What Republicans always did better than Democrats was optimism. Their anti-apocaliptic, “you can do it!”, power-of-positivity stance was their most attractive quality that contrasted favorably with the Democrats’ tendency towards doom and gloom.
Since this election, this is no longer true. The gloominess of Trump’s acceptance speech was as bad as that of any environmentalist fanatic. And his “you are powerless without me as your Big Government” was very jarring for what was supposed to be a convention of people who believe in pulling themselves up.
Clarissa's Blog 
Well, part of it is just politics. Are you really going to inform your base that the economy is doing great? We could have 0% unemployment and it would still be doom and gloom for them. You don’t get into power by highlighting your opponents’ achievements.
The other part is that the republicans have no coherent political philosophy. Alaska has a wealth fund that distributes yearly dividends from oil profits to every Alaskan (literally free money from the state). It’s the closest thing to a universal basic income in this country and it’s from the state that elected Palin! North Dakota has a state bank. Utah’s fiscally-sound solution for homelessness was to give them government housing.
http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how
That these states are predominantly white is just a coincidence, I guess.
The only coherent position that republican voters have is that the undeserveds (read: blacks, minorities) don’t get anything. And if they have to shoot themselves in the foot in order to make that happen, by god, that’s exactly what they’ll do. Zero welfare for all at least guarantees that blacks don’t get welfare. Cut your nose to spite your face etc.
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A lot of political positions can be distilled to “Fuck you, that’s why!”
I was randomly watching commentary and this one commentator said he “didn’t know we were living in Gotham City”.
I can’t comment on the psychological healthiness of such stances.
Clearly, many people see this kind of thing as necessary and good because virtually none of these officers are ever disciplined or punished properly.
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I’m afraid it’s going to get worse with the current hysteria about the danger to cops. They already seem quite unstable and I don’t even want to imagine how they are getting after listening to the news.
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The other thing Republicans used to do better than Democrats during the 1970s and 1980s was oppose Russian expansionism. Now Trump is talking about abandoning NATO’s defense of the Baltic States even though Estonia is one of the few European states to more than fully meet its obligations to the alliance.
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Exactly. What a sad development. Trump also doesn’t get the point of nuclear non-proliferation.
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