12mo ago

How Trump Dominated His Own Party on a New G.O.P. Platform

www.nytimes.com

14 comments

The new platform softened language on abortion, excised old language referring obliquely to gay conversion therapy and culled a section about reducing a national debt that Mr. Trump had increased by nearly $8 trillion during his term in office.
Mr. Trump made clear to his team that he wanted the 2024 platform to be his and his alone. He wanted it to be much shorter and simpler — and, in some cases, vaguer. He was especially focused on the language about abortion, which he recognized was a potentially potent issue against him in a general election. He wanted nothing in the platform that would give Democrats an opening to attack him, and he made clear to aides that he was perfectly fine with bucking social conservatives, for whom he had delivered a tremendous victory by reshaping the Supreme Court with a conservative supermajority.
Mr. Trump also stressed that he did not want to define marriage as between one man and one woman. Instead, the document contains a vague statement open to interpretation: “Republicans will promote a Culture that values the Sanctity of Marriage.”
One person involved in the process recalled Mr. Trump saying privately: “Sanctity of marriage. Don’t define it.”
- This is a huge paradigm shift. The Republican party went from being an evangelical Christian, tax-cut whackoparty into...
  well, without the platform, nobody knows.
  
  It’s just a change to be vague about polarizing topics to attract voters. There is zero accountability for campaign promises.
  
  The Republican party went from being an evangelical Christian, tax-cut whackoparty into...
  A vague blank slate that people can project their hopes onto with no accountability whatsoever.
- So he wants to enact shitty awful terrible ideas still but he doesn't want everyone to know he'll enact those shitty ideas that no one likes.
  I don't think America can last another presidency of this braindead moron.
- Can someone explain the whole US national debt thing? It's impossible to get out of this debt andwhen govt needs money it should just be equivalent to printing money, which wouldn't be debt? Is this an artifact of the federal reserve being outside the government?
  
  If the government just prints a bunch of money to pay off their debit then each dollar is worth less than before. Plenty of countries have done it and almost always results in hyperinflation. The simple way to understand this is say, everyone has a dollar so very few things will cost more than a dollar, but if you started handing everyone $100 bills then people will see the value of a single dollar as being lower and start charging more for their goods and services. There are other things that go into hyperinflation but this is the explain like I'm 5 answer.
  Now the government is basically paying its bills with a credit card and businesses and other countries own the debt betting that the US will keep paying towards its debt plus interest. If the government stops paying then fewer countries and businesses will be willing to offer credit. And once you run out credit then you have to start printing more money instead of adding more debt.
The platform is to say whatever it takes to the people in front of him at any given moment so they vote for him.

14 comments