@JoyAnnReid: 1/ One reason conservatism fails to catch on outside its core constituency is that it is easily caricatured as cruelty.
@JoyAnnReid: 2/ cutting off public assistance to the poor, not expanding healthcare, raising sales taxes on the poor while cutting them for the rich...
@JoyAnnReid: 3/ Those concepts may not be *meant as cruelty, but they are easily read as such.
@JoyAnnReid: 4/ Moreover, the tendency to cling to "traditionalist" notions about women and marriage, and the aversion to expansive views on race ...
@JoyAnnReid: 5/ can exacerbate the caricature of conservatism as "mean," cruel, sexist, or even racially intolerant. Conservatives chafe at this often.
@JoyAnnReid: 6/ People like @RadioFreeTom have written volumes about it - about the caricature and how it alienates conservatives from liberals.
@JoyAnnReid: 7/ Well along comes the Trump campaign, and its central gang: Ailes, Bannon, Giuliani, Christie, Bossie, Lewandowski, etc.
@JoyAnnReid: 8/ To the extent that their brand gets grafted onto conservatism and the Republican Party, the damage this campaign is doing could be huge.
@JoyAnnReid: 9/ No wonder the #nevertrumpers are fighting so hard to cauterize their conservatism off from Trump. (It may be too late for the GOP brand).
@JoyAnnReid: 10/ And the defenses being mounted by Trump spokespeople for the growing list of women accusing him of lascivious behavior are not helping.
@JoyAnnReid: 11/ They are reinforcing a caricature of the right (including an embrace of the far right fringe) that the GOP won't easily shake loose.
@JoyAnnReid: 12/ Women and people of color, particularly YOUNG women and young POC, are going to remember the 2016 election for a long time.
@JoyAnnReid: 13/ One more point: the Trump gang, especially Bossie, Bannon, Ailes and their allies like Rush Limbaugh, WANT to rebrand conservatism.
@JoyAnnReid: 14/ Their central argument is that conservatism has become "sissified," and so has American society. They want to break the GOP.
@JoyAnnReid: 15/ And they want to replace what they see as "cucked" conservatism with a no-holds-barred, take no prisoners, assertive version.
@JoyAnnReid: 16/ They want to re-fight the culture wars and win - on gender (men up, women back down), race, culture, Christian religious dominance etc.
@JoyAnnReid: 17/ Trump appeals to them because he clearly shares their rage, and their instinct for cultural and political pyromania.
@JoyAnnReid: 18/ This wing of the right long pre-dates Trump. They cut their teeth fighting the Clintons, so they're back to what they know.
@JoyAnnReid: 19/ But remember: the Clinton wars hurt the GOP in the 1990s. There's plenty of evidence the "burn the villages" strategy is doing so again.
@JoyAnnReid: 20/ But the real bottom line is, these people don't care. They're not about the GOP. They mean to burn the GOP with the villages.
Joy's tea.
