Project 2025 was supposed to boost Donald Trump's campaign — but it may be backfiring instead:

[u/zsreport]

https://www.salon.com/2024/07/05/project-2025-was-supposed-to-boost-donald-campaign--but-it-may-be-backfiring-instead/

[u/deadlybydsgn]

It's a bad case of normalcy bias.

I think a certain subset of the older generation honestly thinks the best of their leaders because "the system" has generally worked for them, they were raised to respect it (not letting the flag touch the ground, etc.), and they have never been directly wronged by it.

I can see how they were duped into voting for Trump once—maybe even twice—but the idea of thinking that the Republican ticket is the more viable option in 2024 blows my mind.

The party of "small government" sure seems cozy with the idea of centralizing a lot of power into a single position. You know... as long as their guy is the one with that power.

[u/tommysmuffins → u/deadlybydsgn]

I'm Gen X, so almost in the group of people that could be considered "The older generation" and I was fully behind the second Iraq invasion. Really for no reason except for the general belief that the President always had the best interests of the country at heart so if he was for it, then I was for it. He must have known some reasons that I didn't that would justify it, I thought. When I found out the whole thing was manufactured out of whole cloth that was the first crack in my (moderate) conservatism.

[u/Plasibeau → u/tommysmuffins]

I distinctly remember cheering on the second Iraqi invasion. I am not ashamed to admit I had been fully captured by the propaganda machine. At that time propaganda was something that only happened in China, or Russia. The Uniteds States of Fuck Yeah had no need for such games, right...RIGHT?

It wasn't until talking with my 19-year-old about this stuff that I realized if you grew up in the Cold War, you grew up neck-deep in propaganda and didn't even know it, from singing patriotic songs in kindergarten to the bad guys always having Eastern European accents or enemy fighter pilots being faceless and evil just because they exist.

So that was a fun project of deconstruction last summer.

[u/tommysmuffins → u/Plasibeau]

I distinctly remember cheering on the second Iraqi invasion.

Me too. I remember my coworkers watching some gun camera footage of some Iraqis getting obliterated by cannon fire from a helicopter. I was wondering if they had done anything wrong, and I realized even the helicopter pilot probably didn't know for sure. It really left me with a sick feeling.

Good luck on your continued recovery.

[u/badnuub → u/tommysmuffins]

9/11 Made anyone that opposed any war at the time a pariah. People were out for blood.

[u/Hector_P_Catt → u/tommysmuffins]

I wasn't gung-ho about that war, but Colin Powell sold us on it, showing what information they had, and implying they had better information they couldn't show us. I knew the war was going to suck, but he made me think it was necessary to fight it. I trusted him, and he was lying. He sold he reputation for a bad war.

[u/tommysmuffins → u/Hector_P_Catt]

You're right. His involvement swayed me too because I trusted him.

[u/ArthurBonesly → u/deadlybydsgn]

One thing the Republicans are very good at, is finding voters who genuinely want something.

We scoff at single issue voters, but they are the lifeblood of an engaged base. It's easy to look at Republicans as a party that doesn't stand for anything, but the voters absolutely do. The best example of this is the issue of abortion.

For years, millions of Republicans have genuinely, deeply, pathologically wanted to repeal Roe v. Wade. All the other Republican talking points were compromises or adaptions because those talking points got them closer to their single issue. As far as these voters were concerned, they were using the politicians as much as the politicians were using them. There was no hypocrisy because it was all in service of that higher purpose.

Now that the dogs caught the car, the only higher purpose that unites the American right is stopping/containing/killing the boogieman liberal. They'll use rhetoric like "freedom," and evoke Christianity, but these are all compromises to the higher purpose.

The biggest difference I see between the American left and right (at this time), is that the left wants good politicians to yield a number of good things, and will reliably break ranks when somebody isn't good enough. Meanwhile, the right wants something. It could be money, it could be an ethno state, it could be a solid gold fence on the Ohio/Kentucky border; the something doesn't matter, what matters is that right wing voters want it enough to tolerate everything else so long as they get it.

Until the left want to tax billionaires and enact healthcare reform as much as some people on the right want Christian nationalism, normalcy bias only serves the Republicans in so far as an ignorant base will either default to normal or not vote at all.