In this Newsweek article by Charles Sykes, a conservative laments the state of the GOP. He accepts some of the blame, but still seems to want sympathy, and yet, he’s still only part way out of the right-wing alternative reality bubble. Lets see what he has to say, and see if we can help him fully escape into the real world.
I realized that conservatives had created an alternate reality bubble—one that I had helped shape
Liberals had been telling you for years that conservatives live in an alternate reality bubble. There’s no excuse for not realizing that until the 2016 election.
During the 2016 election, conservatives turned on the principles that had once animated them. Somehow a movement based on real ideas—such as economic freedom and limited government—had devolved into a tribe that valued neither principle nor truth;
It’s nice that you recognize this now, but you could and should have recognized this far earlier. And I don’t think it’s quite right to say “conservatives turned”. It’s more that the conservatives in the GOP have been overtaken by the Tea Partiers. The Tea Partiers have always been there, it’s just that they now seem to outnumber the conservatives, and the power is swinging to them. They certainly dominate the House, and are now making progress on the Senate, and of course they control the Presidency.
...as the right allowed liberal overreach in the Obama era to blind them to the crackpots and bigots in their midst.
Ah, yes. It’s always the liberals’ fault for “blinding you” to the fact that you have crackpots and bigots in your party. What was it exactly that the liberals did that blinded you? Was it the fact that they kept screaming “there are lots of crackpots and bigots in your party, and you need to get them out”? Don’t blame “Obama’s overreach” for your own failure to recognize what was happening to your party.
I share many of their concerns about Clinton
Then you still haven’t fully recovered from being in the alternative reality bubble. If you look fairly at all your concerns about Clinton, you’ll find that none of them are founded. Perhaps you never bought into the alt-right stories about Hillary running a child porn ring from a D.C. pizzeria. But I suspect you did buy into the stories and conspiracy theories about Benghazi and emails and the Clinton Foundation that were peddled by Fox News and right-wing radio. Take any of these issues, do your research (it’s not hard these days), and figure out what the facts are. And then go compare that to what Fox News was saying all along. If you do that fairly and thoroughly, you’ll realize that Fox News has been lying to you all along. It’s not that Breitbart and Drudge are just making things up, while Fox News (and Rush) are just providing a slanted view. Fox News is making things up, too.
Donald Trump is the president we deserve.
Yes, Conservatives and Tea Partiers deserve him, but liberals do not. And even the “average Joe” who sometimes watches Fox News does not. That person is easily duped, but he is not malicious. The Tea Partiers are malicious, and Conservatives may not be malicious, but are certainly culpable for allowing the Tea Partiers to take control of the GOP.
This shift took many by surprise.
Who was it that was surprised that Trump is nothing like Reagan? Certainly not liberals. It was you conservatives who seemed to be saying “well, he’s not the one I would have chosen, but as long as he’s got an R next to his name, I’ll vote for him over Hillary”. Or “Hillary is worse”. You should never have been surprised. You should have known, as we liberals did, exactly what Trump was like from the moment he started to run. And to believe the propaganda against Clinton to the point that you think that she’s worse than an completely unqualified, incompetent, (I could go on with the name calling, but I don’t want to be “shrill”) person? So yes, I give you credit for now seeing what Trump is like. A little late, but you got there. Now see if you can find out what Clinton is like. Only then will you be “out of the bubble”.
...a shift from freedom to authoritarianism, from American “exceptionalism” to nativism and xenophobia. From his hard line on immigration and rebuttal of free trade to his strange fascination with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump represented a dramatic repudiation of the values that had once defined the movement.
Well, it’s not fair to say Conservatism was defined by freedom. I know Conservatives think they support freedom more than Liberals, but Liberals think the opposite. As for “exceptionalism”, Conservatives always seemed to be just one step away from “white nationalism” if not just plain “racism”. The Conservative view of “exceptionalism” always seemed to be saying “Americans are inherently better people because we are white and we are Christian”. While Liberals view it as “Americans are inherently better people because we are hard working and passionate”. Note the differences: one is racist and religious “one-upmanship”. The other is based on based on personal and societal attributes. One is “who we are” and the other is “what we do”. Oh, and one is false, and the other is true. And of course, one is based on facts (studies do show Americans are harder working than other countries, and more generous in donations). And one is not.
The timing fueled suspicion that the movement had more to do with the new president’s race—and party affiliation—than his policies, yet the early days of the Tea Party defied easy categorization.
That may have been true in the “early days of the Tea Party”, but it’s no longer true. We now know for certain that the Tea Party was all about Obama’s race, and we know that race is a major factor in Trump’s support. So it’s time that we look back and give credit to those of us – generally, all liberals – who identified this early on. And to note that those who denied that the hate for Obama was a lot about race where simply wrong (virtually all Republicans, including Fox News and AM radio, and including Conservatives). Conservatives were wrong and Liberals were right. Learn from it.
The Tea Party soon became the face of the conservative movement,
Technically, the Tea Party has become the face of the GOP party, not conservatives. We liberals recognize the difference, and so do you conservatives. The difference is that we liberals warned you about it, and you conservatives didn’t listen. Yes, we said “These are deplorable people, and you should kick them out of the party”. We didn’t warn you that they would take over your party and push you out. Even we didn’t really realize how many deplorables there are in the country. But we did warn you.
Legitimate concerns over rationing health care morphed into overheated rhetoric about “death panels.”
Not really. It’s not like John McCain went from legitimate concerns to believing in “death panels”. Instead, he not only tolerated Tea Partiers in the party, he nominated their leader to be his running mate! And the current GOP “concerns over rationing health care” were never legitimate. If you are referring to “reduced access” caused by the ACA, sorry, that myth has been thoroughly debunked. If you are referring to the actual “rationing” that would have happened under the various ACA repeal plans, that’s real, but the the GOP never had “legitimate concerns” there. It was always all about taking away something from “those other people”.
Even after Representative Joe Wilson was censured for yelling “You lie!” at Obama during a speech on health care in 2009, many on the right hailed the South Carolina Republican as a hero.
But even those in the GOP who did not consider him a hero failed to point out that he (Wilson) was lying and denounce him for it.
By not doing so, you were letting the “well, we each have our own set of facts” meme take hold.
And of course, very few Republicans spoke out against the meanness and disrespect of yelling out during the President’s speech.
Trump proliferated birtherism
Yes, and not enough Republicans condemned him for it, and now we are all suffering the consequences. All politicians should have denounced Trump. To say “well, he’s my party’s nominee, so I’m not going to criticize him” is just morally wrong. You should put your country first, before party. If you’re playing politics as a tactical, zero-sum game, then it’s the correct action. But politics is not like that.
Not everyone on the right bought into birtherism.
Yes, and not everyone bought into the theory that the moon landing was faked. It’s not enough to say “not everyone”. Anyone who bought into this conspiracy, or any other fake stories pushed by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, etc. needs to get themselves out of that bubble, and help others to get out. We’ve got too much real-world work to be done to be bogged down by fake conspiracy theories. People who read Breitbart and Drudge may be too far gone to help, but many of those who watch Fox News and listen to Rush can be salvaged. But you conservatives need to salvage them, they won’t listen to us liberals.
In private, conservatives who knew better justified their return to the dark fringes on the grounds that it fired up the base and antagonized liberals
Yes, and that’s horrible. These conservatives, and the GOP in general, are playing an entirely different “game” than Democrats. The Republicans are playing a game where the goal is to beat the other side, a zero sum game, and a game where emotions win out over facts, and the other side is the enemy. Democrats, on the other hand, are playing a game where “both sides” have the same goal: to make the country better.
It’s not like a sports game with one team vs. another. It’s like one group of people trying to renovate a house and make it better. Different people working on the house have some different ideas about what makes a house “better”, and different ideas for how to build it. As with everything these days, this is not just two different ways of viewing things, and everyone is entitled to their opinion. The basic real-world fact is that governing really is like building a house, and it is not like a sports game. The Democrats’ view is accurate, and the Republicans’ view is not.
We were naive. By failing to push back against the racist birther-conspiracy theory—among other harmful, batty ideas—conservatives failed a moral and intellectual test with significant implications for the future.We failed it badly.
100% correct. You where not just naive, but you were insular. You refused to listen when liberals told you that you need to shoot down the batty ideas. It’s never too late, though, to get yourself out of the right-wing bubble. It will be hard to accept that Hillary is not crooked if you’ve been watching Fox News for years, but it’s worth the effort. Imagine the good feeling of realizing the truth after being freed from years of propagandistic brain washing. Try listening to Rush Limbaugh for a few minutes, and the first time he makes a claim about the world, you google it and you will likely find that it’s not true, or at least highly misleading. It’s a good feeling to be able to tell who is lying to you or manipulating you, and to identify when they are doing it.
First there was the massive stimulus package, which threatened to balloon the national debt.
According to economists like Paul Krugman, the stimulus was only about 25% as big as it should have been to produce the number of jobs needed. Ignore the Republican talking points that you’ve heard so many times, and do the research. Start with Krugman, follow his links. Again, this is not a “well, one opinion is that it should have been bigger and another opinion is that it should have been smaller”, or “some say it worked, others say it didn’t. “ There are real experts (economists) who study these things, and they can tell you how big the stimulus needed to be and where the money should have gone in order to be most effective. How well it worked is clearly a “real-world fact”, regardless of talking points. How big it “should have been” is of course a matter of opinion, but the economists who study this can tell you “if you make it this big, you will create this many jobs”.
Obama, frustrated by gridlock in Congress, started issuing a dizzying array of executive orders on issues ranging from immigration to clean power.
Is that “dizzying array” claim true? Did Obama really issue more executive orders than, say, GWB? Google it and find out, don’t just believe the talking points you’ve heard.
But Democrats seemed to act as if their success were preordained
Like a boxer who is the heavy favorite, yes, the Democrats and Hillary in particular, thought and acted as if she would win.
Nothing wrong with that. I don’t see why that’s so offensive. Hillary was always the clear favorite. It’s not like she was being smug or anything. If you think she was being smug, go ahead and site an example. But citing Fox News saying she’s being smug is not an example.
At the same time, conservatives were inundated with stories, links and video clips of protesters chanting “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!” and “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon.”
The only people who were “inundated” were those watching Fox News. And those people choose to watch Fox News because they enjoy the outrage. But it’s a false equivalence between the “Black Lives Matter” protests and the Trump rallies. At the Trump rallies, Trump really was constantly blowing the dog whistle and encouraging violence. But the Black Lives Matter protest where generally peaceful and constructive. It’s the right wing propaganda machine who turned the “Black Lives Matter (too)” message into “White Lives Don’t Matter”. They made their viewers believe it’s something that it’s not.
There’s also the issue of degree. I don’t have solid numbers, but I would say that violent left-wing protesters and those who support them make up less than one percent of the population. But the number of “deplorables” in the country (racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, etc) is around 30-40%. I think Hillary’s estimate that about half of Trump’s supporters being deplorable is about right. Keep in mind that I’m not calling you a racist. You may or may not be racist, I don’t know.
As the Democrats became a party dominated by a highly educated, urban elite, its traditional blue-collar base felt increasingly disenfranchised. Many called them “angry white men” without really asking if they had legitimate reasons to be angry.
We liberals know that. They do have reasons to be angry. The main reason is that Republican policies have kept their income stagnant while the rich get much richer. The claim that immigrants are “stealing their jobs” and causing a lot of crime is not a valid reason to be angry, because it’s simply not true. People may feel that way, but if they do, they need to stop watching Fox News and listening to Rush and find out the truth. Yes, their jobs are being outsourced or simply disappearing, but that’s not for the reasons that they’re told by the right-wing media. For example, coal mining is going away because natural gas is cheaper and other economic reasons, not because of over regulation. But the only way a person can know that is to turn off Fox News and either watch a real news channel or spend a few minutes googling it. Watch CNN. If you’re skeptical about something they say, then fact-check them on wikipedia. Not hard.
Since the 1950s, conservatives have criticized the bias and double standards of the mainstream media. And much of the criticism has been deserved. Conservatives may exaggerate media bias, but they do not imagine it. The double standards made for daily fodder on my radio show for the past 23 years.
Sorry, but that’s simply not true. Fox News is pure propaganda, and there is no left wing equivalent of that. It’s not just that they’re “unfair and unbalanced” (though they are), it’s that they’re also inaccurate. There are countless examples, but you or I could take any 10 minute segment on Fox News and find at least several lies in addition to the bias, inuendo, baseless claims, etc. Or you can examine any one specific claim that you believe is true, but that liberals don’t. For example, did Hillary have the military “stand down” in Benghazi? Research it, and you’ll find its not true. Then think about the countless hours that Fox News spent on that issue, trying to convince you that it was true. Or simply look at the polls to see who many Fox News viewers believe it to be true.
How often Fox News is caught in a specific, explicit lie is not the point. The point is that they get viewers to believe things that are not true. And that’s propaganda, not news. Studies have found that Fox News viewers are not “uninformed”, they are “misinformed” on political issues. The viewers didn’t answer “I don’t know” when asked questions about current events. Instead, they gave the *wrong* answer, the answer provided by Fox News.
But at some point in the past decade, Drudge began linking to Infowars...
It’s nice that you’ve now noticed that Drudge and Breitbart are “fake news” sites. But those are the easy ones, the ones that make up fake stories out of nothing. But a reasonable person should also be able to see that Fox News takes those stories, and makes them mainstream, usually by hints and insinuation and all sorts of devious tactics. Here’s a tip: any time a news channel “asks a question” (e.g. “Did Hillary do X”?), you know something is wrong. News sites do not make up questions, they answer them.
The Donald also enlisted the help of Breitbart bloviator Steve Bannon as his campaign strategist—a man who had turned his website into a platform for the hate-mongering “alt-right.”
Bannon had a much bigger role than that, within the Trump presidency, as you know.
Those of us who were slow to join the bacchanal were denounced as sellouts, traitors or elitists.
And justifiably so. You were a sellout, for putting your party before the good of the country and accepting, if not outright supporting, a person who is not only completely unqualified, but just a horrible person.
You are a traitor for betraying your country by putting your party first. You supported and voted for a presidential candidate who you knew or should have known would be terrible for the country. Trump, or people in his inner circle may have colluded with our enemy, and yet you probably see that as “just politics” and “nothing to it” rather then be willing to go with the real-world facts by seeing where the ongoing investigation takes you.
As for being an “elitist”, I rarely hear liberals calling conservatives “elitist”. In fact, that’s not an insult, it’s a compliment. An elitist is someone who believes a country should be led by people who are elite – i.e. people who are very good at their jobs. I’m certainly guilty of that, and anyone who isn’t needs to rethink things.
Why would you want to have leaders who are not good at their jobs? It’s fine to say “I don’t think the current pitcher is any good, let’s get someone else”. But no matter how much you hate the current pitcher, you don’t put the ball boy in as quarterback. Being bad at a job is not a good thing, and wanting someone who will be bad at his job is a bit insane. Calling him an “outsider” or someone who will “shake things up” or “will drain the swamp” is all good. But that’s not what just happened. Instead, we hired the ball boy to be pitcher (President), Someone who has never played baseball, is not good at baseball, and is a horrible person to boot. And of course, by “we hired”, I mean “you elected”.
Conservatives who had previously agreed that Russia posed a global threat pivoted to embrace Putin as an exemplar of white Christian civilization;
Which just goes to show that Conservatives generally do not really know or care about the facts, and instead simply do their job as part of the “team”.
The “team” hated Russia and all murderous dictators just a year ago. And yet now the Republican love Putin, just because Trump said so. The average Republican, I guess, must be thinking “Sure, I’ll embrace a murderous thug who controls his country by propaganda, if that’s what my team is doing now”. And how far is it from supporting a Russian murderous thug who controls the populace through propaganda, to supporting the same thing in an American leader? Not far. Trump is not far from Putin. All that’s missing is the “murderous” part.
A movement once driven by ideas during the Reagan era—back before the advent of Rush Limbaugh or Fox News—now found itself dominated by Kardashian-like hosts, intellectually dishonest shills, cynical careerists and alt-right bullies.
We liberals, too, would like to get back to “the good old days” where we have no insane members of Congress, all agree on basic facts about the world, and have reasonable discussions about policy. But there’s simply no one on the other side to talk to. The President not only knows no policy, he doesn’t care to learn. The House is gone, with the majority of the GOP being insane Tea Partiers who would go ahead and destroy health care in this country, just because they painted the ACA as a failure and promised to repeal it. There are a few sane members still in the Senate (three, based on the latest ACA repeal support), but they’ll be gone soon. We warned you. We begged you to stop them. You didn’t listen, and now your party has been taken over and you have no home.
It would be great to get back to the era where Republicans just had bad policies, rather than completely insane policies. Perhaps we couldjust fix the minor problems with the ACA, rather than destroying the countries health care system (and destroy Medicaid while we’re at it). But the only way that will happen is by getting votes from all the Democrats and the few remaining sane Republicans.
All I can offer is that you can have a place in the Democratic party, but you’re going to first have to get on board with basic facts about the world. Like the fact that Hillary is not crooked, tax cuts do not pay for themselves, and making 30 million people lose health insurance is a bad thing. Again, these are not political views, they are basic, observable facts about the world. They are things that you can support by reading wikipedia, without ever reading National Review.
Rather than conformity, conservatism needs dissidents, contrarians.
That’s not going to happen. The closest you’re going to get to dissention is two women in the Senate barely decide to vote against a horrible health care bill, before they are primaried out. And one “maverick” who will do the same before he dies. That leaves 47 insane members of the Senate who are willing to vote for what is probably the most destructive bill in US history. And two Senators who vote against it because no destruction is ever enough for them.
Today, there are no “Nixon conservatives,”
There are also very few “Reagan conservatives” left, people who had bad policy ideas, but were sane people.
If you’re looking for sympathy from fellow sane conservatives, you’ll get it. But you won’t get it from the Tea Partiers. To them, you’ve been in charge of the GOP for long enough. And you won’t get it from liberals. To us, you created the Tea Partiers (or at least brought them out of the closet) and destroyed your own party. And you deserve it.
When that lady said “He’s [Obama] an Arab”, McCain grabbed the microphone and said “no, he’s a good guy, a family guy”. As if Arabs aren’t “good, family guys”. That was the wrong thing to do. He should have said “No, that’s a lie, and whoever told you that is lying to you. You’re a misinformed idiot and a racist and I don’t want your vote, and I don’t want you in my party”. He didn’t say that, and now those misinformed, racist, Islamophobic, hateful, insane people are in charge.
Totally your fault, not mine.
