Conservatism has largely been unpopular outside of rural townships, and the nation continues to undergo a process of urbanization as young people continue to move to cities. Normally, a healthy response to this would be to realign and target a more popular set of messaging and policy objectives. Instead the American Right has decided instead that this popularity (and the reflection in media) is a threat to its ability to continue serving a shrinking pool of wealthy benefactors.
It should come as no surprise that the moment they were handed the power, they began to push the boundaries of what is acceptable when it comes to censoring media they see as a threat. Republicanism doesnt work for anyone but the wealthy, it will do everything in its power here.
People who responded as "very conservative/conservative" was 36% in 1992 and 37% in 2024. https://news.gallup.com/poll/655190/political-parties-histor...
"Very liberal/liberal" has increased though (at the expense of moderates).
> It should come as no surprise that the moment they were handed the power, they began to push the boundaries of what is acceptable when it comes to censoring media they see as a threat.
To be clear, they were “handed power” by decisively winning a national election, which sort of undercuts your opening statement about how unpopular they are.
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While I agree with much of what you say, there are a lot of urban, educated, socially left, economically right people (including myself) who complicate some of this analysis. Many economically right-wing people believe a free market is the most effective and helpful path to improve the standard of living for the working class and the poor. ("Progressive neoliberal social democracy", one might call it.)
The issues with Republicans right now go far, far, far beyond "they care more about the wealthy than the poor" (though that is definitely one of their core problems). They're basically destroying the rule of law, the country's internal and international reputation and credibility, all of our most important institutions, our ability to discern what is true, our sense of decency, our civil liberties, our basic respect of human rights... The class stuff is secondary or tertiary to the bigger issues, in my opinion.
Republicans are also the party of regulatory capture, not free markets.
The GOP won the popular vote, all the swing states, and control of both houses of congress and the White House in the last election.
Hard to do that on just rural townships.
Conservatism is a set of political principles and values, which somebody like Trump overtly does not possess, and never did. The whole Republican party feels like a country wide gaslighting operation at this point. They claim to be conservative and Christian, but are clearly neither.
Well the problem I see with this is that the population means very little in terms of national politics in comparison to most modern democratic nations.
So you can be California which in terms of population and GDP will surpass most of central America combined and it still just gets two representatives. Now I get that the idea here was to avoid a dictatorship of the majority that can just ignore smaller states, but the way it is now it is a dictatorship of the minority, even if you ignore all the blatant ways of voter disenfranchisement.
Sorry to all Republicans on here, but if your party needs to prevent people from voting to win, that also hurts you. Ideally you'd want a party to have to listen to their voters. Gerrymandering, predicting voter behavior and throwing out the ones who might not vote for you are all the shameful behavior of traitors to democracy.
This has to be stopped and punished on every political level, as long as you still have a say.
> Sorry to all Republicans on here, but if your party needs to prevent people from voting to win, that also hurts you.
Isn't their main assertion that only citizens should vote?
(something like 80% of people claiming allegiance to both parties said the same, last i saw, but numbers surely fluctuate from poll to poll)
It's an assertion not backed by data. Non-citizens voting is infinitesimally small. Between that, Noem saying out loud "we want the right people to vote", and Trump calling for nationalized elections, it's clear what the real purpose is.
Early in-person voting and making election day a federal holiday are things everyone on all sides ought to be able to rally behind, together. Idk if any of that is in the SAVE Act though
No. There is a long history of Republican voter disenfranchisement:
- In the 1980s The RNC created the Ballot Security Task Force [1], which was a scheme to strike people off the voter rolls by sending them a mailer if they didn't respond. This led to a consent decree requiring "preclearance" for any voter roll enforcement that lasted 25+ years [2];
- Republicans lead the charge in restricting access to mail-in voting because it's used more by Democratic Party voters [3] despite there being no evidence of fraud;
- In response to Arizona turning blue in 2020, Republicans went on a massive voter suppression spree [4], which disproportionately impacts Native Americans [5];
- Nationally, the push to have a street address unfairly impacts Native Americans who often don't have an official sstreet address if they live on a reservation. That's not an accident. It's the point;
- Even the push to force people to have birth certificates is aimed at Native Americans and poor people. There are quite literally millions of Americans who don't have them [6];
- Even if you have the necessary documentation to get an ID, you may have problems getting access. Again, this is by design. For example, Louisiana closed a bunch of DMV offices in minority areas such that the only DMV in certain black-majority areas was only open one day a month [7];
- The so-called SAVE Act recently passed by the house required your birth certificate to match your ID. Well, that's a problem for married women [8].
- States such as Florida have used private firms to strike people off the voter rolls if their name sounds like a convicted felon anywhere else in the country [9].
And why are we doing all this? There is zero evidence of voter fraud on a large scale [10]. And those convicted of voter fraud are most commonly Republican anyway [11].
But let's just say that we want an ID to vote. Why don't we fund the Federal government to issue it and make sure it is readily available and cheap or free? No, we can't have that because it's never been the point.
At some point you have to realize that they don't care about "integrity". Voter suppression is the point because it's the only way they can win elections.
Lastly, I feel compelled to remind people of Lee Atwater's famous 1981 remarks [12]. Republicans went from overt racism to being ever more abstract but the goals remained the same: to disproportionately impact black and brown people.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Security_Task_Force
[2]: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/09/rnc-ballot-securit...
[3]: https://elections-blog.mit.edu/articles/how-policy-influence...
[4]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/ariz...
[5]: https://azmirror.com/2024/06/06/100-years-after-citizenship-...
[6]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/mill...
[7]: https://www.naacpldf.org/press-release/one-day-a-month-is-no...
[8]: https://www.npr.org/2025/04/13/g-s1-59684/save-act-married-w...
[9]: https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2000/06/23/hundreds-of-vote...
[10]: https://www.hoover.org/research/no-evidence-voter-fraud-guid...
[11]: https://archive.amarkfoundation.org/the2020election/voter-fr...
[12]: https://www.bunkhistory.org/resources/lee-atwaters-infamous-...
As if that ever was a huge problem in the US. If you want people to vote and want to avoid disenfranchising US citizens there are ways to do that as demonstrated by the majority of countries on earth. When I vote for example in the EU (Austria), I proactively get a letter from the state (since I am in the voter register). With this letter and some ID card I can show up in the polling location on the weekend and vote after proofing I am the person on my ID card.
What if I am not home? I go to a website a month before the vote, they send me a letter and I vote whenever I like before my election.
Everybody has such an ID card since that card is what you would also show to proove your identity elsewhere. And since we have working social welfare every slice of the citizen population can also afford it.
If you want to solve that problem, it is possible. If you want to solve it, that is. Right wing parties will always use non-citizens as scapegoats that are at the same time draining the welfare state and stealing your jobs. Oh, and you votes. Believing them without citation is the problem here.
>you can be California which in terms of population and GDP will surpass most of central America combined and it still just gets two representatives
Doesn't California have 54 reps, out of 485? And 90 out of ~800 Article III judges (lifetime appointment). It also collects $858 billion a year in state and local taxes that it gets to do mostly what it wants with
If California was apportioned the same as Wyoming, it would have 68 or 69 representatives (depending how you round). Not to play favorites: Texas would have 50 or 51 representatives.
Even if you just count the House of Representatives, smaller states have a per capita advantage.
Yes, but it only has two senators. The 39.5 million people in California have the same Senatorial representation as the less than 600 thousand people in Wyoming.
In what world is that fair or remotely democratic?
Don't think it was ever supposed to be. The Senate was set up by the founders to be picked by the State Legislatures anyway, not a direct vote. Did you read the Federalist Papers?
The idea was that the House of Reps exists to represent the people of the state, and the Senate exists to represent the state itself. The 17th Amendment did away with state legislatures choosing senators, so we have this wonky system left for no good reason.
And don't get me started on freezing the rep count to 435. I certainly don't feel represented by my congresscritter.
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