We Need To Stop Calling Ourselves Conservatives

John Davidson, the senior editor at The Federalist, argued yesterday that Republicans should discard their small government/free market disguises and openly state that they want to use government power to achieve their goals. An excerpt from the article is below that lists some concrete examples of what he has in mind:

To stop Big Tech, for example, will require using antitrust powers to break up the largest Silicon Valley firms. To stop universities from spreading poisonous ideologies will require state legislatures to starve them of public funds. To stop the disintegration of the family might require reversing the travesty of no-fault divorce, combined with generous subsidies for families with small children. Conservatives need not shy away from making these arguments because they betray some cherished libertarian fantasy about free markets and small government. It is time to clear our minds of cant.

In other contexts, wielding government power will mean a dramatic expansion of the criminal code. It will not be enough, for example, to reach an accommodation with the abortion regime, to agree on “reasonable limits” on when unborn human life can be snuffed out with impunity. As Abraham Lincoln once said of slavery, we must become all one thing or all the other. The Dobbs decision was in a sense the end of the beginning of the pro-life cause. Now comes the real fight, in state houses across the country, to outlaw completely the barbaric practice of killing the unborn.

Conservatives had better be ready for it, and Republican politicians, if they want to stay in office, had better have an answer ready when they are asked what reasonable limits to abortion restrictions they would support. The answer is: none, for the same reason they would not support reasonable limits to restrictions on premeditated murder.

On the transgender question, conservatives will have to repudiate utterly the cowardly position of people like David French, in whose malformed worldview Drag Queen Story Hour at a taxpayer-funded library is a “blessing of liberty.” Conservatives need to get comfortable saying in reply to people like French that Drag Queen Story Hour should be outlawed; that parents who take their kids to drag shows should be arrested and charged with child abuse; that doctors who perform so-called “gender-affirming” interventions should be thrown in prison and have their medical licenses revoked; and that teachers who expose their students to sexually explicit material should not just be fired but be criminally prosecuted.

If all that sounds radical, fine. It need not, at this late hour, dissuade conservatives in the least. Radicalism is precisely the approach needed now because the necessary task is nothing less than radical and revolutionary.

My questions around this article boil down to the following two:

Do you think this characterization of the Republican Party is accurate? That it hides it's true intentions behind pleasant sounding platitudes of "small government" and "free market" while often acting counter to those statements?

And do you think shedding those euphemisms is wise? Does doing so help the party further it's policy goals?

Personally my answers to those two questions are "yes" and... "maybe?" I think the answer to the first is pretty clear, but I've long held the opinion that the euphemisms serve the party well. Perhaps I'm wrong on that front.

What say you?

I agree and democrats should stop calling themselves progressives and be honest and tell everyone that they are corporate shills.

A confession of being fascists?

Seems a very "fight fire with fire" type of political philosophy; which would be mirroring what the Left has adopted the last 5 to ten years.

Might as well.

I don't think his current positions are mainstream even among today's republicans.

But i would also like to argue that modern republicans should not be called conservatives.

Conservative implies the desire to keep traditional institutions and costumes, but that is not the case with current Republicans.

Nor is it the case that a small state and pro free market policies are their guiding philosophies since that is applied selectively based on convinience.

There views should be described as nativist populist.

They are: do whatever benefits or feels good for the current Republicans base (non college educated white males from 35 to 65).

Also spend now, don't tax and don't worry about the debt. The next generation will deal with it.

He's kind of spot on. The GoP is moving towards fascism and it's time for them to be clear about it.

Naturalmente. To counter radicalism requires a matching radical reaction.

You mean we're supposed to be shocked that conservatives are turning their backs on democracy to make a one-party fascist state where they wake up and declare ANYone the enemy on a humbug?

This is my surprised face.

This isn't about establishing values, it's about power. With all the civil wars that have broken out in the world over the centuries, most people never saw it coming. Imagine turning the country into the kind of oppressive state they spoken out against for years. North Korea, Iran, Russia, China. The rhetoric has changed from outside forces being the enemy to those within your own borders who don't look, act or think exactly like you.

The poison of tribalism is the unfurling of America, and getting people on the mode to commit atrocities based on being offended on the most innocuous of shit looks to be the norm from here on

Been thinking this for a long time. They really are not conservatives. They believe in big government but only to undo progress and serve a small minority of wealthy individuals.

Democrats are not perfect mind you but at least their basic idea of government is to help people. Yeah it's a wasteful bureaucracy, but better that and doing some good then doing that and doing no good.

If Democrats were smart they'd abandon the elitism and educated aspects they champion and go after traditional Republican values, since they're already the party of the working class, might as well adopt fiscal responsibility and maybe make some positions on saving money or reducing taxes (oh wait, they did kind of).

No more conservative than the left are liberal. They no less seek power to achieve what they want under the guise of small government than democrats do it under the guise of their own bullshit. Republicans are no more for small government than Democrats are for helping the working class as an example. It's all politics, and politics is primarily bullshit. The fact some of you haven't figured this out yet is rather comical.

@eoten: yes , liberalism has become and incorrect description for the left as well as it regularly tries to block or censor views that it considers offensive.

I think the best you can say is that they represent their base of young multi racial voters but at the same time share populist tendencies by assignment more responsibility of economic outcomes to environment rather than personal responsibility.

The Republican party has never been about small government. That's just another in a long lines of obvious lies their gullible base believes for some weird reason. The writer of the article is correct about that. There's nothing small government about stealing trillions from average Americans and giving it to the super rich so you can stay in power.

@nirgal: @eoten: I see you two are not politically educated. In general the Democratic party is made up of moderates. That is the majority. There are some progressives as well but they are not the majority. In the spectrum of political ideology the United States is not close to liberal. I would recommend a better worldview of politics but I doubt you're interested.

You could fool me.

Did you not admit to trolling?

They're only small government when it suits them, sometimes when it's baffling. I remember liberals were going to put an end to predatory pay-day lending after Obama got elected. Who do you think fought against that? Rhetorical question. You know who.

They'll never shake that branding. That doesn't mean they won't act like they can use the heavy hand of government. They'll have it both ways. They'll just say "we're just enforcing the law that's on the books".

Yeah, sure. What a great fucking economy we should be thankful for. Democrats are soooooo great at handling economy. I just love paying 3x the price for gasoline double for electricity while facing an upcoming rent increase.

The oil companies are laughing all the way to the bank as you people blame Biden/democrats for the prices that they're setting. And gee, I wonder who in our government is lobbied by the oil industry. Total mystery.

And how exactly does that apply to one party, and not both? If we're talking about starting civil wars, who went on national television with a Nazi-esque red back drop surrounded by marines to call half the country a threat to the country? Who's claiming blacks are going to be put back into chains if Democrats don't win an election?... If we want to talk about divisive rhetoric from inside the country, be consistent. And aggression towards people who don't think or act like you? You should try having a different opinion on a college campus some time.

He said fascism was bad. If that offends you, you might be a fascist.

Eoten is still coping when he's reminded fascism is right wing and that's often where we see more of it. Especially in American politics.

So whenever anyone brings it up he reacts in an upset manner and brings up fake examples of it from the left.

Thinking the use of a red backdrop is the same as trying to directly overturn an election, lol wtf?

@zaryia: January 6th pushed a lot of this to the forefront, and the roaches are still coming out of the woodwork. Give him time, he'll be wearing the badge proudly soon enough.

@zaryia: Voting for the Democratic party is overturning an election. Didn’t you get the memo? :P

No, when some one disagrees with you and you can't answer it you accuse them of trolling. If the Democrat party is mostly moderates where are they.? Joe Manchin is the only one that may be a moderate.

It's pretty clear that just about anyone can fool you. You support trump, for God's sake

No matter how much bullshit you want to write, bad economies don't create 10 million+ jobs in less than 2 years.

so liberals want to use government to help people, conservatives want to use government to hurt people.

@comp_atkins: But they're hurting people they don't like.

Disagree? You added nothing to the conversation. First you have to make intelligent cogent statements if you want to discuss. You come in here with a hit and run nothing, that's trolling Jim.

I sort of think hiding what republicans really stand for from it's less ardent, more moderate, supporters helps to keep the votes coming in for them time and time again.

I've watched a lot of people argue that they support the republican party because they don't want government spending and want more personal freedoms. Presumably, these people are being honest in their statement. If people want to argue against them they have to start by trying to explain how the republican party doesn't actually support these things, which is difficult to do because you are trying to debunk the very idea of the party's stated platform. To anyone who watches politics very closely it's very obvious that republican politicians don't give a damn about such things, except for when they feel they can benefit politically from doing so, but for anyone only lightly following politics it's less likely they will see the reality of the situation.

To put this in more 5 year old terms- yes I wish everyone would be more honest about what they believed in and hoped to achieve and share that with the people who are voting for them.

No they don't. They lie about it to gain power just the same. That's why when they do get into power you see yet again a lot of money flow upwards back up to the top. Of that $2 trillion spending bill, how much of that went to help anyone, and how much went to corporate interests? And who paid for the massive portion that went to corporate interests? The people did. We have lost more money inflation than what those checks, which people like you have been convinced helped people, actually provided from the debt and inflation alone.

They got power, they got wealthier, the people were not helped. But if you're just trying to dumb it down to a grade school level "us good, them bad" mentality, have at it.

Democrats have control of the house, senate, and presidency... how's that "codifying" of Roe v Wade coming along?

Between Trum or Biden I will take Trump every time. His policies helped the citizens of the United States and we were safe. Under Biden we have been royally screwed and we are not safe.

Really? What policy helped citizens. Safe? His entire administration was rife with criminals and corruption. Trying to overturn democracy does not make you safe. It does the opposite.

Conservative implies you're still willing to move forward. A better label is Regressive.

What $2 trillion spending bill are you referring to? Build Back Better was roughly $2 trillion, but that didn't pass. The IRA was around $370 billion, but that's a far cry from $2 trillion.

Trump left office with $8 trillion in debt over 4 years and 3 million fewer jobs than when he took office. I'm not surprised you support him. You are obviously extremely gullible.

@Serraph105: I believe he may be referencing covid relief payments.

Of course he is largely wrong though, since if all the major economies did not pay out covid supports the world economy would be in much, much worse of a situation.

Having said the above, the covid relief program designs and controls in pretty much all major economies sucked in multiple ways and could have resulted in the same outcomes with 2/3 or less the cost....or they could have delivered significantly better outcomes for the same costs if designed and applied differently.

@SUD123456: Yeah, that's more or less the nature of the beast in a multi- party system, unfortunately. But given that reality we did fairly well at not delaying or sufficiently funding it which would have been much worse.

That's specious at best. Specious reasoning goes hand in hand with superstition, and suggests you would have to be able to prove a negative in order to disagree. Which is a bad faith argument. No, those payments were a large part responsible for the inflation, and I hate to break it to you, but that inflation has already caused more harm than those payments helped. Besides, the vast majority of the spending in that bill that those payments came from didn't even go to the people. It went to very large, very connected corporations at YOUR expense.

That Covid bill was $1.9 trillion. $1,400 per person. Even if every man, woman, and child received payments, that still only comes out to about $450 billion. A huge portion didn't get any, or got reduced amounts, so what people actually received doesn't even tally up to $450 billion. That leaves almost 3x that amount on the table. Where did it go? It went to corporations. And I bet those corporations make political donations.

But hey, it's all for the "little guy" right?

Thankfully, most voters aren't falling for Biden's attempt to shift blame and in two weeks he's going to be as much a lame duck as he is a senile one.

Trump left office after a year of the pandemic in which tons of money was approved by a Democratic congress and Senate to help business and Americans affected by the pandemic. Inflation was 1.7%, gas was $2.37 the economy was rebounding, a vaccine to fight Covid had been developed, North Korea, China and Russia were in check, Crime was not as bad as it is now, our allies respected us and our enemies feared us, we still had police protection, and we were energy independent and Biden destroyed all of that. The southern border was under control and Trump wasn't flying illegal aliens around the country in the middle of the night and dropping them off in unsuspecting cities.

Neither of those is a sign of a rebounding economy. Quite the opposite.

@JimB: You're making dumb excuses for failure. Biden has created 10 million+jobs, 3x more than Trump lost. 🤣

The border under trump was secure? Wonder why he wanted a wall then. 🤔

How is it you are so gullible that you manage to believe the most obvious nonsense?

https://time.com/5566997/trump-border-crossings-immigration/

lol you guys are broken records. we hear this every few years from the right when a democrat president it back in office. back when obama was president you guys were making the exact same arguments. rewind back to clinton, same material.

whenever the "other" guy is in power, you're pining away for "the better times" when the country wasn't falling apart.

freshen up your catalog, guys. it's stale AF

@mattbbpl: That guy is a crack-pot.