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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   25741 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 25, 2024

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Trump is after all a bog-standard democrat from the 90's,

I don't know why people keep saying this. Even if Trump was a bog-standard Democrat in the 90's, which he wasn't (per Wikipedia he first registered as a Democrat in 2001 after losing the 2000 Reform primary to Pat Buchannan), people can change.

In so far as we can see which substantial policy issues Trump actually cares about beyond "Donald Trump should be President", they appear to be:

  • Broad-based tariffs, with other foreign policy goals subordinated to a tariff policy based on perceived US economic interests (rather than using tariffs to reward geopolitical allies and punish enemies, or to contain China specifically).
  • Zero illegal immigration, a large cut in legal immigration, and removal of existing illegal immigrants.
  • Reducing the US resource commitment to maintaining an international system where the US's allies are free-riding.

Any one of these could have got you anathematized by the 1990's Democratic party, which, if you check the date, was controlled by the Clinton machine. They would also have got you funny looks from Reagan Republicans.

Lol, I think No_one already made the point, but everything you just listed was literally part of Clinton's re-election platform. People keep saying it because it is very true- if you shut out the TDS-spawned commentary, you have to search very hard to find much difference between the policies espoused by Clinton and those favored by Trump. The parties are flipping again, 90s Dems are todays MAGA, early 2000s NeoCons are todays Dems.

Any one of these could have got you anathematized by the 1990's Democratic party,

Yeah, sure. Now guess who said this. Answer under spoiler.

All Americans not only in the state's most heavily affected but in every place in this country are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country the jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants the public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers that's why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before by cracking down on illegal hiring by borrowing welfare benefits to illegal aliens in the budget I will present to you we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes to better identify illegal aliens in the work face as recommended by the Commission headed by former congresswoman Barbara Jordan we are a nation of immigrants but we are also a nation of laws it is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years and we must do more

Bill Clinton said this in 1995

I remember Barack Obama saying something in a primary speech about being annoyed that his mechanic only spoke Spanish. Saying that today could literally get you fired from your job.

"Even if Trump was a bog-standard Democrat in the 90's, which he wasn't..."

They're saying this based off of his political positions that he espouses in public, for all the world to hear, and comparing this with where the two national parties have stood over the years. Everything Trump has campaigned on was Democratic dogma in the 90s, and, having lived through that period, your insistence that a) broad-based tariffs, b) eliminating illegal immigration, c) insisting that allies pay their fair share of maintenance of the international order were, in fact, anathema to 90's Democrats is just outright gaslighting. Those were absolutely policies publicly supported by the majority of Democrats; "nobody is illegal" isn't a mantra that exists in the public conscience until the rise of Woke.

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