Re: We are all Slave now.
 

We still exist. I’ve some progressive tendencies, but generally I’m focused on econ issues.

But then again, I’m not an R.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

See your last sentence there - that was my point.

Someday, I expect a substantially new party to replace what exists today of the Republican Party. I don't know if it will be a rejiggered Republican Party or a whole new Party, but what is there now can't continue in its current form or we're really just done as the country of the constitution.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

By using this focus, this definition, you can always accuse all GOP voters of being racist or bigoted. This definition, this framework for assessing whether a voter is racist, would make tax voters, or voters who think a D would betray their values more than Trump, automatic racists. This is the reason the general public rejects this sort of “heads I win tails you lose” framing.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

The old Rs will just die off. And then a truly progressive party will bankrupt us.

ETA: It won’t be that progressive party’s fault. They’ll be handed an unfixable economic mess coupled with a violent populist progressive demand for social justice. It’ll raid a bare pantry and then, finally, we’ll all see what it looks like when you can’t kick the can any further. (There’s a great photographic depiction of this involving Hemingway on a road in Ketchum.)

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Hey, you enable it, you own it.

The fact is there are people who are fine with racism as long as it gets them prohibitions on abortion or lower taxes or exclusive zoning.

When you make a deal with the devil, he gets your soul.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Didn't you say you had a GOP governor who like invented obamacare or something?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

It's not bizarre at all. Social tolerance is favored by people who get the short end of the stick, social-tolerance-wise. In other words, the have-nots. A pro-business economic policy is favored by people with money. In other words, the haves.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

This makes little sense to me for numerous reasons.

For explanation purposes, look at the issues of marijuana and gay marriage.

If you're a have, why do you care whether gay people marry? Why do you care if weed is legal? Neither harms you economically. To the contrary, both of these things could only benefit you, and probably will do so. Gay marriage and legal pot can only increase economic activity. If you're among the overwhelming majority of haves whose livelihoods are not challenged directly by these social changes (you aren't invested in the private prison industry, or alcohol [to the extent pot consumption may decrease drinking among the population], or sell "gay conversion" therapies), social acceptance of these things can only help your bottom line.

Almost every expansion of tolerance brings with it an improvement in GDP. The more things we let people do, the more economic activity we enjoy.

Conservatives who claim that growth is the solution to every ill and then align with social scolds who seek to preclude expansion of new industries are shooting themselves in the foot. (It's sort of like "conservatives" who desire to pillage, rather than conserve, the environment, but that's another discussion.)

Liberals have a similar form of cognitive dissonance at work. You can't claim to desire freedom and tolerance on one hand, yet desire greater govt oversight and interference in activities, on the other. Sure, wanting freedom for all sometimes requires the govt to get involved (civil rights, suffrage, etc.). But those are limited instances. Desiring a generally more robust and interfering govt, which many liberals and progressive want, inhibits freedom.

A more rationally constructed two party system would have the forces in favor of social tolerance and economic growth aligned, and the forces in favor of intolerance and govt control aligned.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

If you truly believe, as a serious conservative, that Hillary is unacceptable, and that Trump, while atrocious, will observe at least some conservative policies, you have to vote for Trump. If one has no choice but to do that because he is only given two options, I don't think he can credibly be called a racist for selecting that lesser of two evils. I agree you can criticize him for aiding racists inadvertently. But his aims were not to aid racists. His aims were simply to exercise the best choice he could given his conservative beliefs.

Under the framework you offer, everyone who votes for an R candidate or third party candidate is automatically a racist. It would confer on every voter an obligation to vote Democrat or be racist. One would be racist even for not voting, as his failure to do so deprives Democrats of a vote, imperiling their success and rendering possible the success of their racist GOP opponent.

I cast a protest vote in 2016. Hank says people like me cost Hillary the election. I did not vote in 2018 as I had a conflict. I find it hard to brand myself a racist for these acts. That descriptive cannot be thrown on such dubious grounds.

I do think, however, that you may rightly criticize my behavior. And you can assert I had a duty to pick from the two choices and should have picked Hillary. That's totally fair. You can even say, "You broke it, you bought it," and assert that I've no right to bitch about Trump because my failure to vote for Hillary perhaps helped to elect him. But I don't think anyone can make the argument that any time anyone votes for a GOP candidate, or does not vote for the Democrat, they are racist, which by natural logical extension your framework seems to do.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Ty will respond Wednesday with 1500 words, but let me try and explain where i think you guys are diverging.

A reality factor in voting is that it is not a multiple choice order. You have two candidates each having positions on a number of issues. As a voter you have to distill those positions down to a choice. And no one candidate will hit on 100% for you, at least if you are a thinking person- so you have weigh pros and cons.

You use the word "tolerate," which actually makes Ty's point- your economically driven voter will tolerate a pro gay marriage candidate, got it, but "tolerate" means that voter can also live with an anti marriage candidate- it is a secondary issue.

My wife's cousin finally married her long time partner once NJ changed- they had been in a civil union for a decade. Every April she would post on her Facebook about how much more she paid in Fed taxes because she could not marry. She was a have-not in Ty's little scenario. A candidate's position on gay marriage was not secondary or something she would "tolerate," it was primary. hell, it was economic.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I think you’re speaking to an important but different point: That economic voters may be somewhat nihilist, too transactional. I agree with that.

But as a pure matter of basic business acumen, there is no reason for economic voters to align with the intolerant. Even if you use the tax avoidance argument, the value of creating new industries pays much more in terms of growth (enhanced revenues for all) than short term tax savings.

If we had two parties with identical platforms save gay marriage and pot legalization, an economic voter could not rationally choose the intolerant party. He’d be precluding growth. It would frustrate his reason for voting.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I'm speaking to what i said- I guess you're back to a hypo- when we pick a candidate, in the real world where i live, we make a host of choices, we choose what is important to us and we choose what is less important.

By the time the election came up i had a host of reason to vote for Hillary (all negatives re Trump), but the only one that mattered, the first, was that Trump was sending crazy ugly tweets at 3 AM- i knew he was crazy- I'm sure there were other issues eventually where I thought "hmm on issue X I like Trump's position better than Hil's," but those were secondary. My primary issue was Trump is fucking nuts and cannot be President. all votes in the real world carry a number of such choices.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Many haves like the social status that comes from being a have and want society (preferably) or the government (second-best) to reinforce that status by condemning those who are different. Many people are comfortable with gender roles and want those roles to be prescriptive. As for weed, they associate its use with all sorts of undesirable things and want the kind of people who use it punished, or at the least not accepted equally.

I obviously don't feel this way, but many people do.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

It's odd to hear you fret about this slippery slope but not about the one where the GOP is disinterested in doing anything at all about racism, since that's the side of the hill we seem to be sliding down.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

No, you don't. Suppose Trump was going to nominate conservatives to the Supreme Court but also strangle Honduran babies on live TV to deter immigration. A conservative doesn't actually "have to" vote for Trump under those circumstances -- she can decide that the Supreme Court is not worth the baby strangling. She can even justify that on conservative principles. So too with the racism.

What you're saying, I think, is that caring about racism is not any part of conservatism, and that conservatives can follow their principles while supporting racists. I'm not sure why you think that's a defense of conservatives or conservatism.