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Peter7136's avatar

A very perceptive article by Damon. When I read the NYT interview with Ross Douthat I was struck by how articulate and thoughtful Vance was. Here is someone that can’t be written off as a blowhard whose primary talent is incendiary provocations, but a man who can formulate a real political philosophy. Two things I felt Vance failed to address in the interview: 1. the real inflationary effect of tariffs and who would be affected by those (surely it is the working class people he wants to help), and 2. his rationalization of election denials (2020) is a weak argument in view of the fact that every attempt to leverage whatever irregularities they could dig up failed in courts, including in front of friendly judges. One senses he knows to avoid too much discussion of this as he is on thin ice.

There are other things I disagree with him about — his views on the Ukraine war are wildly oversimplified imo — but he does a good job of making his case. There’s no way around it, Vance is a smart cookie. Probably opportunistic, but hey, it’s politics, let’s get real.

The other takeaway from the whole article for me is that the Republican Party has now fully reinvented itself and is no longer merely a personality cult. Meanwhile the Democratic Party is dying a slow death with an uninspiring senile leader who refuses to let new blood rise.

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Charles McKelvey's avatar

An ideological construction that synthesizes social conservatism, economic regulation addressing the standard of living, and retrenchment in foreign policy is exactly what is needed to forge constructive national consensus, taking the nation beyond myopic Reaganism and toxic woke leftism. But policies to raise wages must be combined with decisive governmental steps to increase production in strategic areas, in order to avoid inflation. And retrenchment in foreign policy must be in the form of comprehensive anti-imperialism, leaving behind the imperialist mentality that is the trapdoor for endless wars.

https://charlesmckelvey.substack.com/

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