>Didn't both of those publications vigorously oppose Trump?
Yes.
>The "conservative intellectual" niche may be the most politically irrelevant group in the country.
Trump won the Presidency, not the Movement. The rest of the GOP, though shell-shocked, has not suddenly ditched conservatism and embraced Trumpism. The vast majority of the GOP members of the House and Senate, and those in state governments, are conservative, not Trumpist.
Conservatives, not just Republicans, have far more power in the US right now than at any point in recent memory.
And thankfully, the Founding Fathers, sharp blokes that they were, crafted a system of checks and balances. I suspect we'll hear fewer cries of "obstruction!" when Congress blocks President Trump's policies than we did for Obama's.
Please don't take this personally, but I think the "obstruction" comment illustrates why political topics tend to degrade into something bad.
It's a subcase of "blue team criticizes red team for action X, but conveniently ignores blue team performing action X". Problem is this accusation gets thrown constantly by both red and blue teams. And it's probably true most of the time: teams are partisan. It's also hard to objectively evaluate.
Political discussion on the net is mostly just replaying these well-worn tropes.
Again, nothing personal - I have been thinking since the politics ban how we can have good political discussions.
I actually agree with you, and fighting the urge to get a dig in can be tough. You can also see from the other responses to that comment how it derails conversation. I'll try to be better in the future.
The problem I have with the GOP's obstructionism was not that it was checking power, but that it was purely political. They obstructed policies that had been supporting by conservatives in the past, just because they didn't want Obama to be seen as having succeeded with anything. That is not what the checks and balances were designed for.
A lot of conservatives saw it as their duty to stand athwart Obama's agenda and yell, "Stop!"
And quite frankly, they succeeded. I think you're unfairly discounting how much of that was ideologically driven, rather than the result of simple partisanship.
You can say that a strategy to regain power is an ideological action in the long run, but then what is the difference between ideology and partisanship?
It wasn't a strategy to regain power, it was a mission to prevent the President from inflicting further harm upon the country (according to conservative thought). There were plenty of Republicans who thought it would cost them in the elections. But they saw it as worthwhile to prevent the expansion of the welfare state and the enshrinement of Obama's progressive agenda in law.
The notion that they wanted to make government work worse in order to bolster their claim that government doesn't work is what progressives tell each other, not what motivates conservatives. Ditto working class voters "voting against their interests", etc.
Obama himself wanted single-payer healthcare, but was unable to get the support of conservative Democrats for that. What actually passed was based on the Republican proposals made in the 1990s in response to Hillarycare, and almost identical to the plan that Mitt Romney helped develop and pass in Massachusetts and which he (Romney) said should be the model for the nation. The individual mandate was originally suggested by the Heritage Foundation in the 1980s.
Every Republican voted against it. At no point did Republicans in Congress try to improve any of its manifest flaws, but instead they held hundreds of symbolic votes to repeal it and return to the status quo ante (which, prior to that, everyone had agreed was unacceptable - no presidential candidate of either party in living memory had failed to include healthcare reform in their platform). Republicans who had never objected to the individual mandate when they proposed it now claimed it was unconstitutional (Obama didn't help, by claiming for political reasons that it is not a tax). Romney ran for president on a platform that his healthcare plan was a good idea when he did it but a bad idea when Obama did it.
To liberal ears, it's really hard to explain how this was a principled stand against wacky liberal ideas run amok, and not simply an attempt to regain power by obstructing even previously-bipartisan ideas, even at the cost of damaging the country, to ensure that the other side couldn't take credit.
>To liberal ears, it's really hard to explain how this was a principled stand against wacky liberal ideas run amok, and not simply an attempt to regain power by obstructing even previously-bipartisan ideas, even at the cost of damaging the country, to ensure that the other side couldn't take credit.
To my ears, it comes across as a desire to have no health-care reform at all, and blame it on the Democrats to boot. They just want to dismantle and privatize every public service they can, regardless of whether people actually rely on it or not.
>Every Republican voted against it. At no point did Republicans in Congress try to improve any of its manifest flaws
David Frum argued against this and got booted from polite conservative company for his troubles. The Obama administration inserted poison pills into the bill, like some of the impositions on small businesses, as bargaining chips they could give up to Republicans in exchange for their support, but he seriously misjudged the Republican mood.
Fact is, in the middle of a massive recession when the government had just rammed through a really ugly trillion dollar bailout and the deficit was going through the roof, no conservative was going to vote for a massive new entitlement program. They wouldn't vote for it now, either.
You also have to understand how immensely unpopular Obamacare is with the Republican base, which has very little to do with Fox News and everything to do with how it's a massive wealth transfer from working taxpayers to the nonworking poor. Obama likes to crow about giving 20M people health coverage, but think of what that means: 300M already had it. And for those 300M, their health care coverage got worse and more expensive.
And Obama's "Elections have consequences. I won." line to Eric Cantor might, in retrospect, not have been the ideal way to get Republicans on side. Just throwing that one out there.
>Romney ran for president on a platform that his healthcare plan was a good idea when he did it but a bad idea when Obama did it.
Which was obvious bollocks, and one of the reasons he lost--there was absolutely no appetite for Romney among the Republican base. He was the Republican's Hillary Clinton.
>To liberal ears, it's really hard to explain how this was a principled stand against wacky liberal ideas run amok
Conservatives believe government is generally terrible at everything. They think the health care system needs less government, not more. Your default position when it comes to "will conservatives support x policy proposal" should be, "if it shrinks the government then yes, otherwise no".
The US currently has around $100T, with a 'T', in unfunded liabilities in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. That gap is going to close one way or the other, either through increased taxes, decreased spending, or a sovereign debt crisis. Adding another massive chunk to that is a very bad idea that conservatives simply do not like. Paul Ryan isn't trying to cut Medicaid and Medicare and Social Security because he's a nasty man who hates poor people, he's doing it because the US simply cannot afford those programs and the only way to pay for them would be to massively raise taxes. If you're okay with that, vote Democrat.
>simply an attempt to regain power by obstructing even previously-bipartisan ideas, even at the cost of damaging the country, to ensure that the other side couldn't take credit.
There's a real divide in the GOP between the line-in-the-sand types and the responsible government types. You've got people like Boehner, who thought it was necessary to compromise with Obama on some things, and people like Cruz, who thought it was vital to take a stand and ensure the government did not continue to grow, even at the cost of shutting it down. While electoral politics certainly play some role in that, it really is driven by ideology. Ted Cruz, whatever else you might say about him, is not a flap-in-the-wind sort of guy. He's a true believer. Ditto Ryan.
That's certainly true, and you'll see Republicans pass some legislation they don't want to. But they're not going to rubber-stamp policies they find abhorrent.
I suspect the trillion-dollar infrastructure spend will happen. But the "Muslim registry", and similar illiberal proposals, will not.
How do you see that aligning even slightly with your earlier statement about not passing Obama agenda because it wasn't aligned with conservative beliefs?
How can a trillion dollars infrastructure spend under Trump and yet a health care plan that would save money be blocked by under Obama?
I applaud your constructive approach in this conversation BTW. And I hope you are right about blocking Trumps craziness.
I suspect Congressional Republicans will pass Trump's infrastructure plan because they're shell shocked and not quite sure what their base demands of them. It's not an ideological capitulation, but rather a defensive retreating into their shell while they figure out where they stand. Was Trump really a denunciation of the Conservative Movement, or just a well-known figure who eked out an EC victory against a detested and uninspiring opponent?
>a health care plan that would save money be blocked by under Obama?
Which plan was this? Obamacare was a massive expenditure. If you're talking about proposals to improve it, why would Republicans try to fix a program they thought was ill-conceived and detestable in the first place? They now have the opportunity to repeal and replace Obamacare whole cloth. Let's see what they do with it.
>I applaud your constructive approach in this conversation BTW.
Thanks. I'm trying to be civil, hopefully with some success. I realize SV types aren't a natural audience for conservative views, but I think HN is a pretty good forum for people to discuss opposing views rationally and civilly.
>And I hope you are right about blocking Trumps craziness.
You and me both. I'm more hopeful than optimistic, at least in the first year while Congressional Republicans find their legs. My appraisal is that they'll probably pass some legislation that's anathemic to conservatives, but they'll stop short of endorsing illiberalism. There's a personal, moral difference between doing things you think are wrong and doing things you think are Wrong, and the latter will remind Republicans of who they are and what they believe.
As I can't edit this comment any more, let me apologize for the "obstruction" bit. It was a cheap blow, not a meaningful contribution. But please do pay attention to the "checks and balances" bit, then go read Federalist 51[1] (if men were angels...) or at least a decent summary of it[2]. This notion of government being designed to pit power against power in an effort to avoid what Trump would be if he governed unopposed is central to conservative belief, and it's why we keep banging on about the Founding Fathers and the Constitution.
"The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."
No, you'll hear more cries of "obstruction!". They'll be on Trump's Twitter feed. If current trends continue, the media will feel that each one is news, and will write an article about each one.
My hope is that Trump Twitter fatigue sets in very early.
On what grounds do you find a refusal to consent to an executive's appointment to be unconstitutional? As someone who's been studying the constitution for five years, it seems eminently constitutional to me as well as every lawyer or law professor I've discussed the matter with.
Washington Post has asserted the claim that it is unconstitutional as a "3 pinocchios" falsity[1]
Yes.
>The "conservative intellectual" niche may be the most politically irrelevant group in the country.
Trump won the Presidency, not the Movement. The rest of the GOP, though shell-shocked, has not suddenly ditched conservatism and embraced Trumpism. The vast majority of the GOP members of the House and Senate, and those in state governments, are conservative, not Trumpist.
Conservatives, not just Republicans, have far more power in the US right now than at any point in recent memory.
And thankfully, the Founding Fathers, sharp blokes that they were, crafted a system of checks and balances. I suspect we'll hear fewer cries of "obstruction!" when Congress blocks President Trump's policies than we did for Obama's.