MYTH: GOP is better for the Economy

[Dill]

(05-23-2023, 02:05 PM)Nately120 Wrote: I remember when McCain was speaking with that voter at the town hall thing and the woman said she's afraid of Obama because he's an Arab and McCain cut her off and said that he wasn't and that he wanted to focus on policy and so on.  I had a gf at the time who was a republican and she responded that McCain completely blew it by saying that and Obama was almost a shoe in now.

That was the point where I saw an educated republican admit that failing to lie and/or lean into culture war stuff that politicians and smart voters know is a lie but don't care about was harmful to the GOP's election chances.   Academically I get it, but the idea that McCain can't say that Obama is NOT a dangerous Arab was a sign where the party was headed.  

McCain and his style/supporters would eventually become an enemy to the Trumps and Kari Lakes of the world, so that says a lot, too.  Gore v McCain in 2000 would have been a more beneficial election in my mind, but thems the breaks.  I guess he really was a political fossil who got left behind by the shift of the right wing.

Yes, if getting power was all that mattered, then McCain did the wrong thing. He's the anti-McCarthy.

Liz Cheney would likely agree: the incentive structure in the GOP does not now reward people who stand on principles of decency and civility.
McCain grew up in an era when it did, and was unable to "adjust." 

This dovetails with what the Dominion Suit revealed--RWM and politicians know that they have to endorse conspiracies, lies they know are lies, and ugly, anti-democratic behavior to keep power. Or the voters will find other "leaders," and from Trump to Santos they'll hold tight to them whether their lies are exposed or not.  

That's the lesson drawn from McCain's encounter with the woman who'd heard Obama was an "Arab." 

The other crazy aspect of the present is that people may be called "partisan" for noting that the GOP now does things regularly
that no party did before, at least since 1945. It is structurally and functionally different now compared to 25 years ago. This cannot, however,
appear true to someone who thinks Trump really won and/or truly believes the Clintons have people killed; from that perspective, understandably, Dems are equally bad: "both sides do it."  Hence the strange phenomenon of "independents" who clearly espouse the priorities of one party over the other, but cannot identify with that party because they "lie equally" or present the same level of danger to the country.
That flies wherever people find it normal or unobjectionable that the guy who actually tried to steal an election remains the front runner
of his party--that includes people who aren't voting for Trump, and even claim to dislike him, but still don't see what the big problem is with
the fact that he can draw 50 million votes just like that-- with indictments still pending for sedition, obstruction of justice, theft of classified documents, and a liable finding in a defamation suit involving a sexual assault.

That's why discussions of the economy with the requisite data and graphs may not settle the issue of which party has historically been better. 
It's always really about something else.