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I agree with your first paragraph; not so much with the second. Bannon was Trump's chief strategist and architect of his campaign. Bannon is more of an old school, Truman/JFK Democrat than anything.
Trumps approval rating among Republicans is over 80%. Who knows what his ideology really is? However, he has governed as a persuaded conservative. In some ways he has actually been more conservative than Reagan. Reagan never installed a school choice advocate as Ed Secretary, for example. Reagan favored an 'assault weapon' ban; Trump doesn't.
Trump's actions aren't based on conservative ideology. They are based on whatever whim happens to flow through his primordial brain on any given day.
The core tenets of traditional conservatism don't have anything to do with wedge issues like guns or abortion. I would argue that true conservatism has two primary pillars; a strong national defense and clear understanding of our true enemies on the global stage; in that regard, Reagan was very conservative in his endless push-back against the USSR. Second tenet is to the prosperity and the potential for businesses to expand, and to provide the governmental support and promote the national stability to allow that to happen.
So far I haven't seen any evidence that Trump is interested in either of these goals, or if he is, has any understanding of how to accomplish them, or cares if he undermines them. In fact on these points, you could argue that Obama or Clinton were more effective conservatives than Trump.
Ask Union workers...before they were broken by the Right, if that progressive policy worked.
Ask all of those choking from smog....if cars that are 50X cleaner helped.
Ask all Americans if they support the Right of all to vote? To access public accommodations?
I think a lot of these world views worked very well until the GOP started demolishing them......
"The Square Deal was Theodore Roosevelt's domestic policy based on three basic ideas: protection of the consumer, control of large corporations, and conservation of natural resources."
Sounds very American to me.
FDR and the New Deal - which had to be put in place due to the Republican Great Depression included:
"Major federal programs included the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Farm Security Administration (FSA), the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) and the Social Security Administration (SSA). They provided support for farmers, the unemployed, youth and the elderly. The New Deal included new constraints and safeguards on the banking industry "
I can't hardly think of ANY of those policies that DIDN'T work, although adjustments have been made and I'm sure mistakes have also.
Sounds to me like The Progressive Movement is what made America Great. Even the War on Poverty - which "conservatives" like to find fake history about, worked to quite an amazing degree.
The War on Poverty stated in 1964, although JFK had addressed it earlier.
In 1963 approx. 19% of the US was at the poverty level.
In 1973, 10 years later, the figure was closer to 13%. That is a 30+ percent reduction, quite amazing for a decade.
That chart, as with many, shows the Reagan years as the real start of going backwards or at least not going forwards. In other words, conservative policies have not helped with poverty at all.
I am having a difficult time assimilating in my mind what has happened to this part of America. The current ideology of conservatives appears more and more to be anti everything that is good, moral, honest and beautiful. Anyone else feel this way?
I do. They seem to be some of the most miserable people I've ever encountered. It didn't used to be that way. I work with a guy who is staunchly conservative and his demeanor has noticeably deteriorated lately. According to him everyone is a leech, old people don't deserve SS and Medicare, all immigrants deserve nothing less than total expulsion from the US (forget just the illegal ones), etc. He used to be a somewhat nice guy but lately anything sets him off. It's bizarre. I see the same look on other people's faces who are avowed conservatives as well.
I believe that toxic attitude was always there but for some reason, with the election of Trump, it seems like they've changed. It's almost like he's given them a license to unleash the ugliness that's been pent up for a long time.
Of conservative ideas yes I am not a fan at all. Why should I be?
I guess we'll never know because (if I'm counting correctly) this is your fifth post on a thread you initiated to complain about conservatives being anti everything that is "good, moral, honest and beautiful," yet you still haven't listed one specific thing that you consider to be good, moral, honest or beautiful.
Cutting taxes without cutting spending = putting spending on the Federal credit card = increasing the national debt.
You think money grows on trees? When I don't take as much salary, I cut my spending. Typical conservative mentality is to push bills on to someone else and pretend nothing happened when trillions are added to the national debt. They cut taxes and INCREASE spending
You've proven that once again modern conservatives are fiscal hypocrites
Cutting spending is quite literally the bedrock idea of conservatives. The problem is that there are too many democrats, who won’t allow us to, so in order to fix the discrepancies we are forced to try to outgrow them which is why growth has been the key objective of the Trump administration. There are other ways to cut spending like stopping illegal immigration, getting people into the workforce and off social services etc. If you look on the state level red and purple states are infinitely more sound financially than blue states. Most run surpluses and are on a sustainable path while the likes of NJ, CT, IL, etc are heading towards bankruptcy.
Cutting spending is quite literally the bedrock idea of conservatives. The problem is that there are too many democrats, who won’t allow us to, so in order to fix the discrepancies we are forced to try to outgrow them which is why growth has been the key objective of the Trump administration. There are other ways to cut spending like stopping illegal immigration, getting people into the workforce and off social services etc..
1. Texas will not do E-Verify for employers - it has been brought to the floor there MANY times and the "conservatives" in their Government (one party, basically) refuse to do so.
2. You cannot say with a straight face "The Democrats FORCED us to do a 1.5 Trillion dollar tax cut that was not needed...out of debt and deficits". You also cannot say "The Democrats forced a 100% Republican controlled government to double the deficit that Obama was shrinking...and to make it that way for all projected years in the future".
You must know that doesn't compute.
"so in order to fix the discrepancies we are forced to try to outgrow them which is why growth has been the key objective of the Trump administration."
Any business person knows that when you are losing money on each sale, you can't make it up in volume. In fact, the complete opposite is true.
1. Texas will not do E-Verify for employers - it has been brought to the floor there MANY times and the "conservatives" in their Government (one party, basically) refuse to do so.
2. You cannot say with a straight face "The Democrats FORCED us to do a 1.5 Trillion dollar tax cut that was not needed...out of debt and deficits". You also cannot say "The Democrats forced a 100% Republican controlled government to double the deficit that Obama was shrinking...and to make it that way for all projected years in the future".
You must know that doesn't compute.
"so in order to fix the discrepancies we are forced to try to outgrow them which is why growth has been the key objective of the Trump administration."
Any business person knows that when you are losing money on each sale, you can't make it up in volume. In fact, the complete opposite is true.
The tax cut paid for itself in growth, it is the spending that is causing the deficits. The government does not operate like a business, what a terrible anaology, if we can grow at a sustained 3-4% clip than the size of our annual deficit becomes relatively insignificant. Debt to GDP is what matters, not the size of the debt. For example you are in a better situation with a 21 trillion dollar debt in a 21 trillion dollar economy than you are with 20 trillion in debt in a 19 trillion dollar economy. You can outgrow your debt, in fact it’s probably our only way out of debt because cutting spending is politically impossible. One you give someone something it becomes impossible to take it away.
Cutting spending is quite literally the bedrock idea of conservatives.
Yet gwb doubled the national debt with a mostly republican congress. Trump signed a $1.3 trillion spending bill last year, the second largest in history and passed a tax cut that will add a trillion dollars to the deficit annually without a single Democrat vote.
Do you really believe what you just posted? At a federal level, they are worse than dems/libs
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