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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   1629 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 22, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Interesting tidbit from the new NBC News poll: Project 2025 has a net favorability rating of negative 53 points. Only 4 percent of registered voters have a positive opinion of it.

I realize that basically nobody has actually read the 922 page policy document, but how does a pretty mainstream conservative policy agenda end up with lizardman numbers?

Distaste for Project 2025 is, in my opinion, the most naked example of media conspiracy to demonize a nothingburger. This is the Heritage Foundation, they're going to be recommending conservative policies that that've been recommending every day for the past 40 years. The song remains the same.

But, as you pointed out, it's a wonkish, highly dense policy agenda that 99% of people won't read. They will read headlines that equate it to a plan for female slavery. They'll associate it with ORANGE MAN BAD and think it's his personally crafted Plan For World Domination.

I think it gets down to the simple reality that "Project 2025" has a bit of a conspiratorial sound to it. If they had named it something like, "The Heritage Plan for Restoring American Family Values," I think it becomes much more difficult to get people to latch onto it. It sounds corporate and boring.

how does a pretty mainstream conservative policy agenda end up with lizardman numbers?

Half of the electorate is against because it's a roadmap for the other team, and the team it's a roadmap for has had its marching orders from the boss to say they don't like it.

It's the inverted equivalent of Woke. Much as Woke is an amorphous exonym that contains everything you don't like about liberals, Project 2025 is an amorphous conspiracy that contains everything you don't like about conservatives. Nobody is defending Project 2025, much as nobody defends Woke.

If you hear about it from liberals it's bad. If you hear about it from Trump he says he knows nothing about it, which given his record on prior endorsements from Bad Hombres would tell you as a Trump Voter it must be double plus bad. Seriously, every other flier I get from Trump is about how he disavows project 2025!

Is it really mainstream? I scrolled to somewhere in the middle randomly and they're talking about restricting money spent on food stamps. We're talking about a program that's 2% of federal outlays and about 20% of Americans have used food stamps at some point. Does anyone actually give a shit about cutting this program?

It's created by the Heritage Foundation and is generally in line with the Republican party agena of the past few decades. Heavier on social conservatism than libertarianism, as Heritage is a social conservative think tank.

I'm curious if any Republican candidates have run on cutting SNAP. I suspect not.

There's multiple ways you can read what Newt Gingrich says here. I'll let you decide if this counts.

Cutting welfare in general is a mainstream conservative position (cutting any specific program tends to be quite unpopular, but you gotta start somewhere). Poor people actually tend to be fatter than middle class or rich people, so there seems to be a caloric excess on the margin among food stamp recipients.

As you pointed out, 10% of EBT goes to hyper-sugary drinks which are essentially poisons for the people on food stamps.

We're subsidizing shitty food or playing some endless whack-a-mole of trying to paternalistically stop the underclass from eating themselves to death. It seems like they're hellbent on doing it anyway, so I'm not a fan of food stamps.

I'm not saying that a motte contrarian can't talk himself into it. I'm wondering if it's actually "mainstream conservatism" given that people want to win elections.

It's not really aimed at the general public, but at the Republican Presidential candidates and the people who might make up their cabinet if they get elected. Nobody cares much about selling the general public on how it's totally super awesome. Only conservatives who are hardcore policy wonks would actually read it. There's probably not much to be gained from any Republican candidate for office talking about how it's great and they promise to do it all either.

The Liberal institutions picked up on it as something they can scare their base with. It's easy and in their interest to go wall-to-wall selling everyone on how it's totally super terrible and horrifying and every Republican definitely seriously wants to do it, regardless of how much truth there is to that. And so, the overall public perception is super bad.

I guess this begs the question of: what exactly do Republican voters think they're voting for? What do they even want to vote for? I can understand why Trump himseld would want to distance himself from Project 2025, but why would conservative voters not want to support it? Are they just stupid?

Maybe this is exactly the expected result? Is 4% the actual proportion of non-stupid conservative voters in the general population? Everyone else is either not conservative, or just thinks whatever Trump tells them to? I can't say I have any evidence against this hypothesis.

They're probably voting for an expression of values and a meme-length description of what they want to do. Which is exactly what probably at least 90% of all voters on both sides of every election everywhere does. I don't think any of those Democrat voters could articulate exactly what Project 2025 is and why they think it's bad either.

I'd love it if the great majority of the voter base voted based on thoughtful consideration of actual policy positions, but it's just not realistic. If you want to win in any system resembling democracy, you're going to have to accept that there's more than a few idiots and nutcases on your side.

Republican voters think they're voting for an end to political correctness, a secure border, lower inflation, etc. Much like the median democrat, they're a bit fuzzy on what that means.

Honestly, because nobody has actually read the dumb thing. All they know is the scare monger stuff that’s out there. I’m not necessarily in favor of some parts of it, but to listen to the talk, it’s Mein Kampf as a policy manual. Even at its worst, it is not that, but until you can put those pages under the noses of the people, it’s impossible to have any reaction other than negative to a policy that is being held up as evil and that nobody is reading.

Most people would not care I think if they knew just how mundane most of it is.

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