I have always had an ambivalent relationship with “conservatives,” because I could never divine their principles. They want to “conserve” . . . what, exactly? They are cautious about change – the disease of tired/mentally ossified old people. Most mean well but are ready meat for the Left, which does have a principle – which is to win and hold onto power by any means necessary.
The GOP is worse than inept. It is insufferable.
It is a chamber of commerce greedhead grift, defined by opportunism and petty meannesses, hiding behind a nauseating facade of Just Folks buncombe exemplified by Fred Thompson, who had the affect down pat. He also had the act down pat. He had an old truck waiting for him just outside the town where he was scheduled to show up for a rally. He got out of his limo and into the old truck to do the Just Folks schtick for the benefit of the rubes come to listen to him pretend to care about their concerns. 
There was also Nixon, an unscrupulous lawyer of the Roy Cohn variety, who talked about his wife’s cloth coat and their little dog, Checkers.
The GOP has the principles of a small-time check kiter or used car salesman looking to make a quick score off a gullible mark. Trump is apotheosis of what the Republican Party stands for. He is in it for the money, as much as he can grab and does it unapologetically. He sells the country out to the highest bidder, which is to say Israel and the Wall Street/Tech Bro class.
It can never win, much less accomplish anything meaningful (insofar as rolling back the tide of government) because that would be contrary to its interests, which lie in complaining about government while profiting from it, which includes getting the rubes to send in campaign donations so that the Republicans can win office in the next election and then do nothing to roll back the tide of government, while making fat stacks along the way. To expect the Republican Party to advance the cause of less government is something like expecting Dennis Hastert – the recently croaked Republican onetime speaker of the House – to stop diddling young boys. He could not help it and neither can the GOP.
That is why the increasingly desperate appeals of the GOP soliciting the support of the people it has (once again) betrayed appear to be falling – at last! – upon deaf ears. The rubes are awakening. They finally understand that Voting Harder isn’t going to make their lot better and is likely to make it worse – because there’s not much that’s worse than getting fooled and rolled (again). Trump has done an inadvertent service in this respect. He has managed – in the space of less than two years – to almost completely discredit the Republican Party by laying bare what it’s really all about.
That is why the GOP is now a dead man walking, personified by the zig-zagging gait and leaning-forward penguin stance of the puffy-faced, swollen-ankled old man who is currently its podium-clutching, teeth-grinding front man. The blue waters are coming, like a Nepalese flood. You can hear the distant roaring heralding what’s coming. All will be washed away, soon. It is a good thing, because it’s easier to rebuild on ground that’s been cleared of the debris of the past.
This rebuilding – if it is to happen – will require the one thing the GOP (and “conservatives”) have never had. That thing being principles. Binary moral positions about what’s right – and what’s not. These can be defended with clarity; there is no hedging, no “mending” rather than ending.
Is the income tax morally abhorrent? Yes – or no? Is the property tax evil? Yes – or no. Not we’ll reduce income taxes (and lower property taxes). We will get rid of them, for exactly the same moral reason we’d arrest a common thief – because theft is theft.
What’s yours is yours – and by the same token, what belongs to others does not belong to you. Leave him alone and he’ll leave you alone.
It seems like a square deal, doesn’t it?
Should the government have any say about what kind of car you’re allowed to buy? Should you or anyone else have any say about the kind of car your neighbor is allowed to buy?
About how many miles-per-gallon it gets – or doesn’t get? How many air bags it has – or even seat belts? Why are such things anyone else’s business besides the person who buys the car and the company that offers the car for sale?
Want to buy insurance? Go right ahead. Because you have every right to buy it. But you haven’t got any right to compel someone else to buy it. If a thing is a right, it imposes no harm on another. Taking someone else’s money when they haven’t harmed you or anyone else is a harm.
Here’s a principle that could serve as the basis for an effective opposition to the seemingly inexorable advance of the tide of government: Leave everyone free to be responsible for themselves – but hold them responsible for themselves. You are free to work – and if you work, what you earn is entirely yours. But if you decide you’d rather not work, you have no claim on the earnings of those who chose to work. You are free to ride a motorcycle if you like – and without a helmet, if you like – but do not expect other people to pay your medical bills, if you incur them. Do as thou wilt – to crib a line from Aleister Crowly – with the proviso that you harm no one else in the process. If you do, then you’ll be held accountable. But only if. And not before. 
Otherwise, we’ll leave you alone.
That could be a swell campaign slogan, eh?
It sure beats hell out of anything the Republicans have to offer.
. . .
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The job of the progressives is to implement socialism.
The job of the conservatives is to maintain the progress of the socialists.
Very astute observation, thanks! I never thought of it that way, but that is an accurate statement. When Dems proposed Social Security every Republican was dead against it, now they defend it.
‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,’ said Aleister Crowley. That’s what Donnie Flakestein does, though of course the Orange Oaf never has heard of Crowley.
This just in: “What are the chances that a private plane took off from Austin and flew to tiny Hamilton airport in Ohio 20 mins from the Lindner Center, a private inpatient mental health treatment facility, and then turned around and flew back to Austin landing yesterday morning at 10:24am right before [Democrat Senate candidate] James Talarico magically reappears [after a two-week absence] at the Austin City Limits music festival that afternoon?” Caroline Wren wrote on X.
Something is going on. More politicians are openly flaking out with unexplained absences, such as Senator Mitch McClownell and Rep. Thomas Kean, Jr. Earlier, Texas Rep. Kay Granger started the trend by disappearing for the whole second half of 2024. Nobody noticed she was gone, till she turned up in a memory care facility near Fort Worth, staring blankly at the wall.
Now it’s an established lifestyle for Senator Fetterman: “It was like arguing with a toddler every day,” a former staffer said, adding that it felt like “arguing with him nonstop to pretty much get out of bed in the morning and tie his shoes.”
‘Fetterman largely holes up in his Capitol office, lying on the couch and scrolling Apple News, several former staffers said. “Every day was a battle that by the end of the day you were physically and emotionally battered just by getting John to do any part of his job,” a former staffer said, describing the work as “soul-crushing.”’ — MSN
I suspect a Stepford Wives situation, in which independent-minded Congress Clowns have been replaced with robotic or chip-controlled replicas that are malfunctioning. It’s bad — and it’s nationwide. :-0
On top of all of this, even since Fetterman had the major stroke that everyone has tried to pretend he did not have, he has become the biggest Zionist slave in the Demonrat party, an even bigger Bibi cocksucker than Chuckie Schumer himself. Fetterman has since threatened to defect to the Repukes because the Ds are not subservient to Israel enough, and has voted with the Rs to thwart any of the mild rebukes to Bibi and IsraHELL that have come to a vote.
That all of this is from a guy who likely drools on himself and is unable to tie his own shoes is not surprising. I suspect after his stroke some Israeli doctor was flown over to put an implant in his brain so he could be shuffled into the Senate and vote ISRAEL! on every issue.
Eric –
I believe that it has to be more than leaving people alone. Leaving people completely alone implies leaving corporations alone as well. It was big companies and large investment groups participated in the shellacking of people’s political, civil and constitutional rights during the great COVID scam and grift. Large companies have been exempt from liability for the harms that they have caused.
Following that, “private equity”, “investors” and institutional concerns ramped up the real estate market to unsustainable levels through unlimited access to capital and market manipulations.
Getting rid of government won’t solve these incursions on people. The “supreme coat” won’t either. Every one of their decisions since the 1890s and maybe earlier has upgraded government and corporations and downgraded and denuded the individual of his or her natural rights.
The first people who are able to articulate this and come up with ideas on how to curb the power of the state and corporations over people through transparancy, limitations on their power and whatnot have the possiblility of gaining some kind of movement.
Part of that is stopping the war machine abroad and slashing the surveillance state at home. Curbing corporate power is part of that.
Of course, it doesn’t look likely to happen at all. Part of the reason is that “conservatives” have no idea about anything.
Hi swamp,
The problem is the US was sold out to corporations a century ago. When they allowed JP Morgan and John D Rockefeller to loan money to the US Treasury the die had already been cast.
What is happening now is nothing new except the gluttonous pigs (Trump and Company) don’t even try to hide it. At least in years past our “leaders” had a bit more couth and tact when they were stealing from the American taxpayer, now they just hang out of the troughs not caring how it appears to the public.
What we need is for the American citizen to stop giving a crap. Don’t vote, don’t do business with greedy corporations, don’t send money to election campaigns or put yard signs up. Ignore them or better yet, belittle them. Anyone that runs for office should be treated like a joke, because that is what they are.
Yard signs, puke. Nice fall foliage on full display, pumpkins dot the landscape. And of course political street spam and eye sores everywhere you look. This pseudo religious bizarro ritual needs to end, stat. The metal sign brackets shoved far up the anus of those who put them in their yards.
There is an answer to that problem: Full liability for corporations for the harms they have caused, including for the owners/officers who can no longer hide behind the corporate shield.
This is a perfect example of what is wrong with “conservativism” as it has been advocating so called “tort reform” for decades which is nothing more than a Get Out of Jail Free Card for Big Corps. It is a perfect head fake – over publicize a few ridiculous damage awards and say that the poor widdle companies need protection from the big, bad public. The Vaccine Injury Compensation Act was the template for this, and guess what, the Trumpenstein administration wants to extend this to glysophate, the chemical industry and data centers.
Calling them whores is an insult to real prostitutes.