[Gormo]

> Can you name even a single left-wing policy or rhetorical position of this administration?

Tariffs. Deficit spending. Federalization of law enforcement. Hyperpoliticization of social questions. Government ownership/direction of private industry.

> “Cultural wedge issues” are about actual policy domains, and have a real left-right valence.

They've not been about actual policy domains until relatively recently. These issues have been marginal with respect to actual policy considerations for decades.

> 30 years ago? The height of the neoliberal consensus when the Right leaned heavily on the cultural wedge issues of opposition to abortion, homosexuality, and affirmative action?

GOP candidates in certain regions invoked various wedge issues on the campaign trail in order to put them over the top in elections for contested seats. Upon election, they then did nothing whatsoever to shift the actual policy needle in relation to these issue, and focused precisely on "neoliberal consensus" economic issues of the exact sort that the current administration is diametrically opposed to.

> but that was pretty obviously a tactical adaptation to the immediate circumstances, not the essence of conservatism.

But no, it actually is the "essence of conservatism" where conservatism is an actual political philosophy, and not an empty term that refers to the haphazard policy preferences of whatever faction a particular political party happens to be pandering to at any given moment.

[dragonwriter]

> Tariffs. Deficit spending. Federalization of law enforcement.

None of those are left wing (or even “more frequently associated with the less right wing of the two major parties in America”)

In fact, in the period where the GOP has been the more right-wing party, deficit spending has been associated more with them being in power.

> Government ownership/direction of private industry.

Fascist corporatism is not left-wing (state ownership as a proxy for and in the interest of the working class is a feature of some versions of leftist theory, but this isn’t something that Trump’s industrial intervention even makes a rhetorical appeal to.)

> > [...] the Republican Party, being out of the White House for the first time in a while and having just taken a Congressional majority after mostly being in the minority for a generation was also emphasizing restraining government and elected officials more than the Right normally has before or since, but that was pretty obviously a tactical adaptation to the immediate circumstances, not the essence of conservatism.

> But no, it actually is the "essence of conservatism" where conservatism is an actual political philosophy, and not an empty term that refers to the haphazard policy preferences of whatever faction a particular political party happens to be pandering to at any given moment.

No, you’ve confused libertarianism/minarchism with conservatism. Conservatism, as an “actual political philosophy”, or rather a broad political orientation which is not a single unified philosophy but is conprised of distinct philosophies tending in the same broad direction, arose in response to and is exactly resistance to the downward, equalizing, leveling drive of enlightment liberalism.

The on-and-off rhetorical appeal to libertarianism by the Right especially when out of power is, exactly, a matter of “whatever faction a particular political party happens to be pandering to at any given moment.”

[IAmBroom]

> None of those are left wing (or even “more frequently associated with the less right wing of the two major parties in America”)

> In fact, in the period where the GOP has been the more right-wing party, deficit spending has been associated more with them being in power.

You're using circular logic: "You can't describe left wing as doing something the GOP does, because I define them to be right wing."

[Gormo]

> None of those are left wing (or even “more frequently associated with the less right wing of the two major parties in America”)

These are quintessentially left-wing in the context of the past century of American politics.

> Fascist corporatism is not left-wing

Of course it is. It was deliberately designed as an alternative means for achieving socialist ends by socialists disillusioned with Marxism. It's always characterized itself as a "third way", but still one that seeks to radical change society through political force, and in opposition to those who want to conserve the status quo and admit change only through gradual development. The former is the traditional definition of "left" and the latter of "right".

> No, you’ve confused libertarianism/minarchism with conservatism. Conservatism, as an “actual political philosophy”, or rather a broad political orientation which is not a single unified philosophy but is conprised of distinct philosophies tending in the same broad direction, arose in response to and is exactly resistance to the downward, equalizing, leveling drive of enlightment liberalism.

It should be clear that in a US context, I'm referring to specifically Anglo-American conservatism, which does differ from other varieties in its devotion to particular forms of constitutionalism and to economic liberalism, i.e. the Burkean variety, and not to continental forms of conservatism which have had little historical significance in America.

> The on-and-off rhetorical appeal to libertarianism by the Right especially when out of power is, exactly, a matter of “whatever faction a particular political party happens to be pandering to at any given moment.”

The problem is that you're presumptively conflating party with political philosophy even in levying this criticism. In terms of US presidents in my lifetime, I'd regard Carter, Reagan, and Clinton as conservatives, both Bushes and Obama as moderates, Biden as being on the center-left, and Trump as being on the far left.

Actual political philosophy cuts across party lines -- the parties themselves are just coalitions of factions that are mainly aligned due to mutual tactical opposition to the other coalition, and not by any shared worldview. The nature of these coalitions has far more influence on what rhetoric they employ on the campaign trail than it does on what actual policy positions they take once in office.