Posted on 09/29/2023 3:34:41 PM PDT by cotton1706
Tim Scott and Nikki Haley don’t seem like they’re one electoral defeat from hawking snake-oil supplements on a podcast monitored by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Both would have been at home in the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, or Mitt Romney. Neither harbors any obvious affection for Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin. They are both stalwart supporters of Ukraine’s defense and the Republican foreign policy establishment’s ambitions more broadly.
For these reasons, both have been coded as relative “moderates” in GOP’s 2024 presidential primary.
The tendency to ideologically categorize Republicans on the basis of their affinity for Trumpism — such that those most aligned with the former president and his heterodoxies are far right while those more aligned with the GOP old guard are moderate — has always been misguided. Trump and his acolytes are, of course, uniquely radical in some important respects; anyone who does apologetics for an insurrection can be fairly described as a reactionary. Yet in some policy areas, Trump’s ostensible positions (if not his actual ones) are less extreme than Mitch McConnell’s. For example, the ex-president’s avowed opposition to entitlement cuts and a federal abortion ban puts him to the left of the median GOP officeholder on those issues.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
The liberal Republican consultants whisper in these candidates' ears and surprise surprise the electorate, correctly, deems them to be moderates.
Yet these are the smart set, the pundits, and they have NO grasp of history.
If they took half a day to read Phyllis Shclafly's "A Choice Not an Echo" they'd understand better. But all they read is Howard Zinn, etc. and watch Rachel Maddow.
Reckless interventionism was a product of the Bush family ideological corruption of the GOP. It was never a Reagan value. Trump is a return to traditional Reagan populist values and a rejection of 35 years of reckless Bush family interventionist dogmas.
‘...been at home in the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan...’
no. the ‘Republican Party of RR’ was a GOPe that was submitted by him against it’s will.
THEY DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT TRUMP’s APPEAL IS.
They cannot accept that they are worthy not merely of opposition, but of contempt. They worship at the altar of keeping the wheels turning and the government doing . . . whatever it is they imagine it is doing at $1+ Trillion/year deficits.
There is no virtue in keeping government functioning when its function generates $33T in debt. They cannot look in the mirror and tell themselves they are Swamp filth. They can’t, because maybe no human could.
It is far more easy to persuade themselves that their role in government is not what caused all the failures. Surely it must have been someone else. And there is only one more step past that conclusion to the next, which is that the people should not find them to be failures and exquisitely harmful.
“Moderate Republican” = approved of by Democrat and Progressive elites.
Brandon was gushing over McCain as his kind of Repub at his speech yesterday.
The author is a moron
” anyone who does apologetics for an insurrection can be fairly described as a reactionary
And anyone who describes J6 as an “insurrection” can fairly be described as a dumbass partisan hack.
What exactly was the big “takeover” plan? Idiotic.
It's time to drum them and their supporters out onto the street
I think of a “moderate” Republican now as being politically pretty much like what my mom called a “Kennedy Democrat” in the 80’s-they need to go take the socialists out of the ‘rat party and leave the republican party to MAGA...
Ronald Reagan was MAGA before it was fashionable.
Reagan was cautious and the Bushes were reckless, bur that recklessness had much to do with the fall of the USSR and the idea that we were the one remaining superpower. People who called themselves Reaganites got caught up in that overconfidence just like people who didn’t.
Forty years ago this same author would have written that Ronald Reagan was a threat threat to the Republican Party of Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller. Before that he would have written about Barry Goldwater as a threat to Eisenhower's party.
Once I saw “Southern Poverty Law Center” I stopped reading…
The problem with these also rans is they listen to their election advisors too much. I don’t think they even believe what is coming out of their mouths.
To ensure the peaceful development of nations, free from coercion, the United States has taken a leading part in establishing the United Nations, The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members. We shall not realize our objectives, however, unless we are willing to help free peoples to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes. This is no more than a frank recognition that totalitarian regimes imposed on free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States.
This is the Lincoln Doctrine:
At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?-- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
So Trump is focusing on the threat that Lincoln foresaw. The "moderate" "Reagan" Republicans are following in the losing footsteps of a Democrat.
What exactly was the big “takeover” plan?Infiltrate the admittedly and legitimately pissed-off crowd with enough agents provocateur to manipulate them into something that could be portrayed as criminal before a DC court...
...anyone who accepts "brought to you by Pfizer" Deep State propaganda can fairly be described as a useful idiot...
Thank you for the Lincoln quote.
Excuse me? The fall of the USSR was in 1989, a few months after the VP Mistake called GHW Bush became President. Reagan was in for 8 years prior, the idiot and unelectable Bush for a few months - are you telling me Bush was responsible for the fall of communism in the USSR?
Where are you getting that from?
I am saying that US policy makers became overconfident and more inclined to go to war after the USSR fell. If that hadn’t happened, the Bushes and Clinton wouldn’t have intervened as much as they did. I said nothing about who was responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union.
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