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Comment by gred | Hacker News Reader

As a conservative American, I'm...

Cautiously optimistic about: curbing government spending, reducing illegal immigration, protecting unborn lives, restraining Iran + proxies, continuing economic growth

Nervous about: Ukraine, additional inflation caused by tariffs, ongoing political polarization

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Economists, a conservatively skewed bunch, are not optimistic about his plans: https://qz.com/donald-turmp-taxes-tariffs-economy-simon-john...

The majority of women are not enthusiastic about his plans on that front either

I can't wait for MAGA to experience the 'hardship' that Musk has already promised. If they keep voting red after that, it's beyond stupidity.

Keep in mind that the left has been saying that the right has been voting against their own best interests for decades. I doubt that will change, especially if the apparent realignment along "class" lines turns out to be sustained.

The S&P 500 is up 2.4%. The only economists you need to listen to are the ones who put their money where their mouth is.

Economists may be conservatively skewed relative to other academics, but certainly not relative to the median voter.

The only way to curb government spending is to completely eliminate Medicaid and Medicare at this point. If you look at the data there's simply not enough tax revenue to cover those programs with an aging population, and the Republicans were against allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices so I'm not sure they'll give the program any teeth.

Yeah that one has more emphasis on the "cautiously" than the "optimistic" :-) Both parties have largely ignored this issue since the Tea Party movement, but it has been mentioned somewhat prominently in this campaign.

Medicaid and Medicare will be strong than ever as long as we ... (checks notes) ... cut taxes on the rich? /s

How do you figure that not providing life-saving medical treatment to a pregnant mother and letting her and her baby die is going to protect that unborn life?

Well for one, strawmen are very flammable and fire is bad for unborn life.

I think you're putting words in my mouth. IMO in this scenario the medical decision-making process should weigh both lives equally. Doctors make life-and-death decisions all the time, and I'm OK with that as long as one life is not considered "lesser". I understand that reasonable people can disagree on when life truly starts, though.

Doctors aren't doing that though, they're saying they won't touch people in case they are seen to be breaking laws, and people are already dying, how can you not understand the nuance?

Which laws, and which doctors?

Here's one recent example: https://www.propublica.org/article/josseli-barnica-death-mis...

Thank you for the example, I do hope that they clarify that gray area in the law. It's a tough situation; they were dealing with probabilities (sometimes infections occur, and sometimes these infections lead to death) rather than a clear-cut "we can save one of these two lives if we perform an abortion".

Funny how treatment like this used to be a clear-cut decision made by the only experts who can make it (medical professionals), but now innocent people and babies are dying because of peoples random religious beliefs, that obviously have nothing to do with medicine.

It has nothing to do with medicine because there isn't a doctor in the world who would willingly let a patient die when they could have treated them - unless they believe they will end up in jail for it - which is exactly what is happening - and that blood is on your hands for defending this absolute crap.

Your calculus ignores the hundreds of thousands of unborn lives that will be saved by allowing states to democratically establish their own abortion laws. Since you do not recognize the massive benefit, you see only the cost... I can understand your frustration, but perhaps you can understand why I don't share it.

Putting aside the general disagreement on the topic, one of the major concerns is all of this isn't really happening, with some of these laws and prosecutions just being so strict. Take [1] for example: when doctors are unable or afraid to intervene even when the baby has already died. It's just so completely unnecessary and purely the result of an overly strict abortion ban. This is hardly the first or only story of its kind.

[1]: https://people.com/texas-teen-suffering-miscarriage-dies-due...

Firstly, Roe vs Wade was overturned in 2022 during the BIDEN term.

Secondly, Trump has never called for a federal abortion ban, nor, in fact, a state abortion ban.

Thirdly, there are currently exemptions in ALL states that protect abortion if it is a life-saving necessity for the mother. Trump has never proposed removing these exemptions.

Search the news for mothers and their babies dying because doctors in states which have enacted abortion bans refuse treatment. That's what happens.

Rove vs Wade was overturned because of a right wing stacked supreme court, which has nothing to do with the sitting president. Unless you think the executive has control over judicial decisions?

Trump is enabling all sorts of backward thinking ideology to fruit, directly or indirectly.

Just to be clear I am pro-choice and I support mothers and their bodily autonomy.

I think the Dems will continue to lose elections if, in their hysteria, they attibute bad things to Trump that had little to do with him.

If the Dems and their supporters care more about the Two Minutes Hate against Trump than creating their own positive vision of America, then they'll continue to lose.

Americans are a positive and patriotic populace. That's why Trump's "Make America Great Again" messaging resonates with them.

Why do right wingers think democracy is about beating some other party, rather than improving the lives of citizens?

You're implying that unless the major left wing party kow-tows to the emotional needs of extreme right-wingers, then they should be allowed to destroy the country because mummy wasn't nice to them?

How about actually focussing on improving things instead of crying about every little thing.

"Right wingers" (really, the republican party is not nearly as right wing as you want to pretend) aren't the ones who ran on not much more than not being Trump.

>Firstly, Roe vs Wade was overturned in 2022 during the BIDEN term.

That timing is all about how long it takes a lawsuit to work through the system to reach a stacked court.... not so much who was President when it finally was resolved.

What about "If things don't go my way, I don't mind starting civil war?"

I haven't seen that in Trump, myself. It seems to me that a lot of the Jan 6 discussion comes down to "what was he thinking when he did X?", and the tribes either give him the benefit of the doubt or assume the worst intentions, according to their various inclinations.

> restraining Iran + proxies

The way to restrain Iran is to put reasonable sanctions on them, then negotiate terms for removing those sanctions. An international group (the US, China, France, Russia, the UK, and Germany) did that over Iran's nuclear weapons program and it resulted in an agreement that would have delayed Iran from getting nuclear weapons for at least a decade.

Then Trump was elected and a couple years later and over the objections of China, France, Russia, the UK, Germany, and the EU unilaterally withdrew from the deal and imposed even harsher sanctions that had been on Iran before.

So we ended up back to where we were before that deal, except with Iran knowing that if you make a deal for sanctions relief you can't trust the US to keep it, and so they have figured out other ways to get by with the sanctions in place. And the US is not Spinal Tap...when sanctions at 10 don't work it can't turn the dial to 11.

> when sanctions at 10 don't work it can't turn the dial to 11

Yea it can. It did that to Iraq.

curbing government spending:

increased taxes, as per evident of the UK government switch to labour

reduce illegal immigration:

shortage of labour for mundane jobs, as evidenced by the UK brexit. We now don't have farmers to do the jobs that we all hate

protection of unborn lives

abortion aided to the protection, so now expect a baby boom crisis. Your daughter gets pregnant, now what? You have to fork the bill of either supporting or child care of others.

economic growth:

You rely on china for everything, when was the last product you looked at that had "made in the usa?

What is there to grow upon? AI/ML? CyberSecurity?

> curbing government spending: increased taxes, as per evident of the UK government switch to labour

Can you elaborate on this one? I don't agree with most of your takes, but this one I just didn't understand.

The Conservative government, right wing-- caused a "black hole" in spending. Where by for the eight years they were in power the conservatives took any income, money for the country for themselves and their bed buddies.

This includes scrapping budgets for Scotland, Wales leading a dominance in the London tax haven and sabotaging anything else progressive.

So, we've finally extinguished the conservative party with a left wing party, labour who are suppose to fight for the people but in return have just released the budget report where by instead of cutting spending they're going to increase national insurance, work taxes from next April, cut public services of schools, healthcare and pensions all in the name to get us out of this "black hole" including draining further Scotland and Wales because with increase spending.

So instead of actually tackling the issue they want the same pie that conservatives had and their slice too.

Thanks for the explanation. But that sequence sounds more like "corruption -> increase taxes", or perhaps "cut taxes -> increase taxes"... not "cut costs -> increase taxes"?

what are the most probable policies regarding russia ? since russia and iran are in the same bed i wonder how things are going

Lifting all sanctions against Russia. Putin helped Trump to win this election in the end.

Past performance is mixed: Trump 45 used mostly the carrot with the North Koreans, but mostly the stick with the Iranians and Chinese. I think it's pretty clear that Ukraine aid will decrease, but I'm not sure how much carrot vs stick will be applied to Russia.

* curbing government spending - elon musk said that he plans cutting about $2T. It includes social security.

* reducing illegal immigration - mass deportation is a fantasy. in reality trump will not do much about it.

* protecting unborn lives - yeah, more women will die instead. good job.

* restraining Iran + proxies - yeah, Putin is a best buddy of Iranian leaders and Trump will be in their company too.

* continuing economic growth - trimp policies will lead to recession.

* Ukraine - it's utterly fucked.

* additional inflation caused by tariff - on spot. companies will not hesitate to gauge pricing more than necessary because of tariffs.

* ongoing political polarization - it's not just polarization. It will be on the edge of the civil war when Trump will order shoot protesters.

> mass deportation is a fantasy

as the grandson of two concentration camp survivors: I'd call that a nightmare and I don't think it's so far from reality you'd hope for.

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