I believe it’s because there’s no reasonable conservative option. There’s nobody even pitching “fiscal responsibility” or “small government” anymore. You’ve gotta drink the Kool aid and support The Donald or you’re a liberal cuck. There’s no room for being just right-leaning; you’ve gotta go all in.
Gen Xer here, I’ve never seen a republican led federal government that ever actually acted fiscally conservative. Being fiscally conservative and small government has always meant cut social programs and cut taxes but never cut spending to one of the biggest cost centers in the government, the military. There’s nothing fiscally conservative about cutting taxes and ballooning the deficit. There’s nothing fiscally conservative about starting two wars and essentially putting them on credit cards. The American people only put up with them for so long because the only ones who had to sacrifice for them were those that died or came back maimed. If we had to pay for them with higher taxes instead of passing the bill to the next few generations, those wars would never have even happened.
That’s a good theory, as a lot of the people we see joining up for the right are usually either doing it out of spite/ironically (and eventually having the “be careful what you pretend to be” moment where it stops being ironic) or they’ve been grown and raised around these worldviews.
I believe it’s because there’s no reasonable conservative option. There’s nobody even pitching “fiscal responsibility” or “small government” anymore. You’ve gotta drink the Kool aid and support The Donald or you’re a liberal cuck. There’s no room for being just right-leaning; you’ve gotta go all in.
Gen Xer here, I’ve never seen a republican led federal government that ever actually acted fiscally conservative. Being fiscally conservative and small government has always meant cut social programs and cut taxes but never cut spending to one of the biggest cost centers in the government, the military. There’s nothing fiscally conservative about cutting taxes and ballooning the deficit. There’s nothing fiscally conservative about starting two wars and essentially putting them on credit cards. The American people only put up with them for so long because the only ones who had to sacrifice for them were those that died or came back maimed. If we had to pay for them with higher taxes instead of passing the bill to the next few generations, those wars would never have even happened.
That’s a good theory, as a lot of the people we see joining up for the right are usually either doing it out of spite/ironically (and eventually having the “be careful what you pretend to be” moment where it stops being ironic) or they’ve been grown and raised around these worldviews.