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It's not surprising to be that Dems are claiming that again and again - "if only you nominated a normal non-extremist candidate, we wouldn't call him Hitler, but you always nominate Hitlers!". This is a simple and time-tested tactics - "we're not political or ideological, we are just defending common sense from those crazies". The oldest trick in the book. What is astonishing there are still people on the red side that fail to see through the con. How many years of this happening again and again, with literally every single candidate, one needs to understand the pattern?
Why does it only work one way, though?
There was a comment yesterday about Democratic voters being motivated by Trump and by abortion rights, with voters not trusting Republicans to not write insane abortion laws. That's probably a reasonably accurate analysis. The necessary question, though, is whether that perception is due to the actual insanity of Trump and Republican abortion laws, or because of the perceptions of Trump and Republican abortion laws created by the Blue consensus machine.
"Moderates" want things to be normal and peaceful, and Blues can deny them normality and peace arbitrarily. Scott and other "moderate" blues often have stated how they want a "functional" Red establishment to moderate the crazier Blues. But what Red interest is provided in providing them that moderation? The moderate Blues have no interest in Red values at all, and will never concede to tolerating them if they don't absolutely have to. Providing such moderation just advances Blue dominance and further bricks Red interests out of any hope of actual power.
The relationship is abusive. The solution is, at best, to leave.
It doesn’t. Lots of people think Obama was a socialist.
As for why reds are generally less successful than blues at it, it’s because of who controls the media.
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One might, for example, compare the abortion laws promoted by Republicans with ones common in Europe. After all, European policies could not be made by insane MAGA Trumpsters? One could check how many countries practice "no limits up to the moment of birth" abortion, and for those that have term limits, what the average terms are and how they relate to Republican proposals. But the US mainstream press is largely completely disinterested in that discussion. Because it is almost completely owned by one tribe, and for that tribe it is more convenient to present any Republican policies as utter insanity which no normal people would ever discuss.
And I believe them. But when it comes to actually doing that, turns out that each move of the Reds to "cooperate" is met with vigorous "defect, defect, defect, defect!" on the Blue side. Try to make late terms abortion limited, by any reasonable term? Maybe let's try to find some middle ground here? Nope, no restrictions at all, Roe gives us this power and we intend to use it to the max. Well, how is that working for you? Try to find solution to a migration crisis? Nope, any border is racist, we'll refuse to follow the law and call it "sanctuary". I can hardly remember a moderate cooperative move for Republicans where it ended up with them not getting the shaft. What exactly is the point of keeping conceding? I'd get if it were in the interest of peace - this smells an awful lot of blackmail, but to heck with it, if we get peace - but there's no peace. It only gets worse.
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