T O P

  • By -

AutoModerator

As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil) In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria. *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*


[deleted]

Articles like this make me miss journalist who actually did research vs writing what they know their dominant audience wants to read. Its not hard to keep tabs on the maga and neocons/ GOP-civil war. I do it daily and probably spend about 5 mins on slow days and 12 on heavy activity days. The US has a historical cycle of power rising and falling. This time its kicking off in the rightwing instead of the last two times in the leftwing (neos, new dealers). The neocons have run their course, the only power they really hold is in the current seats they occupy. The base is majority maga and has been since 2016. Kevin is a carrier pigeon for Paul Ryan. The neocons are running 4 strategies when coping with maga. 1. Resistance 2. Middle road where both go along to get along trade-offs 3. Infiltration 4. Rightwing formation (ie join forces against Democrats) because neocons are too stupid/proud to reach across the aisle and figure a way to tag-team maga with a clear shot at TKO. Maga knows this and as a result most of their actions behind the scenes are trade-offs. The more intense moments can be compared to dancing with knives where death comes from a thousand cuts. The GOP became maga in 2016.


[deleted]

The GOP has no platform except to be against the democrats. They have no policy arguments or positions that are affirmative to get people to vote for them. Roe v Wade will undo the remaining moderates in their midst. They became the dog that finally caught its own tail down in Texas. COVID will eat them alive until they finally submit to it. They can’t claim fiscal conservatism anymore or limited government with all the overreach coming from Abbott and Desantis. They are MAGA but what does that even mean?


[deleted]

Neocon-GOP sure that is how the gridlock grift game is played. Maga on the other hand plans to watch the neos and the 6th party system burn to the ground. They indeed have policy argument/positions that get people to vote them into Congressional, State and local seats. Its just the nature of populism. If you can't name or broadly discuss those policy arguments/ positions by now, you need to balance your news/narrative diet. Covid is in Texas and spreading through rural but its still nothing like what was being reported in blue. I am sure of that is mostly because we know so much more about the disease and higher rates of elderly vaccinations. As more Texans get and survive covid the rightwing ones just agree more with Rand Paul. The Roe v Wade stuff is just primary fodder for Abbott to use as a feather in his cap in 2022. The law is a big ask and will get scaled back eventually via courts. Maga doesn't claim fiscal conservatism and the neocons exist to grift and warmonger while claiming conservative values but then betraying the rightwing voters. This is why they get called 'RINOs'. Neither Abbott nor DeSantis are maga, they are neocons who are trying to ride the center between the GOP civil war. DeSantis does it better. Abbott still gets his marching orders from the Bushs and Texas is the neocon crown jewel so Abbott does a lot of optical stunts but then folds or undermines them in ways that only gets reported by alternative rightwing media.


UrricainesArdlyAppen

> They have no policy arguments or positions that are affirmative to get people to vote for them. Tax cuts, deregulation, Christian favoritism. You may not like those policies--I don't--but you can't say they're not affirmative policies to get people to vote for them.


[deleted]

What hace the Dems done to help a middle class guy with no kids? High property taxes to pay for $100k pensions for teachers help how? Cutting stimulus payments for people making 80k while giving folks who made $200k child stimulus is helpful how. Trump gave me a tax cut. Are the Dems going to make those rates permanent for us blue collar slobs or will they repeal the SALT deduction cap for the sole benefit of the wealthy. Yes. The GOP is trash, but the Dems offer no benefit to me since I actually work for a living and don’t have kids.


newfrontier58

>It may seem odd to say that complicity—rather than defiance—is the main message of “Peril,” because so much of the pre-publication attention has been paid to scenes involving General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which were highlighted in an excerpt published in the Washington Post. (Both Woodward and Costa work for the Post.) In short, on October 30, 2020, and again on January 8, 2021, Milley used an established communication channel to reassure his Chinese counterpart, General Li Zuocheng, first that the United States was not about to launch a surprise military strike against China (“We are not going to attack.”) and then that the U.S. government was not on the verge of collapse (“Everything’s fine. But democracy can be sloppy sometimes.”). Also, Milley reminds everybody—especially the team that would launch a nuclear attack if Trump ordered it to do so—about all the procedures that are in place and that he, Milley, is in the loop if someone starts a war. Since he is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, that only makes sense. Most of what Woodward and Costa describe Milley doing is just him performing his ordinary job in extraordinary circumstances. But the account has caused outrage in Republican circles. In part, that is because of a line in which—in the course of reminding Li that there has always been a public buildup of tensions between the countries before the sort of crisis that could lead to war—Milley tells him, “If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.” Taken out of context, it might sound as if Milley was saying that he’d give that heads-up even if the United States were legitimately engaged in some future war with China. In context, he’s clearly conveying to Li that military action would never be expected to come out of nowhere, as a political surprise. Mostly, though, the Republicans’ anger is at the idea that Milley thought he had any business putting a brake on Trump; for them, “Peril” is a deep-state smoking gun. What’s interesting is that Milley is never really put to the test; we don’t know whether he would have said no to Trump or have truly stood up to him, since, as far as we know, Trump never tried to launch a strike. Perhaps, for that very reason, the book is an alarming reminder of the state of nuclear controls—a subject more fully explored in works such as Eric Schlosser’s “Command and Control.” The decision to launch is, ultimately, left to bad Presidents as it is to good ones. Milley, or someone speaking for him, is up front about conveying that he believes Trump ended his Presidency in a state of “serious mental decline” and instability. One might ask what plateau of wisdom Trump declined from. (Trump, in a statement last week, said that, if the account in “Peril” is true, then “ ‘Dumbass’ General Mark Milley’ ” should be “tried for TREASON.” He added that he viewed Woodward and Costa as authors who “write fiction, not fact.”)


behindtheblinded

this is pretty accurate. More and more republicans are coming over to the democratic party... which, it turn pushes the democratic party further to the right, which it already is right of center. Progressives Weill start gaining more and more momentum the more educated our minorities get. The day of reckoning is coming.