this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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Україна Ukraine
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"There are two parties in the US. These parties are centrist, big-tent, and from a policy standpoint, don’t dramatically differ."
If you think this, then I can see why you disagree. I'd have to ask by what measure do you make this claim? Or compared to what exactly? Personally I think this opinion out of date.
In my view, depending on how you look at it, the US has either 2 or 3 parties. Democrats, Republicans and MAGA. Traditional Republicans are so diminished some, myself included, consider them to not even be relevant. Heck Dems are more like traditional Republicans than Republicans are now.
MAGA is not centrist or big-tent and there are enough of them that can break things or hold hostages or say elect a religious lunny to be speaker of the house. They cling to extremist positions and absurd conspiracy theories, and attempt to force their will on to others. They run impeachment proceeding based on zero evidence with the hope they will turn something up to have to talk about and since there is nothing to find apparently, they literally make stuff up. They do not want to fund Ukraine for, some reason, and presently they are winning on that.
MAGA isn't even a faction -- it's just a Trump campaign slogan. If you mean that there are nativists who complain about immigration, sure, but those have always been around. This isn't even a particularly notable time for them; the Know-Nothings or the anti-Chinese riots back around 1870 were considerably stronger.
As to the conspiracy theorist stuff:
Being a big-tent party means that one has to suck in all of the voters from a broad range of areas. Both the Republican and Democratic parties are gonna include groups of voters that have views that are kinda out there. But that doesn't mean that that's what winds up being adopted as policy. The conspiracy stuff isn't new. There's been a conspiracy theorist crowd going waaay back into US political history. If it were the 1970s, the right-wing form would be something like the John Birch Society.
What you don't have is terminating Ukraine aid being the centerpiece of any political campaign. Donald Trump's campaign website doesn't even mention Ukraine on its issues portion. The only reference to Russia on said page is about how Biden isn't tough enough on Russia and how Trump would take a harder line on Russia. There's no overwhelming opposition to supporting Ukraine in Pew or Gallup polls, and foreign policy doesn't usually rate all that high in importance anyway when it comes to US domestic politics.
I am clear on what MAGA is and in case you didn't notice there is a sizable enough of a group of R house of rep members who are MAGA zealots. I already mentioned these kooks, if you don't want to call the extremist Repub T worshippers, MAGA then that's fine but I think you are missing something fundamental.
"The only reference to Russia on said page is about how Biden isn’t tough enough on Russia and how Trump would take a harder line on Russia. "
So we should just forget about what T actually did while in office and use this absurd claim from his campaign website as "evidence"? The man is a gigantic liar.