Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnnyanmac | Hacker News Reader

well, going to r/conservative, top answer in a tarriff thread:

>To influence companies to produce their goods domestically instead of internationally. What is so hard to understand about this?

So they are stuck in Just World Land.

another top comment linked this: https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/fact-sheet-pr...

So they more or less buy into "The extraordinary threat posed by illegal aliens and drugs, including deadly fentanyl"

P.S. more than happy to take suggestions of a better forum representing conservative opinion

View on HN

r/conservative is a bad litmus test. Between AI-driven bots (read comment histories!), flair-only posts, and chronically online users it's a terrible reflection of the average American who identifies as conservative.

We need to stop reaching for the easiest data source just because we're desperate for a data source. There's a reason great research is hard - mostly because it requires stupendous effort (and funding!) to get reliable results.

>We need to stop reaching for the easiest data source just because we're desperate for a data source.

I agree. Pretty much all internet sources are inherently biased due to response bias, so there's no fixing that without talking to such people face to face (which is a bit hard in my area).

But if you aggregate enough data you can at least start to see some sort of prevailing trends and sentiments. So I am open to better sources and some biased/compromised forums are still better that choosing to be trapped in an echo chamber. I have browsed around on other comments sections from news sources and the results unfortunately make Reddit look like a think-tank.

> r/conservative is a bad litmus test. Between AI-driven bots (read comment histories!), flair-only posts, and chronically online users it's a terrible reflection of the average American who identifies as conservative

Sure, the average American who identifies as conservative just shows up every 4 years and hits the R without giving it much though. Thinking about them doesn't really give us much either.

I think /r/conservative tells us a lot, even if it's not representative of the constituency. The President is driven by memes and is extremely online. The "vibes" in /r/conservative (and on X, The Everything App) are extremely relevant, because these are the audiences Trump plays to.

What ever happened to the free market consevatives? The ones who were proud to work with Clinton to pass NAFTA in the first place.

Heck Trump himself negotiated USMCA his last term and is now apparently reneging on his own agreement?

"A Trump never keeps his word"

"A Trump never pays his debts"

I don't know if it's dementia or if Putin has compromising info on him, but he seems intent on speed running the tearing apart of the west.

They got tired of nonsensical progressive social policies and threw in their hat with a politician that wins, a lot.

Pre-Trump the 2nd, it seemed to me that conservative view-points were being “shouted down.”

Anecdotally I recall even on HN conservative views weren’t looked too kindly.

Remember that Google engineer who had an odd-take about less qualified Googlers, and getting ostracized for it?

I never particularly thought of "free trade" as a conservative policy. I thought it was fairly bipartisan that large corporations want to get the cheapest prices for stuff (which often is not within the US).

Clinton wasn't able to get a significant number of his own party to vote for it while significant numbers of republicans supported it. At the time free trade was a rebuplican talking point and many democrats opposed it.

Because NAFTA is the brainchild of Reagan. Bush Sr worked out most of the policy with CA/MX. Finally, Clinton signed it into law, with little influence on the policies overall.

Clinton pushed congress to pass it. He may not have had influence to the content (this is false - he added two amendments and had opportunity to restart talks on anything he cared about, though he may have decided some things were not worth bothering with it was still his choice) but he used his influence to get it passed in congress. It was his right to refuse to send it to congress.

As far as I am aware, Free Trade was a clinton era policy, which sparked globalization. Yes it cost American industry jobs, but gave rise to a significant boom in non manufacturing jobs.

Free trade and globalization have been around a lot longer than most of us here have been alive, maybe all of is

It has been a rising tide that lifts all boats on our blue marble

All of us, presuming that there's no-one here aged over 200.

I hear the bicentennials are happily collecting social security or serving in congress

The FTA was Reagan/Mulroney era policy. It was enacted by conservatives on both sides of the border, and the liberals on both sides "opposed" it (and then had a religious conversion once they took power again, and supported its successor, NAFTA).

The 88 election debate in Canada is famous for the confrontations around this topic. I was in my early teens it was the first election debate I remember watching and having strong opinions about.

"Free trade", as a named policy position, goes back to the 19th century, though as a _thing_ it's somewhat older.

In particular it was a major political controversy in the UK for most of the 19th century.

Nothing says “I need to relocate my supply chain” like 24 hours of tariffs

I didn't formally verify it, but during the Russian internet blackout, r/conservative was very quiet. I assume that the responses you read on that forum are not from actual US conservatives. After reddit purged most conservative subs (in 2 waves, when Trump 1 began and when Trump 1 ended), I don't think you'll find any conservative subreddits.

Unfortunately, I haven't found a forum that's accessible and with lots of conservatives. You have some on X and you have YouTube channels. Both are harder to engage with.

Reddit purged them due to infections by what you complain about for /r/conservative.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com