Please don't assume anything undeclared about anyone's background, or if you do then keep it to yourself.
- Manlobbi
Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy❤
No. of Recommendations: 11
And they won't want to hear it; won't listen.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), who just announced he would not seek re-election next year, gave an extraordinary interview to McKay Coppins on why he was leaving the U.S. Senate.
One of his most striking lines: 'A very large portion of my party really doesn't believe in the Constitution.'
No. of Recommendations: 2
He spoke the truth about Russia too.
No. of Recommendations: 4
And they won't want to hear it; won't listen.
Perhaps. But it's equally true that a very large portion of his party really doesn't believe in free trade, immigration to meet business needs, government austerity, or free market maximalist withdrawal from national industrial policy.
Right-wing populism is an answer to "What's the Matter With Kansas?". Instead of socially conservative, economically liberal working class voters deciding to ignore the cultural red meat thrown at them by the GOP's business elite and vote Democrat, they instead decided to just throw the GOP's business elite faction out of power and elect protectionist and immigration hawk Republicans that don't want to cut Social Security or Medicare.
For obvious reasons, Romney prefers to emphasize his disagreement with the "not believe in the Constitution" part of populism. But a very large portion of his party now rejects a number of foundational substantive positions that his faction of the party supported.
No. of Recommendations: 2
free market maximalist withdrawal from national industrial policy.
What in the name of boot licking populist totalitarianism is that?
No. of Recommendations: 3
What in the name of boot licking populist totalitarianism is that?
Sorry - going back and re-reading it, that's more of a word salad than an effective way of communicating.
What I was trying to say is that a huge part of the modern GOP does not care one patoot about keeping the government out of the free market. The business/libertarian wing of the GOP argues that market forces should be left to themselves to sort out things like whether the local manufacturing plant shuts down and the jobs move to Mexico. The right-wing populist base doesn't care about that - they want the federal government to do something to bring back manufacturing jobs or make Wall Street stop following ESG principles.
Trump was bad at presidenting, so he didn't actually do anything to bring back manufacturing jobs. But he didn't engage in the rhetoric about government not putting their thumb on the scale or not picking winners and losers, either. He saw that using the power of the federal government to strong-arm companies to do things was really popular, so he did it. Not effectively, of course, but he was no Milton Friedman libertarian about it.
Albaby
