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Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
The critique is far more expansive than that, but you'll frame it as you like, as that's your favorite form of response.
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You quoted two paragraphs. The first was about liberal hypocrisy. If you think there was something better in the rest of what he wrote, quote it and I can respond. But the idea that liberal hypocrisy impels people to vote for Trump is stupid. As you said below, conservatives are hypocrites too.
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People really, really dislike a lot of the preachiness and know-it-all-ism of Democrats, particularly given it's matched almost always with incompetent policies and is later discovered to have been based on bad data analyses. Democrats never leave anything alone. There's always an urge to tell everyone what their analysis of an issue is, and then insist on a policy prescription to react to it. Later, they admit they tackled a problem that didn't need to be tackled and in doing so caused another worse problem. From Clinton-era silliness about everyone needing to own a house (followed by the feckless W administration) to Covid over-reaction, they think they're the smart set, with the answers... and they fuck it up. Over and over and over. The law of unintended consequences bites Ds in the ass every time and their response? "Let's pass another law!"
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If you want preachy and know-it-all combined with incompetent policies and bad analysis, Trump.
There is so little in this paragraph that differentiates Democrats from Republicans in any way. The more interesting question is the one you won't touch, which is why these things bother you (and Stephens) when they come from Democrats but not Republicans.
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On the second question, Liberalism doesn't turn off anyone. And I don't think liberals turn off anyone. Liberals are open minded. Classical liberals don't want to tell anyone what to do. They venerate tolerance and live and let live attitudes.
It's MAGA and Progressives that want to tell everyone what to do. Stephens' question should have been, "How do both parties rid themselves of extreme right wingers and progressives?"
We classical liberals and conservatives can get along just fine, horse trading our way to sane compromises. But these right wingers, these MAGA people? And these wingnut progressives? You can't deal with these groups. They're cancers - founts of dysfunction.
YMMV, but IMO, moderate Ds hate progressives. They think they're nuts. And moderate Rs hate MAGA and right-wingers. They think they're nuts and ruining the party. There's a whole lot of overlap for the sane of us in the middle to cut deals. We just have to eliminate the extremists from the conversations.
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Uh, hello? It's 2024 and this is your wake-up call. There are no moderate Republicans left. The party is ruined. It's is a fully-owned subsidiary of MAGA.
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Conservative hypocrisy is so overt, there's nothing revelatory in a column calling it out. They're openly full of shit. It's like Trump. Try keeping a list of all his lies and contradictions. You'll run out of space in the spreadsheet by noon.
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Indeed. But just pointing that kinda undercuts the point of the Stephens piece you quoted. Are you going to notice that at some point? I guess not.
If we want to talk about why people are choosing to vote for Republicans, let's talk about why they choose Republicans. It's a choice, not an allergic reaction to Democrats.
If you ask me, inflation is pretty important.
