"Donald Trump’s selection of Ohio Senator J D Vance as his running mate on Monday ... was a death knell marking the end of the American conservative movement as it was constituted from the mid-20th century until now.
"The movement’s birth date is typically traced back to 1955 ... Ronald Reagan would go on to restate the [founding] principles by observing that the [modern] Republican Party ... was held up by a 'three-legged stool' of social and fiscal conservatism, as well as anti-communism. After the fall of the Soviet Union, this third tenet was unofficially amended to emphasise the importance of American leadership on the world stage.
"Though the GOP has always represented these values to varying degrees, Trump was the first to seriously stress-test the stool during the 2016 Republican presidential primaries. By promising to implement tariffs, leave entitlements untouched, and seek a rapprochement with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Trump threatened to kick at least two of the movement’s legs out from under it. ...
"By making Vance his heir apparent, Trump has not only set the tone for what his second term would look like, but what the GOP will stand for in the years that follow.
"Vance is not merely an advocate of a more restrained foreign policy, he’s a demagogue plagued by a single minded obsession: rewarding Putin for waging a bloody, unprovoked war on Ukraine. ..."He may claim to put America first, but Vance can be better understood as a member of the 'Blame America First' crowd that conservatives once rightly deplored.
"His economic outlook is similarly indistinguishable from the Right’s ancestral opponents. ... resort[ing] to the simpleminded, envy-laden demagoguery of the Left since entering the political fray.
"He supports minimum wage hikes and indiscriminate protectionism. He opposes Right-to-Work laws and tax cuts. ... and has suggested that Senators Bernie Sanders (a socialist) and Elizabeth Warren (a quasi-socialist) were his favorite candidates among the 2020 Democratic presidential field.
"Moreover, Vance’s prioritisation of his own personal ambition over all else throws even his claim to being a committed social conservative into doubt. ... This should come as no surprise. Vance now claims to be proud to be the running mate of a man he once compared to Hitler and agreed was a serial sex predator. ...
"Reagan, and their contemporaries ... fought and won an uphill battle to bring much-needed contrast, not to mention wisdom, back to American politics.
"By contrast, Vance’s rapid rise has been characterised by his sycophancy toward a single charismatic figure whose coat-tails he hoped to ride.
"With Trump and Vance cemented as American 'conservatism’s' frontmen for the foreseeable future, it is no exaggeration to say that the values – and the spirit – of the conservative movement shaped by Reagan [et a] are functionally dormant, if not dead."~ Isaac Schorr from his column 'JD Vance as Trump’s running mate is the death knell of American conservatism'
Wednesday 17 July 2024
"How is it conservative to back Putin’s Russia?"
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Of course, the thing here is that conservatism as a “stance” (it lacks sufficient heft to call it an ideology, let alone a fully-fledged political philosophy) has always defined itself primarily not by that which it is *for* but more by that which it is *against* — defined itself by being anti-communism, anti-socialist, anti-big-spending (until conservatives are the spenders), anti-progress, anti-liberal etc. — which means it has always granted to its ideological opponents the power to shape its “stance,” and to set its very terms.
So now, as the liberal clique have prioritised class-based and identity-based politics, so too have “conservatives” in response — agreeing on the battlefield, opposing only the class and racial identity of those to be politically prioritised.
What a filthy bunch of bastards they all are.
Stopped reading when I read.
"Vance is not merely an advocate of a more restrained foreign policy, he’s a demagogue plagued by a single minded obsession: rewarding Putin for waging a bloody, unprovoked war on Ukraine. ...
What a load of tosh.
While Vance once argued that the American working class had to “stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better,” he has resorted to the simpleminded, envy-laden demagoguery of the Left since entering the political fray.
Today's reminder that the NAZIs were National Socialists ...
I can't find the original Newsweek article that Vance himself wrote but here are some key quotes:
One of the things I had no idea about, coming from a working-class background, is that America’s ruling class loves to celebrate how much power and money it has. I call these “masters of the universe” events, and they’re held all over the country in fancy hotels, ski lodges and beach resorts. On this particular evening, my wife and I found ourselves at a roundtable with the CEO of a large hotel chain on our left, and a large communications conglomerate on our right.
The Republicans, we’re often told, are the party of the rich and famous. Yet nearly everyone assembled at this dinner simply loathed Donald Trump. He was the focus of nearly every conversation.
...
And then the hotel CEO announced, “Trump has no idea how much his policies are hurting business. I mean, we can’t keep people for $18 an hour in our hotels. If we’re not paying $20, we’re understaffed. And it’s all because of Donald Trump’s immigration policies.”
...
Let’s pause for a second to appreciate one of the wealthiest men in the world complaining about paying hard-working staff $20 an hour. The only thing he was missing was the Monopoly Man hat and cane.
...
His argument, while vile, was at least intellectually honest:
“Normally, if we can’t find workers at a given wage, we just get a bunch of immigrants to do the job. It’s easy. But there are so few people coming in across the border, so we just have to pay the people here more.”
While I have long agreed with the arguments around free trade the reality is that a lot of Americans have been thrown on the scrapheap, and all the economic arguments in the world will fail in the face of that reality, something that the likes of NRO's Kevin Williamson doesn't care about as he raged against Trump in 2016:
The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too.
The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.
Yep, seems to be a common theme these days of the right / conservatives / even many Objectivists. So caught up in their own negativity they support anything that purports to be anti to whatever they hate the most, without even wondering if it’s in favour of what they supposedly love the most. If you get to that stage, you should know your enemies have probably beaten you.
Thanks for that well reasoned and thoughtful perspective.
I’m wondering, are you really a bloke, or are you just a woman venting your emotions? If the latter I might forgive you.
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