• Copernican@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The thing that I dont think a lot of people like to recognize is that GW Bush had both some of the highest and lowest approval ratings. For months immediately after his approval rating was like 90 percent. Dems are also responsible for going to war then, even if they weren’t the party in control.

    But the thing is republicans did hold institutions, agencies, and administrative government orgs in higher esteem and weren’t trying to destroy and purge. That’s very different than trump. There’s a difference between Mitt Romneys of the. GOP and the Jim Jordans who have never passed their own legislation and instead only focus on dismantling government and going on witch hunts.

    I think the other thing you need to look at is how other elected officials speak about working with him. There’s what you say in the public light, and then there’s the work that actually gets done.

    Also, didn’t Romney kind of quietly champion universal healthcare in MA? And despite his own views, accept state Supreme Court rulings to provide gay marriage licenses? This guy actually cared about governing.

    • hydrospanner@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I think that MAGA-ism has led to a dangerous amount of rose tinted glasses with regard to the pre-Trump GOP. Even the pre-Tea Party GOP (which was the real start of this latest flavor of rot)…

      buuuuuuut

      You do make a very good point in the difference between a Romney and a Jordan.

      The Romneys of the world may indeed want small government, hell some of them may only want a smaller government…but they still want some degree of government, and by extension, they’re still interested in governing. That is: doing their job of steering the nation toward some sort of goal that they feel is a worthwhile betterment of the country.

      I may not agree with their goals or the ways they try to get there, but they do in fact have a goal and part of that end goal includes an intact, functioning country with an intact, functioning government.

      The Jordans, however, have a fundamentally incompatible end goal: they don’t just want small government, they want no government. Any level of government would serve as a check on their power to enforce their ideals, so their constant goal is simply to dismantle any bit of the government they can.

      So they literally use their position as a chosen caretaker for the government as a platform to destroy the very thing they’re supposed to be managing.