Posted on 08/11/2017 12:36:33 PM PDT by Kaslin
RUSH: There’s a fascinating piece here by F.H. Buckley. F.H. Buckley is a professor at the Scalia Law School at George Mason University, is the author of the book The Way Back: Restoring the Promise of America. He has a great piece here –which I’m not going to get into yet. I’m just setting it up. “How Trump Won, in Two Dimensions.” Let me give you the killer conclusion here: “The sweet spot in American politics…” I love this if this is true. I’ll tell you why I love it. You know Republicans, and you know them — in fact, you may even be one of these.
Republicans are famous for people that are, “Just leave the social issues alone, will you? Just don’t bring them up! Just talk about the economy. Every time you bring up social issues, we lose; we’re going to lose. My wife starts nagging me! Just don’t bring them up. Leave them alone. We don’t want to bring up abortion.” You’ve heard that? I hear it constantly. I mean, I can’t get away from it down here. It seems to be the definition of a Palm Beach Republican.
The wives of guys I play golf with — even the guys themselves, too, because their wives are nagging them about it. So they adopt it just for peace, and what Mr. Buckley has found… I’ve never been one of those. I think social issues win. I think social issues win. Particularly in this era of culture collapse, I think social issues win and triumph. And that’s what Mr. F.H. Buckley has found here in essence. This is really all you need to know about the piece.
“The sweet spot in American politics today,” according to market research and polling and focus groups, surveys of voters… If you draw a circle, and they make four quadrants inside the circle where various issues overlap, he writes here, “The sweet spot in American politics is thus the upper-left quadrant of the double majority: economic liberals and social conservatives.” That is the “sweet spot” in terms of voters today. Mr. Buckley writes, “It’s the place where presidential elections are won, and the winner is usually going to be the candidate who’s won’t touch Social Security and who promises to nominate judges in the mold of Antonin Scalia.
“In other words — Donald Trump.” These people are “labeled … populists, but [Buckley] prefer[s] the term that Mr. Trump himself has applied to them: the Republican ‘workers party.’ They constituted nearly 30% of voters in 2016 and they split 3 to 1 for Mr. Trump. They’re “economic liberals,” which we would have to define (and the piece does that), and “social conservatives.” The point here is that it blows up this traditional, conventional wisdom of Republicans that social issues is the hill they die on. Wrong! It’s the hill they win on — or at least that Trump did.
Now we need to ELECT Trump style “sweet spot” guys to office in Senate and House and get ride of the 70-80 year old dinosaurs who have resided there for decades...Amen
The thing is a Scalia like supreme court justice could be someone who dismantles Social Security and other similar programs before a Bader-Ginsberg type would.
Yes I think he has, and now we need to elect lots of similarly minded people to actually advance his agenda :)
Don’t sweat the X stuff, and the rest will settle in place!
Lewie Puller always said the best positions in the Corps were Platoon Sergeant and Battalion Commander!
If ya get my drift!
;)
Semper POTUS TRUMP! IF we can Keep Him!
*****
‘Chesty’ bump...
What social issues? And if you support big government, you are actually supporting the social left.
supreme court justice could be someone who dismantles Social Security and other similar programs
You've attributed a constitutional power to Supreme Court Justices that doesn't exist.
If that's a 'sweet spot', then we're doomed as a free people.
What’s an “economic liberal?”
unless a case comes before them, then yes, you are correct.
It's certainly been the most ignored sector of the political world (until very recently). The Nolan Chart was promoted by libertarians who had contempt for people who were neither economic libertarians nor social/cultural libertarians. They were called "statists," "authoritarians," at best "populists" or "communitarians," at worst "fascists" or "totalitarians."
But look, what happened in US politics in the last quarter of the 20th century, is that the children and grandchildren of the New Deal generation got fed up with the social policies of the Democratic Party. They weren't voting Democrat in the 1980s, but they certainly weren't free market libertarian types. So, yes, it's that sector of the population that gave Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and now Trump their victories. And after all the trouble Wall Street put the country through, it's not hard to ignore more militant free marketeers.
Perhaps you feel they should have that power but they do not. The Founders had a better idea.
The Supreme Court's single purpose is to determine if a law brought before them conflicts with the constitution. They have no power to initiate an action.
I could make this conversation take a nasty turn. : )
“economic liberals”
It’s important to note that the research on which Buckley’s piece is based (https://www.voterstudygroup.org/reports/2016-elections/political-divisions-in-2016-and-beyond) appears to define support for “free trade” as part of economic conservatism.
My understanding comes from reading the words in America's founding documents.
The words in the Declaration of Independence state that the reason to constitute a government is to protect rights.
The words in the Constitution provide government with only enough power to protect the people’s rights. The founders separated power between the three branches of government.
I believe more Americans will acknowledge and accept the founder's understanding once we have a constitutional government.
We're getting closer to a constitutional government but it is difficult to drain the swamp when you’re up to your ass in alligators.
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