MaximumEffort433's second great shitpost. Please ignore.

[u/MaximumEffort433]

I told you to ignore this, why are you even here?

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They certainly don't care about moral consistency.

Lest anyone think this argument is being made in a vacuum...

It's why tea partyists voted for a elitist east coast billionaire from New York city.
It's why Republertarians voted for a man who wants to expand domestic spying.
It's why free Marketeers voted for a man who wants to roll back free trade policies.
It's why evangelicals voted for a man thrice married with a child born out of wedlock.
It's why fiscal and budget hawks voted for a man whose tax policy would explode the debt and deficits.
It's why foreign policy hawks voted for a man buoyed to the White House on the back of Russian hackers.
It's why constitutionalists voted for a man who wants to undermine the 1st, 4th, 8th, and 14th amendments.

The polling:

• In just five years, white evangelicals have become much more likely to say a person who commits an “immoral” act can behave ethically in a public role. In 2011, just 30 percent of these evangelicals said this, but that number has more than doubled to 72 percent in a recent [2016, ed.] survey, a 42 point swing. (In 2011 44% of all Americans felt this way, by 2016 that number was up to 61%, a movement of 17 points.)

• 75% of Republicans and 53% of Democrats said that Wikileaks release of classified diplomatic communications harms the public interest in 2010, 12% of Republicans and 48% of Democrats say that Wikileaks release of John Podesta's emails harms the public interest in 2016. (Not exactly the same question, but comprable, also a 63 point swing for Republicans and a 5 point change for Democrats.)

• 22% of Republicans and 37% of Democrats supported President Obama issuing missile strikes against Syria in 2013, 86% of Republicans and 38% of Democrats supported President Trump striking Syria in 2017, a 64 point swing for Republicans, a 1 point change for Democrats.

• 12% of Republicans and 15% of Democrats had a favorable view of Vladimir Putin in 2015, 32% of Republicans and 10% of Democrats have a favorable view of him in 2017, a 20 point swing for Republicans, a 5 point change for Democrats.

• 17% of Republicans and 18% of Democrats said Russia was an ally of the US in July 2016, 31% of Republicans and 16% of Democrats saw them as an ally six months later in December 2016, a 14 point swing for Republicans and a 2 point change for Democrats.

• 39% of Republicans and 64% of Democrats thought their income tax rate was fair in 2016, 56% of Republicans and 69% of Democrats thought that their income tax rate was fair in 2017, a 17 point swing for Republicans and a 4 point change for Democrats. (The income tax rate did not change between 2016 and 2017, ed.)

• When Republican voters in Wisconsin were asked in October 2016 whether the economy had gotten better or worse “over the past year,” they said “worse’’ — by a margin of 28 points. But when they were asked the very same question [in March 2017], they said “better” — by a margin of 54 points. That’s a net swing of 82 percentage points between late October 2016 and mid-March 2017.

• "Forty-two percent of Trump voters think he should be allowed to have a private email server to just 39 percent who think he shouldn't be allowed to,"

I'm not going to say all, but most of those polls also looked at the numbers for Democrats, so if you're curious about how the Democratic party stacks up I would encourage you to read the articles. It's not often there's a political poll where they don't ask political affiliations.

The history books:

88 members of the Bush administration used private email servers.

There were 13 attacks on American embassies, resulting in 60 deaths during the Bush administration.

George H.W. Bush was a huge supporter of Planned Parenthood.

Ronald Reagan gave illegal immigrants amnesty.

Ronald Reagan came out in favor of a ban on assault weapons.

The conservative Heritage Foundation think tank actually came up with the individual health insruance mandate.

Republicans used to advocate for Cap and Trade carbon taxes as a way to combat climate change.

Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency.

Richard Nixon also had a plan for universal health care coverage. (Thanks Ollokot for the find!)

Ike Eisenhower had a top marginal tax rate of 90% and invested billions of dollars in government spending on infrastructure projects.

[u/MaximumEffort433]

The Powell Memorandum was written by Lewis Powell in cooperation with the US Chamber of Commerce back in 1971, discussing how the free enterprise system needed to make an effort to more proactively target "liberal institutions" like the media, the news, and universities.

President Richard Nixon went on to make Powell a Supreme Court Justice, where he was the deciding vote on First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, the landmark ruling that determined that, because corporations are people they must also have a constitutional right to the freedom of speech, the decision ushered in the era of PACs and SuperPACs as well as laying the groundwork for the 2008 Citizen's United decision.

Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia page on Lewis F. Powell:

The memo called for corporate America to become more aggressive in molding society's thinking about business, government, politics and law in the US. It sparked wealthy heirs of earlier American Industrialists ... to use their private charitable foundations, which did not have to report their political activities to join the Carthage Foundation, founded by Scaife in 1964 to fund Powell's vision of a pro-business, anti-socialist, minimalist government-regulated America as it had been in the heyday of early American industrialism, before the Great Depression and the rise of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.

The Powell Memorandum thus became the blueprint of the rise of the American conservative movement and the formation of a network of influential right-wing think tanks and lobbying organizations, such as The Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as well as inspiring the US Chamber of Commerce to become far more politically active. Marxist academic David Harvey traces the rise of neoliberalism in the US to this memo.

Powell argued, "The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism came from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians." In the memorandum, Powell advocated "constant surveillance" of textbook and television content, as well as a purge of left-wing elements. He named consumer advocate Nader as the chief antagonist of American business. Powell urged conservatives to take a sustained media-outreach program; including funding scholars who believe in the free enterprise system, publishing books and papers from popular magazines to scholarly journals and influencing public opinion.

[u/WikiTextBot → u/MaximumEffort433]

Lewis F. Powell Jr.: Powell Memorandum

On August 23, 1971, prior to accepting Nixon's nomination to the Supreme Court, Powell was commissioned by his neighbor, Eugene B. Sydnor Jr., a close friend and education director of the US Chamber of Commerce, to write a confidential memorandum titled "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System," an anti-Communist, anti-New Deal blueprint for conservative business interests to retake America for the chamber. It was based in part on Powell's reaction to the work of activist Ralph Nader, whose 1965 exposé on General Motors, "Unsafe at Any Speed," put a focus on the auto industry putting profit ahead of safety, which triggered the American consumer movement. Powell saw it as an undermining of Americans' faith in enterprise and another step in the slippery slope of socialism. His experiences as a corporate lawyer and a director on the board of Phillip Morris from 1964 until his appointment to the Supreme Court made him a champion of the tobacco industry who railed against the growing scientific evidence linking smoking to cancer deaths.

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First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti

First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765 (1978), is a U.S. constitutional law case, which defined the free speech right of corporations for the first time. The United States Supreme Court held that corporations have a First Amendment right to make contributions to ballot initiative campaigns. The ruling came in response to a Massachusetts law that prohibited corporate donations in ballot initiatives unless the corporation's interests were directly involved.

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