis, because we just aren’t building housing where people need it. For instance, the vast majority of Seattle is zoned for single family housing, despite the population having increased about 25% in the past 20 years, and we can see that pattern across nearly every major metropolitan area.
But, and this is a big but*, Republicans are offering no solutions to those problems. None. Hating trans folks and banning abortions isn’t going to put food on the table or a roof over your head. Jacking up tariffs isn’t going to make baby formula less expensive.
At least Democrats want to address the cost of baby formula, albeit on the demand side.**
——
*: “I like big butts and I can not lie”
**: is that too far? I feel like that might be a little too far, but I can’t help myself.
@JKB:
Correct. The question is whether or not getting him out in public is helping or hurting the ticket. Again, my position, is that Vance has terrible media instincts. His answers are long, angry, and well, weird. That’s what happens when you elevate a neophyte politician into a national spotlight.
For example, celebrating the fact that Trump meets with neo-nazi’s and White supremacists as a sign that “he listens to everyone” is a good talking point.
Of course, your mileage may vary. And as Lonsberry reminded us a few days ago, neither is the voting public.
And what we have consistently seen is that the more Trump does press, the lower his numbers go. And I can’t see anything possibly going wrong with having two people who are both well known for staying on message (that was a joke) and dabbling with White supremacy narratives getting an hour of unscripted live time together.
@JKB:
Has it not been seven years?
These are the difference I observe that impact our politics.
1. Religious plurality and tolerance was the motivation for many colonists to move to British America. Religious freedom was enshrined in our Constitution. Religious tolerance and cooperation was essential for community survival. But today, most people don’t even know their neighbors and buy the myth that America is a Christian nation.
2. Polarizing politics and muckraking has always been part of the American experience, but the speed and extent of dissemination was based on paper printing presses and horses. Today we have the Internet which allows anyone to set up their own electronic printing press and communicate to their message to world instantly. This is especially true for charismatic “evangelists” who line their pockets with the donations of cult members. Trump is a cult leader, but there are well-known hucksters.
3. When the GOP began to morph into a cult (with the entrance of the Tea Party), many elected GOP leaders simply retired rather than risk not being re-elected. They were cowards. With the exception of the Never Trump group, sole responsibility for saving American democracy fell into the laps of the Democrats. Who among us hasn’t heard a Republican friend or family member who doesn’t like Trump say something to the effect, “Why didn’t the Democrats…”
4. The Tea Party cult was the result of the offshoring jobs, the Global War on Terror and the end of the post-WWII economic boom, and the Great Recession. I can hear Bin Laden laughing from his grave. The magnitude and disruption of these changes made many who had less prosperity than their parents blame those for whom recent liberties were endowed: women, LGBTQ, Blacks (which is much easier than being mobile, resilient, and learning a new trade).
@Gustopher:
I’d love to see how that breaks out between right-to-work states and union states.
I was encourage, though, to see that over the last 20 years below-median incomes have gone up (relative to increasing prices) more than above-median incomes.
@Matt Bernius:
This idea that Republican enablers are pushing now that Trump/Vance > Harris/Walz because press appearances > rallies is so dumbfounding it beggars belief.
1) Such a U-turn from the guy who has called the press the enemy of the people while claiming his big rallies are a mandate from the people is whiplash inducing.
2) Both Trump and Vance have pretty convincingly beclowned themselves with the press appearances they’ve done in the last several days. If the point of a political campaign is to demonstrate the candidate’s necessary wisdom and savvy to run the country, then the best possible demonstration from the Democrats is to stay out of the way while their opponents self-immolate.
@Gustopher:
This is part of the problem. But, I think there’s another dynamic at play that doesn’t get enough attention.
There is a very natural tendency for people to see wages increases as something they’ve earned, while inflation is something that is done to them. Simultaneous wage and price growth, even when the wage growth outstrips the inflation, will never redound to a government’s benefit simply because of the way credit/blame is assigned by humans.
@drj: I don’t think it’s as much that they didn’t see that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery as it is that they didn’t expect that uppity mouth-breathing peasants were eventually going to forget “their place.”
@Gustopher: Based on what we know about people who are held in genuine solitary confinement for extended periods of time, I suspect that some of them would probably never become sane enough to formulate any ideas that we might be able to identify as religious. Maybe most.
There’s also the question about what they would actually understand about their surroundings if no one ever spoke to them. Would they even have/perceive surroundings? Would they even develop language or self-awareness?
(Yes, I understand that you were trying to snark. Count this one for a loss.)
@JKB:..Vance headlined three of the Sunday shows, ABC, CBS, CNN
For years your boyfriend Trump has declared ABC, CBS, CNN the fake news. Now you are promoting the Vance appearance as if it is some sort of political campaign victory. I’m not buying it . That wasn’t Vance. That was some AI generated hocus pocus. Just like what private citizen, convicted felon, mature Republican male candidate Donald Trump said about the crowd that greeted Vice-President Harris at the Detroit airport. I’m sure you believe Trump over your own lyin’ eyes.
@Gustopher:
@Just nutha ignint cracker: What I was going to say before a missed keystroke sent my comment into limbo was “Sure, Gus, but only because the Republicans are seeing an opportunity, not a problem. Look at how much they’re gonna make when they sell their houses and how much they’ll take in on windfall rent increases. And as an added bonus, they don’t have to worry about selling their house to the “wrong person,” and they do get rid of significant numbers of poor people who didn’t pay their rent on time/consistently. Wins all the way around.
The white trash demographic has an exploitable inferiority complex that’s being exploited to a T. Also a demographic with a strong sense of entitlement-to-power. It’s a toxic brew, but an unattractive one to most others.
@Skookum:
This is false — a pernicious myth that matters.
The persecuted religious minorities (Pilgrims, Puritans, Catholics, Anabaptists, …) who migrated to the New World did not come to implement religious plurality and tolerance. They came to impose their own minority cults on everyone else. There is no vestige of tolerance in any of the New England colonies in pre-Revolutionary times.
The Founders, in their limited wisdom, recognized that having one cult impose its views (and taxes!) on everyone else is a recurring source of trouble. Their radical, never-before-seen solution was to declare that no cult would be in charge — all would be treated equally under the law, with secular authority dominant. Crazy talk.
@DrDaveT: wasn’t Rhode Island founded to protect religious liberty?
I’d pay some amount of money to watch Kid Rock explain what policies of Trump he believes in.
And while I disagree with the position, and don’t think it works in reality, I have some amount of respect for French, and even for JD Vance, who take their position that “life begins at conception” seriously. I don’t see how you can reconcile that belief with exceptions for rape and incest. Life of the mother, yes, because if the mother dies, the child dies, but in the case of rape and incest, the embryo/theoretical person did nothing wrong.
@DrDaveT:
You are entirely correct that white European men of affluence held the reins of power when our the United States was formed. I would go so far that they created a capitalist society that benefited their class, and that many were enslavers and crass land speculators that did not treat Native Americans with respect and fairness.
That said, Great Britain, France, and Spain viewed America (and Australia) and other colonies as places to export nonconformist troublemakers. Quakers, Baptist, Presbyterians, Huguenots, Catholics, Lutherans, Mennonites, and other religious practitioners, including Jews and Muslims either freely immigrated or were brought as indentured servants or slaves.
When I research my family history, which goes back to British America colonial period for both of my parents, I find that on the frontier being a good neighbor required tolerance. In fact, often people were so hungry for spiritual guidance, they attended the meeting houses of other religions. And there are many examples of young people leaving the religion of their parents to marry someone who was not of their faith.
I acknowledge that religion can be used to create myths to control people. Trump and his Christian backers are a prime example.
But I also believe that the path to living the Golden Rule is taught by many faiths. Indeed, David French said the most persuasive argument to him for leaving the MAGA environment is that Trump and his ilk don’t live by the Golden Rule, yet they say they are Christians.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: I was thinking more of letting the kids be in a group, just with no outside influence other than their basic needs being met. Also, no predators.
We would learn a lot. I think a lot of what makes people people is a shared community experience that starts before we are born and will continue on after we die. Like a bit of software that makes the hardware function. A superorganism composed of many semi-independent individuals.
People are social animals. I wouldn’t put them in solitary confinement. That would be cruel.
Alas, we can’t just run experiments like that, we have to wait for happy accidents where an infant is raised by wolves rather than eaten by them. If we could grow infants in artificial wombs, we could make use of all those frozen embryos in IVF clinics.
@Monala:
Rhode Island was founded to protect Roger Williams and his followers when they were kicked out of Massachusetts Bay for their (relatively) whacked doctrines. That’s not the same as protecting religious liberty — the subsequent “7th day baptists” were kicked out of Rhode Island for their nonconformist views. They founded a colony in New Jersey, which included ancestors of George W. Bush and Barack Obama (and me). New Jersey eventually kicked them out again, so they founded a new new colony in West Virginia.
@Skookum:
There is no contradiction between “Europe thought of America as a place to ship their nonconformist troublemakers to” and “The nonconformist troublemakers shipped to America were not defenders of religious freedom.”
It was a big continent. They all thought that they could establish a state religion of their own flavor in the territory they were shipped to.
@DrDaveT:
I agree that that some colonies were formed to support specific religions and that conflict occurred when people of different faiths attempted to settle where they did not practice the predominant religion. Examples are when Virginian Baptists tried to settle in Maryland or when Roger Williams was exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and established Rhode Island. However, I believe plurality and tolerance became more prevalent as colonists migrated west and the colonies had to cooperate to win the Revolutionary War and form a national government.
Some interesting articles:
America’s True History of Religious Tolerance
Religion and the Founding of the American Republic
The Surprising Religious Diversity of America’s 13 Colonies
Divining America: Religion in American History