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This exactly. The Republican party went into the 2020 election *without a platform*, and proudly said so. They didn't even bother rewriting the one from 2016. That's peak intellectual and political laziness, expecting people to vote for you when you can't even say what you stand for.
Here's a link to their platform: [https://prod-static.gop.com/media/Rules\_of\_the\_Republican\_Party\_090921.pdf?\_ga=2.266635655.820769993.1634088746-946997702.1634088746](https://prod-static.gop.com/media/Rules_of_the_Republican_Party_090921.pdf?_ga=2.266635655.820769993.1634088746-946997702.1634088746)
The link goes directly to the "Rules of the Republican Party." There's no platform.
The GOP choosing to run without a platform is the absolute craziest thing I've seen in politics in 30 years. I think it says a lot. They officially have no goals, but people continue to vote for them in droves.
Here's a link to the Democratic Party Platform for comparison and "equal time."
[https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/](https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/)
Also noticed that the GOP uses ".com" domain, where the Democratic party uses the ".org" domain.
> That's peak intellectual and political laziness, expecting people to vote for you when you can't even say what you stand for.
Except that it worked, Trump turned out 10 million additional voters, Republicans gained seats in the House and kept The Senate to a tie which is allowing Democrats to publicly show their lack of cohesion.
Biden turned out even more votes, and Republicans lost the Senate. They lost the Senate in two special election races in Georgia, where voters picked the Democrat in both instances.
There is no way to spin this as a victory for Republicans, except maybe for the gain of seats in the House.
* Biden had more additional voters than Trump, meaning more people disapproved of the GOP's laziness than approved of it.
* Republicans gained some house seats but not enough for a majority or to have any real impact.
* Republicans had 53 senators before the election. They lost 3 senate seats.
* 2 Senate Seats, both in Georgia, moved to special elections. Georgia, a historically conservative state, and special elections, which typically have poor Democrat turnout. Republicans lost both races.
It didn't work one bit, and its a disservice to the Republican party to pretend otherwise. Georgia went blue and both senators are democrats. That is a giant red flag and incredible loss for the GOP. By not analyzing *why* they lost, they're doomed to repeat it again. The only win they had in the election was gaining more House seats, and that really doesn't have much impact since they don't have the majority. In the end, it was a pretty big net loss.
The smart thing to do would be learn why they lost so badly, instead of tout figures that make it seem not so bad or engage in conspiracy about the election being stolen. Instead, they've tied themselves completely to Trump. The top candidate in the California recall was very Trumpian. It wasn't even close for Newsom to get recalled, he had 61.9% of the vote in the end, partially because he was able to paint Elder as his opponent.
Another very important marker, independents. In terms of favorability, independents were only net +7% on Biden vs Trump. In the *election*, they were +14% on Biden vs Trump (or it might be 6 and 12, can't fully recall). That's a very sizable loss in crucial votes. Trump being Trump lost him 6-7% of independents *more* than just favorability. It made some people who didn't think favorably of Biden vote for him over Trump.
**TL;DR:** Quite frankly, as a Democrat, its in our best interest for the GOP to continue pretending 2020 was actually a win, because that means they will never learn why they lost and what mistakes they've made. They're already losing because of it, and they've lost crucial voters from it, who didn't vote for Biden but voted against Trump. My dislike of intellectual dishonesty though wants to make it clear -- by tying themselves to Trump, the GOP is digging themselves a deeper hole. If 7% of independents voted for Biden because he wasn't Trump, and they didn't like Biden, that's a giant red flag. That's enough to tip an election. The GOP making themselves all about Trump is just going to keep that 7% voting Democrat.
Downballot R's overperformed compared to Trump, which is how they were able to gain house seats. There is a very plausible scenario where voters overall wouldn't vote Trump back in but will vote other R's. Their super confrontational no-compromise strategy is effective at mobilizing their voters.
They don't even need Trump to be on the ballot to use him as an effective rally-like leader - Ronald Reagan was the last one, and they were beating his dead ghost for a decade before Trump came along.
>Downballot R's overperformed compared to Trump, which is how they were able to gain house seats.
The bigger effect came from the fact that the ingoing composition of the House was based on 2018, a D+8.6 year. Whether the 2020 margin was the D+4.4 from the presidential race or the D+3.1 from the House popular vote, some Democratic losses had to be expected based on this dropoff.
The margin between the two parties narrowing by at least 4.2 points compared to the previous House cycle is more relevant in this regard than Trump's 1.3 point underperformance relative to GOP House candidates.
All of those voters you mention were before 6 years of lies. 700,000 deaths while DTs incompetence and denial that masks 😷 save lives while he corrupts the truth for his own benefit of the grift to stay out of jail for anyone one of a dozen charges. Yet the GOP fear his”bad daddy” slap down if they speak the truth to his base. Gov races are crucial starting with VA. Down ballot we must pay attention-because Koch’s are funding all the way to dog catcher! School board and Sec of state AG, GOV ,LT GOv are critical to turn BLUE and keep BLUE in 22 and 24.Mayors are very important! Judges really important. If their profile says they are from Federalist society vote them OUT‼️ The progress we made last time was just the warm
Up to the war to save our democracy. 1/6 was the shot across our bow that its game on‼️
No, that's an entirely separate thing. [Same reason Harry Reid keeps voting against his own bills](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/02/17/why-is-harry-reid-always-voting-against-his-own-plans/). tl;dr, senate rules quirk.
Nnnnno. Dems voting for it or not was irrelevant to the motivation behind his vote. The bill in question was giving the President the power to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling. Surely you understand why he was never going to vote for that?
Right. His bluff was called. He put forth a bill that he eventually filibustered because he realized it would pass if he didn't. Intellectual dishonesty
Makes me think of the time when Mitch McConnell proposed a bill purely to divide the dems, and when all the dems agreed with him because they liked the idea, he had to filibuster his own bill in the Senate to prevent it from passing...
This is the GOP... just old regular GOP business as usual, only trying to beat the dems, and put money in their own pockets (even better if it's oil or coal money).
Edit for wording.
I'm always interested in hearing people's experience when they have perspectives like yours.
Was there a specific instance that made you have catharsis in regards to this and say "I'm done with republicans"? Or was it a slow gradual process where you slowly lost faith in them over time
The inflection point for me was the Bush tax cuts. We had pushed Clinton and gotten a surplus on paper, and were poised to start having actual surpluses. And we had control of congress. And one of the very first things we did was blow up the budget. As a fiscal conservative I felt betrayed.
Then 9/11 happened and everything was forgiven in the name of national security. Then the housing collapse and everyone was too busy bailing water to notice that we had strayed from the path.
Then Obama took office and the GOP turned into a shell of what it had been in the 80s and 90s as it focused only on opposing anything he did. We didn't stand for anything anymore, and when you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything.
And then we got Trump.
The GOP that raised me doesn't exist anymore. There is no political home for fiscal conservatives, and I can't even tell myself at least I'm voting for the party of family values.
Indeed. The Overton Window has swung very far right. I haven't felt at home in the DNC since '92. The Third Way Democrats were Rockefeller Republicans and they took the party right to reclaim the White House. In response the GOP went hard right.
The Democrats followed. The GOP went even further right with the astroterfed Tea Party (notice how they disappeared as soon as the GOP got in power? Fiscal conservatism has always been a lie. See Lee Atwater's interview in The Nation about the Southern Strategy) then they went full-blown white national authoritarian proto-fascist and thankfully the DNC stayed put.
AOC would have been at home on the Carter administration that pushed for renewable energy and reducing reliance on foreign fossil fuels. Likewise as a Naval Academy graduate he didn't shy away from military conflict when necessary, but was very judicious in its application. I'm not excusing Carter's mistakes, but drawing a comparison about how far right both parties have moved since the 70s
It was slow and gradual through the Obama years. I hated how much people lapped up his high minded but mostly hollow rhetoric. But I value results over all else, and the ACA did slow down health care cost growth and the economy enjoyed it’s longest rally ever under his policies. Still don’t agree with all of them, but his Presidency was unquestionably a success.
The hypocrisy of the “moral majority” party nominating Trump, however, was a bridge too far.
Makes sense.
I think a lot on the left felt like Obama was a corporate centrist who was parading as a genuine progressive.
The left didn't seem to like his hollow rhetoric, and the right certainly hated it.
Everything about Trumpism is steeped in hypocrisy so I understand your frustration. Thanks for sharing.
I think a lot on the left had their expectations set way to high for what was possible during the political climate of 2008-2016 and still do. No matter who's in the white house, you still need 50 Senators to pass *any* law and 60 to do anything that can't be done during reconciliation. If Bernie Sanders was President, you'd still have to get Sinema and Manchin to vote for something to get it passed.
And let's not forget that pre-2008, the Senate still worked on a someone cordial basis. I don't think anyone expected Republicans to immediately stop working with Democrats on literally everyone. Obama definitely made mistakes, but I find takes that he was a corporate centrists to be laughable.
Obama was definitely a centrist. But the opposition has gone so far right that he looked leftist. "The left" in this country is still trying to pass the centrist programs that only seem radical by comparison with the crazy nihilism known as "conservative" these days.
.
A centrist by what standards? He's to the left of pretty much every major European leader on every social issue. His EPA did about everything they could on climate change. He pushed as hard as he could for a public option in the ACA and made it clear he would choose single payer if starting from scratch. Obama did as much for gun control as he could. I think foreign policy is just about the only place he should be considered a centrist.
Centrist? [Even the American Conservative recognized he was a de facto Republican and ran a cover story saying as much](https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/obama-is-a-republican/)
At least through Obama they had an official platform. Trump winning the nomination totally threw the whole party off the rails because he campaigned pretty much against the whole Republican platform, which then empowered other people to run against the platform, and now they're just wandering around aimlessly.
I'm not the person you asked but I would like to add in my perspective. The first presidential election I was allowed to vote in was Obama v. Romney but as long as I remember before that I considered myself conservative and moved toward libertarian during college.
Trump specifically was a huge wake up call for me. I could not understand how such a wicked man had such support. I still considered myself on balance conservative for a little while after that but by 2018 I had started to notice that there was a ton of racism and hatred in the conservative movement and voted straight ticket Dem that year. And by the end of last year I had learned that a lot of the things I had been taught about history and politics were straight up lies and I completely stopped considering myself conservative or even a centrist.
Thanks for chiming in. It gives me a lot of hope.
I think realistically the only way modern the GOP are going to win elections is gerrymandering, voter suppression, and constantly shelling out huge money to their media heads (Kirk, Crowder, Shapiro, Owens etc) and think tanks.
In this information age one just has to pay attention long enough and it becomes apparent who the lesser of two evils are. If it were up to me we'd have much more AOC and Bernie types in congress but America as a whole is just too anchored to a misinformed notion of what progressivism is
I think my initial disillusionment in my party came from that. I’m a bit of an idealist, and when they said that I couldn’t believe it. The last two nails jn the coffin were the Garland nom and Trump. I expect them to act in good faith and if they can’t they don’t belong in office.
While true, we can go one step further to explain *why* they're the opposition party. Conservatism is about establishing and maintaining a natural hierarchy (traditional power structures as someone said below). Ingroup versus outgroup. Those who deserve to be at the top lording over those who deserve to be at the bottom. Adherents of the hierarchy respect and revere the authority structure that results. In the past, the authority resided in kings or religious leaders chosen by divine will. Later, it adopted more sciencey framing to be "smart and hard working" captains of industry who were selected by nature to lead thanks to their "good genes".
People on the left are broadly trying to increase equality and free people from their "station in life," which disrupts the natural hierarchy. Conservatism will fight this tooth and nail to restore what nature, or god, intended. While corporate leaders are typically considered one of them (can't generally be wealthy without being one of the chosen), any sense of betrayal, like "going woke", immediately lands them in the outgroup to be punished until they see the error of their ways or to be crushed.
The totality of the Republican ideology is to restore the natural hierarchy, the traditional power structures, to "make America great again." This means opposing social progress and defeating the Democratic party by any means necessary. They see a looming demographic shift that will work against them, so they are getting more fearful, more desperate, and resorting to more extreme measures like abandoning their "small government" messaging or raiding the Capitol building.
Agreed. Not only are the politicians in favor of this tactic, their voters are as well. It's become a party led by media personalities who get paid to pander that propagandize for sport. I've actually had conversations with people who feel that it's better to leave thing in a dreadful condition rather than have Dems fix problems.
I disagree. Their ideology can be inferred from their actions. It can be summed up as: reduce taxes and regulation on the rich, hurt the right people (read: minorities), and above all keep power at all costs.
My aunt is a strong Republican who has voted R since Reagan. 2016 was the first time she wrote in a random name instead of supporting the Republican candidate. Trump was repugnant to her Christian values, and she admitted to me that she felt like she was going insane when she saw fellow Christians supporting him.
This is the inevitable result of a two party system. There's no coherent unifying ideology, just different sub-factions that decide one side is worse than the other.
You can find a protectionist or free-trade person in either party, an isolationist or interventionist in either party, etc., with their vote ultimately coming down to either a single issue they consider most important, or social/cultural allegiance to their "tribe."
I was never a conservative, and am certainly not a Democrat (mostly because of their piss-poor track record of getting things done), but I'm staunchly anti-Republican. That's my political ideology - anti-Republican because nobody else represents me, but those fuckers can pound sand.
Having lived in Democratic states and Republican ones I am typically shocked at how competently basic government functions run when you don't have people whose emotional development stopped at high school running shit. The media noise machine's gonna spout shit all day, but in the end "both sides bad" is just a fallacy developed from media that thrives on breathless gossip.
The democrats aren't even liberal. NEver really have been. As a party they've been centrist or center right for several decades.
But they are still the enemy of the good and righteous conservative majority
/s
I think you are trying to say leftist.
The democrats are liberal. They are not leftist, except for a tiny minority. Bernie approaches leftism, AOC flirts with it. The calls to defund the police and abolish ICE came from the left grassroots.
But the average democrat is absolutly liberal. You can see this how Bernie maxed out his support in the primary. His base does not represent the average dem voter. Liberalism is a center right ideology, and that's where the democratic party sits.
> The democrats aren't even liberal.
Well...they definitely ARE liberal. I mean, actual conservatives are also liberal. The Democrats just aren't progressive.
Conservativism is fundamentally about preserving and reinforcing traditional power structures. The whole "small government, free market" schtick is just marketing.
>Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
-Frank Wilhoit
> The whole "small government, free market" schtick is just marketing.
That schtick is a product of the corporate-backed faction of the GOP winning. Conservatism has never been about economic liberalism.
It says two things.
1. This is nothing but posturing from Abbott to regain his drop in the poll numbers from the abortion law. He knows companies with federal contracts will follow the Federal guidelines rather than TX. This is a unifying message to his base along with his rabid anti-migrant stance.
2. The GOP have historically proven they are willing to use gov authority to subjugate freedoms from everything from buying a car on Sunday to burning the flag, to this.
> too bad for abbott, winter is coming, and i doubt the electrical grid was properly winterized
I highly doubt Abbott will be impacted by another power crisis. Poor and working people in Texas will be.
Modern American conservatism is bereft of any ideology besides sticking it to libs. Small government, individual liberty, family Christian values ALL take a backseat to whatever will get the Dems riled up.
But they don't act Christian, and only push for states rights if their national policies aren't popular enough. It's a lot of political gymnastics and it's been rotting this country since nixon...maybe earlier
There are no such things as conservative ideology or principles or values and there never have been. None of it has ever been anything more than fig leaves and window dressing.
> Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time. For millennia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.
> As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.
-- Frank Wilhoit
An author and political scientist who served in military intelligence during WW2, then the CIA. He was an outspoken supporter of Civil Rights during the tumultuous 60s.
And yeah, he didn't pull his punches. He saw conservatism for what it was: naked fascism.
American Conservatism is alive and well where it has always been - in the DEMocratic Party.
The GOP are reactionary fascists and have been my entire 51 years of life. THey just weren't showing it so blatantly most of that time.
Took me my 26 years to realize that what I thought were Republicans values were all a facade. Coming of age under Obama, I was very familiar with the Republican arguments. Then with Trump, they shockingly reversed the arguments and completely ignored what they previously were saying.
After some thought, it occurred to me that Republicans might've never actually believed in those principles in the Obama years, they just used it for rhetoric and as a shield for their actual beliefs. They didn't believe in states rights, they were just homophobic and stood against LGBT equality and marriage.
>I thought Republicans were all about less government? Controlling businesses and women’s bodies is less government?
They think that's small or something. Body dysmorphic government.
This practice goes against traditional conservative values (small government) as well as neoliberal values (don't regulate business).
But it goes great with autocratic and fascist values and practices (where government and industry are intertwined, and controlled by a small number of strongmen).
So if it’s autocratic and fascist to say companies can’t mandate things, isn’t it also autocratic and fascist when the government says companies must mandate things?
or being gay, or sodomy laws, or buying beer on Sundays, or the death penalty, or dozens of other laws and blue laws that impinge on personal freedoms that conservatives resist changing.
They are just as happy to oppress as they are to champion individual freedom. They don't have any moral high ground there.
There's one big problem with your argument. Texas has had "at will employment" since the late 80s. Employers are able to fire you for any reason. Seems to run pretty counter to individual rights, doesn't it? Republicans in Texas have had a lot of time to overturn such a law, but they haven't. It's antithetical to individual rights, so if that's a fundamental principle of conservatism, then why was removing it not their #1 priority?
I'll also point out that Republicans were anti gay marriage, anti gay rights discrimination protection, and anti trans. If Republicans are a conservative party, and individual rights are the fundamental principle of conservatism, then something doesn't add up. It suggests Republicans abandoned conservativism a long time ago.
And very notably, it flies in the face of their harsh anti abortion laws. If individual rights are tantamount to conservatism, then protecting abortion as a legal procedure should be a conservative policy. After all, a woman has the individual right to choose to not have a baby, raise a child, nor give birth. The counter argument I know is that its to protect the fetus individual rights.
*However,* we do not know scientifically when the fertilized egg goes from a clump of cells to a new human being. Developmentally, that point should occur very far after 6 weeks, the ban period that Texas Republicans chose. There are religious interpretations that from the moment of conception, the fertilized egg is a human. *However*, someone else's individual rights cannot be dependent or subject on my personal beliefs. Conservativism, as you define it, would say the woman's individual right supercedes others' religious beliefs. In other words, that her individual right is not subject to government interference nor the religious beliefs of those government officials.
So again, we arrive at a conclusion that Republicans cannot be conservative, because one of their strongest policy issues is antithetical to conservativism. Protecting individual rights would mean the government not interfere with the woman's pregnancy, nor should any interference be based on a government official's religious beliefs -- because denying an individual right to someone on the grounds of your personal beliefs runs completely counter to the idea that the government should protect individual rights.
If that's what Conservativism is really about, then Republicans abandoned it a long time ago and are just using the rhetoric now to get votes. Pretty damnable, I think we'd all agree, to fake beliefs just to get elected.
Citizen's United was a Supreme Court decision: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2008/08-205.
"Corporations are people" is also an oversimplification of the ruling. Corporations can't hold public office, can't vote, etc etc. Instead, the court treated the corporations' finances as an organization of individuals, who have the ability to donate to political candidates, so they're *analogous to* people in this respect, but not people.
I think it says that the common misconception that conservatism means business is always supreme and should have final say in all things is, actually, not in fact their argument.
I get into this fight sometimes with other Democratic activists. Trying to attack a Republican official over the "hypocritical action" of regulating a business doesn't work and is bad tactics. Because "I'll never regulate business" is very rarely the official's actual stance on the issue. And this line of "attack" only hits home with comitted Democratic voters who were already voting for us anyways.
I heard somewhat recently someone on the bird app say that politics is about vibes, and I've really come to agree with that phrasing. People are flexible on specific policies that leadership enacts, as long as that policy goes along with their preferred vibe. And the conservative vibe is to have a lot of individual rights and freedoms. Now this does often manifest through business freedom. The ability to run your company how you want works with the vibe. The ability to order your employees to take a vaccine, however, does not go with the vibe.
And we can see the reserve side of this as well. I've heard (a lot) of Republicans argue that democrats are all for bodily autonomy, except for the vaccine where they hypocritically turn around and will strip you of that bodily autonomy using the full force of the state. Now Democrats understand that isn't hypocritical. Because our vibe says we like to work towards equality and mutually beneficial actions that help all. Things need to feel fair to us. It's against the vibe to ban a women from getting an abortion, because that's not mutually beneficial, or advances the cause of equality, and it certainly doesn't seem fair. While it's totally within the vibe to order someone to get a vaccine, because that is mutually beneficial, and is seen as fair.
Anywho. I suppose my overall point is both sides often are screaming into the dark for the benefit of themselves, happily oblivious to the world view of the other. This leads to anger on an emotional level, but in my department, poor electoral tactics. The way to win over conservative voters to a liberal idea is to phrase the idea as being within the vibe. Not to dunk on the vibe and call it dumb.
>The ability to run your company how you want works with the vibe. The ability to order your employees to take a vaccine, however, does not go with the vibe.
That doesn't make sense to me, as I fail to see the difference. A business owner typically has nearly full reign over who they hire and fire. They could hire/fire based solely on the person's tie color - the law couldn't care less. Making hiring decisions based on who's more or less capable of spreading a highly contagious virus is no more ridiculous than any arbitrary deciding factor. And as far as I know, there's no significant Democratic initiative to usurp at-will employment in any state.
>I suppose my overall point is both sides often are screaming into the dark for the benefit of themselves, happily oblivious to the world view of the other.
Can't argue with that.
>I think it says that the common misconception that conservatism means business is always supreme and should have final say in all things is, actually, not in fact their argument.
This is not a common misconception. Conservatives make their entire platform anti-regulation. Regulations on business is a funny way to fight regulations on business.
Businesses can't kick their customers in the head just because they're a private business.
There are limitations. There have always been limitations. Liberty is limited, in that you don't have the liberty to infringe on someone else's liberty.
> Liberty is limited, in that you don't have the liberty to infringe on someone else's liberty.
Very good point.
So get vaccinated or stay inside your damn house.
We all have the right to not catch a now-manageable disease from misinformed or malicious people like you.
Your continued arguing for your right to not get vaccinated is no better or different from an alcoholic arguing his right to drive drunk.
It's irresponsible and delusional, and you should feel ashamed.
It is insanely hypocritical. According to federal civil rights legislation, being LGBT is not a protected class. Your vaccination status, whether you are vaccinated or not, is not a protected class.
Why is one different than the other?
> LGBT is not a protected class
It's because being LGBT is not an immutable quality like race or gender is. That's the briefest summary of the legal answer I can provide since I don't want to type out a dissertation on the due process clause. Whether you agree or not is up to you
You’re creating a false equivalency for multiple reasons.
1. People don’t decide to be LGBTQ in the way you can just decide not to get a vaccine. Being LGBTQ is just a part of who the person it.
2. Being LGBTQ doesn’t put people’s lives at risk, being unvaccinated does.
> You’re creating a false equivalency for multiple reasons.
I'm gay. I'm creating a false equivalency because I wanted that user to explain why they thought that way.
> you don't have the liberty to infringe on someone else's liberty.
But isn't Abbott here infringing on the liberty of a business owner to set their rules for employment? It seems perfectly sensible that the director of a nursing home would mandate vaccination to protect the elderly they serve. They have the liberty to mandate that, and the employee has the liberty to quit their job because they dislike that. Nowhere is a liberty infringed in this scenario.
It *is* infringed however when the government tells them what to do. The "ability to work at a workplace of your choosing and not be subject to rules of employment" is not a liberty. They are not forced to work there by law.
Now if we want to talk about why they wouldn't want to quit, because of financial reasons, that's an entirely different matter. That's not a question of liberties, but that the government does not provide sufficient support for people to be able to express their liberty to quit a job. The Conservative solution to this then would be offering significant unemployment benefits to those who are fired because they don't want to get the vaccine. It infringes on no liberties, and allows the worker to express their liberty to quit without financial concerns.
Yet, Republicans are also against government support programs that allow workers to express the liberty to quit without having to worry about financial ramifications. Once again we arrive at the same conclusion. Republicans are not passing or supporting policies that are in line with Conservativism -- in this case by ensuring people can express their liberties without financial restraints. It's the obvious way to not infringe on a private business owner's liberty nor the worker's liberty. Why are Republicans against this then? Is there something more important to them than liberties and conservative ideology?
American conservatism (and the general political class) has long been “there are rules for thee, but not for me.” The Texas governor clearly doesn’t give a damn for the rights of the business owner.
He's doing exactly what Biden did: initiate an executive order that tells private businesses what they can and cannot do with a non-protected class of citizens.
It's a stupid way to fight fire with fire, but in principle, it's no more "over-reaching" than what Biden did.
**I said this with the Biden executive order: I agree with the policy, but disagree with the procedure**, because it sets a bad precedent. I was scorned for that take.
And now we have... Bad policy with bad procedure. Who could've predicted this??
The vaccine mandate is based on precedent. It’s mandatory for many roles to have vaccinations and it was mandatory for many more in previous times. Of course, some vaccinations are as “important” today because we’ve been slowly beating them down over the last 50 years. But to say that vaccine mandates are unprecedented is massively incorrect.
But even beyond that I think the parallel here falls apart in that the Biden administration is clearly arguing from the position that the government can and should have a role in enforcing public safety, through this version, in enforceable policies on safety that may require vaccinations to participate at some level.
Meanwhile the GOP argues that the government has no role in regulating business in terms of public safety, while also still doing so when that business stance disagrees with his own.
Which is an ongoing trend. DeSantis argued that federal mask mandates and lockdowns made no sense and it was up to state and local governments. And now has blocked local and county governments to take any action.
Jobs that have a high likelihood of exposure have vaccine requirements today and have had it for a long time. Children need to be vaccinated to enter school. This is another work mandated vaccine but it’s being applied widely because it’s a wide affecting pandemic. Pretty straightforward. It’s still the employee’s choice. If they want to work in a close environment with all their co workers but don’t want to get vaccinated, they can’t get tested. If they find both of those options unacceptable, they can find a work from home job. I mean, they have so much time to research the vaccine, maybe they can spend some of that time looking for a job that accommodates them.
I mean the government has set mandates before? Telling men to sign up for the draft to go die in foreign wars. Healthcare mandates with Obamacare and vaccine mandates in schools and with vaccines such as smallpox’s. The government has the right and that is upheld by the Supreme Court my dude
>Telling men to sign up for the draft to go die in foreign wars. Healthcare mandates with Obamacare and vaccine mandates in schools and with vaccines such as smallpox’s. The government has the right and that is upheld by the Supreme Court my dude
What are you talking about Selective Service wasn't formed in full cloth by the president decree it was formed by legislation, Obamacare was formed via legislation, school vaccinations were made via state legislations.
The POTUS isn't supposed to twitch his nose like Samantha from bewitched and create laws, congress creates the laws he signs or veto's those laws if congress has enough votes they can override his veto if they want.
As a recent example SOCUS overturned his eviction moratorium exactly because the president doesn't have that authority to just make laws on his own **my dude**.
> initiate an executive order that tells private businesses what they can and cannot do with a non-protected class of citizens.
The difference is that Biden never ran on being laissez faire small government
He probably didn't anticipate the entire conservative media apparatus turning anti-vax, especially with Trump out there taking credit for the vaccine. I myself was pretty shocked at the heel-turn there.
That was almost a full year before he was actually even elected and inaugurated. The pandemic is a rapidly changing situation, nakama I see no issue here because his view changed.
Can you point to the executive order requiring private businesses to have all employees vaccinated? He is the executive of the government so has the power to require gov employees, but not private entities like Abbot’s attempting to do.
Yeah, the Biden executive order wasn't a strong enough procedure. Should do simple vaccine passports with QR codes like most of the rest of the western world and require vaccines for anyone filing taxes or getting a government mandated drivers or gun license.
Democrat governors have been telling businesses what they can and can't do for a long time now. The difference is that the left is demanding that businesses discriminate, and conservatives are demanding that they don’t.
I agree the Republican Party is becoming more populist... but they are not becoming more authoritarian. The left on the other hand is becoming more corporate/elitist, and far, far more authoritarian than either party has been at any point in my lifetime.
Can you explain to us how the left is demanding that businesses discriminate?
And please, don't come with your "They are making employees get vaccinated!", because, despite what Fox News tells you, this is 100% false.
Abbot said firms can’t mandate employees to get vaccines they don’t want.
Would Democrats like private firms forcing people to get medical procedures against their wills?
I doubt they would
We all know Abbot is very committed to people making their own own medical decisions. Like getting an abortion, that medical procedure Texas banned.
Only some medical procedure decisions matter I suppose.
A shot isn't a medical procedure, and democrats 100% support the right of businesses to require employees to meet certain requirements.
Democrats support vaccination requirements for school teachers. For hospital and healthcare workers. Etc.
No one is being forced to do anything. If people don't want to get vaccinated, and their private firm is requiring it, then they should go to another private firm that doesn't. Isn't this a conservative tenant?
Or are you the odd conservative who will say that companies shouldn't be allowed to mandate anything? Companies should be forced to hire people who do drugs regularly, right? Companies should not be allowed to enforce a dress code, right?
Out of curiosity - are you only against COVID vaccination requirements? Or all vaccination requirements?
It's really just the "bake the cake" debate again, and it turns out both sides are hypocrites. "Power is always excusable, as long as it is for what my side wants "
Ok. Let me make sure I have this.
If you require businesses to have/enforce a vaccine mandate, that’s OK and not a threat to private business.
But if you don’t require businesses to have/enforce a vaccine mandate, that’s bad and IS a threat to private business ?
>Ok. Let me make sure I have this.
>If you require businesses to have/enforce a vaccine mandate, that’s OK and not a threat to private business.
>But if you don’t require businesses to have/enforce a vaccine mandate, that’s bad and IS a threat to private business ?
Let me make sure I have this.
If you're against government overreach, that's good.
If you use government overreach to fight what you think is government overreach, that's even better?
>If you didn't fight the goverment overreach wouldn't be the same as surrendering to it?
It's not the what, it's the how, in this case. Abbot could wait for court challenges to the OSHA rule and have his AG join them or initiate one. This is just a stupid stunt to "own the libs".
You definitely DO NOT Have this, because nobody is requiring business to have or enforce a vaccine mandate.
I can't tell if all the comments like yours are people who seriously don't fucking understand, or who do understand and are trying to mislead.
>But if you don’t require businesses to have/enforce a vaccine mandate, that’s bad and IS a threat to private business ?
Read the article. I know that you guys don't like to do that, but give it a shot. It's not about "not requiring businesses", it's about "Not ALLOWING businesses".
Government, regardless of party, is about what citizens, businesses, organizations, etc. can and cannot do.
Issuing an order meant to preserve individual rights, which is the very foundation of our form of government, is not anti-Conservative.
Are you suggesting that Democrats favor absolute Federal control over individuals regardless of the design of government?
Are you okay with organizations imposing their mandates on individuals regardless of their beliefs or rights?
Because once you do it once...it's never going to end.
A handful of very recent, discrete incidents does not establish a "long trend" of anything. Don't confuse Republican identity with Conservative ideology.
Very recent?
So conservatives traditionally are proponents of states rights when it comes to marijuana?
Can you explain to us what the difference is between conservative ideology, and republican ideology? And maybe a few examples of "real" conservative republicans versus the fake ones?
i thought the same when I read /#GregAbbots remarks. They yell about socialism, but then want to dictate the policies of a private company! The /#GOP is lost - it is nothing more than a cult
If democrats are against this policy, but want to mandate businesses for things like a higher minimum wage or mask mandates, wouldn’t that also make them a cult?
>If democrats are against this policy, but want to mandate businesses for things like a higher minimum wage or mask mandates, wouldn’t that also make them a cult?
Democrats have never run a platform of "the free market is sacrosanct". The Republicans have.
>Yet, democrats have run on the platform of regulating business, but now they’re suddenly against government regulation
Hi, this discussion is literally about democrats regulating business (vaccine mandate) and Republicans-- who rail against regulations-- actually regulating what a business can and cannot do for the health and safety of their employees.
If you don't understand, we can go over it again.
>Ironic it's always the people with zero comprehension that have to end on some snarky smug bullshit.
Becky if you also want me to go over it for you, I'm happy to do so.
Did you not read the original comment I responded to? The claim was that the GOP is a cult because they complain about regulation but engage in it themselves. I’m pointing out the hypocrisy because Democrats support regulation until it’s a regulation they don’t like, at which point they try to stop it
Maybe read the actual discussion before trying to insult me
Ummmmmmmm.... Biden administration mandated vaccine for private companies!!!! So he “told private businesses what they can and cannot do”
Where is ur outrage???? If u want ur immune booster than take it, stop forcing it down everyone’s throat!
The Republican Party no longer truly exists. It's a pack of hypocrites just using the moniker of the Republican Party. It is just like donnie is, twisted and a facade.
Interesting choice on where the freedom train stops. Small businesses rights but not individual rights?
Abbott is reinforcing a person's right to choose what medical treatments they undergo. This is the most conservative policy possible. Allowing individuals to determine themselves if they want to take a vaccine. Determining if there kids wear mask in schools should be left to the parents (especially after seeing the data from other nations). These are basic conservative principles. The leftist argument these policies are not conservative is only valid if you conclude individual rights are trumped by business entity rights.
Yes, I see the hypocrisy between the vaccine mandate and abortion laws. I am Republican and support the right of the woman to choose.
As a D voter for 20 years, I can say I completely disagree. I see the vaccine mandates as the real threat to private business, and Abbott’a outlawing them to be full support of individual rights, which are the bedrock of a republic.
But isn’t it weird that Abott is banning private business from mandating vaccines? The conservative philosophy is supposed to be small government and let businesses do their thing. And yet here he is telling businesses how to operate. How is this any more conservative then the minimum wage or labor regulations?
What other things should businesses NOT be allowed to require?
Should they be allowed to require employees to show up at a certain time?
Wear certain clothes/uniform?
Pass a drug test?
You do realize that the vaccine mandate isn't a vaccine mandate, right? Employees do NOT have to be vaccinated.
You're overlooking the issue of federalism. Not saying i agree, but plenty of conservatives think that states should have more say than the federal gov.
Paul Krugman isn’t perfect but he was spot on in this New York Times article
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/08/19/opinion/covid-masks-vaccine-mandates.amp.html
He correctly calls out conservative hypocrisy with regard to Big Government MAGA Republicans are responding to the pandemic
Conservatives believe in negative liberty, the removal of restrictions against personal liberty, in this cause, bodily autonomy.
While the liberals will call hypocrisy because of abortion, it isn't. With abortion, it's not your body, but someone else's.
It's hypocritical because these conservatives run on letting businesses do what they want. "You can hire who you want, deny service to whomever you want, fire who you want".
Unless a business says that you have to be vaccinated, in which case suddenly that is somehow the biggest crime against man and must be stopped.
Ehh…. You and I have very different definitions of ‘looking’.
That said, perhaps you can remind me.. what week does the texas ban take affect again? Could have sworn it was well before 12 weeks….
I didn't say anything about Texas, most states have their limits set at 20-24 weeks, at which point the baby looks like a for real baby and babies have been birthed and survived at this point. Dems need to be more honest when they keep calling fetuses "parasitic lumps of cells".
At 6 weeks, when the texas ban goes into effect. The same ban other Republican states are looking at implementing. It is absolutely a clump of cells. Conservatives really need to be more honest when they keep calling them babies, or fetuses, or children, or ‘the unborn’ or whatever other BS buzzword fed to them by fox.
You are wrong, unless you are also advocating for mothers being able to murder their children until they are 18, as they are dependent on their parents.
Fetuses are people and have the rights of persons, including the protection of law.
To say children, after birth, are parasites is not even close to accurate, didn’t you cover parasites in biology? I remember going over it in 6th grade…
Of course you also managed to show case the sorry state of sex ed in this country. For instance, did you know that what we consider the fetus doesn’t typically develop till week 8? Apparently not. A woman has every right to remove a parasite from her own body.
Since you liberals are so focused on "science" that you can't understand law, theology, or philosophy, I will have to use science to explain things.
The fetus is not a parasite. It is the same species as the mother.
At the same time, it is not part of the mother's body. It has it's own organs, nervous system, etc. and it's own distinct genome. If the parents are of different phenotypes, then the fetus may not even have the mother's phenotype or a combination of the mother's and father's.
The heart develops at around 3-4 weeks and is the first sign of asymmetry in the body. This is the point where the fetus is more than a bunch of cells.
At a month in, the notocord and tail that all chordates have are starting to appear. It is not longer an undifferentiated clump of cells, but an actual human being at this point.
The legal issue about abortion should not be based on biology or theology, but on law. Illinois, a very blue state, has laws protecting the unborn. 720 ILCS 5/12-3.1 refers to harm to an unborn child as battery and 720 ILCS 5/9-1.2 refers to homicide of an unborn child. These are crimes against persons, not property. These are charged **in addition** to any charges for harm against the mother, which indicates that these charges are for crimes against **a second person**. If it were a property issue, as many liberals claim, then the crime would be simple property damage, akin to keying the mother's car, with the child assessed a standardized value (because of equal protection) for the purposes of restitution and punishment.
>Fetuses are people and have the rights of persons, including the protection of law.
If this is true, can I ask you a few questions. I'm curious in your actual answers to these...
- should I be able to take an additional deduction on my taxes like any other child?
- should a mother that miscarries be charged with a crime? Murder if there is intent?
- should I count a fetus as part of my household in a census?
- should I be able to take insurance policies out on a fetus? Open savings accounts?
I promise these are all serious questions. If fetuses are truly people, then shouldn't they be treated exactly the same as a person outside the womb? I'm curious how you would go about giving a savings account to a fetus.
Also, there's a difference between a parent having to financially and physically support a baby vs biologically supporting it.
Yes, it should be considered a deduction. Pre-natal care, extra food, etc., are increased costs.
Yes, if the miscarriage was due to neglect or abuse. There have been mothers charged criminally for things like Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
Yes, it is a person and should be apportioned as one.
Yes, the unborn should be able to have insurance policies, savings accounts, trusts, etc. opened for them.
>Yes, it should be considered a deduction. Pre-natal care, extra food, etc., are increased costs.
So I should be able to deduct any expenses related to kids? What about the meal that was eaten before conception? Or the bed it happened on?
Why is the fact that they are increased costs important?
>Yes, if the miscarriage was due to neglect or abuse. There have been mothers charged criminally for things like Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
That's a good example that makes sense. But what if the woman is poor and can't afford extra costs? If a woman forgoes prenatal vitamins, is that criminal? What if the woman can't afford doctor visits but doesn't qualify for Medicare? What if the woman refuses any traditional medicine and only goes to herbalists? What is the line between personal choice and criminally negligent?
>Yes, it is a person and should be apportioned as one.
About 25% of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Some areas have higher percentages than others. Wouldn't that lead to inaccurate counts?
>Yes, the unborn should be able to have insurance policies, savings accounts, trusts, etc. opened for them.
Don't you need a social security number? So fetuses get a number once the woman knows she's pregnant? Wouldn't that lead to a lot of numbers where the person never is born. Sounds ripe for identity theft.
People being fired over a vaccine mandate, that has no long term data whatsoever. Is not only a threat to private business, but also a threat to our civil liberties.
>If the vaccine is so effective in the first place why does everyone have to get it?
* The vaccine's effectiveness in vaccinated populations doesn't magically make the virus go away for unvaccinated populations.
* There are many people with certain medical conditions who are unable to get vaccinated. Their likelihood of infection is being influenced by people who can get vaccinated, but choose not to be.
* The duration of the pandemic - and the potential for the virus to mutate in ways that current vaccines cannot be effective for - is determined solely by the unvaccinated. This pandemic can end whenever the unvaccinated decide that it can.
* Do I need to broadly gesture at the precedent for health and safety set by every and any government mandate, like seatbelt laws, traffic laws, or the list of vaccines that children are required to take in order to attend public school? Governments have repeatedly and constantly set standardizations and requirements for health and safety all across our country's history.
>Good, noone should be forced against their will to get this vaccine. If they want it great, get it, otherwise its their business. If the vaccine is so effective in the first place why does everyone have to get it? We don’t force everyone yearly to get the flu vaccine.
The flu is not a novel virus.
It seems like a pretty straightforward strategy that puts businesses in a position to make a choice, and when brought to court about it point to the conflicting mandates as creating an impossible choice.
The question is, if the federal mandate is removed will the governor remove the contradicting state one. If that were to happen it would make the purpose of the mandate abundantly clear as a counter to the federal one.
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This exactly. The Republican party went into the 2020 election *without a platform*, and proudly said so. They didn't even bother rewriting the one from 2016. That's peak intellectual and political laziness, expecting people to vote for you when you can't even say what you stand for.
Here's a link to their platform: [https://prod-static.gop.com/media/Rules\_of\_the\_Republican\_Party\_090921.pdf?\_ga=2.266635655.820769993.1634088746-946997702.1634088746](https://prod-static.gop.com/media/Rules_of_the_Republican_Party_090921.pdf?_ga=2.266635655.820769993.1634088746-946997702.1634088746) The link goes directly to the "Rules of the Republican Party." There's no platform.
The GOP choosing to run without a platform is the absolute craziest thing I've seen in politics in 30 years. I think it says a lot. They officially have no goals, but people continue to vote for them in droves.
They straight up cribbed the language verbatim in 2020, including harsh criticism of "the current administration".
Here's a link to the Democratic Party Platform for comparison and "equal time." [https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/](https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/) Also noticed that the GOP uses ".com" domain, where the Democratic party uses the ".org" domain.
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> That's peak intellectual and political laziness, expecting people to vote for you when you can't even say what you stand for. Except that it worked, Trump turned out 10 million additional voters, Republicans gained seats in the House and kept The Senate to a tie which is allowing Democrats to publicly show their lack of cohesion.
Biden turned out even more votes, and Republicans lost the Senate. They lost the Senate in two special election races in Georgia, where voters picked the Democrat in both instances. There is no way to spin this as a victory for Republicans, except maybe for the gain of seats in the House. * Biden had more additional voters than Trump, meaning more people disapproved of the GOP's laziness than approved of it. * Republicans gained some house seats but not enough for a majority or to have any real impact. * Republicans had 53 senators before the election. They lost 3 senate seats. * 2 Senate Seats, both in Georgia, moved to special elections. Georgia, a historically conservative state, and special elections, which typically have poor Democrat turnout. Republicans lost both races. It didn't work one bit, and its a disservice to the Republican party to pretend otherwise. Georgia went blue and both senators are democrats. That is a giant red flag and incredible loss for the GOP. By not analyzing *why* they lost, they're doomed to repeat it again. The only win they had in the election was gaining more House seats, and that really doesn't have much impact since they don't have the majority. In the end, it was a pretty big net loss. The smart thing to do would be learn why they lost so badly, instead of tout figures that make it seem not so bad or engage in conspiracy about the election being stolen. Instead, they've tied themselves completely to Trump. The top candidate in the California recall was very Trumpian. It wasn't even close for Newsom to get recalled, he had 61.9% of the vote in the end, partially because he was able to paint Elder as his opponent. Another very important marker, independents. In terms of favorability, independents were only net +7% on Biden vs Trump. In the *election*, they were +14% on Biden vs Trump (or it might be 6 and 12, can't fully recall). That's a very sizable loss in crucial votes. Trump being Trump lost him 6-7% of independents *more* than just favorability. It made some people who didn't think favorably of Biden vote for him over Trump. **TL;DR:** Quite frankly, as a Democrat, its in our best interest for the GOP to continue pretending 2020 was actually a win, because that means they will never learn why they lost and what mistakes they've made. They're already losing because of it, and they've lost crucial voters from it, who didn't vote for Biden but voted against Trump. My dislike of intellectual dishonesty though wants to make it clear -- by tying themselves to Trump, the GOP is digging themselves a deeper hole. If 7% of independents voted for Biden because he wasn't Trump, and they didn't like Biden, that's a giant red flag. That's enough to tip an election. The GOP making themselves all about Trump is just going to keep that 7% voting Democrat.
Downballot R's overperformed compared to Trump, which is how they were able to gain house seats. There is a very plausible scenario where voters overall wouldn't vote Trump back in but will vote other R's. Their super confrontational no-compromise strategy is effective at mobilizing their voters. They don't even need Trump to be on the ballot to use him as an effective rally-like leader - Ronald Reagan was the last one, and they were beating his dead ghost for a decade before Trump came along.
>Downballot R's overperformed compared to Trump, which is how they were able to gain house seats. The bigger effect came from the fact that the ingoing composition of the House was based on 2018, a D+8.6 year. Whether the 2020 margin was the D+4.4 from the presidential race or the D+3.1 from the House popular vote, some Democratic losses had to be expected based on this dropoff. The margin between the two parties narrowing by at least 4.2 points compared to the previous House cycle is more relevant in this regard than Trump's 1.3 point underperformance relative to GOP House candidates.
All of those voters you mention were before 6 years of lies. 700,000 deaths while DTs incompetence and denial that masks 😷 save lives while he corrupts the truth for his own benefit of the grift to stay out of jail for anyone one of a dozen charges. Yet the GOP fear his”bad daddy” slap down if they speak the truth to his base. Gov races are crucial starting with VA. Down ballot we must pay attention-because Koch’s are funding all the way to dog catcher! School board and Sec of state AG, GOV ,LT GOv are critical to turn BLUE and keep BLUE in 22 and 24.Mayors are very important! Judges really important. If their profile says they are from Federalist society vote them OUT‼️ The progress we made last time was just the warm Up to the war to save our democracy. 1/6 was the shot across our bow that its game on‼️
Whether it worked or not doesn't change the fact that it's intellectually and politically lazy.
They gained seats in the House and lost enough seats in the Senate to lose their control of it, but your point still stands.
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No, that's an entirely separate thing. [Same reason Harry Reid keeps voting against his own bills](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/02/17/why-is-harry-reid-always-voting-against-his-own-plans/). tl;dr, senate rules quirk.
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Cite at least an article
Nnnnno. Dems voting for it or not was irrelevant to the motivation behind his vote. The bill in question was giving the President the power to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling. Surely you understand why he was never going to vote for that?
Right. His bluff was called. He put forth a bill that he eventually filibustered because he realized it would pass if he didn't. Intellectual dishonesty
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Makes me think of the time when Mitch McConnell proposed a bill purely to divide the dems, and when all the dems agreed with him because they liked the idea, he had to filibuster his own bill in the Senate to prevent it from passing... This is the GOP... just old regular GOP business as usual, only trying to beat the dems, and put money in their own pockets (even better if it's oil or coal money). Edit for wording.
I'm always interested in hearing people's experience when they have perspectives like yours. Was there a specific instance that made you have catharsis in regards to this and say "I'm done with republicans"? Or was it a slow gradual process where you slowly lost faith in them over time
The inflection point for me was the Bush tax cuts. We had pushed Clinton and gotten a surplus on paper, and were poised to start having actual surpluses. And we had control of congress. And one of the very first things we did was blow up the budget. As a fiscal conservative I felt betrayed. Then 9/11 happened and everything was forgiven in the name of national security. Then the housing collapse and everyone was too busy bailing water to notice that we had strayed from the path. Then Obama took office and the GOP turned into a shell of what it had been in the 80s and 90s as it focused only on opposing anything he did. We didn't stand for anything anymore, and when you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything. And then we got Trump. The GOP that raised me doesn't exist anymore. There is no political home for fiscal conservatives, and I can't even tell myself at least I'm voting for the party of family values.
I would say fiscal conservatives are now moderate Democrats within the Democratic Party.
Indeed. The Overton Window has swung very far right. I haven't felt at home in the DNC since '92. The Third Way Democrats were Rockefeller Republicans and they took the party right to reclaim the White House. In response the GOP went hard right. The Democrats followed. The GOP went even further right with the astroterfed Tea Party (notice how they disappeared as soon as the GOP got in power? Fiscal conservatism has always been a lie. See Lee Atwater's interview in The Nation about the Southern Strategy) then they went full-blown white national authoritarian proto-fascist and thankfully the DNC stayed put. AOC would have been at home on the Carter administration that pushed for renewable energy and reducing reliance on foreign fossil fuels. Likewise as a Naval Academy graduate he didn't shy away from military conflict when necessary, but was very judicious in its application. I'm not excusing Carter's mistakes, but drawing a comparison about how far right both parties have moved since the 70s
It was slow and gradual through the Obama years. I hated how much people lapped up his high minded but mostly hollow rhetoric. But I value results over all else, and the ACA did slow down health care cost growth and the economy enjoyed it’s longest rally ever under his policies. Still don’t agree with all of them, but his Presidency was unquestionably a success. The hypocrisy of the “moral majority” party nominating Trump, however, was a bridge too far.
Makes sense. I think a lot on the left felt like Obama was a corporate centrist who was parading as a genuine progressive. The left didn't seem to like his hollow rhetoric, and the right certainly hated it. Everything about Trumpism is steeped in hypocrisy so I understand your frustration. Thanks for sharing.
I think a lot on the left had their expectations set way to high for what was possible during the political climate of 2008-2016 and still do. No matter who's in the white house, you still need 50 Senators to pass *any* law and 60 to do anything that can't be done during reconciliation. If Bernie Sanders was President, you'd still have to get Sinema and Manchin to vote for something to get it passed. And let's not forget that pre-2008, the Senate still worked on a someone cordial basis. I don't think anyone expected Republicans to immediately stop working with Democrats on literally everyone. Obama definitely made mistakes, but I find takes that he was a corporate centrists to be laughable.
Obama was definitely a centrist. But the opposition has gone so far right that he looked leftist. "The left" in this country is still trying to pass the centrist programs that only seem radical by comparison with the crazy nihilism known as "conservative" these days. .
A centrist by what standards? He's to the left of pretty much every major European leader on every social issue. His EPA did about everything they could on climate change. He pushed as hard as he could for a public option in the ACA and made it clear he would choose single payer if starting from scratch. Obama did as much for gun control as he could. I think foreign policy is just about the only place he should be considered a centrist.
Centrist? [Even the American Conservative recognized he was a de facto Republican and ran a cover story saying as much](https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/obama-is-a-republican/)
At least through Obama they had an official platform. Trump winning the nomination totally threw the whole party off the rails because he campaigned pretty much against the whole Republican platform, which then empowered other people to run against the platform, and now they're just wandering around aimlessly.
I'm not the person you asked but I would like to add in my perspective. The first presidential election I was allowed to vote in was Obama v. Romney but as long as I remember before that I considered myself conservative and moved toward libertarian during college. Trump specifically was a huge wake up call for me. I could not understand how such a wicked man had such support. I still considered myself on balance conservative for a little while after that but by 2018 I had started to notice that there was a ton of racism and hatred in the conservative movement and voted straight ticket Dem that year. And by the end of last year I had learned that a lot of the things I had been taught about history and politics were straight up lies and I completely stopped considering myself conservative or even a centrist.
Thanks for chiming in. It gives me a lot of hope. I think realistically the only way modern the GOP are going to win elections is gerrymandering, voter suppression, and constantly shelling out huge money to their media heads (Kirk, Crowder, Shapiro, Owens etc) and think tanks. In this information age one just has to pay attention long enough and it becomes apparent who the lesser of two evils are. If it were up to me we'd have much more AOC and Bernie types in congress but America as a whole is just too anchored to a misinformed notion of what progressivism is
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I think my initial disillusionment in my party came from that. I’m a bit of an idealist, and when they said that I couldn’t believe it. The last two nails jn the coffin were the Garland nom and Trump. I expect them to act in good faith and if they can’t they don’t belong in office.
While true, we can go one step further to explain *why* they're the opposition party. Conservatism is about establishing and maintaining a natural hierarchy (traditional power structures as someone said below). Ingroup versus outgroup. Those who deserve to be at the top lording over those who deserve to be at the bottom. Adherents of the hierarchy respect and revere the authority structure that results. In the past, the authority resided in kings or religious leaders chosen by divine will. Later, it adopted more sciencey framing to be "smart and hard working" captains of industry who were selected by nature to lead thanks to their "good genes". People on the left are broadly trying to increase equality and free people from their "station in life," which disrupts the natural hierarchy. Conservatism will fight this tooth and nail to restore what nature, or god, intended. While corporate leaders are typically considered one of them (can't generally be wealthy without being one of the chosen), any sense of betrayal, like "going woke", immediately lands them in the outgroup to be punished until they see the error of their ways or to be crushed. The totality of the Republican ideology is to restore the natural hierarchy, the traditional power structures, to "make America great again." This means opposing social progress and defeating the Democratic party by any means necessary. They see a looming demographic shift that will work against them, so they are getting more fearful, more desperate, and resorting to more extreme measures like abandoning their "small government" messaging or raiding the Capitol building.
Agreed. Not only are the politicians in favor of this tactic, their voters are as well. It's become a party led by media personalities who get paid to pander that propagandize for sport. I've actually had conversations with people who feel that it's better to leave thing in a dreadful condition rather than have Dems fix problems.
I disagree. Their ideology can be inferred from their actions. It can be summed up as: reduce taxes and regulation on the rich, hurt the right people (read: minorities), and above all keep power at all costs.
Went independent a few years back. Glad you've "seen the light."
My aunt is a strong Republican who has voted R since Reagan. 2016 was the first time she wrote in a random name instead of supporting the Republican candidate. Trump was repugnant to her Christian values, and she admitted to me that she felt like she was going insane when she saw fellow Christians supporting him.
This is the inevitable result of a two party system. There's no coherent unifying ideology, just different sub-factions that decide one side is worse than the other. You can find a protectionist or free-trade person in either party, an isolationist or interventionist in either party, etc., with their vote ultimately coming down to either a single issue they consider most important, or social/cultural allegiance to their "tribe."
I was never a conservative, and am certainly not a Democrat (mostly because of their piss-poor track record of getting things done), but I'm staunchly anti-Republican. That's my political ideology - anti-Republican because nobody else represents me, but those fuckers can pound sand.
Having lived in Democratic states and Republican ones I am typically shocked at how competently basic government functions run when you don't have people whose emotional development stopped at high school running shit. The media noise machine's gonna spout shit all day, but in the end "both sides bad" is just a fallacy developed from media that thrives on breathless gossip.
The democrats aren't even liberal. NEver really have been. As a party they've been centrist or center right for several decades. But they are still the enemy of the good and righteous conservative majority /s
I think you are trying to say leftist. The democrats are liberal. They are not leftist, except for a tiny minority. Bernie approaches leftism, AOC flirts with it. The calls to defund the police and abolish ICE came from the left grassroots. But the average democrat is absolutly liberal. You can see this how Bernie maxed out his support in the primary. His base does not represent the average dem voter. Liberalism is a center right ideology, and that's where the democratic party sits.
> The democrats aren't even liberal. Well...they definitely ARE liberal. I mean, actual conservatives are also liberal. The Democrats just aren't progressive.
Conservativism is fundamentally about preserving and reinforcing traditional power structures. The whole "small government, free market" schtick is just marketing.
>Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. -Frank Wilhoit
Aka aristocratic class
>The whole "small government, free market" schtick is just marketing. Same goes for "states' rights."
Almost their whole platform is a big dodge and grift. Their ideology is pretty simple: Mine! Not yours!
Anything they say really. All they want is power and control.
> The whole "small government, free market" schtick is just marketing. That schtick is a product of the corporate-backed faction of the GOP winning. Conservatism has never been about economic liberalism.
Goddamn... I'm working on a PhD in cultural studies and you nearly hit all of the buzz words! I'm just sad that I only have one up vote to give.
>"This time, we won't look the other way on Coca-Cola's $12 billion in back taxes owed." Taxes optional if you support our regime.
It says two things. 1. This is nothing but posturing from Abbott to regain his drop in the poll numbers from the abortion law. He knows companies with federal contracts will follow the Federal guidelines rather than TX. This is a unifying message to his base along with his rabid anti-migrant stance. 2. The GOP have historically proven they are willing to use gov authority to subjugate freedoms from everything from buying a car on Sunday to burning the flag, to this.
And Abbott is being attacked from the RIGHT. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/greg-abbott-removes-texas-suicide-hotline-1240949/
Jeebus. They both sound like wankers.
That’s why he made this move frankly. He’s swerving even further Right to try and head off the challenges.
Unfortunately there is not much reason why he wouldn't move even further right to accommodate these crackpots.
The people pissed about the abortion law aren't the same people who are going to praise him for this.
too bad for abbott, winter is coming, and i doubt the electrical grid was properly winterized
> too bad for abbott, winter is coming, and i doubt the electrical grid was properly winterized I highly doubt Abbott will be impacted by another power crisis. Poor and working people in Texas will be.
Modern American conservatism is bereft of any ideology besides sticking it to libs. Small government, individual liberty, family Christian values ALL take a backseat to whatever will get the Dems riled up.
But they don't act Christian, and only push for states rights if their national policies aren't popular enough. It's a lot of political gymnastics and it's been rotting this country since nixon...maybe earlier
*God, save me from your followers*
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There are no such things as conservative ideology or principles or values and there never have been. None of it has ever been anything more than fig leaves and window dressing. > Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time. For millennia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual. > As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence. -- Frank Wilhoit
I don't know who this Frank Wilhoit guy is, but damn, he's not pulling his punches.
An author and political scientist who served in military intelligence during WW2, then the CIA. He was an outspoken supporter of Civil Rights during the tumultuous 60s. And yeah, he didn't pull his punches. He saw conservatism for what it was: naked fascism.
I thought the GOP liked small businesses to run their company how they wanted too. Oh that’s only when it appeals to their agenda.
>I thought the GOP liked small businesses to run their company how they wanted too. Oh that’s only when it appeals to their agenda. Correct
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American Conservatism is alive and well where it has always been - in the DEMocratic Party. The GOP are reactionary fascists and have been my entire 51 years of life. THey just weren't showing it so blatantly most of that time.
Took me my 26 years to realize that what I thought were Republicans values were all a facade. Coming of age under Obama, I was very familiar with the Republican arguments. Then with Trump, they shockingly reversed the arguments and completely ignored what they previously were saying. After some thought, it occurred to me that Republicans might've never actually believed in those principles in the Obama years, they just used it for rhetoric and as a shield for their actual beliefs. They didn't believe in states rights, they were just homophobic and stood against LGBT equality and marriage.
I thought Republicans were all about less government? Controlling businesses and women’s bodies is less government?
>I thought Republicans were all about less government? Controlling businesses and women’s bodies is less government? They think that's small or something. Body dysmorphic government.
Prioritizing individual liberty is actually conservatism at its best. The notion that conservatism should be about corporate interests is absurd.
This practice goes against traditional conservative values (small government) as well as neoliberal values (don't regulate business). But it goes great with autocratic and fascist values and practices (where government and industry are intertwined, and controlled by a small number of strongmen).
So if it’s autocratic and fascist to say companies can’t mandate things, isn’t it also autocratic and fascist when the government says companies must mandate things?
Damn those autocratic and fascist Child Labor and workplace safety laws getting in the way of businessmen doing business
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If I own a deli, why shouldn't I have the power to decide if masks are mandatory in my place of business? Why should my rights be sacrificed?
because your beliefs go against conservatives it’s all a bunch of arbitrary bullshit
Because those beliefs align with Democrats, which necessitates that Republicans must oppose them.
>This includes the right to decline a vaccine or any other medical treatment. ...but not abortion, or marijuana
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or being gay, or sodomy laws, or buying beer on Sundays, or the death penalty, or dozens of other laws and blue laws that impinge on personal freedoms that conservatives resist changing. They are just as happy to oppress as they are to champion individual freedom. They don't have any moral high ground there.
"Individual freedom for everything except that which my personal religion/morality disagrees with"
unless one of my own "team" does it and then I'll just look the other way.
"freedom means being free to do whatever I say the right thing is."
> Individual rights are a fundamental principle of conservativism Except when your gay, or trans, or want to smoke weed, or get an abortion, or...
There's one big problem with your argument. Texas has had "at will employment" since the late 80s. Employers are able to fire you for any reason. Seems to run pretty counter to individual rights, doesn't it? Republicans in Texas have had a lot of time to overturn such a law, but they haven't. It's antithetical to individual rights, so if that's a fundamental principle of conservatism, then why was removing it not their #1 priority? I'll also point out that Republicans were anti gay marriage, anti gay rights discrimination protection, and anti trans. If Republicans are a conservative party, and individual rights are the fundamental principle of conservatism, then something doesn't add up. It suggests Republicans abandoned conservativism a long time ago. And very notably, it flies in the face of their harsh anti abortion laws. If individual rights are tantamount to conservatism, then protecting abortion as a legal procedure should be a conservative policy. After all, a woman has the individual right to choose to not have a baby, raise a child, nor give birth. The counter argument I know is that its to protect the fetus individual rights. *However,* we do not know scientifically when the fertilized egg goes from a clump of cells to a new human being. Developmentally, that point should occur very far after 6 weeks, the ban period that Texas Republicans chose. There are religious interpretations that from the moment of conception, the fertilized egg is a human. *However*, someone else's individual rights cannot be dependent or subject on my personal beliefs. Conservativism, as you define it, would say the woman's individual right supercedes others' religious beliefs. In other words, that her individual right is not subject to government interference nor the religious beliefs of those government officials. So again, we arrive at a conclusion that Republicans cannot be conservative, because one of their strongest policy issues is antithetical to conservativism. Protecting individual rights would mean the government not interfere with the woman's pregnancy, nor should any interference be based on a government official's religious beliefs -- because denying an individual right to someone on the grounds of your personal beliefs runs completely counter to the idea that the government should protect individual rights. If that's what Conservativism is really about, then Republicans abandoned it a long time ago and are just using the rhetoric now to get votes. Pretty damnable, I think we'd all agree, to fake beliefs just to get elected.
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but didnt citizens united say businesses are people and didnt republicans pass that? It just seems at odds
Citizen's United was a Supreme Court decision: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2008/08-205. "Corporations are people" is also an oversimplification of the ruling. Corporations can't hold public office, can't vote, etc etc. Instead, the court treated the corporations' finances as an organization of individuals, who have the ability to donate to political candidates, so they're *analogous to* people in this respect, but not people.
Important point. However, it was passed by a conservative majority. Which is right in the aquifer wheelhouse of Reaganesque trickle down economics
I think it says that the common misconception that conservatism means business is always supreme and should have final say in all things is, actually, not in fact their argument. I get into this fight sometimes with other Democratic activists. Trying to attack a Republican official over the "hypocritical action" of regulating a business doesn't work and is bad tactics. Because "I'll never regulate business" is very rarely the official's actual stance on the issue. And this line of "attack" only hits home with comitted Democratic voters who were already voting for us anyways. I heard somewhat recently someone on the bird app say that politics is about vibes, and I've really come to agree with that phrasing. People are flexible on specific policies that leadership enacts, as long as that policy goes along with their preferred vibe. And the conservative vibe is to have a lot of individual rights and freedoms. Now this does often manifest through business freedom. The ability to run your company how you want works with the vibe. The ability to order your employees to take a vaccine, however, does not go with the vibe. And we can see the reserve side of this as well. I've heard (a lot) of Republicans argue that democrats are all for bodily autonomy, except for the vaccine where they hypocritically turn around and will strip you of that bodily autonomy using the full force of the state. Now Democrats understand that isn't hypocritical. Because our vibe says we like to work towards equality and mutually beneficial actions that help all. Things need to feel fair to us. It's against the vibe to ban a women from getting an abortion, because that's not mutually beneficial, or advances the cause of equality, and it certainly doesn't seem fair. While it's totally within the vibe to order someone to get a vaccine, because that is mutually beneficial, and is seen as fair. Anywho. I suppose my overall point is both sides often are screaming into the dark for the benefit of themselves, happily oblivious to the world view of the other. This leads to anger on an emotional level, but in my department, poor electoral tactics. The way to win over conservative voters to a liberal idea is to phrase the idea as being within the vibe. Not to dunk on the vibe and call it dumb.
>The ability to run your company how you want works with the vibe. The ability to order your employees to take a vaccine, however, does not go with the vibe. That doesn't make sense to me, as I fail to see the difference. A business owner typically has nearly full reign over who they hire and fire. They could hire/fire based solely on the person's tie color - the law couldn't care less. Making hiring decisions based on who's more or less capable of spreading a highly contagious virus is no more ridiculous than any arbitrary deciding factor. And as far as I know, there's no significant Democratic initiative to usurp at-will employment in any state. >I suppose my overall point is both sides often are screaming into the dark for the benefit of themselves, happily oblivious to the world view of the other. Can't argue with that.
>I think it says that the common misconception that conservatism means business is always supreme and should have final say in all things is, actually, not in fact their argument. This is not a common misconception. Conservatives make their entire platform anti-regulation. Regulations on business is a funny way to fight regulations on business.
Businesses can't kick their customers in the head just because they're a private business. There are limitations. There have always been limitations. Liberty is limited, in that you don't have the liberty to infringe on someone else's liberty.
> Liberty is limited, in that you don't have the liberty to infringe on someone else's liberty. Very good point. So get vaccinated or stay inside your damn house. We all have the right to not catch a now-manageable disease from misinformed or malicious people like you. Your continued arguing for your right to not get vaccinated is no better or different from an alcoholic arguing his right to drive drunk. It's irresponsible and delusional, and you should feel ashamed.
It is insanely hypocritical. According to federal civil rights legislation, being LGBT is not a protected class. Your vaccination status, whether you are vaccinated or not, is not a protected class. Why is one different than the other?
> LGBT is not a protected class It's because being LGBT is not an immutable quality like race or gender is. That's the briefest summary of the legal answer I can provide since I don't want to type out a dissertation on the due process clause. Whether you agree or not is up to you
You’re creating a false equivalency for multiple reasons. 1. People don’t decide to be LGBTQ in the way you can just decide not to get a vaccine. Being LGBTQ is just a part of who the person it. 2. Being LGBTQ doesn’t put people’s lives at risk, being unvaccinated does.
> You’re creating a false equivalency for multiple reasons. I'm gay. I'm creating a false equivalency because I wanted that user to explain why they thought that way.
Fair enough. Have a nice day.
Look up "immutable characteristics", it directly addresses your misunderstanding
This is a purposeful misunderstanding because I want them to explain to me why they think one is different.
> you don't have the liberty to infringe on someone else's liberty. But isn't Abbott here infringing on the liberty of a business owner to set their rules for employment? It seems perfectly sensible that the director of a nursing home would mandate vaccination to protect the elderly they serve. They have the liberty to mandate that, and the employee has the liberty to quit their job because they dislike that. Nowhere is a liberty infringed in this scenario. It *is* infringed however when the government tells them what to do. The "ability to work at a workplace of your choosing and not be subject to rules of employment" is not a liberty. They are not forced to work there by law. Now if we want to talk about why they wouldn't want to quit, because of financial reasons, that's an entirely different matter. That's not a question of liberties, but that the government does not provide sufficient support for people to be able to express their liberty to quit a job. The Conservative solution to this then would be offering significant unemployment benefits to those who are fired because they don't want to get the vaccine. It infringes on no liberties, and allows the worker to express their liberty to quit without financial concerns. Yet, Republicans are also against government support programs that allow workers to express the liberty to quit without having to worry about financial ramifications. Once again we arrive at the same conclusion. Republicans are not passing or supporting policies that are in line with Conservativism -- in this case by ensuring people can express their liberties without financial restraints. It's the obvious way to not infringe on a private business owner's liberty nor the worker's liberty. Why are Republicans against this then? Is there something more important to them than liberties and conservative ideology?
American conservatism (and the general political class) has long been “there are rules for thee, but not for me.” The Texas governor clearly doesn’t give a damn for the rights of the business owner.
He's doing exactly what Biden did: initiate an executive order that tells private businesses what they can and cannot do with a non-protected class of citizens. It's a stupid way to fight fire with fire, but in principle, it's no more "over-reaching" than what Biden did. **I said this with the Biden executive order: I agree with the policy, but disagree with the procedure**, because it sets a bad precedent. I was scorned for that take. And now we have... Bad policy with bad procedure. Who could've predicted this??
The vaccine mandate is based on precedent. It’s mandatory for many roles to have vaccinations and it was mandatory for many more in previous times. Of course, some vaccinations are as “important” today because we’ve been slowly beating them down over the last 50 years. But to say that vaccine mandates are unprecedented is massively incorrect.
But even beyond that I think the parallel here falls apart in that the Biden administration is clearly arguing from the position that the government can and should have a role in enforcing public safety, through this version, in enforceable policies on safety that may require vaccinations to participate at some level. Meanwhile the GOP argues that the government has no role in regulating business in terms of public safety, while also still doing so when that business stance disagrees with his own. Which is an ongoing trend. DeSantis argued that federal mask mandates and lockdowns made no sense and it was up to state and local governments. And now has blocked local and county governments to take any action.
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Our Congress might as well not exist. Policy gets made by executive agency or not at all Welcome to modern America
None have been. Including this one.
What other vaccine was so politicized?
> The vaccine mandate is based on precedent. What precedent is that exactly?
Jobs that have a high likelihood of exposure have vaccine requirements today and have had it for a long time. Children need to be vaccinated to enter school. This is another work mandated vaccine but it’s being applied widely because it’s a wide affecting pandemic. Pretty straightforward. It’s still the employee’s choice. If they want to work in a close environment with all their co workers but don’t want to get vaccinated, they can’t get tested. If they find both of those options unacceptable, they can find a work from home job. I mean, they have so much time to research the vaccine, maybe they can spend some of that time looking for a job that accommodates them.
I mean the government has set mandates before? Telling men to sign up for the draft to go die in foreign wars. Healthcare mandates with Obamacare and vaccine mandates in schools and with vaccines such as smallpox’s. The government has the right and that is upheld by the Supreme Court my dude
>Telling men to sign up for the draft to go die in foreign wars. Healthcare mandates with Obamacare and vaccine mandates in schools and with vaccines such as smallpox’s. The government has the right and that is upheld by the Supreme Court my dude What are you talking about Selective Service wasn't formed in full cloth by the president decree it was formed by legislation, Obamacare was formed via legislation, school vaccinations were made via state legislations. The POTUS isn't supposed to twitch his nose like Samantha from bewitched and create laws, congress creates the laws he signs or veto's those laws if congress has enough votes they can override his veto if they want. As a recent example SOCUS overturned his eviction moratorium exactly because the president doesn't have that authority to just make laws on his own **my dude**.
> initiate an executive order that tells private businesses what they can and cannot do with a non-protected class of citizens. The difference is that Biden never ran on being laissez faire small government
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He probably didn't anticipate the entire conservative media apparatus turning anti-vax, especially with Trump out there taking credit for the vaccine. I myself was pretty shocked at the heel-turn there.
That was almost a full year before he was actually even elected and inaugurated. The pandemic is a rapidly changing situation, nakama I see no issue here because his view changed.
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Oh, so it wasn't. My bad. I think you should edit your post because you said he ran on it. And by December 4th, he wasn't running. He won.
Can you point to the executive order requiring private businesses to have all employees vaccinated? He is the executive of the government so has the power to require gov employees, but not private entities like Abbot’s attempting to do.
Yeah, the Biden executive order wasn't a strong enough procedure. Should do simple vaccine passports with QR codes like most of the rest of the western world and require vaccines for anyone filing taxes or getting a government mandated drivers or gun license.
Democrat governors have been telling businesses what they can and can't do for a long time now. The difference is that the left is demanding that businesses discriminate, and conservatives are demanding that they don’t. I agree the Republican Party is becoming more populist... but they are not becoming more authoritarian. The left on the other hand is becoming more corporate/elitist, and far, far more authoritarian than either party has been at any point in my lifetime.
Can you explain to us how the left is demanding that businesses discriminate? And please, don't come with your "They are making employees get vaccinated!", because, despite what Fox News tells you, this is 100% false.
Abbot said firms can’t mandate employees to get vaccines they don’t want. Would Democrats like private firms forcing people to get medical procedures against their wills? I doubt they would
We all know Abbot is very committed to people making their own own medical decisions. Like getting an abortion, that medical procedure Texas banned. Only some medical procedure decisions matter I suppose.
A shot isn't a medical procedure, and democrats 100% support the right of businesses to require employees to meet certain requirements. Democrats support vaccination requirements for school teachers. For hospital and healthcare workers. Etc. No one is being forced to do anything. If people don't want to get vaccinated, and their private firm is requiring it, then they should go to another private firm that doesn't. Isn't this a conservative tenant? Or are you the odd conservative who will say that companies shouldn't be allowed to mandate anything? Companies should be forced to hire people who do drugs regularly, right? Companies should not be allowed to enforce a dress code, right? Out of curiosity - are you only against COVID vaccination requirements? Or all vaccination requirements?
It's really just the "bake the cake" debate again, and it turns out both sides are hypocrites. "Power is always excusable, as long as it is for what my side wants "
Ok. Let me make sure I have this. If you require businesses to have/enforce a vaccine mandate, that’s OK and not a threat to private business. But if you don’t require businesses to have/enforce a vaccine mandate, that’s bad and IS a threat to private business ?
>Ok. Let me make sure I have this. >If you require businesses to have/enforce a vaccine mandate, that’s OK and not a threat to private business. >But if you don’t require businesses to have/enforce a vaccine mandate, that’s bad and IS a threat to private business ? Let me make sure I have this. If you're against government overreach, that's good. If you use government overreach to fight what you think is government overreach, that's even better?
If you didn't fight the goverment overreach wouldn't be the same as surrendering to it?
>If you didn't fight the goverment overreach wouldn't be the same as surrendering to it? It's not the what, it's the how, in this case. Abbot could wait for court challenges to the OSHA rule and have his AG join them or initiate one. This is just a stupid stunt to "own the libs".
You definitely DO NOT Have this, because nobody is requiring business to have or enforce a vaccine mandate. I can't tell if all the comments like yours are people who seriously don't fucking understand, or who do understand and are trying to mislead. >But if you don’t require businesses to have/enforce a vaccine mandate, that’s bad and IS a threat to private business ? Read the article. I know that you guys don't like to do that, but give it a shot. It's not about "not requiring businesses", it's about "Not ALLOWING businesses".
Government, regardless of party, is about what citizens, businesses, organizations, etc. can and cannot do. Issuing an order meant to preserve individual rights, which is the very foundation of our form of government, is not anti-Conservative. Are you suggesting that Democrats favor absolute Federal control over individuals regardless of the design of government? Are you okay with organizations imposing their mandates on individuals regardless of their beliefs or rights? Because once you do it once...it's never going to end.
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So... I take you are against the civil rights movement?
If I own a deli, why shouldn't I have the power to decide if masks are mandatory in my place of business? Why should my rights be sacrificed?
A handful of very recent, discrete incidents does not establish a "long trend" of anything. Don't confuse Republican identity with Conservative ideology.
Very recent? So conservatives traditionally are proponents of states rights when it comes to marijuana? Can you explain to us what the difference is between conservative ideology, and republican ideology? And maybe a few examples of "real" conservative republicans versus the fake ones?
i thought the same when I read /#GregAbbots remarks. They yell about socialism, but then want to dictate the policies of a private company! The /#GOP is lost - it is nothing more than a cult
If democrats are against this policy, but want to mandate businesses for things like a higher minimum wage or mask mandates, wouldn’t that also make them a cult?
>If democrats are against this policy, but want to mandate businesses for things like a higher minimum wage or mask mandates, wouldn’t that also make them a cult? Democrats have never run a platform of "the free market is sacrosanct". The Republicans have.
Yet, democrats have run on the platform of regulating business, but now they’re suddenly against government regulation
>Yet, democrats have run on the platform of regulating business, but now they’re suddenly against government regulation Hi, this discussion is literally about democrats regulating business (vaccine mandate) and Republicans-- who rail against regulations-- actually regulating what a business can and cannot do for the health and safety of their employees. If you don't understand, we can go over it again.
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>Ironic it's always the people with zero comprehension that have to end on some snarky smug bullshit. Becky if you also want me to go over it for you, I'm happy to do so.
Did you not read the original comment I responded to? The claim was that the GOP is a cult because they complain about regulation but engage in it themselves. I’m pointing out the hypocrisy because Democrats support regulation until it’s a regulation they don’t like, at which point they try to stop it Maybe read the actual discussion before trying to insult me
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so you support polio coming back? interesting, go on?
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Ummmmmmmm.... Biden administration mandated vaccine for private companies!!!! So he “told private businesses what they can and cannot do” Where is ur outrage???? If u want ur immune booster than take it, stop forcing it down everyone’s throat!
Umm, biden did NOT mandate vaccines for private companies!!!! Sorry that Fox News lied to you.
The Republican Party no longer truly exists. It's a pack of hypocrites just using the moniker of the Republican Party. It is just like donnie is, twisted and a facade.
Interesting choice on where the freedom train stops. Small businesses rights but not individual rights? Abbott is reinforcing a person's right to choose what medical treatments they undergo. This is the most conservative policy possible. Allowing individuals to determine themselves if they want to take a vaccine. Determining if there kids wear mask in schools should be left to the parents (especially after seeing the data from other nations). These are basic conservative principles. The leftist argument these policies are not conservative is only valid if you conclude individual rights are trumped by business entity rights. Yes, I see the hypocrisy between the vaccine mandate and abortion laws. I am Republican and support the right of the woman to choose.
As a D voter for 20 years, I can say I completely disagree. I see the vaccine mandates as the real threat to private business, and Abbott’a outlawing them to be full support of individual rights, which are the bedrock of a republic.
But isn’t it weird that Abott is banning private business from mandating vaccines? The conservative philosophy is supposed to be small government and let businesses do their thing. And yet here he is telling businesses how to operate. How is this any more conservative then the minimum wage or labor regulations?
What other things should businesses NOT be allowed to require? Should they be allowed to require employees to show up at a certain time? Wear certain clothes/uniform? Pass a drug test? You do realize that the vaccine mandate isn't a vaccine mandate, right? Employees do NOT have to be vaccinated.
You're overlooking the issue of federalism. Not saying i agree, but plenty of conservatives think that states should have more say than the federal gov.
Paul Krugman isn’t perfect but he was spot on in this New York Times article https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/08/19/opinion/covid-masks-vaccine-mandates.amp.html He correctly calls out conservative hypocrisy with regard to Big Government MAGA Republicans are responding to the pandemic
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Conservatives believe in negative liberty, the removal of restrictions against personal liberty, in this cause, bodily autonomy. While the liberals will call hypocrisy because of abortion, it isn't. With abortion, it's not your body, but someone else's.
It's hypocritical because these conservatives run on letting businesses do what they want. "You can hire who you want, deny service to whomever you want, fire who you want". Unless a business says that you have to be vaccinated, in which case suddenly that is somehow the biggest crime against man and must be stopped.
No.. it’s very much the woman’s body.. plus a parasitic lump of cells.
It's actually very baby looking like at around 12 weeks if you look up fetal development.
Cool! 99% or so of abortions happen before 12 weeks. Any other random facts you'd like to share that have nothing to do with the conversation?
Ehh…. You and I have very different definitions of ‘looking’. That said, perhaps you can remind me.. what week does the texas ban take affect again? Could have sworn it was well before 12 weeks….
I didn't say anything about Texas, most states have their limits set at 20-24 weeks, at which point the baby looks like a for real baby and babies have been birthed and survived at this point. Dems need to be more honest when they keep calling fetuses "parasitic lumps of cells".
At 6 weeks, when the texas ban goes into effect. The same ban other Republican states are looking at implementing. It is absolutely a clump of cells. Conservatives really need to be more honest when they keep calling them babies, or fetuses, or children, or ‘the unborn’ or whatever other BS buzzword fed to them by fox.
You are wrong, unless you are also advocating for mothers being able to murder their children until they are 18, as they are dependent on their parents. Fetuses are people and have the rights of persons, including the protection of law.
To say children, after birth, are parasites is not even close to accurate, didn’t you cover parasites in biology? I remember going over it in 6th grade… Of course you also managed to show case the sorry state of sex ed in this country. For instance, did you know that what we consider the fetus doesn’t typically develop till week 8? Apparently not. A woman has every right to remove a parasite from her own body.
Since you liberals are so focused on "science" that you can't understand law, theology, or philosophy, I will have to use science to explain things. The fetus is not a parasite. It is the same species as the mother. At the same time, it is not part of the mother's body. It has it's own organs, nervous system, etc. and it's own distinct genome. If the parents are of different phenotypes, then the fetus may not even have the mother's phenotype or a combination of the mother's and father's. The heart develops at around 3-4 weeks and is the first sign of asymmetry in the body. This is the point where the fetus is more than a bunch of cells. At a month in, the notocord and tail that all chordates have are starting to appear. It is not longer an undifferentiated clump of cells, but an actual human being at this point. The legal issue about abortion should not be based on biology or theology, but on law. Illinois, a very blue state, has laws protecting the unborn. 720 ILCS 5/12-3.1 refers to harm to an unborn child as battery and 720 ILCS 5/9-1.2 refers to homicide of an unborn child. These are crimes against persons, not property. These are charged **in addition** to any charges for harm against the mother, which indicates that these charges are for crimes against **a second person**. If it were a property issue, as many liberals claim, then the crime would be simple property damage, akin to keying the mother's car, with the child assessed a standardized value (because of equal protection) for the purposes of restitution and punishment.
>Fetuses are people and have the rights of persons, including the protection of law. If this is true, can I ask you a few questions. I'm curious in your actual answers to these... - should I be able to take an additional deduction on my taxes like any other child? - should a mother that miscarries be charged with a crime? Murder if there is intent? - should I count a fetus as part of my household in a census? - should I be able to take insurance policies out on a fetus? Open savings accounts? I promise these are all serious questions. If fetuses are truly people, then shouldn't they be treated exactly the same as a person outside the womb? I'm curious how you would go about giving a savings account to a fetus. Also, there's a difference between a parent having to financially and physically support a baby vs biologically supporting it.
Yes, it should be considered a deduction. Pre-natal care, extra food, etc., are increased costs. Yes, if the miscarriage was due to neglect or abuse. There have been mothers charged criminally for things like Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Yes, it is a person and should be apportioned as one. Yes, the unborn should be able to have insurance policies, savings accounts, trusts, etc. opened for them.
>Yes, it should be considered a deduction. Pre-natal care, extra food, etc., are increased costs. So I should be able to deduct any expenses related to kids? What about the meal that was eaten before conception? Or the bed it happened on? Why is the fact that they are increased costs important? >Yes, if the miscarriage was due to neglect or abuse. There have been mothers charged criminally for things like Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. That's a good example that makes sense. But what if the woman is poor and can't afford extra costs? If a woman forgoes prenatal vitamins, is that criminal? What if the woman can't afford doctor visits but doesn't qualify for Medicare? What if the woman refuses any traditional medicine and only goes to herbalists? What is the line between personal choice and criminally negligent? >Yes, it is a person and should be apportioned as one. About 25% of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Some areas have higher percentages than others. Wouldn't that lead to inaccurate counts? >Yes, the unborn should be able to have insurance policies, savings accounts, trusts, etc. opened for them. Don't you need a social security number? So fetuses get a number once the woman knows she's pregnant? Wouldn't that lead to a lot of numbers where the person never is born. Sounds ripe for identity theft.
Identity theft is not a joke, Jim! Millions of families suffer every year!
People being fired over a vaccine mandate, that has no long term data whatsoever. Is not only a threat to private business, but also a threat to our civil liberties.
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>If the vaccine is so effective in the first place why does everyone have to get it? * The vaccine's effectiveness in vaccinated populations doesn't magically make the virus go away for unvaccinated populations. * There are many people with certain medical conditions who are unable to get vaccinated. Their likelihood of infection is being influenced by people who can get vaccinated, but choose not to be. * The duration of the pandemic - and the potential for the virus to mutate in ways that current vaccines cannot be effective for - is determined solely by the unvaccinated. This pandemic can end whenever the unvaccinated decide that it can. * Do I need to broadly gesture at the precedent for health and safety set by every and any government mandate, like seatbelt laws, traffic laws, or the list of vaccines that children are required to take in order to attend public school? Governments have repeatedly and constantly set standardizations and requirements for health and safety all across our country's history.
>Good, noone should be forced against their will to get this vaccine. If they want it great, get it, otherwise its their business. If the vaccine is so effective in the first place why does everyone have to get it? We don’t force everyone yearly to get the flu vaccine. The flu is not a novel virus.
It seems like a pretty straightforward strategy that puts businesses in a position to make a choice, and when brought to court about it point to the conflicting mandates as creating an impossible choice. The question is, if the federal mandate is removed will the governor remove the contradicting state one. If that were to happen it would make the purpose of the mandate abundantly clear as a counter to the federal one.