Tucker: Leaders show no obligation to American voters

[Tx_Aggie]

I don't agree with everything the man says, but this is absolutely worth the 15 minutes it takes to watch.

It's nice to see someone in the MSM actually giving some thought to the plight of the average American.

[VARIABLE9]

It’s funny how the opposition will blast all of these points, when they really do merit some thought.

[Firefly]

Tucker Carlson will end up dead or implicated in kiddie porn the way he keeps on pointing out the obvious.

O Reilly was a baby boomer fence sitter who appealed to old farts and only attacked safe targets.

Tucker Carlsons hits way too close to home, has a sizeable audience, and doesn't give a hang.

So at some point...something gonna happen to him. They already tried to burn his house down.

And yet...he's just pointing out the obvious

[26 Inf]

It’s funny how the opposition will blast all of these points, when they really do merit some thought.

Not necessarily opposition but good commentary:

More Populist, More Conservative

A debate about where the Right should go from here is the right one.

by Mike Lee (R) Utah

Conservatives on both sides of Tucker Carlson’s broadside against America’s elite last week should be grateful he launched it. In the wake of President Trump’s surprise victory in 2016 and Republicans’ loss of the House of Representatives in 2018, a debate about where the Right ought to go from here is the one we all need to be having.

Carlson’s must-see monologue may aim wide in a few particulars, but it seems to me directionally correct. He is right that both parties in Washington rely too much on aggregate economic statistics to measure their success. Government — including economic policy — does not exist simply to grow the economy, but to facilitate “the happiness of the people.” Obviously I see economic freedom and prosperity as vital components to social health and happiness, but they’re not the whole story.

Carlson is also right that there is an opportunity gap between America’s elite and everyone else; that those elites have the power to improve this situation; and that they choose not to do so, for reasons ranging from obliviousness to selfishness. I have made many of the same arguments over the years.

On the other hand, many of Carlson’s conservative and libertarian critics score some points, too. First, they caution Carlson against a populism that infantilizes the poor and working class and excuses them from moral agency and responsibility for their decisions. And second, they rise to defend market capitalism from a false politics of demagogic grievance. Market capitalism is not “a religion,” as Carlson said, but it is still the greatest engine of prosperity and opportunity ever devised by man, and conservatives should not abandon it simply because more of the economy’s recent losers happen now to be Republican voters.

Rather than trying to join this debate on one side or the other, it seems to me that conservatives should instead be thinking about how to reconcile the two. First, because I think the Republican party needs to become both more conservative and more populist to meet the challenges the country faces today. And second, because I think the inequalities and injustices Carlson rightly condemns are primarily caused not by the natural operations of the free market, but by elite manipulation of it.

It’s not the free market that is financializing the American economy and empowering Wall Street’s leveraged buyouts of American businesses. It’s the federal government’s preferential tax treatment of corporate debt and guarantee of “too big to fail” bailouts.

It’s not the “invisible hand” giving investment income preferential tax treatment over workers’ wages, even though in a globalized economy that discrepancy can incentivize American investors to create jobs overseas instead of here.

It’s not Adam Smith who simultaneously ended vocational tracking (training) in American high schools while flooding college campuses with students and borrowed dollars that would have been better off elsewhere. Nor did Milton Friedman make it unprofitable for residential real-estate developers to build anything other than mid-rise apartments and McMansions. That’s federal and state policymakers.

It wasn’t capitalism that stripped religion from public schools and, indeed, the public square, denying working communities a source of social capital and solidarity they depended on. That was a group of activist courts.

There is no market principle empowering local zoning boards and school boards to artificially price working families out of good school districts. Or creating the occupational-licensure epidemic blocking low-skilled workers from promising careers. Or allowing border lawlessness and corporatist immigration policies to overwhelm America’s great assimilative melting pot. Or loading up our social safety net with marriage penalties. Or replacing human-scale voluntary associations with anonymous federal bureaucracies.

Those were policy decisions made by our political class, cheered along (sometimes led) by economic elites who directly and disproportionately benefited from them.

However well (or ill) intentioned, these policies have subtly but inexorably rigged the American economy, privileging elites at everyone else’s expense. The real problem is not market capitalism but the failure of our political class to adapt with it — its refusal to reform outdated public policies to harness the forces of globalization to the commonweal of all Americans. Correcting these inequities through reforms is beyond neither the scope of policy nor the wit of man. (I have introduced some myself.) They simply require a reassessment of national economic policy in this new era of global economic competition.


The best path forward for Republicans, then, is for conservatives and populists to work together on a new synthesis — a reform agenda that would be more substantively useful and politically appealing than either side’s default platform.

Tucker Carlson is right that if we want to put America first, we’ve “got to put its families first.” Down the road, conservatives and populists may disagree about when and if that ever means putting government’s thumb on the scale for working families. But surely we can at least start by taking its boot off their neck.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/...m-vs-populism/

[SteyrAUG]

It's been this way for some time and for the life of me I can't seem to be able to name the last time meaningful representation existed, perhaps it was Truman and his decision to use the atomic bomb rather than spend American lives even though it probably cost him politically. Reagan did many things that benefited us, but at the end of the day it was more about his vision of defeating communism and he was even willing to get into the weeds (Iran-Contra) to do it.

So really I'm hard pressed to remember the last person who represented us rather than themselves. Would would almost need a Congress assembled by the same process as jury duty to get anything different. People don't spend millions of dollars to become public servants, all that money is an investment they intend to recoup with huge dividends.

[ABNAK]

I agree with Tucker about 85-90% of the time.

His views on foreign policy border on Isolationism, although he does make some legitimate points in that category with me (Syria for instance).

His borderline fellating of populist ideals is another point where we seem to parts ways. His rants about the "working class" and what appears to him as a grand setup to hold them down fly in the face of his other points about freedom.


The other thing that seems to contradict his "freedom" stance is his certainly-not-Libertarian opinions on drinking/drugs. I like to bend my elbow on occasion but don't much care for the other. That said, I don't give a damn if they legalize weed or not. It's not one of my "hills to die on".

Tucker seems to fluctuate between supposedly already-drawn lines with Right/Left politics, sprinkle in a little populism and a shake of Libertarian. Reminds me of that bald British dude on FOX.


I watch Tucker every weeknight, so my minor criticisms are overridden by that 85-90% like for the guy!

[lowprone]

Tucker Carlson will end up dead or implicated in kiddie porn the way he keeps on pointing out the obvious.*********************************************

No, they will simply disenfranchise him, no ads, no Tucker !

[Buncheong]

There was a study done in 2014-15 by two professors, one from Princeton and the other from Northwestern, which analyzed 20 years of data and concluded that the American voter has almost no influence on U.S. Government policy, at all.

Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens was the title.

[SteyrAUG]

The other thing that seems to contradict his "freedom" stance is his certainly-not-Libertarian opinions on drinking/drugs. I like to bend my elbow on occasion but don't much care for the other. That said, I don't give a damn if they legalize weed or not. It's not one of my "hills to die on".

While I mostly agree, the second hand cigarette smoke I deal with is bad enough, hate to think what it would be like if weed was legal. If people could just do that shit in their own house it wouldn't even be an issue but drugs and responsible usage don't seem to go hand in hand.

Additionally, despite my libertarian tendencies, I have a problem with opiates, meth, etc. I think if they were legal, a percentage of the population would do them for no other reason than "It's legal, must be ok" and we don't need more people on opiates, meth, etc. If they could do them and stay the hell in their house it wouldn't be a problem, but again responsible usage and serious drugs don't seem to go hand in hand.

I'd be in favor of a "red light district" approach where you can do any drug you want at a controlled facility where you check in, but you aren't allowed to leave unless you can pass a sobriety test. And if it becomes an opium den that some people just never leave, well that's better than having them out walking around creating problems for the rest of us. Surgeon general warnings that "Opium Will Kill You" at the door and then you are on your own.

[Dr. Bullseye]

Tucker Carlson will end up dead or implicated in kiddie porn the way he keeps on pointing out the obvious.

O Reilly was a baby boomer fence sitter who appealed to old farts and only attacked safe targets.

Tucker Carlsons hits way too close to home, has a sizeable audience, and doesn't give a hang.

So at some point...something gonna happen to him. They already tried to burn his house down.

And yet...he's just pointing out the obvious

O'Reilly started off as a fire brand but then tried to become "reasonable". Nobody wanted reasonable. Tucker lets Leftists come on and present their viewpoint, vomiting on all of us in 5 minute stretches. Tucker still thinks this is the 1990s and he is on Crossfire. I have heard enough Leftist talk for a lifetime. Now is the time for action.