It’s not surprising that most republicans feel that way, it’s obvious that they aren’t thinking about their position.
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If you want people on the left to be more pro-capitalism then you have to find ways to make capitalism work for everyone, not just the already well-off.
Except because of a religious faith in “true” free-market capitalism, any kind of regulation, any kind social safety net and the tax needed to keep it going, is seen by conservatives as “communism!”
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…That’s agreeing though.
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The left are the people who have already given up on capitalism to some degree, and are unlikely to be drawn back by claims that it will be different this time.
The only way you will get some of us back is by accepting some form of socialism, even as a mixed-economy. For some reason, we don’t think compromise is “We vote for them, and they will ignore us and do what they want”.
I say this as someone from a country where both the government and opposition have decided that is to their political advantage to make me part of an out group undeserving of rights. Don’t let the US fall into that dysfunctional state.
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According to the latest CBS News/YouGov Battleground Tracker, 70% of Republican voters favor a “strong economy” over “a functioning democracy.”
…because they firmly believe they’ll be the ones in control when democracy dies.
If the question were framed differently (something along the lines of “would you support perpetual Democratic party control if the economy were strong”), I suspect they’d respond differently.
Of course, the hardest part would be convincing them you can have a robust economy under Democratic control despite ample evidence indicating this is true.
Yes, yes, correlation isn’t causation. But 1. That’s a LOT of correlation and 2. The GOP would refuse to accept even that the correlation exists.
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This is such a ridiculous framing, leading audiences to believe that functioning democracy and strong economy are opposed concepts, and that one comes at the expense of the other. Shameful really.
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it’s not really “seen as” it’s “labeled as.” most conservative leaders understand it’s not communism, and that it’s not the kind of socialism that people worry about either. instead, that phrasing is deliberately used to close off all argument because those things are “anti-american”
if you read the heather cox richardson reposts, she makes clear that this connection started during reconstruction, and was specifically code for “government helping black people” - an unbroken thread right up and through reagan’s “welfare queens”
the additional modern element is that it also drives some white and non-white immigrants their way too, because of dictators using those labels in their countries of birth
it’s strategy. and while i think the way to confront it is a bernie sanders style “yes!” - most democrats just avoid the conversation by sliding to the right. it works, and will continue to until it’s dealt with head-on
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They might believe that such concerns are overblown–paranoid and desperate attempts to attack the republican party for resisting Democratic opportunism.
Ah, who am I kidding? If a political scientist highlights the Nazi party as being a anti-liberal, anti-democratic party, a certain percentage of the republican base will think Naziism is a great strategy to attack liberal Democrats like Nancy Pelosi.
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As I typed those words I was thinking of how to present the idea to the typical conservative voter, the kind of person who buys into “all this stuff is communism, and communism is bad”, at least until you start posing the ideas in a different way.
Politicians and pundits who are willfully dishonest about this stuff are a lost cause, the average person on the street might still be convinced national health care won’t lead to gulags.
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Republicans are gonna be repugnant, big surprise. All I’m thinking is “what the hell is wrong with such a large minority of Democratic voters?”
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… the Clinton era says “No.”
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I’m not known for my optimism, but only two GOP candidates refusing to concede seems like a very low estimate.
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What a strange list of countries! Except for Canada, they didn’t include a single functioning democracy in the list. I wonder what it would look like if they had also asked about, say, New Zealand, Sweden, Germany or Iceland. None of those are perfect, of course, not by a long shot, but they would have been further up the scale in such a way that they would have pushed down the others.
The list as it stands is UK, Canada, US, Israel, Mexico, Brazil, Philippines, Turkey, Iraq, Venezuela, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, North Korea.
All either autocracies (yes, I count the UK among those) or countries with huge internal problems like drug cartels or right wing American interference (as if those two were unconnected!)
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This is the scariest thing I’ve heard this Halloween.
Someone ask some older Italians what happens when you want the trains to run on time over everything else.
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The only trains that run on time on fascism are those taking the regime’s enemy to the camps.
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Basically anyone who isn’t a white nationalist has left the Republican Party or been ostracized. So the people left in it are all the more extreme. I’m mainly talking about the politicians but the voters too - the voters who have remained republicans have made the choice that they are at least ok with white nationalism and fascism. The scary part is how much of America that is. (I no longer wonder how the German people went along with Hitler) I think they are a minority actually but they still have a lot of power because of gerrymandering and the electoral college…
the only way to oppose this movement is for the rest of us with decent sense to get out and vote and fight for change. Unfortunately the “rest of us” are a fickle bunch who don’t all agree on the best alternative. We’re a mix of everything from people who are essential fiscal republicans to hard socialists…
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That’s how I always understood the dual meaning of that old phrase about Mussolini (i.e. yes dictators do get things done, but are not actual good things) but maybe I missed something?
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I’d argue more likely, in fact. There is no evidence that fascists are better with the economy. The surge after the nazis took over came from them expropriating vast amounts of wealth from the various people that they targeted and from their secret military build up.
Leaving out broad swaths of the rest of us.
They objectively are…
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