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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   7027 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026

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I would never vote for Trump, for sure, but the Republicans haven't sought moderate votes with a presidential candidate since Romney. I would have absolutely voted for someone like Rubio over Harris in 2024.

Well, no one's been the Republican nominee since Romney other than Trump, who has a unique gravitational pull over the Republican party but is deeply divisive. He also won more than a few moderates in 2024 -- enough to swing the election in some key constituencies.

I would also note that the Obama attack energy against Romney can be attributed to the way Republicans reacted to Obama's first term -- if anyone in politics has been demonized unfairly, it's Barack Obama. I disagreed with him on things, but Republicans treated him like the coming of the antichrist. Both McCain and Obama ran remarkably clean campaigns, although I think McCain would have made a better president. (Far better than Romney, as well.)

I think the real thing here is not that the GOP doesn't want to seek moderate votes, but that Trump uniquely energizes both his supporters and his enemies. I think it'll be good for American politics that he's a term-limited old man who won't be with us for all that much longer (natural causes, of course -- he's 80), because he has too much of a gravity well for his actual competence at governing to justify.

I recall how Romney and McCain were smeared as right wing extremists. The Romney campaign publicly asking the Obama campaign to please decrease the use of Nazi and fascist rhetoric and imagery to attack him. We had moderate Republican candidates.

We know the vitriol they get and how gracefully they lose. Trump didn't appeal to the center and was equally smeared as a fascist, but he got more votes than Kamala.

I don't contest any of that, and I certainly appreciate that being toxic is clearly the winning strategy for both sides, especially in primaries.

But I would vote for a Romney-like over Hillary or Harris in a heartbeat.

So you voted for Romney and McCain?

No. I thought Obama was good abd vastly superior in 2008, especially with Palin as a proto-Trump and even more with Obama's Iraq war opposition since I view that war as a huge error. I greatly regret not voting for Romney in 2016, though in my defense I think that Obama and Romney were both basically good choices. Today, I do not believe there is any scenario in which the Democrats present me with a good candidate, but the Republicans keep giving me Trump. It would take very little for me to vote against a Sanders-esque Dem nominee - probably literally anyone except Vance or with the last name Trump.

So there is no pleasing you

In a British accent That's not right...

Maybe, but there is also not much criticizing me that I would not swing. McCain was an old man hawk with a populist side kick - the obvious wrong choice. Romney was a good choice but this is the coin flip of centrist vs centrist - okay, I lean Dem based on this, but, I mean, I dont think we will ever see a candidate on either side as good as either of these guys for at least a decade. I think it has been extremely correct to vote against Trump every time, thougb I cede that has handlers did a pretty good job on his first term - unfortunately, Trump inmediately undid all the good of TCJA in his second term.

I voted for both; never voted for Trump.

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