United States 2024: United States Senate Dicussion Thread
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Romney is not running for re-election because his brand/the GOP old brand of 'fusionism' has been shown to be a dead end compared to MAGA and the New Right, and he knows he doesn't fit the new GOP base/brand anymore.
Fusionism of the old GOP is done, and the fossils who tried to keep it alive are bowing out or dying off.
Terthna
Professional Lurker
First I've ever heard of this particular political philosophy; but maybe if they had actually adhered to any of its tenants, as opposed to simply bending over backwards to accommodate the regressive left at every possible opportunity, perhaps people wouldn't be rejecting them now.
Blasterbot
Well-known member
Huh. if only they could have lived up to it. then the Republican party wouldn't have been such dog shit in the Bush/Obama years.
I'd only heard of it because of @S'task went after me at one point for not knowing what it was, yet daring to have an option on the GOP.
I guess 'fusionism' is code for 'post-Reagan establishment/corpo GOP ideology' in most ways, and yeah, it failed at it's goals rather badly compared to liberal and progressive ideologies accomplishments.
Romney is not nor ever been a Fusionist. He's always been a Liberal Republican / Rockefellers Republican and they staunchly opposed Fusionist from the very beginning.
In point of fact, very few Republicans have ACTUALLY been Fusionists, even though ideologically Fusionists were basically who wrote the Republican Party platform going back decades. The only Republican President who actually was Fusionist was Reagan.
Fusionists =/= Neocons. Fusionists =/= Libertarians. Fusionists =/= Rockefellers or Liberal Republicans.
The reason most people don't know about Fusionist is because Fusionists were so successful philosophically that the base Fusionist tenants are better known as basic "Conservatism" in the US. Small government, social conservative, pro-gun, low taxes and regulation Conservatism is Fusionism. I'm a Fusionist. National Review (which has long had gripes with Romney due to him not being an actual conservative on many issues) is ideologically Fusionist. William F Buckley was basically the guy who really synthesized the ideas.
The Tea Party was also ideologically Fusionist. Much of what MAGA claims to want is also founded in Fusionism, the biggest departure between Fusionism and MAGA is debates concerning Free Trade (and Fusionism is not STRICTLY Free Trade historically, though it is more open to it under the ideal of low government regulation on things).
This idea that Fusionism is what Republicans have been operating under for decades is stupid. They've consistently failed to actually embrace Fusionism. Fusionism was what George W. Bush was rejecting with his calls for "Compassionate Conservatism", and Romney is just a liberal Neocon at best.
That just sounds like fusionism trying to claim credit for everything about the modern GOP, except MAGA not being willing to worship 'the free market' and put corpo desires above the average US worker.
Which is why I call it 'establishment/corpo conservatism', because the corporations who bought the pre-Trump GOP and kept it from embracing protectionism till Trump, very much put the desires of their corpo donors above their base and their nation.
And I'd argue that there is plenty of fusionist/neo-con overlap, particularly during Bush Jr's days.
. . .
Did you even read what I wrote. I explicitly pointed out that W. Bush rejected Fusionism, that's what he was rejecting/replacing with his much pushed "Compassionate Conservatism". FFS even WIKIPEDIA lists it as a separate strain of thought of Conservatism from Fusionism, as is likewise Neoconservatism which WAS the exact thing you're calling Corporate/Establishment "conservatism".
Further you're misunderstanding what I was stating. Fusionists were the dominate intellectual class behind the Republicans from the 1980s onwards. They were the policy wonks in most areas OUTSIDE of foreign affairs (which was dominated by the Neocons). This means they wrote things like the party platform and also means that intellectually their ideas are what most people associate with what it means to be a "conservative" in the US as they often were the people writing opinion peices in newspapers and magazines. HOWEVER, just because they wrote the platform or defined what it meant to be conservative ideologically doesn't mean that the Republican party actually governed according to those principles. They didn't. Republicans, as you noted, tended to either favor the Neocons when it came to foreign affairs or corporate interests when it came to some domestic affairs. Fusionists have, for instance, been calling to abolish the Department of Education at the Federal level since it was established under Carter... no Republican has actually done that.
I'm not seeing anything mentioning a comparison to Fusionism in that article or the links in it.
The only difference I can see between fusionism and 'Compassionate Conservatism' is that the latter wants/expects charity/social safety nets to be the realm of private charities and churches, instead of state intervention, and paternalistic view of citizens vs an economic/individualist view of citizens in fusionism.
...it really just sounds like you are trying to slap the 'fusionist' label on anything not explicitly neo-con or MAGA created, which...feels like a cop-out and maybe trying to give fusionism more credit than it's due.
Because if fusionism was actually something mainstream US politics considered as being meaningful, you would not have been the first person I ever heard the term from, and the only person I've run into who seems to think fusionism is the foundation of the modern GOP.
Have you considered you might be just as blind about your own side/fusionisms reach/lack there of or success/lack there of?
Vyor
My influence grows!
Except he's not the only person saying that, more or less everyone with any grasp of history says it.
Except the very first time I'd heard of fusionism was S'task lecturing me about 'how I don't know the GOP internal history' a while back.
I mean it when I say I had not heard of fusionism before that point, nor does it seem to show up in any mainstream political debates or rhetoric.
The description of fusionism vs other things like the neo-cons, the Evangelical Right/'Compassionate conservatism', and the establishment make it feel very much like the only real differences are how much they suck off the concept of 'free market' vs protectionisms, whether they pay attention/deal with foreign affairs intelligently, and how much they try to use either corpo or evangelical reasoning to buttress their arguments.
Because right now fusionism seems like a giant nothingburger trying to claim credit for a lot of other groups power/ideology/actions.
Because what you think of basic bitch political capital-C Conservatism in US politics IS Fusionism. Every time people talked about "Conservatism" without any other modifier (Neo-, Paleo-, Compassionate, etc.) they were talking about Fusionism.
When people talk about the Conservatism of National Review, they're talking about Fusionism.
Basically, Fusionism was so successful that in many respects it disappeared as a separate thing because it became the core foundation of the US Conservative movement and everything else is defined in how it VARIES from Fusionism.
...see, exactly what I said, you claim fusionism is the base of modern conservatism and everything else is a change from it.
Which just doesn't track outside GOP internal propaganda.
You say that fusionism's political invisibility is a mark of it's success.
I'd argue that the fact I never heard about before you mentioned it, and the state of modern political realities, show more like fusionism is...an obscure political footnote at best and functionally irrelevant at worst.
Vyor
My influence grows!
Because you don't look for shit:
We Need a New Fusionism
Conservatism is almost as divided as America, split between divergent brands that range from traditional and social conservatism to libertarian and constitutional conservatism. But there is no reason to despair—conservatives have never marched in lockstep. Just as they oppose centralized...
www.heritage.org
Know Your Enemy: Frank Meyer, the Father of Fusionism - Dissent Magazine
A deep dive into the life and work of Frank S. Meyer, the longtime senior editor at National Review who became most famous for his theory of "fusionism," which combined the traditional and libertarian strains of the conservative movement.
Is There a Future for Fusionism?
There's a well-worn tale about modern American conservatism: It says that the movement as we know it came into being…
reason.com
Fusionism - South Carolina Encyclopedia
A phenomenon of the Reconstruction period, “fusionism” describes the awkward and short-lived political alliance between moderate wings of the South’s Democratic and Republican Parties. With newly enfranchised blacks entering the political arena as Republicans, white Democrats (mostly former...
www.scencyclopedia.org
The Conservative Consensus: Frank Meyer, Barry Goldwater, and the Politics of Fusionism
Conservatives have always been a disputatious lot. Their disputes are passionate and often personal precisely because they revolve around the most important thing in politics -- ideas. Far from being signs of a crackup or a breakdown, intense uninhibited debate among conservatives is an...
www.heritage.org
2024 UT United States Senator: Fallout of Romney not seeking reelection.
49ersfootball
Well-known member
According to KSL-TV, Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs (R) & UT House of Representatives Speaker Brad Wilson (R) are likely candidates for Romney's US Senate seat.
Mitt Romney says he won't seek reelection in 2024
Yes, amazingly when I started supporting the populist Right that is/was MAGA and Trump I didn't much care for 'basic bitch conservatism' or what it's adherents believed it is responsible for.Because you don't look for shit:
We Need a New Fusionism
Conservatism is almost as divided as America, split between divergent brands that range from traditional and social conservatism to libertarian and constitutional conservatism. But there is no reason to despair—conservatives have never marched in lockstep. Just as they oppose centralized...Know Your Enemy: Frank Meyer, the Father of Fusionism - Dissent Magazine
A deep dive into the life and work of Frank S. Meyer, the longtime senior editor at National Review who became most famous for his theory of "fusionism," which combined the traditional and libertarian strains of the conservative movement.www.dissentmagazine.org
Is There a Future for Fusionism?
There's a well-worn tale about modern American conservatism: It says that the movement as we know it came into being…Fusionism - South Carolina Encyclopedia
A phenomenon of the Reconstruction period, “fusionism” describes the awkward and short-lived political alliance between moderate wings of the South’s Democratic and Republican Parties. With newly enfranchised blacks entering the political arena as Republicans, white Democrats (mostly former...www.scencyclopedia.orgThe Conservative Consensus: Frank Meyer, Barry Goldwater, and the Politics of Fusionism
Conservatives have always been a disputatious lot. Their disputes are passionate and often personal precisely because they revolve around the most important thing in politics -- ideas. Far from being signs of a crackup or a breakdown, intense uninhibited debate among conservatives is an...
It wasn't 'basic bitch conservatism' that brought people to Trump, MAGA, or the current GOP, so why should most of the people Trump pealed off from the Dems/center care what specific title the old guard called themselves.
Basic bitch Conservatism/fusionism isn't what is bringing young people to the GOP or Right, and as I said, before S'task bitched at me for not knowing what it, I had no idea 'fusionism' was something supposedly distinct from the establishment/corpo GOP.
Vyor
My influence grows!
Because. You. Do. Not. Research. Shit.
I do research shit that matters to me; what 'basic bitch conservatives' call themselves and what their internal propaganda says was not high on my list of concerns regarding politics.
Vyor
My influence grows!
You said you'd never heard of it and that it never mattered.
You're wrong, outright, and now you're just screaming "NO NO NO DOESN'T MATTER FUCK YOU".
No, I am saying that whatever 'fusionists' think of themselves, outside their choir/echochambers, most of the public has ziltch idea the term even exists.
To most people, the whole 'fusionist' shit just sounds like either corpo or Evangelical GOP 'rebranding.
I've never heard the term 'fusionist' used in a live political debate, I've never seen it referenced in media, I've never even heard Limbaugh or Rush or Ben Shapiro mention it.
I had never heard the term till I saw S'task mention it when I criticized some GOP internal propaganda a while back.
So whatever 'fusionists' want to claim credit for, the fact the entire political 'grouping' within the GOP under this banner has been effectively invisible since at least the 90's is not something to be proud of.