So a lot of the times, I see statements like “The GOP is illegitimate” or “Republicans are idiots”. I get the rooting for your side stuff to a degree. But if you had to steelman some of the best republican arguments, what positions could you live with? Also, if there are time periods or candidates you could point to that would be helpful.
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So a lot of the times, I see statements like “The GOP is illegitimate” or “Republicans are idiots”. I get the rooting for your side stuff to a degree. But if you had to steelman some of the best republican arguments, what positions could you live with? Also, if there are time periods or candidates you could point to that would be helpful.
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Republicans positions they tout, or the ones they actually implement? Those tend to be very different.
Republicans? Mostly maybe. MAGAs? No.
Guns.
I do wish the left would just give it up for now. You cant pass anything federally and on the state level its pointless because theres always one asshole neighbor with absolutely no limits at all.
Off the top of my head: child tax credits, improving border security, countermeasures for social media censorship.
A lot of the reasonable republicans aren’t republican anymore. There doesn’t seem to any positions anymore as much as “whatever Trump says”.
Tort reform? Their alleged care of trying to reduce the debt? Permitting reform? All which can be achieved without the fascism
no i’m a socialist
Mental health.
Every school shooting, Republicans tell us it’s a mental health problem, not a guns problem. I think they’re half right, so I’d love to work together on mental health, even if we can’t accomplish anything together about the guns. Not sure if it’s fair to call this their “position” though, because I haven’t seen any serious policy proposals. It seems more like a red herring.
Some of them probably fuck in pretty normal positions, I guess?
I don’t care about them saying “govt should be smaller” or “taxes should be less” — like these are starting points I’m open to hearing them out. And some of their criticisms of liberals aren’t off base.
Most of them are, in the abstract.
It’s the cruelty with which they’re implemented.
It’s the sheer malevolence of the people they’re voting for.
Whilst I don’t support such a law by principle, I would actually accept a federal 15 week ban on elective abortion where every state in the country has elective abortion up to 15 weeks but banned afterwards. I think there is an argument to be had having such a law is more fair and more stable than the current post-Dobbs environment, and I say that as someone living in a blue state. Note the wording “elective abortion”, so there would be exceptions including blue states that may sneak in mental health exceptions.
Of course I highly doubt that Republicans would ever agree to such a thing. That said though I actually think there are like 10-13 Republicans in the Senate who might vote for a law like that though, those who represent states with more liberal laws on abortion than 15 weeks (WI, MT, MT, OH, OH, PA, WI, WI, UT, UT, AK, MO, MO) so if Dems would support such a law it’d easily pass with over 60 votes in the Senate.
I would say their position on national security is reasonable. In terms of dealing with non-state actors that engage in conflict with the United States. It’s somewhat reasonable.. Most countries handle non-state actors using police work, we kind of use the power of our military on non-state actors. Which draws a lot of controversy in international relations. Since there is no real way to distinguish non-combatants. But over the decades we’ve utilized special forces and surgical strikes for this reason.
The social issues, they use to be reasonable once upon a time, but now it’s turned into a zero sum game of just turning the clock back to segregation and installing a theocratic state. I dunno. Depends on who you are. If you’re an evangelist that’s a perfectly reasonable thing if you’re constitutionalist, it isn’t. But that’s where things stop being objective.
Insider trading, and potentially other restrictions on elected officials.
Matt Gaetz and AOC cosponsored a bill on this in 2023. It’s not the rank and file R or D position though.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/05/02/aoc-and-gaetz-push-for-ban-on-congressional-stock-trading/
There are two I can think of that Republicans claim they hold, but they don’t really do:
1- Free speech absolutism
2- Keep the government out of people’s personal lives.
I find it weird how republicans are against certain positions when dems are in charge, then perfectly fine with them, when they are in charge.
Not really worth it, because all the few good ideas they have dems support too. So you could just vote dem and avoid the other gop problems.
Pre-Reagan Republicans didn’t totally suck. Nixon is responsible for the EPA. Eisenhower increased social security coverage, and signed the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 allowing more immigrants into the country. Shit, even Reagan had the amnesty program that granted citizenship pathways to undocumented immigrants.
Prior to the psychotic religious take-over of the party, there was a focus on fiscal conservatism, strong protection policies towards natural resources, provide more pathways to citizenship AND an emphasis on building infrastructure. Not all Republican policies were good, but they had some I’d be willing to vote for.
When the culture war bs started with Reagan, any Republican policy other than abortion or religion went out the door. It ruined this country more than I think people realize. There’s nothing worth supporting because it all became performative.
That’s beside the point if you can’t count on them to remain true to any position
I’d (still) be a Republican if the GOP were interested in running a minimal, constitutional, fiscally responsible government rather than culture wars. So for pretty much all of their (espoused) domestic policy plus immigration, there is a version I agree with. I don’t find much salvageable about tariffs or playing footsie with Putin.
EDIT: As for eras/candidates, I’d take George W Bush with a few changes:
nix the Patriot Act
no war in Iraq
rethink Too Big to Fail and the bailouts
no Defense of Marriage Act
With hindsight, we might also improve:
the war in Afghanistan
No Child Left Behind (less assembly-line thinking, please)
economic policy that led to the 2008 crash
Being conservative with money aka a balanced budget or cutting programs that truly don’t make sense, I’m good with. If DJT’s administration had taken the time to truly audit the contracts one by one and come up with any sort of fraud/waste/abuse, I’d be all for cutting wasteful spending. But we know this admin is a fraud because they ‘cut wasteful spending’ and then DJT spends $26M going golfing and another 15-20M going to the Super Bowl and a nascar race.
Mit Romney was the last republican; the party is dead.
Republicans are now the party of reelecting a constitutionally disqualified insurrectionist, rapist, and felon to the office of President. They’re the party of ignoring due process in the pursuit of illegally deporting legal immigrants, kidnapping people off the streets and hiding their deaths in their custody, of worshipping kings and hatred of free speech. The party of alienating and abandoning our allies while bowing down to dictators. They crashed the economy for literally no reason because their king has no idea what the hell he’s doing, and nobody with any power is going to do anything about it. Their Supreme Court invents rulings from wholecloth that have nothing to do with the Constitution and they don’t give a shit about democracy. They’ll even proudly tell you they don’t, with phrases like “we’re not a democracy, we’re a republic,” or “democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner.” They hate the core values the country was founded on and they’re traitors to our country and to the world.
The only reasonable position involving Republicans is to refuse to be associated with that party at all.
Edit: I could answer your question, but why bother? Any time Republicans actually have a worthwhile steelman, Democrats adopt the position themselves anyway. Democrats actually wanted border reform and Republicans are the reason that didn’t happen, for example.
I dunno, maybe “The U.S. was better for white men before desegregation”?
I used to believe this but there were some but this hasn’t been true in like a decade. They’re entirely the Donald’s personality cult now. If he says the moon is made of cheese, it becomes the new GOP position.
Some of George HW Bush’s foreign policy was pretty good, stopped Saddam Hussein from seizing too much power without destabilizing Iraq & forcing regime change. Handled the fall of the USSR really well.
There are no republican positions
I used to agree with republicans on letting the free market play out globally, and not interfering to prop up American businesses. But now that’s the main part of their platform, extreme government overreach and interference in the free market to force a specific outcome.
Not the current group, no.
ACTUALLY conservative positions, absolutely. What should we want to conserve? Natural Parks, for example? Awesome. A moderating force on progress so that change is sustainable, positive and pragmatic? Absolutely. A fiscally conservative party to keep spending in balance? Sounds great!
A Republican party that is actually conservative and actually operates in good faith for the sake of the American people would be great.
The current Republicans are an embarrassment though and need to be dumped from power entirely.
Are you asking traditional conservative positions or new MAGAt positions. I agree with a little of traditional republican positions, just not their idea of a solution. But the last traditional republican was McCain. I disagreed with some of his solutions but always respected the man.
Yeah, I mean interestingly both Republicans and Democrats believe government spending relative to taxation income is an issue. They just differ wildly on the solutions, cut all funding vs tax rich people.
This is honestly the problem with politics, same idea wildly different conclusions both believing themselves to be right.
I agree with the MAGA views on birthright citizenship, only something like 5 countries have birthright citizenship and it seems super illogical.
Remember those times when Republicans said they were the “Law and Order” party, the party of “Constitutionalists” and “Peace On Earth”, then decided that Congressional power really didn’t matter, the President can just blatantly ignore the Judicial branch, and clapped in agreement as Trump contemplated reclaiming Panama and seizing Greenland while quietly parking B2 bombers off the Iran’s coast? Those were fun times.
No, there’s nothing.
Well, maybe the penny. We agree on the penny.
No
Quite frankly after Trump 2.0 if I agree with a conservative I usually go and make sure I’m not totally wrong before talking about it again.
I haven’t seen a single piece of policy or legislation that isn’t targeting a small group of people.
Except Bush’s AIDS and foreign vaccine policies.
A really good one that I like a lot is “Tariffs and other protectionist policies are usually bad because they favor well-connected special interests over the populace at large and cause workers to pursue careers in industries that might die without ongoing, stable government intervention.”
Annnnnd it’s gone.
i think whenever republicans are ‘reasonable’ its because they stumble into a good position through bad logic.
Like they’ll acknowledge the very real opiod epidemic in america but downplay societal factors like poverty and mental health.
they’ll acknowledge that competitive markets drive innovation but then support measures that make markets anti competitive. stuff like that
I’m heavily pro gun. That’s about The only thing I agree with them about. (Although the right isn’t as pro gun as they portray themselves to be when it comes to minorities of guns.)
Hmm they run on the premise of getting big money out of politics. But they only seem to be getting more in. You know what they say about actions…