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Comment by naijaboiler | Hacker News Reader

i remember when this happened during an actual crisis, in 2008, republicans all over cried on the radio day after day, arguing that it's socialiasm.

But now, crickets!!

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They were still complaining about Solyndra over a decade later.

The Republican party of 2008 bears little resemblance to the one of 2025, especially on economic issues. Many in the party have changed their views over the last decade+ on industrial policy and the libertarian wing of the party has very little influence now. It's really a striking shift.

What remains of the "old guard" is, in fact, loudly complaining about this move:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/08/the-government-should...

I am a republican. I even voted for trump. I am categorically against this. In fact, he should be impeached for it, and I have already called my representative (a democrat) telling her she has my vote if she introduces articles of impeachment against him. This is a red line for me. My parents left a third world country to not have to deal with this shit.

Everybody lives on their own personal reality nowadays, but for me the internet has been incredibly loud about it.

For me as a vague 1920s maybe-the-SocDems, I see this as vaguely positive. A return to pragmatism from market dogmatism.

I see some of the tariff stuff and the US protectionism sort of the same way, although I don't approve, since I think the US uniquely benefits from this kind of thing due to that the dollar is such a predominant reserve currency and since I think it's badly done and will backfire, tarring what in principle be sensible policies if carefully targeted with being Trumpist.

This seems more vaguely 1930s maybe-some-other-ism.

Maybe in this specific case, but I don't see this kind of policy as necessarily ideological.

It's just requires the government to not be totally market dogmatist.

Exactly! I know there's a lot of Trumpers/MAGAs on HN, so I'm sincerely asking them: How is this not the evil thing you guys constantly lecture us about (socialism!)?

It's not the evil thing because it's "their side" doing it.

Because they only lecture about socialism as a red herring. They only care about power and obtaining it. Fascists have no actual principles other than more power and hatred of others.

Here's some emergency reading

https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/its-not-hypocrisy-youre-j...

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