This is called blind partisanship and I thought it was a problem, but I guess since everybody, particularly democrats, are doing it, it's ok. I kinda used to think that this was one of those things that made conservatives better than liberals, that they were not as partisan, but I appreciate you guys opening my eyes to just how disgustingly partisan republican voters can be as well.
Not clear to me that you mean "partisan." You seem to be implying that "conservatives" are not partisans of the conservative cause but rather sycophants of Trump personally, that can't therefore see his "crimes"? Not sure that's really the case. I think it's far more common that "we" don't trust the labels of his accusers (by whom I mean the media and his political enemies), because we've seen them lie time and again and get caught in those lies time and again, and we know they never had our best interests in mind.
It's not "turn about" or hypocrisy on my part for you to claim that Trump lies all the time and that I don't care about his lies. I've investigated Trump's "lies" many times and found much of the time that they we were not lies at all, at least not of Trump's, but still more lies by those who oppose him. When you see ridiculous things like "Trump lies 45 times a day," and you believe them it's not because you should but because you've been conditioned by propaganda to accept it (or in the case of some posters here, don't care whether its true because it endorses their position).
Trump's actual policies on the other hand? Almost uniformly better for the country than the prior admins or the alternatives this time around. The only ones that are even arguable to me are the use of tariffs, with which I've come to agree, and whether the pendulum swung too far on environmental regulations.
If Dubya had been divorced twice and loved to grab em by the kitty and say such nice things about Puuter and talk about invasions from Mehico etc etc, he definately would have still been the Republican nominee in 2000.
You say things like that and expect someone to believe that you're not motivated by a "partisan" anti-Trumpism that's exactly what you seem to see in others? The grabbing them comment is literally exactly what me too culture is about, and an accurate description of what being a celebrity meant. Trump was just as right about saying celebrities could get away with that as he was when he told everyone that politicians had granted him access for decades to get contributions from him.
There is no way a pro-life voter is going to switch from R to D because they think the Democrat's economics make more sense;
Really? What about all those liberal Catholics? Liberal Catholics are notorious for being pro-life at home, but not much when it comes to the legal realm. Then again, they're not actually switching over are they? And yet, somebody had to switch from R to D in this last election, right? Who did that?
He makes a fair point, pro lifers are not likely to switch, but there are voting blocks that have a misaligned loyalty to a party and it takes significant periods of time for them to realize it. Left leaning Catholics are a bad example, at least the ones I've known, as they are not particularly committed to the religious dogma of the Catholic church, including on abortion. There are definitely other traditional blocks that are far more at odds with DNC party politics and haven't seemed to realize it, Jewish voters, Black and Hispanic voters, and blue collar workers.
Who switched over to the D's? It seems mostly that Biden did better with white men if you look at the demographics. Literally Biden owes his election to improved performance with white men. Kind of undercuts everything the left believes. He also improved slightly with white women.
Trump meanwhile improved both in raw numbers and percentage of voters with every major minority block (both genders). Again, kind of undercuts the left story.
You are voting for an ideological viewpoint, not for a person.
This is the heart of the entire problem. This IS the problem. It used to just be someone else's problem, but now it's apparently everybody's problem. The idea that you're voting for a philosophy or ideology. Honestly, I think the truth is that half of the time people are simply voting AGAINST some other philosophy or ideology. The underlying assumption being that this or that philosophy or ideology is GOOD, and the other is BAD.
It's both good and bad. Our government is too complex not to consider ideology when voting. You may think Biden is a good guy, but do you think everyone he's appointing is also a good person? We know they aren't, in fact we kind of know exactly who they are, they're a mix of old guard swampers who've routinely ignored our civil rights and ushered in regulation after regulation designed to increase their power at our benefit and new age radicals intent on imposing a failed and destructive philosophy because it sounds nice. 99% of what they do is never crossing Biden's desk in any meaningful way and he has no power - no matter how nice you think he is - to stop it from become "law" (by which I mean regulation that he never has to sign and no one can veto). Heck his party's entire philosophy is tied into expanding the regulatory state and it's ability to create laws without any democratic feedback into the process. It was his party that tried to create the CFPB with a director accountable to no one at all, with virtually unlimited power to create law and enforce them with an unlimited budget and with a term designed to skip a President of the wrong party's ability to oust him. That's a literal attempt at empowering a fascist dictator within the government and they paid no penalty for it (by the way, you should look at the definition of fascism that can be found in any source other than the internet with a publication date prior to 2015, rather than the systemically reprogrammed version that's being spread today).
Trump on the other hand? His goal was to tear out those excess power grabbing regulations. His approach was to trample under bureaucrats who believed their own authority was greater than that of the elected officials that are supposed to set our policy direction. You literally have testimony in Congress during the "whistleblower" mess demonstrating just how convinced those bureaucrats were of their own rightful exercise of power and how the elected officials are interfering. I mean, sure he made some crappy appointments, but he also wasn't shy about replacing them. But on the whole the things they were doing to deregulate and dis-empower the bureaucracy were far far better for our future freedom than the inverse.
Good and bad of course brings us to the realm of ethics and morality. It used to be that conservatives recognized that the end doesn't justify the means. But apparently when it comes to elections, this can now be thrown out the window. Because of course the other side is REALLY BAD. Politics is war now.
This comment has no real meaning. There is no ends justifying the means in a binary choice. You can pick the better choice or you can pick the worse choice, and that's it. Are you suggesting that the only moral choice is to stand down and let others pick the worse choice? That's not moral, that's good people allowing bad things to happen when they could have acted to prevent them.
I also think you're ignoring reality. Trump is in fact a better choice for the freedom of the country and its people. Picking Trojan Horse Joe may seem like a more palatable option because you think you can respect him more (you can't really, you just think you can), but that's a false comfort. Its virtue signalling of the worst order.
The problem is that when you start down the road to utilitarianism and determinism, forever will it dominate your destiny.
Anyone but Trump is pretty much the definition of utilitarianism and determinism. So yes, you're probably right, following that path is going to create a mistake that it may be impossible to walk back from.
The Greeks, Romans, and early Christians (those dirty libs) were all virtue ethicists. They didn't concentrate so much on a particular act or it's results, but the character of the individual. See, they were all root cause analysists. They asked themselves "WHY DO PEOPLE DO BAD THINGS", not "WHAT IS A BAD THING". To them, that question was too simplistic. Their answer to the first question is that people do bad things BECAUSE they lack CHARACTER TRAITS. They called those character traits "virtues". The idea behind all this is that a person with good character will do good things because character compels them to. People without good character traits will do bad things because bad character traits compels them. Virtue was both a knowledge and skill. It was something that must be learned but also exercised like a muscle.
Maybe recognize that our government is not a single person and not personified by just Trump or just Biden no matter their personal traits but that it involves tens of thousands of consequential and unaccountable people that your only option to influence is through an election. Biden represents and always has more of the unaccountable power of that government and more increases in it, Trump represents a reduction of it and rationalizing of it with better limits. That's how his administration worked.
Today, apparently, it doesn't matter how much of an *censored* your presidential candidate is, or how many interns fellate him in the oval office, or their past criminal or dubious activities. As long as they are on your team, it's all good to go. The Pope can bugger as many little boys as he likes, as long as he's dedicated to crushing the Jews and Muslims.
Or rather you can choose to believe what the Muslims say the Pope has done, or what the Catholics say about what the Muslims have done without question or you can make your own judgements. Trump's
actions in office have been for the betterment of the country and all of us.
So that's apparently where we are at today, supposedly. It didn't used to be that way. It doesn't have to be that way. But before we start casting stones, it would do well to at least put up some brick walls first.
The only way to get better candidates is to hold the candidates that you support to account for their behavior, you get no where holding the other guy's candidates to "account," or demanding that they do so. It's literally impossible to accept moralizing in support of a party that has no problem with an Adam Schiff but wants others to have problems with a Donald Trump, or even that liked Donald Trump before he was a politician and declared him the devil afterwards.
So I'll tell you what, when the politicians from "safe" districts are held by a party to be moderate that's an indicator of who the party is. That's not what we get at all.