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POLITICO-Harvard poll: GOP Voters Now Reject Free Trade

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S

saelz8

Member
So, what this means is that Republicans have changed the economic philosophy they have believed for the last 35 years in a SINGLE PRIMARY.

WHAT?

In a stunning reversal, a large majority of Republicans are repudiating their party’s traditional support for free trade, and falling sharply in line with nominee Donald Trump’s insistence that trade costs Americans more jobs than it creates.

Meanwhile, Democrats, whose representatives in Congress have traditionally been far more skeptical of trade deals — and largely voted against giving President Barack Obama the “fast-track” authority to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership last year — are now far more apt than Republicans to see the benefit of trade, according to an exclusive poll conducted for POLITICO and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Forty-seven percent of Republicans surveyed said that trade deals have hurt their communities over the last 10 years, compared to only 24 percent of Democratic voters. Only 18 percent of Republicans surveyed said that trade deals helped, while 33 percent of Democrats believe free trade helps.

The poll results, which come ahead of Monday night’s highly anticipated presidential debate, show a stark turnabout in public opinion from a decade ago, when George W. Bush was president and Republican lawmakers — with the notable exception of some lawmakers from textile industry states — championed free trade. In 2006, a Pew Research Center poll showed Democrats — who traditionally have stronger ties with organized labor — to be considerably more negative about free trade than Republicans.

Now, the POLITICO-Harvard poll shows, 85 percent of Republicans say that free trade has cost the U.S. more jobs than it has created, compared to 54 percent of Democrats.
Click to expand...

Source
 
I

Ihyll

Junior Member
I seriously wonder if these people know in what way their communities were harmed by free trade or if they're just brainwashed and the new buzz phrase of "Free trade kills jobs" is getting to them .
 
Vestal

Vestal

Junior Member
saelz8 said:
So, what this means is that Republicans have changed the economic philosophy they have believed for the last 35 years in a SINGLE PRIMARY.

WHAT?



Source
Click to expand...


They probably phrased the question something like.

Do you support Free-trade?
R asks back.. Whats Free Trade
Interviewer replies, Like TPP what Obama is trying to pass in congress.
R responds.. Never have supported Free-Trade and never will.
Interviewer replies: You are a Republican right?
R responds: "Off-course why would you ask that again?"
Interviewer: "Well the Republican party has supported Free-Trade for the past 35 years, and it has been one of the corner stones of their platform"
Dead silence.....
R retorts: "TYPICAL LIBURUL MEDIA!!! TWISTING THE FACTS!!!"
Hangs up line.
 
Y

Yaboosh

Super Sleuth
Polls should consist of small tests to see if the respondents have the tiniest idea what they are even responding to.
 
E

ErnieMcCracken

Member
King Tubby said:
Y'know, maybe this is a generalization but GOP voters don't strike me as all that ideologically consistent.
Click to expand...

Cr4Cjv2XgAEo3Yz.jpg
 
R

royalan

Member
Branduil said:
They're extremely consistent in hating brown and black people.
Click to expand...

Bingo.

There's a large and dominant segment of the Republican party that will mold their ideology to hate or accept any policy if it allows them to discriminate against brown or black people.

I guess the part of me that has seen people like me be on the receiving end of Republican dogwhistles for generations is happy that it's now out in the open. But it's worrying how many people refuse to accept this.

The Republican party is the party of hate. True conservators...yeah you exist, but you don't run this party anymore. It's time to accept that.
 
A

Abinash117

Member
Branduil said:
Well, I guess that kills the TPP, lol.
Click to expand...

Nah, many of the politicians still support free trade. What you are going to see is a wide gap with the voters and the politicians. The party pretty much have to be pro-free trade because many, many businesses heavily support the GOP and they have a lot of wealthy support. If they lose that, especially to the Democrats I think they'll lose a lot of power and influence.
 
B

Basileus777

Member
There's also polling that shows that Americans largely don't even know what the TPP is. Opinions about trade are probably fluid because voters don't especially care and mold their thoughts to what they are hearing.

This probably won't change policy.
 
E

ezrarh

Member
GOP voters would very quickly vote for all the handouts so as long as black or brown people don't receive any.
 
Rentahamster

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
Trump isn't an ordinary Republican. That's one of the reasons so many hardcore conservatives were against him in the primary. A lot of them thought he is a liberal in disguise. He crippled the neoconservative movement and neutered the religious right. He got the RNC to clap at pro-LGBT applause lines in his speech. He's already changed the Republican (some might say destroyed) in a very profound way.

Whether or not it's for the better or worse remains to be seen.

Trump is uniquely qualified in his rhetorical abilities to target a group, in this case Republicans, and manipulate their opinions in a way that someone like Jeb!, Cruz, or Rubio would never be able to.
 
S

SwiftDeath

Member
Considering the party's nominee for president made public requests for Russia of all countries to effectively launch a cyber attack against a fellow American for potential political gain and that this did not seem to hurt said candidates polling with the party, I don't think being consistent with historic policy is too important to a lot of GOP voters.
 
S

sphagnum

Banned
Free trade stands in opposition to populist nationalism and fascism, the two ideological strains that actually best represent what the GOP base believes. Free trade sounded like a great rallying cry during the Cold War because it's inherently anti-communist, but white people have always in truth loved protectionism and government spending (on them), and globalization has harmed a lot of the areas that the GOP is strongest in. The base only ever really went along with free trade because the establishment promised to uphold social conservatism and because the party managed to convince them that globalization and deregulation were patriotic because capitalism is patriotic.

Slayven said:
How do they feel about small government ?
Click to expand...

They never really cared about small government outside of the libertarians. Small government is code word for keeping minorities down. The GOP base has always loved big government for themselves.
 
V

Vicetrailia

Banned
They understand their situation but it's not exactly like the the party educates them on anything. With some exceptions, they go with the wind.
 
M

Man-is-Obsolete

Member
Well a black democrat has been president for nearly the last decade, so everything in their eyes needs to be done different than the last ten years no matter how good it was or in line with conservative ideals.
 
J

j_k_redtail

Member
Branduil said:
They're extremely consistent in hating brown and black people.
Click to expand...

I read a decent article about this earlier this summer. There are members of the GOP intelligentsia who are realizing what liberals have claimed for years:

The available evidence compiled by historians and political scientists suggests that 1964 really was a pivotal political moment, in exactly the way Roy describes.

Yet Republican intellectuals have long denied this, fabricating a revisionist history in which Republicans were and always have been the party of civil rights. In 2012, National Review ran a lengthy cover story arguing that the standard history recounted by Roy was “popular but indefensible.”

This revisionism, according to Roy, points to a much bigger conservative delusion: They cannot admit that their party’s voters are motivated far more by white identity politics than by conservative ideals.

“Conservative intellectuals, and conservative politicians, have been in kind of a bubble,” Roy says. “We’ve had this view that the voters were with us on conservatism — philosophical, economic conservatism. In reality, the gravitational center of the Republican Party is white nationalism.”
Click to expand...

He expands on this idea: “It’s a common observation on the left, but it’s an observation that a lot of us on the right genuinely believed wasn’t true — which is that conservatism has become, and has been for some time, much more about white identity politics than it has been about conservative political philosophy. I think today, even now, a lot of conservatives have not come to terms with that problem.”

This, Roy believes, is where the conservative intellectual class went astray. By refusing to admit the truth about their own party, they were powerless to stop the forces that led to Donald Trump’s rise. They told themselves, over and over again, that Goldwater’s victory was a triumph.

But in reality, it created the conditions under which Trump could thrive. Trump’s politics of aggrieved white nationalism — labeling black people criminals, Latinos rapists, and Muslims terrorists — succeeded because the party’s voting base was made up of the people who once opposed civil rights.

“[Trump] tapped into something that was latent in the Republican Party and conservative movement — but a lot of people in the conservative movement didn’t notice,” Roy concludes, glumly.
Click to expand...

The whole thing is worth a read.
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
Not sure what took them so long. The rank and file supporting free trade was always bizarre to me because you'd think a group that hates foreigners wouldn't be supporting a policy that rewarded those same foreigners with jobs at the expense of Americans.
 
E

Electric Eye

Banned
I've learned over the years that if you want a republican to like something you have to say it angrily, loud and put it on a bumper sticker in the colors red white and blue.
 
Clockwork5

Clockwork5

Member
Basileus777 said:
There's also polling that shows that Americans largely don't even know what the TPP is. Opinions about trade are probably fluid because voters don't especially care and mold their thoughts to what they are hearing.

This probably won't change policy.
Click to expand...
There is a very good reason Americans don't know what TPP is.
 
N

numble

Member
Vestal said:
They probably phrased the question something like.

Do you support Free-trade?
R asks back.. Whats Free Trade
Interviewer replies, Like TPP what Obama is trying to pass in congress.
R responds.. Never have supported Free-Trade and never will.
Interviewer replies: You are a Republican right?
R responds: "Off-course why would you ask that again?"
Interviewer: "Well the Republican party has supported Free-Trade for the past 35 years, and it has been one of the corner stones of their platform"
Dead silence.....
R retorts: "TYPICAL LIBURUL MEDIA!!! TWISTING THE FACTS!!!"
Hangs up line.
Click to expand...

The methodology of the poll is public information:
http://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000157-58ef-d502-ad5f-dbef0b4f0000

In general, do you think current U.S. free trade policies with each of the following countries have helped the U.S., hurt the U.S. or not made much of a difference?

Over the past 10 years, would you say U.S. trade policies with other countries have created more jobs for the U.S., lost more jobs for the U.S., or have U.S. trade policies with other countries had no effect on U.S. jobs?

Over the past 10 years, would you say U.S. trade policies have made the wages of American workers higher, lower or not made a difference?

As you may know, the U.S. has negotiated a trade agreement with 11 countries bordering on the Pacific called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, also known as TPP. Have you heard or read anything about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or not?

Do you favor or oppose Congress approving this agreement?

After the November election, the old Congress will still be in session until January. This is often referred to as a lame-duck session. Do you think there should be a vote on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, also known as TPP, during this lame-duck session, or should the vote be left until the new Congress comes into office?
Click to expand...
 
M

massoluk

Banned
Free Trade support was probably the last thing I have in common with GOP. Hope Democrats fully take it up (considering mainstream economists now supporting dem, I sure hope so)

Don't let whatever beef they have against tpp ruined the idea of free trade
 
Burglekutt

Burglekutt

Member
You see this all the time in politics.People who identify with one party or another will switch there views mostly to agree with their parties candidate or oppose the opposing candidate. Nothing new under the sun.
 
O

O Canada Our Home and Native Land

Banned
massoluk said:
Free Trade support was probably the last thing I have in common with GOP. Hope Democrats fully take it up (considering mainstream economists now supporting den, I sure hope so)

Don't let whatever beef they have against tpp ruined the idea of free trade
Click to expand...

Democrats will never fully take up free trade. It's already a hotly contested issue within the party and even Hillary has rejected TPP. Free trade is supposed to belong in the Republican Party.
 
A

Abstrusity

Member
massoluk said:
Free Trade support was probably the last thing I have in common with GOP. Hope Democrats fully take it up (considering mainstream economists now supporting den, I sure hope so)

Don't let whatever beef they have against tpp ruined the idea of free trade
Click to expand...

Same, here. The benefits far outweigh the costs, and as the joint costs of rising wages in developing countries and rising shipping fees from abroad continue to rise, we'll begin to see a little more manufacturing here at home.

Specifically speaking, we really ought to be focusing elsewhere for job losses. H1Bs and their equivalents rather than domestic workers for skilled labor -- labor that is uncommon, but not as rare as these companies like to make them out to be -- are the main problem, right now. The increased imports AND exports creates more billable hours, which translates directly to more employment. Poor management decisions, not free trade, is what killed manufacturing here, and it ain't even dead, yet. Add in some bleeding edge development like 3D printing farms, and we're top of the line for prototyping -- cheaper and easier than contracting it out to China, AND your patent won't get infringed upon worldwide, before you're ready to ship.

Where work visas and the like have their own benefits too, there appears to be some sort of abuse problem with it, and that needs to be nipped in the bud.
 
4

4Tran

Member
I don't know if there's anything too surprising about this. The Republican party is made up of largely disparate factions, and we're seeing a shift as to which faction is in ascendance. Historically, the White Nationalists have been kept away from the chambers of power at the national level, but now Trump has brought their policies to the forefront.
 
M

Media

Member
To me, this doesn't say anything more than that our political system has broken down into a total 'us vs them' system. If one party supports it, the other doesn't.
 
N

numble

Member
Abstrusity said:
Same, here. The benefits far outweigh the costs, and as the joint costs of rising wages in developing countries and rising shipping fees from abroad continue to rise, we'll begin to see a little more manufacturing here at home.

Specifically speaking, we really ought to be focusing elsewhere for job losses. H1Bs and their equivalents rather than domestic workers for skilled labor -- labor that is uncommon, but not as rare as these companies like to make them out to be -- are the main problem, right now. The increased imports AND exports creates more billable hours, which translates directly to more employment. Poor management decisions, not free trade, is what killed manufacturing here, and it ain't even dead, yet. Add in some bleeding edge development like 3D printing farms, and we're top of the line for prototyping -- cheaper and easier than contracting it out to China, AND your patent won't get infringed upon worldwide, before you're ready to ship.

Where work visas and the like have their own benefits too, there appears to be some sort of abuse problem with it, and that needs to be nipped in the bud.
Click to expand...

Lowered barriers for immigration are part of the idea of free trade--see how important free movement is to the EU market. The complaints you have about "abuse of work visas" are the same complaints people have about outsourcing--work going to lower paid foreigners instead of higher paid citizens.
 
D

darkace

Banned
Oblivion said:
Not sure what took them so long. The rank and file supporting free trade was always bizarre to me because you'd think a group that hates foreigners wouldn't be supporting of supporting a policy that rewarded those same foreigners with jobs at the expense of Americans.
Click to expand...

This is why I support closing borders between the states, as those damn Missourians are stealing jobs from hard working New Yorkers.

OT, sad to hear this, some party needs to carry the banner of free trade, free markets and a more efficient tax system. The Democrats will never fully be on board with free trade given their union base.
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
Trump had the potential to make this election far more interesting than it's been. Early on in the campaign, Trump said that he's not going to touch social security or medicare and argued (briefly) that the rich should be paying more in taxes. So far he's held firm on his promise not to cut ss/medicare, but he went back to bog standard trickle-down economics on the latter.

It would have been kinda neat to see a Republican running on White nationalism while protecting the welfare state and minimizing income inequality. i.e. Social conservatism paired with economic progressivism.
 
Clockwork5

Clockwork5

Member
Suikoguy said:
Yeah, Trade Policy is boring.
Click to expand...
And confidential.

The office of the United States Trade Representative has said that “negotiators need to communicate with each other with a high degree of candor, creativity and mutual trust. To create the conditions necessary to successfully reach agreements in complex trade and investment negotiations, governments routinely keep their proposals and communications with each other confidential.”
Click to expand...

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/business/unpacking-the-trans-pacific-partnership-trade-deal.html
 
U

Unknown Soldier

Member
Regulus Tera said:
If there's one theme in this election, it is isolationism vs globalisation.
Click to expand...

The globalists try so very hard to make it seem like this binary choice, like if you oppose unlimited globalization and free trade you are automatically an isolationist. There are plenty of people who oppose the TPP but do not in general oppose free trade.

Of course these are the same people who are determined to turn the world into "pro-Hillary" and "pro-Trump" and if you don't support Hillary with 100% of your soul and being then you are automatically a Trump supporter who wants the world to burn.
 
D

darkace

Banned
Clockwork5 said:
And confidential.
Click to expand...

tpp has been available for a year

Unknown Soldier said:
The globalists try so very hard to make it seem like this binary choice, like if you oppose unlimited globalization and free trade you are automatically an isolationist. There are plenty of people who oppose the TPP but do not in general oppose free trade.
Click to expand...

Generally the bits of the TPP that people are opposed to (ISDS is the most common) are in practically every FTA.
 
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