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If we are talking vibes and just random anecdotes, then republicans are very excited about the RFK and (to a lesser extent) Tulsi endorsement. Both RFK and Tulsi are big in the Rogan orbit. Could help Trump and helps with enthusiasm. Listen to the roar of the crowd when RFK walked on stage Friday in Arizona. That’s vines.
The fact that RFK is the counter enthusiasm on the R side is sad and desperate. We’re not building enthusiasm anymore to build the wall or drain the swamp or even fight inflation. It’s a crackpot lefty further watering down any sense of conservatism.
I think his support for free speech is something every conservative can get behind. Also there has always been a strain of “no foreign entanglements” amongst conservative thought for a long time.
Doesn’t mean RFK agrees with all or even most of conservative thought but there are some key overlaps there and it shows that the Republican Party can appeal to disaffected democrats. It also could be big for the election. Assume RFK was polling 5% in battleground states. Assume 60% of his voters vote and they break 2-1 for Trump. That’s a net 1% bump for Trump.
"Support for free speech." Isn't this the guy who was calling for the imprisonment of "climate deniers" like two minutes ago?
Specifically think tanks and organizations. Now I still think it's wacko, as are of course a lot of things about the man, but on paper the idea that individuals have free speech, not organizations, is perfectly coherent.
Having one's rights end where those of a legal fiction begin is one of the more insane accepted beliefs of our time.
There's definitely a bi-partisan contingent of people who think corporations should shut the fuck up about politics, that their involvement amounts to bribery and that Citizens United was a bad decision.
It's of course a longstanding gripe in US lefty circles, "take the money out of politics" and so on, but individualistic libertarians on the right and even MAGA people don't hold woke corporations in their hearts. So RFK codes as a friend more than he does as an enemy.
Money out of politics? Is this what you think this is about?
No. It's about shaking down any company that does things that New York thinks is bad, or is associated with a persona non grata. Such as being funded by the Kochs.
Thinking that this is about getting corporations out of politics is among the more naive takes I've seen on this forum.
You think you're a cynic, but you're not nearly cynical enough. Politics isn't about policy or the effects of policy for the most part.
It's about signalling the right things to the right people. Politicians routinely support insane policies that would never actually be implemented or even do anything that furthers their goals on the sole motivation that those policies send the right signals.
"Build the wall", they say, and then don't literally build a literal wall, because what the people heard and care about is "I want to lower immigration", not the thing in itself.
What I'm trying to get at here is what tendency RFK is coming from and whether that tendency is reconcilable with that of Trump's electorate. That his actual policy positions are contradictory with those of Trump, or even with themselves, is immaterial.
RFK is the standard bearer of old school hippie leftists who are skeptical of the government, corporations and buy into every conspiracy theory under the sun, his alliance with Trump is a ritual that consecrates the alliance of that tradition with the generally syncretic MAGA movement. Or at least it's what the Trump campaign is trying to make it into.
This isn't even cynicism, it's just taking him at his word.
Noted businessman Trump is not exactly the kind of guy who I would say is skeptical of corporations. The argument you are making here seems incoherent - RFK is against corporations, we must imagine Trump is too, therefore they go together. Then you confusingly heap the campaign finance angle on it for some reason even though nobody is talking about that.
And yet Caesar is no less the ally of the plebs because he is himself a patrician.
The distinction you are not seeing is the one delineated further down in the thread, between public companies as oligarchies and private companies as monarchies. Trump is a champion of the latter, of personal power and individualism.
This is compatible with old hippie individualism to some degree. It's also contradictory of course, but that doesn't and has never prevented syncretism. All that needs to happen is a depersonalization of the robber barons. Which is effectively what comes out of RFK's mouth when he wishes death on abstractions instead of specific names.
Everybody is talking about that.
There is a specter haunting the Western world. And his name is Managerialism.
All political conversations are ultimately about the ruling class and its enemies. Or they're not political conversations.
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