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Comment by nimbius | Hacker News Reader

A well known risk of democracy is populist nonsense laws that appeal to a vocal minority or entrenched voting block. The legislator who pushed this turd of a law knew what he was doing and the consequences were moot. Getting re elected was more important.

The modern Republican party of small government and low taxes is long gone. in its stead is basically a zombie that shambles from culture war to culture war in a desperate bid to remain relevant to anyone who still thinks cutting a billionaires taxes makes any sense in 2023. It advances dead cat legislation and reactionary edicts against the very first amendment it insists it champions.

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Where have you ever seen a mainstream republican candidate for small government? Reagan is the only one in my lifetime and even that is questionable. Both parties have always been about using the power of government for their own purposes. This is why the federal government never gets smaller. It's unfortunate because both parties are heavy handed in their pursuit of power. It's unavoidable because people always want action even to the determent of reason. This is not republican or democrat - this is human nature.

Reagan had gun control, the War on Drugs, 40% higher military spending, top down union busting via legislative technicalities. He’s wasn’t for small government at all, just lower taxes really.

I agree with you. I posted "Reagan is the only one in my lifetime and even that is questionable." He gave lip service to small government. In practice nothing really changed.

Most of them. Not that they actually implement small government when they get into office, but they'll scream it from the rooftops because to the "small town folks," small government equates to turning a blind eye to social justice issues. Cutting spending is never eliminating waste from government, because they'd never think of cutting the military budget. They always specifically target social services due to Reagan's welfare queen mythology that exists to this day.

Reagan wasn't "small government" either, by the way. He expanded the government faster than any other POTUS in history outside of world wars. His economic policies also gave both parties the green light to spend like it's going out of style, although Republicans are notably bad when it comes to actually making economic sense with their taxes versus their expenditures.

He talked about "small government". He didn't actively work on reducing the size of government at all. That's why I wrote that it was questionable.

Funny you should say that but the former governor (Doug Ducey) who signed this law was actually a pretty old-school, conservative Republican. I was very disappointed he signed this bill considering the rest of his record. I get the feeling he knew it wouldn’t stand legal challenges (but it was still disappointing).

In a saner Republican Party he would have been a good Senator or even Presidential nominee. Unfortunately, that isn’t the age we live in.

> rest of his record

I'm wondering if you've actually paid attention to his record. Most of it is expanding the role and power of government.

Always has been a part of all parties in every country and always will be.

> a zombie that shambles from culture war to culture war

I’m just going to applaud your literary sense here for a sec. Beautifully written and explained thought about this completely new and troubling phenomenon.

Mostly troubling because it does seem to be working insofar as the zombie won’t goddamn die.

Yes, a great analogy

> ... It advances dead cat legislation and reactionary edicts...

The legislative circus is a sideshow to the main event, which is fundraising from a small core of donors (which is a perversion of 1A, but we digress...).

And the modern Democratic party is...? Just curious where you stand and what your biases are.

A right of center stone dais. The majority in the Democrats don't actually want progress, they just want to maintain the previous "normal." That is despite their opposition pushing further and further right and making parts of the new "normal" facets of the old extreme. Most of this ceding of ground and drift further right has been to foster a large authoritarian surveillance system that they both benefit from. It's hard to tell if the cooperation with the Republicans towards that system is fully intentional or just a useful secondary effect of the Democrats' tactics of trying to appeal to the broadest voter base possible. Maybe a bit of both depending on the official (such as Joe Manchin).

> the modern Democratic party is

An amorphous blob. A winning strategy against an opponent who cedes the centre.

Center right, by any reasonable analysis. Largely pro corporate, fairly disinterested in change from the status quo.

Very, very few even question capitalism, let alone call for its replacement.

A more accurate answer is that the Democratic Party is a coalition party with several factions. As a coalition party, it’s not driven by an ideology.

But overwhelmingly those factions are all centre right, and so therefore so is the party as a whole.

I judge parties by what they do. And what they've done is monumentally center right, with small local exceptions.

A foil to capture people who don’t identify as Republican, but with actions that align pretty firmly on “right of center”.

The culture war bullshit is how they convince people to vote for small government which is against almost everyone’s financial well-being except for a vanishingly small number of rich arseholes.

The core mission of the movement is still anarcho capitalism.

> The modern Republican party of small government and low taxes is long gone.

A better way to think of the Republican party platform is "anti-reactionary". This descriptor makes more sense for how they seemingly jump from topic to topic. Which, credit where it is do, is probably fine in the long run in a functional political system where they can act as ballast against excesses.

But as a weirdness of our time, foreign and economic policy between the two parties are pretty largely aligned so if you represent a fluid anti-reactionary platform, the only thing of value you can provide are culture war issues.

Would you mind shedding light on how you find the republican party "anti-reactionary"? In my mind, they are quite reactionary.

Sorry, don't know why I phrased it as anti-reactionary. I distinctively meant reactionary.

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