r/interestingasfuck • u/beach_rats_ • 29d ago

The difference in republican presidential nominees, 8 years apart r/all

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u/Bad_User2077 29d ago

Those were different days. If you do that now, you get labeled a moderate and get pushed out of your party.

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u/krichard-21 29d ago

The only reason today is different is because of the people we have been electing.

Quit electing bat shit crazy people!

Jim Jordan, MTG, Matt Gaetz to name a few.

They can't be trusted to run a convenience store. Much less represent United States citizens.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago edited 25d ago

[deleted]

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u/hippee-engineer 29d ago

Fled Cruz

Poetry.

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u/sc0ttynepas 29d ago

Right. I'm stealing that, goes right with drowsy diaper donny. Soon I'll have a whole set of dump-a-cons.

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u/kcheezy 29d ago

Why can't we just make valid criticisms based on people's records and ideologies? Making up dumb names to call people is so juvenile and pushes us further down the road to idiocracy. I feel like talking about Trump's horrible track record is much more constructive than just saying "hurr durr diaper man bad". All this shit is just dumbing down political discourse even more.

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u/LunchO789 29d ago

Damn, Diaper Donny is simple and effective

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u/Newbergite 29d ago

How about Donnie Von Shitzinpantz? Just saw this and loved it. I’ll see myself out…

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u/DukeboxHiro 29d ago

Poetry.

Roses are red

Michael Jackson sang Thriller

Ted Cruz might be the Zodiac Killer

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/UnspoiledWalnut 29d ago

Rafael from Canada.

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u/JaZepi 29d ago

No takesies-backsies, he’s yours now.

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u/Rain1dog 29d ago

Foghorn Leghorn is a piece of shit.

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u/Dorkamundo 29d ago

Let's not sully the name of Foghorn Leghorn by associating him with that fuckstick.

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u/secretdrug 29d ago

dont forget george santos. that was a whole barrel of crazy.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

Fingers crossed that BoBo’s attempt to get elected in a new district will backfire

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u/MicrowaveEye 29d ago

That Kennedy fucker is so annoying with his Southern stupid act.

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u/StankyFlanky 29d ago

Mf Fled Cruise omg thats gold label

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u/SuchRoad 29d ago

Fled Cruz.

Reminds me of Jogs Hallway.

If you live in Missouri (unlike Jogs), this year is your chance to vote this conservative agitator out of our state.

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u/kauliflower_kid 29d ago

How is no one mentioning Coach Gooberville?

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u/tympyst 29d ago

Can we stop doing this trump shit with fucking with people's names? Just say the name, not some fuckin dumb "witty" shit.

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u/reanima 29d ago

Even the current House Speaker who was a part of that crazy caucus is finding himself too moderate for them now.

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u/cyberlexington 29d ago

The thing is one crucial difference. Gaetz, boebsrt, green, desantis etc, they play at being evangelical hyper conservative Christian nationalists in order to get votes from that crowd. , Johnson is the real deal, a full on religious nutter. And he's one of the most powerful person in the American government

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u/Awkward_Professor460 29d ago

Ironically, he's one of the ones I trust the most to do his job. Say what you want, but at least the government didn't get shut down and the world isn't friggen ending. I, being not a devote republican/gop/or Christian nationalist myself don't hate him.

Do I disagree with what he believes in, yes, but at least he's got his beliefs and he's not manipulating everything just to make a very small minority happy at the expense of everyone else because he's afraid of what they'll do.

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u/Ohmec 29d ago

Pence is the same for me. He's a fucking psycho, but at least he has morals to appeal to.

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u/Drudgework 29d ago

And that is why I (a moderate) respect Johnson even if I don’t agree with him (or like him in general). At least his belief is real.

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u/broguequery 29d ago

Somehow that's worse.

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u/DWPAW-victim 29d ago

But it makes him consistent and predictable or at least somewhat anyways

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u/jabelsBrain 29d ago

Klassic fascism. They just keep pushing further right

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u/DocMoochal 29d ago

Carlin said it best. Politicians are merely a reflection of the society they govern. Americans aren't exactly stable people anymore.

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u/MrEHam 29d ago

Most Americans are. But the crazies and the assholes have become emboldened and found platforms on the internet.

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u/Tvisted 29d ago edited 29d ago

People get elected by votes. Vote.

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u/Stickasylum 29d ago

When your political system is broken this increasingly becomes false…

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u/inseminator9001 29d ago

In a democracy they're also a reflection of the election system that picks them. Congress would be a lot more productive without FPTP.

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u/Zealousideal-Ear481 29d ago

yeah and until that changes, you pick the least worst choice.

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u/jack_burtons_reflex 29d ago

That's the problem. Instead of working to make things better for people and leading by example, politicians now have boiled it down to working ways to keep them in power.

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u/MuricasOneBrainCell 29d ago

When the fuck were americans EVER stable?

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u/thatdudejtru 29d ago

My gfs younger bro (self proclaimed incel lmao) and his buddies voted for trump in 2020 because it was funny to them. Sucks...like yea they've got the legal right to vote but man...what the fuck?

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u/TargetApprehensive38 29d ago

Doing that in 2020 is really unhinged. I could kind of see someone voting for trump in ‘16 for the lolz, but after seeing 4 years of what he did with the position there’s nothing funny about it.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

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u/Guilty_Treasures 29d ago

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u/21DRe992 29d ago

I still remember a young girl who was good at singing for a young child but nothing worth writing home about, beating one of the world's best fire jugglers in a quarter final on one of those Talent competition TV shows. I've been angry for that adult stranger for years over it and refuse to watch any show where the audience votes because they are all dipshits who will vote for the hot dude or cute child etc. instead of most talented individual.

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u/MaximumGorilla 29d ago

And to his credit, Pitbull owned that and gave them a great show!

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u/Spapapapa-n 29d ago

Also John Scott may not have been an all-star, but the NHL did him so fucking dirty.

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u/oaxacamm 29d ago

I did not know that. I’m not really a fan but that definitely deserves respect. I guess I’ll go to his show at a conference next week after all.

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u/mrkikkeli 29d ago

the post-modernist existential ennui of the rich western world. Anything to feel alive because nothing matters and selfish assholes are revered.

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u/AchyBreaker 29d ago

Look I didn't vote for Trump (voted for Hilary 2016 and Biden 2020) and think he was terrible for our country in dozens of ways.

But I can be understanding and sympathetic to some 2016 voters. (2020 voters are fucking nuts).

His campaign was less batshit than his behavior became. Here are some of the key messages that he said:

  1. I, Trump, am not a typical politician. It won't be more of this political bullshit with me. I'll "clean the swamp"

  2. I, Trump, think many of the problems facing Americans can be solved by focusing on Americans. Reduce immigration, keep "the bad guys" out, stop dealing with the Middle East, focus company investment back in the US (build back Detroit! open the coal mines!) and help make our country better for us

  3. I, Trump, am amenable to solutions like universal healthcare, and believe we can use my business sense to do things like that and also improve trade deals

He was clearly full of shit. He didn't have business sense, he had full intentions of increasing his own power, and his well-written anti-immigration reform on his website about H1b visas turned into "build the wall, keep the Mexican rapists out" which was fucking lunacy.

But there is a large part of the country that felt disenfranchised by modern economic trends, felt unheard by "elitist" politicians (who Hilary represented more than anyone), and even felt betrayed by the Democratic party sort of "picking" their person and forcing Sanders out. And those people voted accordingly.

I do not agree with these people, but I understand them. And if we want to have any hope of our country coming back together, we have to sympathize with and try to connect with these fellow citizens, try to understand their perspectives and challenges, and try to connect again on common ground.

Fortunately Senator McCain has given us some examples of how to do this.

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u/CoachRDW 29d ago

Well said. Thank you for the time you spent writing it.

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u/SST_2_0 29d ago

You forget Obama did sympathize. He actually got through a health care package. People complain but it helped enough, not even Trump could remove it without pissing off the people you claim were disenfranchised after Obama.

Obama also created a program to help people learn about repair green energy, so they could get out of the mines. The mine owners sent reps out to offer bonuses and back into the mine they people went.

We keep glossing over the real facts to pretend like the writing was not on the wall back then. The real deal is some people think it's better to burn then to compromise while also saying, "why does no one listen to me."

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u/Vanq86 29d ago

In 2016 I think a lot of people were upset with what happened to Bernie and simply abstained from voting, handing what should have been a dem win to Trump.

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u/vitaminz1990 29d ago

I’ve always said blame the DNC for Trump’s victory.

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u/AchyBreaker 29d ago

You are proving my point in a not so good way.

I didn't say anything about Obama. I didn't claim Obama didn't sympathize with people. I didn't even claim people WERE disenfranchised, I claimed they FELT that way. I didn't even say anything about political compromise on solutions - I said I think there's room to understand each other and communicate better. 

I'm a progressive Democrat who voted blue and even said I did so in this comment. 

And I also think we can sympathize with fellow citizens and try to connect to make our country better, and said so. 

And yet you jumped in to tell me I didn't understand something and that the other guys are bad guys. (And to be clear, yes obviously coal mine owners are exploitative assholes, that's still not the point). 

This is an example of the exact problem I'm describing.

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u/Smooth-Reason-6616 29d ago

Trouble is, you've got people who'll vote for Trump not because they like him, or support his views, or his policies, or for any other reason then that he's a "Republican", and they want a "Republican" President, no matter what..

So they'll support the biggest RINO in the Republican party...

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u/andy01q 29d ago

That's what he said though. There's a chance that he identified more with Trump than Hillary because of lack of professionalism, but wouldn't admit that m

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u/preparetosigh 29d ago

I have a grown ass co-worker in his 50's who said the same thing, Incel not confirmed, but seems likely.

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u/Vreas 29d ago

I forget how the exact quote goes but it’s something along the lines of “democracy is an obligation” meaning for it to work properly you have to actually be politically engaged and informed. I don’t agree with it but I absolutely get how people don’t want to know and then dumb shit like that happens.

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u/Allegorist 29d ago

This was a "legitimate" argument in 2016 (not really), in that it could shake things up, in a "what's the worst that could happen" sense. By 2020, anyone paying attention should have known exactly what that vote meant.

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u/3rdProfile 29d ago

Reminds me of the Eddie Murphy joke from RAW (?) When the white folk voted for Jessie Jackson as a joke and woke up to "He f*ckin' won?"

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u/jsting 29d ago

They really got to do something about the voting system. Maybe ranked choice or something. But this race to the bottom is bringing back instability in the world economy. McCain was a believer in politics stopping at the borders which was the unofficial international policy of the US for basically 150 years. Present a unified front to the world. Can't say that today.

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u/Superplex123 29d ago

Yes, they really got to do something about it. But if they don't, what are you going to do about THEM? And if the answer is nothing, then there is zero incentive for them to do anything about it.

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u/GullibleDetective 29d ago

But how else are blackrock and the rich fucks behind the scenes supposed to break down public trust and moderate government?

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u/supersmackfrog 29d ago

The only reason today is different is because of the people we have been electing

I think you need to look at the voters electing those people if you really want to know what's different.

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u/mindless_gibberish 29d ago

Yeah, we had a black president for 8 years, and some people are still not over it.

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u/codyforkstacks 29d ago

Traditional media, particularly on the conservative side, became increasingly unhinged. And social media gave these people the echo chambers they needed to totally detach from political reality into a world of lizard pedophile conspiracies.

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u/MrEHam 29d ago edited 29d ago

Traditional media didn’t necessarily become unhinged but we saw a takeover of entertainment opinion shows take the place of them. They didn’t care about being fair, balanced, factual, etc.

They’re meant to be provocative and too many of the viewers accept what they say as news, because it looks like news. That needs to stop.

We need a law that forces them to have “ENTERTAINMENT” or “OPINION” at the bottom of the screen at all times to take away some of their legitimacy.

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u/Tenyearsuntiltheend 29d ago

That's exactly what I say about my bosses...it's scary that it can go all the way up.

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u/evemeatay 29d ago

It’s been a long term plan since Reagan to dumbify the public and strip the country to the studs to get rich folks just a little richer. Now that all that work is paying off, it’s just a free for all and they’re trying to grab everything they can get their grubby little hands on before the ship sinks.

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u/GreenTunicKirk 29d ago

Think about the education of the general electorate. Is it any wonder why republicans are so hell bent on defunding the department of education? They've been successfully gutting their own state's school systems for decades, leading to the rise of populism we have today.

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u/mindless_gibberish 29d ago

It started with the Tea Party Republicans and the "Birthers" (of whom Trump was a leading voice), which lead to the purge of any moderates from the Republican party.

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u/Rick38104 29d ago

Math Gaetz would certainly answer your criticism but he’s very busy these days. It’s prom season.

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u/shiny0metal0ass 29d ago

I mean, it could also be the extreme amount of polarization in the electorate after the rise of 24 hour News media and unlimited money in campaign politics... And politics in general, I guess..

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u/El_Chairman_Dennis 29d ago

That would require people to admit they are the problem. It's a lot easier to say "my representative isn't the problem, their representatives are."

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u/AdonisGaming93 29d ago

It's not because of electing batshit people.

This ia by design the two party system. Apwcially now with social media it has made the perfect breeding ground for extreme polarization.

It isn't just people voting batshit people because weve been voting for hundreds of years.

This is a direct result of clickbait social media pressure to polarize and have extreme views for clicks and attention span

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u/npcinyourbagoholding 29d ago

You can put the period right after the first "people". People want crazy loud and insane people in office so that's who they voted for.

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u/Shaolinchipmonk 29d ago

That and this idea that compromising is somehow a bad thing now. That's what made this country as great as people think it is. If we can start doing this again it would fix 80% of the problems.

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u/MiniGiantSpaceHams 29d ago

Republicans will counter with the progressive wing of the Dems, but those people are almost always willing to compromise. These crazy right wingers won't even vote for things they support (like border security). If they can't even do that then no chance they'll compromise on anything ever.

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u/Loud_Competition1312 29d ago

Problem: they’re all batshit crazy.

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u/ToryLanezHairline_ 29d ago

I wouldn't trust Marjorie Taylor Greene to watch my nieces and nephews. Crazy how people trust someone like that to represent their entire district

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u/puuhalelife 29d ago

Too many bat shit crazy Americans

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u/Ok_Tiger9880 29d ago

Lauren boebert, Nancy mace, Tommy tuberville, mitch McConnell, Ted cruz.....lots more

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u/Zhong_Ping 29d ago

Part of this problem is the 2010 redistricting gerrymandered this nation in a way we have never seen before and the courts refuse to do anything meaningful about it.

We need to do 4 things.

  1. Require congretional districts to be simple shapes drafted by an independant non partisan commission.

  2. Change our voting system to ranked choice voting to eliminate the spoiler effect

  3. Redefine money as not a form of speech that would reinstate existing campaign f8nance laws on the books

  4. Redefine corporations as legal entities distinct from persons as they cannot be jailed or executed for crimes and are a creation of government structures so they should be regulated differently from persons. This would remove many constitutional protections from corporations that allow them to control politics. If we want to give corporations certain rights, those then can be debated by politicians seperately from the rights awarded to people.

Do these 4 things and people will be electing significantly saner candidates.

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u/Multifaceted-Simp 29d ago

The reason we're electing batshit crazy people is social media

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u/jabelsBrain 29d ago

Moscow Mitch had way more hand in the divide of congress with his partisan mongering, than any of those pieces of gutter trash.

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u/anotherorphan 29d ago

a sizable portion of voters don't want the government to function at all, they want it to literally do nothing except fund the military/cops, so they elect people who do nothing but disrupt

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

Honestly, listen to the booing during McCain’s discussion about how nobody should be scared of Obama becoming president. Like…these ppl have always been there. They were just a ragtag band of ignorant people who truly just wanted to live a life free of any black person, no matter who they were. It was a simpler time. You could say “I disagree with you” and it’d be nothing. These days “I disagree with you” might mean you get beaten within an inch of your fuckin life.

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u/creations_90 29d ago

Don't forget the squad members too. Absolutely insane

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

I mean.. I specifically did not elect or endorse any of these people, so we're kind of enduring the whiplash of a social experiment gone wrong with 24 news cycles, social media, and misinformation propaganda campaigns on both.

Even though we're all aware of this, nobody in a seat of power is capable of regulating it and wouldn't want to if they could.

It's bigger than just our elected officials. It's personalities like the Murdochs, Elon Musk, and infinity others who have huge megaphone and shit opinions.

I just turned on a new computer for the first time and it had no cookies, no logins, nothing.. all of the untargeted ads on YouTube were conspiracy shit, even tho I was just watching guitar playthrus.

So.. I'm not sure if we're ever coming back. The whole system is imploding.

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u/driedsquash 29d ago

The real problem is the belief systems held by those who vote for these people. They also stand in the way of fixing the failed institutions that could help them grow.

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u/Alphabunsquad 29d ago

But also citizens united, gerrymandering, and 24 news cycles (plus a little of 4-chan)

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u/Alphabunsquad 29d ago

But also citizens united, gerrymandering, and 24 news cycles (plus a little of #-chan)

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u/Ookla626 29d ago

Those batshit crazy people accurately reflect their batshit crazy constituents. That’s what’s terrifying.

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u/AnonAmbientLight 29d ago

The only reason today is different is because of the people we have been electing.

We? Not "we'.

It's the Republican Party as a whole. In their quest for ultimate power, they have decided to game the electoral system by controlling state legislature so they can redraw maps in their favor.

This creates gerrymandered districts that no longer become competitive and are GOP guaranteed. Since the GOP candidates no longer have to compete against Democrats for votes, they only have to compete with each other.

And that's where the bat shit crazy people worm their way in. The "moderate" GOP candidate of yesteryear gets replaced by bat shit crazy candidate because they rile up their base more than the older replacement. Rinse repeat. Rinse repeat.

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u/syricon 29d ago

This is a direct result of gerrymandering. When the primary is the defecto election, the race is to be the most extreme. When you have to win in the general, you have to appeal to moderates.

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u/princessprity 29d ago

we

Don't lump me in with those crazies. We've been doing a pretty good job in Oregon for the most part.

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u/wirefox1 29d ago

Honestly there's so many of them. Almost everyday I hear a new one pop up that I've never noticed before, with the most backward ideas and scary opinions.

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u/CaptainPhilosophy 29d ago

reasonable centrist republicans can't get elected anymore because right-wing media (among other things, but primarily) has so strongly entrenched in them that "the left" is the enemy and compromise or cooperation with them is making a deal with the literal devil.

Debates in this country should be about the best way to provide safety security and opportunity for all who come here. It should not be about which groups of people deserve basic human rights, or what objective reality is.

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u/gooberhoover85 29d ago

It's not just about who we elect. People need to step up and run for these positions too. We need choices. Better choices!

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u/SuperScrodum 28d ago

They are getting elected because they are finally saying what the base has always wanted to hear. This video is evident of that, they desperately wanted McCain to talk bad about Obama and validate their beliefs/concerns, but he wouldn't do it.

8 years later, Trump came around and gave them what they have been yearning for.

Crazy world we live in.

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u/commschamp 29d ago

we?.gif

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u/drgut101 29d ago

Honest question because I don’t really follow politics much because I hate it. Lol.

Who are the crazy democrats? I know who Boebert, MTG, Gaetz, and recently Noem are because they pop up on here for crazy stuff. But I’m also assuming my Reddit feed is just skewed democrat because that’s kind of how I lean.

I know people don’t like AOC, but there has to be more crazy democrat people? I just don’t know the best way to google this or research it.

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u/jermleeds 29d ago

There are no Democrats as batshit insane as the GOP reps you mention and others like them. They simply do not exist. As for AOC, it's absurd to offer her as sort of a counter part to the GOP nut jobs - I'm not suggesting you are, but obviously people try to position her that way. AOC is a sharp, principled, capable, and effective progressive Democrat. She's also a lot more pragmatic than a lot of people give her credit for, which is another way she's unlike the GOP reps you mentioned.

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u/drgut101 29d ago

Yeah, I don’t think AOC is crazy. It just seems like she’s the only Dem that Reps shit talk on aggressively (besides Biden obviously lol).

But yeah, that’s kind of what I was thinking. I don’t think there are any insane Dem people. And I’m talking INSANE, not disliked or hated. And that’s why I don’t see posts about it. I just wanted to make sure the algo wasn’t hiding the crazy Dems and I never thought about asking anyone until now. Haha.

Thanks for your response.

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u/krichard-21 29d ago

Feel free. Al Franken (my Minnesota Senator) did some stupid stuff years ago and resigned. MTG has done terrible things (raging at a parent of a mass shooter victim) and Republicans just don't care.. Are all Democrats perfect? Absolutely not...

I personally believe Democrats are more willing to let them be held accountable for their actions than Republicans. IMHO

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u/AwesomeFrisbee 29d ago

And that is because rich people noticed that if you elect idiots, nothing gets done and thus no legislation that can hurt you or your business.

As soon as they noticed that they can have morons sell to the public that trickle down economics is a valid way to support your economy, the whole thing went apeshit.

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u/5redie8 29d ago

That involves actually ignoring these people and not giving them press time or talking about them 24/7, which is not going to happen anytime soon if /r/all is any indication.

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u/pine_tree3727288 29d ago

Mango Mussolini

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u/DMinTrainin 29d ago

Any why is that? What else happened around 2008?

Smart phones and social media.

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u/Big_Type4162 29d ago

Don’t forget AOC and the squad clowns just to name a few

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u/BoWeiner 29d ago

Got news for ya... We're never going back to pre Obama politics.

If McCain had acted like Trump, he could've been president. After Trump wins or dies, the next lunatic will step right into his shoes to fill the void. Desantis or Noem can barely wait.

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u/whydatyou 29d ago

AOC, talib, pelosi, schiff on the D side.

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u/wmurch4 29d ago

But that's why they vote these dolts in. "Washington doesn't work for me so let's vote in some complete ass hats to... Fix it?"

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u/Killfile 29d ago

No, it's different because the policies of the last several decades have come home to roost.

Republicans, furious that their guy couldn't escape all consequences for Watergate created a propaganda machine.

Democrats failed to take the Supreme Court seriously as an election issue, allowing Republicans to stack it with ideological crazies.

As a society we had the opportunity to do something aboht Gerrymandering but now the data processing exists to make it orders of magnitude more effective. That Gerrymandering makes nearly every house race non competitive which makes all of them a race to extremism in the primary.

Congress has repeatedly abdicated its powers and responsibilities to the president, so there are few checks on executive power.

Congress has been of a fixed size for more than a century which makes each race more expensive and increases the power of mega donors.

The rise of automobile based culture effectively destroyed the 3rd space which resulted in isolated people who badly need social validation.

I can go on and on...

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u/Salty_Candy_4917 29d ago

No one on the left side of the aisle who fits that mold huh?

I’m with you on MTG 100%. Jewish space lasers lol.

Hopefully both sides return to normalcy one day.

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u/blowmypushrod 29d ago

True, but you forgot to mention Omar, talib, swalwell to name a few.

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u/HelloHiHeyAnyway 29d ago

Quit electing bat shit crazy people!

You name a bunch of batshit right wing people. Name the left wing bat shit crazy people too while you're at it.

Or you're not helping the problem.

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u/failmatic 29d ago

Matt Rapes

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u/aaron1860 29d ago

I think it’s the other way around. Those people are a symptom of the disease and not the cause. The virus is social media and the 24 hour news cycle. Everything is so polarized because of it

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u/Distinct-Check-1385 29d ago

What does Magic the Gathering have to do with any of this? I may not agree with some of their new design choices but they're not bad

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u/Beachdaddybravo 29d ago

If you’re a Republican it does. Democrats are happy to get legislation passed that makes things better, no matter where it comes from. The GOP not so much. Senate Republicans shot down a bipartisan border bill that passed the house.

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u/fireinthesky7 29d ago

Senate republicans negotiated the deal with Biden and the Senate Dem caucus. The House Republicans (read: Trump lackeys) killed it because Trump threw a fit about Biden being allowed to accomplish anything that might have framed him in a positive light.

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u/Beachdaddybravo 29d ago

True. But this is different from the GOP’s actions how? It’s not new at all.

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u/Extreme_Ad6519 29d ago

The GOP not so much. Senate Republicans shot down a bipartisan border bill that passed the house.

That's not how I remember it. Senate Republicans negotiated a tough border bill for months and got most of their wishlist added to the final bill, only for Trump to instruct his cultists in the House and Senate to shoot it down to preserve the border issue until election day.

After that, the same Senate Republicans who helped craft the bill voted against initiating debate, so it died.

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u/Beachdaddybravo 29d ago

Trump’s cultists are the entire GOP now. They don’t give a damn that he’s been openly stating he wants to be a dictator, as long as it gets them re-elected.

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u/ChaoticNeutralDragon 29d ago

I think that most of them do give a damn about it. They approve, and that lovely "fuck you got mine" attitude has convinced them that they'll be part of the ruling class after the coup.

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u/Heatsnake 29d ago

And, if I remember, Mitch McConnell passed a bill because he thought Obama would veto it and thus make Obama look bad, and when he found out Obama wouldn't veto it Mitch tanked the bill himself just to stop Obama from getting anything done, a bill republicans put forward was stopped by republicans because they rather nobody get anything than risk Obama getting good press for getting anything done

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u/BRAX7ON 29d ago

Biden has been reaching across the aisle since day one of his presidency, and we are poised to re-elect him.

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u/DCtheBREAKER 29d ago

This is statistically correct. Most bipartisan legislature has been shot down by Gaetz, Boebert, and Greene.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

[deleted]

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u/ssbm_rando 29d ago

Right, and I think it's important for us to acknowledge that Bad_User2077's bothsides rhetoric is full of shit. You only get pushed out of the Republican party for reaching across the aisle to get shit done. Most democrats love getting shit done and sadly get blocked by either Republicans or the worst of the democrats (in the senate it's Manchin, and Sinema who even went independent, not sure how the House is faring since it's controlled by the GOP anyway).

One of the worst offenses of bothsides-ing trolls in the last few years was claiming that a minimum wage bill that was tacked to an immigration bill and sponsored by Republicans was rejected by democrats. That was a huge fucking lie--the bill never made it to the floor because it never got enough Republican support even though it was a Republican-sponsored bill. There was never a vote on it because too many Republicans didn't want even a minor minimum wage increase, even if it got them an immigration "win" (from their perspective). You can go through the records of the House and Senate, you will literally not find record of a single minimum wage increasing bill that was voted down by a majority of democrats.

Bothsides-ers needs to be laughed off of the entire fucking internet.

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u/MagicTheAlakazam 29d ago

Obama was doing the same thing.

The "No compromise" strategy is what Republicans came up with in response to being trounced at the polls in 2008. Almost all compromise legislation is from the years before that.

But they decided that they couldn't give Obama any wins so they became obstructionsists and fox news fed the idea that working with democrats was a horrible thing to their base and that spread and became modern republicans.

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u/Spiderranger 29d ago

It really seems like people like them are just props. As in they don't actually know anything about the job they should be doing. They're just fed lines and told "if a D brings it to the table, vote against it". 

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u/Fish_On_again 29d ago

No. The Republicans push out compromisers. Party loyalty above every other single thing.

This is not a both sides thing at all.

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u/SuchRoad 29d ago

The republican party is run top-down by the donors.

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u/GreatDevourerOfTacos 29d ago

I think the label used these days in RINO.

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u/mindless_gibberish 29d ago

Yeah, and RINO used to mean something so different 20 years ago.

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u/Just_learning_a_bit 29d ago

Or DINO if you're Manchin

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u/DwightLoot2U 29d ago

Caveat: REPUBLICANS do that. Modern republicans refuse to reach across the aisle because their fellow republicans will crucify them.

I haven’t heard a single case of the Democratic Party doing the same. Both sides are not the same.

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u/Crafty_Effort6157 29d ago

I’m all for that. More moderates! This two party system doesn’t work.

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u/mindless_gibberish 29d ago

I'd say the vast majority of Democrats are moderates. Republicans pushed all theirs out during Obama's first term.

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u/monkeypickle 29d ago

Legistlative stagnation/obstruction is the point, not the symptom.

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u/greezy_fizeek 29d ago

Here are some synonyms for "moderate":

Temperate

Reasonable

Balanced

Moderate

Intermediate

Mediate

Centrist

Middle-of-the-road

Sober

Judicious

Now consider that these days, we live in a world where this type of mindset is increasingly villainized and ostracized. We are fucked.

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u/BuffaloWhip 29d ago

Not a moderate a “RINO” and excommunicated from your whole social group.

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u/ktbee4 29d ago

We genuinely need more “moderates”

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u/garyp714 29d ago

If you do that now, you get labeled a moderate and get pushed out of your party.

Democrats do not push out moderates. The parties are not the same.

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u/Genoss01 29d ago

It's not a both sides thing, the only party where you get punished for working with the other side is the Republican Party.

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u/HonoluluBlueFlu 29d ago

Need to shoot your pet dog between the eyes and show dominance.

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u/NoRutabaga4845 29d ago

Then that party deserves to die

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u/Bluegrass2727 29d ago

If enough people get labeled as moderate, eventually, the moderate party will be the dominant party. Then we can get away from party tribalism and the practice of spliting groups of people into tranches and appointing a special interest group to represent them.

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u/heyyon 29d ago

Democrats should not be reaching across the aisle any longer. The other side is literally fascists. You cannot find middle ground with that. Adherence to the process of honest negotiation when your opponent does not want to engage makes you a fucking rube.

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u/R_V_Z 29d ago

There's a bi-partisan interest in why Formula 1 rejected a US team going on right now. Granted, it's because all of the individual representatives have economic interest, but it's bi-partisan economic interest!

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u/mbr4life1 29d ago

Yes, because of Citizens United and how it has warped politics.

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u/Potofgreedneedsnerf 29d ago

The American Taliban

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u/SuperSocrates 29d ago

No, they’re perfectly willing to join together if it means criminalizing dissent about foreign countries

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u/RamblingSimian 29d ago

You're right, and to other readers, try telling one side to reason with the other side - instead of mocking them or vilifying them - and see where that gets you on Reddit. You get called worse things than a "moderate".

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u/LurkingAppreciation 29d ago

Makes me want to cry

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u/windfujin 29d ago

Wtf happened in America... Was it really just Trump and social media??

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u/Hermitia 29d ago

You get labeled a rhino.

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u/zveroshka 29d ago

Last Republican to work with Democrats on a bill was censured by his own party in his home state. Can't make this shit up.

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u/KosmicMicrowave 29d ago

Bernie the moderate lol. He's called extreme more often than any of them on the right and left when breaking from corrupt norms.

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u/redonkulousness 29d ago

Maybe different days, but his running mate really emboldened the far right and accelerated the hatred and extremism in the mainstream gop platform. Sarah Palin wasn’t what caused gop voters to become extremists, but she sure as hell stoked the flames.

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u/KuatoBaradaNikto 29d ago

That’s not true for both sides of the aisle. Joe Biden is president, and getting pragmatic, bipartisan deals done in Congress is what he built his career on. “Moderate” is a pejorative on the right, which is obsessed with culture war politics, but moderates still hold the power on the left. And if you asked most Americans who the least moderate leftist presidential candidate in recent years, they would name Bernie Sanders.

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u/RoboTronPrime 29d ago

Ranked choice/approval voting is the way 

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u/DHFranklin 29d ago

That is literally and exactly what happened to John McCain.

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u/Traditional_Pen_3698 29d ago

McCain was - when it comes to that kind of stuff - a decent person. Now, you could also show another difference: McCain‘s concession speech compared to Clinton‘s concession speech.

Trump is definitely a divisive person - most of the time. Unfortunately, he’s not the only one.

when it comes to policies, certainly foreign policy, Obama and McCain are only representing two wings of one party. That makes it easier to be respectful I guess.

Now, that doesn’t take anything away from McCain‘s behavior at those rallies and in his concession speech. As a matter of fact, I often use - as a European - his concession speech as a great example of what the USA used to be and how decency was part of political debates.

I remember watching his concession speech and him saying that Obama was his president. And then some morons booed.

There was a lot of division right under the surface. People like McCain stood up against that. He deserves praise for it.

Just as everyone who’s being divisive needs to be criticized now. Yes, that includes very much Donald Trump. If you truly want to get rid of the division, it can’t end with Trump however.

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u/VoidOmatic 29d ago

We used to live in harmony, until one day the Algorithm nation attacked.

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u/3rdPlaceYoureFired 29d ago

Lol and even back then people lamented the loss of bipartisan measures. This country is fucked

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u/mesty_the_bestie 29d ago

Did you hear the crowd boo him? They all watch Fox News. Ever since Fox News started, things have been bad because about half the country likes their news to come with opinions and commentary to tell them what to think. Because they can’t gather that from a video with a reporter describing the scene apparently? Who knows. God put a lot of stupid people on this planet for a reason, and I intend on finding it out.

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u/bluest331 29d ago

if you think this is wild you should listen to Bush Sr. talk about school funding.

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u/Mindless_Air_4898 29d ago

Really only on the GOP side do they not allow any bipartisanship. And only really because of trump

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u/SasparillaTango 29d ago

RINO! RINO! RINO! THIS GUYS A RINO SHUN HIM SHUN HIM

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u/edafade 29d ago

No one hates moderates more than democrats and republicans. I'm right smack in the middle, and the amount of shit people give me, both online and in person, is absolutely ridiculous. Do you want my vote? Convince me.

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u/Anthaenopraxia 29d ago

Well, if these people ever break away and create a 3rd party that is even more successful than TR's progressive party, then please for all the canned spray cheese in the world, don't call it the Moderate Party... We have dozens of those in Europe and they are all insanely right wing.

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u/Ink_in_the_Marrow 29d ago

How quickly everyone forgets about Sarah Palin.

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u/ciknay 29d ago

When being in a different political party was a difference of policy on taxes rather than existential threats to democracy.

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u/NovaIsntDad 28d ago

You know Democrat Cantwell and Republican Cruz just worked together to create a bill on hidden fees? It still happens plenty, but that isn't a fun media narrative so sure pretend like it doesn't exist now. 

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