GOP isn't a person. It's a loose confederacy of people. For small government freedom-loving Republicans, go to e.g. parts of Texas.
Utah is a religious conservative. That's an entirely different sort of person. It's a demographic which, in many ways, would align better with Democrats, if not for a few wings of the DNC such as:
* Dawkins-toting militant atheist wing
* Pro-choice feminist wing
That's a big part of why Mitt Romney so often sides with Democrats on key votes, and takes so much flack from other parts of the GOP. He was also governor of Massachusetts, which is about as blue as you get. It take a special kind of Republican to win there.
I don't agree with a lot of what Utah Republicans stand for, but I don't see much hypocrisy there. It's pretty consistent:
* For: Helping poor people (although with a complex split of private charity, church, and government), good education, clean strong neighborhoods, community, families, churches
COVID19 went a bit wonky, but with a few exceptions like that, it's mostly straight-line honest Mormon views.
Curiously, pre-Romney, who seems among the least corrupt politicians in government, Utah was represented by Orrin Hatch, who seemed to be among the most corrupt of the senators at the time.
I live in Cedar City. Down here everybody hates Mitt. Few for the right reasons (like his 47% comments about the middle class/low class), most because this is Trump country and he's not one of "them".
Church has been out of session a long time so a lot of the Mormons (I'm exmo btw) I guess flocked to QAnon as a replacement for religion during the pandemic?
Somebody's grandpa was checking me out at the register at a small grocer and said "did you see it" all excitedly about the Trump parades going around town. Not like I could miss them circling the entire city for two weeks straight - that being just the first day of it.
There's some romney conservatives I'm sure in Utah, but there's so many Trump ones now too that I don't even think Mitt will win the primary in 2026.
If he really was bi-partisan though why not support ending the filibuster? I mean if he wants to deal with democrats and be a cross-the-aisle kind of politician he kind of needs to offer an olive leaf. Him and Murkowski could do a lot together as conservatives with a new plan to keep the party conservative but still reach across for some social progress.
Like the stimulus plan and ending the filibuster would give him big rapport with a lot of senate democrats who'd be more willing to co-sponsor bills with him. That's how we could fix Washington, but I don't see it happening anytime soon.
Everyone wants whatever type of government to push the issues they care about. Dems want small government when it comes to marijuana legalization, but also the Federal government should set education curriculum across the entire country or enforce country wide mask mandates. GOP wants states to be able to ban abortions and teach creationism, but chafes at the idea that states could legalize marijuana unilaterally.
"Dems want small government when it comes to marijuana legalization..."
This isn't really true. The legalization involves local and state regulation and taxes. Sure, the law is more lenient in that one can legally sell and buy the product, but it comes with substantially more regulation (you now need a department to do inspections audits etc).
"chafes at the idea that states could legalize marijuana unilaterally"
Technically they can't legalize it. They can do so at the state level, but it can still be illegal at the federal level. The thing is, the feds don't have the resources to enforce all the laws they make.
I do agree that most political parties and figures can be hypocritical.
As a Democrat I want big government when it comes to marijuana. Why shouldn’t we have the FDA test cannabis products for impurities, set labeling standards, check that facilities that process it are safe, and that labor laws are abided?
I think it depends on which topics one holds most dear.
If you are in the minority on an issue, you may feel something is overbearing but the other side may feel it's "reasonable". For example, if one isn't a gun owner, then they aren't something one has to know and deal with. So one may feel that more regulation is not infringing on rights or freedoms.
It doesn't have anything to do with which topics one holds dear. Small governments would not tell you you can't smoke weed, or buy alcohol at certain places or certain times of day, or cities can't create their own municipal fiber ISPs, or gay people can't get married, or women can't get abortions, or put under god in the national anthem and currency
The parent comment that I was replying to was stating that one party is known for small government, but isn't. I'm just saying they might appear to be small government depending on the person's views and in comparison to the other party. Neither party is advocating in good faith for a true minarchy.
Not just a GOP state, but specifically a politically-dominant-historically-persecuted-by-government-religious-group state.
> What happened to 'small government'?
The dominant faction of the GOP has never really been about small government, but tends to use “small government” as a slogan to avoid debating the role of government when opposing things they see as outside the proper role of government. It's dominantly a right party that seeks to appeal to libertarians to bulk up it's base of support, not a (even just right-) libertarian party (though they do have a right-libertarian faction, whose members—and even candidates—have a somewhat fluid interface with the Libertarian Party, which is a right-leaning libertarian party.)
That said, you might think the politically dominant group in Utah would be keenly aware of the dangers of a dominant group imposing strict social controls through the power of government, but clearly they are fine with that as long as they are the dominant group.
(FYI it's Mormon*, named after the Book of Mormon)
However, (also FYI), adherents prefer if you refer to the church as "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" and members of said church "Latter-day Saints" or simply "Christians".
I know "Mormon" is a long-standing nickname and most people don't intend to use the term derogatorily, but calling Latter-day Saints "Mormons" is like nicknaming Muslims "Mohammeds" or "Qurans" or nicknaming Islam "the Mohammed Church" or "the Quran Church".
I don't agree that it's like nicknaming Muslims "Mohammeds" or "Qurans". There already exists a short word to refer to Muslims, which is Muslims.
Mormon is an effective short form of "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints", which is a mouthful. And sometimes, you might want to refer to a specific type of Christian, such as Baptist, Protestant, Catholic, or in this case, Mormons.
> I don't agree that it's like nicknaming Muslims "Mohammeds" or "Qurans". There already exists a short word to refer to Muslims, which is Muslims.
“Muslim” and “Islam” weren't imported from Arabic into general use in English (or most other Western European languages) until after “Mohammedan(ism)” or similar constructions had been around for a long time.
> Mormon is an effective short form of "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints"
It's a short alternative, but it's not really a short form as it does not derive at all from the long form. (LDS is more of a short form.)
> Mormon is an effective short form of "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints", which is a mouthful.
I agree, but they've asked not to be referred to by that term. If we extend the courtesy to trans people who don't want to be referred to by certain terms, I don't see why we shouldn't extend the same courtesy to religious people who don't want to be referred to by certain terms.
If trans people were asking to be referred to as "people who were assigned a gender at birth but do not identify with that gender now" instead of "men" or "trans men" or whatnot, one might object to the lengthiness of that, too.
I see where you're coming from, but for the purposes of language, I'm not aware of Mormon being a slur, and it's probably the most widely known term used to describe people in the LDS church. It's been only a few years since the church themselves called themselves Mormons:
A person changing their name and a tribe changing their name is not exactly comparable, but I can see there is some gray area. I guess if people in LDS really made a big deal out of it, I'd change the way I referred to them.
Exmormon here, and op is full of it. We used to call ourselves mormon for a long time, and many of my friends still active were like whatever I'll disregard that "commandment" to not use Mormon as a term... I mean there's still a pro-mormon subreddit called mormon, and until 2016 the church had mormon.org with multiple people sharing their testimonies using the phrase "I'm a mormon".
This is just a corporatocracy trying to "rebrand" under new management. Nothing more.
> However, (also FYI), adherents prefer if you refer to the church as "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" and members of said church "Latter-day Saints" or simply "Christians".
I have a hard time referring to them as Christians when they think that the non-Latter-Day Christians are someone that needs converted. They sure send a lot of missionaries to go after (other) Christians. They sure seem to teach that you have to be part of their church. In short, they sure seem to act like they regard other Christians as "other".
So, no, I have a hard time calling them "Christians".
(And if you're going to say that they self-identify as Christians, well, Jesus said something about "Not everyone who calls me 'Lord, Lord'...")
> I have a hard time referring to them as Christians when they think that the non-Latter-Day Christians are someone that needs converted.
Most Christian groups think that “Christians” outside of their group need to be converted. There are theological reasons why large groups of Christians exclude LDS, SDA, JW, and certain other groups that self-identify as “Christian” from the scope of that term (while still including very large sets of ‘Christians’ with whom they otherwise disagree), but “they think other ‘Christians’ need to be converted” isn’t one of them, and there would be no Christians at all if that standard was applied consistently.)
I think I know why you're saying that, but at least in Texas most people who identify as Christian aren't really aware of the differences between groups. If one believes that Jesus is God, it doesn't matter if they even go to church at all, or if they go to evangelical or Catholic services. It's all considered Christian, and social circles often include people from vastly different denominations.
Most Christian groups don't focus on converting other Christian groups. That doesn't mean they don't know the difference between Catholic and Protestant.
Sure, but they are mostly seen as superficial differences that people don't much care about in practice. One might not want to go to Mass because they prefer the style of a modern evangelical service, but they couldn't care less if you go to Mass and have no interest in converting you to their style. As an example, Catholics who move to a new area might start attending a Methodist church because of the similarities in services. I'm sure many of the leaders are aware of the deeper differences, but among the people not many care.
> I have a hard time referring to them as Christians when they think that the non-Latter-Day Christians are someone that needs converted.
Yet I'm assuming you have no problem calling both Sunni and Shiite Muslims "Muslims" even though they each think the other is wrong and that the other needs converting to their way of thinking? Disputes about which church/sect is the one true church authorized by God are going to happen in every major religion. I think the term "Christian" though is generic - if you believe in and follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, you are a Christian.
> However, (also FYI), adherents prefer if you refer to the church as "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" and members of said church "Latter-day Saints" or simply "Christians".
The first for members is problematic (especially in speech, where there is no equivalent to capitalization to distinguish the proper nouns from a combination of common words; and plenty of people discussing “Latter-Day Saints” would very much not want to endorse the idea that the people referenced are “latter day saints”.
The latter of those is even more problematic for somewhat similar reasons, since there are lots of other people who identify as and are commonly known as Christians, so it's not particularly good to distinguish Latter-Day Saints. Especially given that the boundary large groups of Christians who disagree on, well, nearly everything else draw around the boundary of “Christian” excluded Latter-Day Saints.
> Calling Latter-day Saints "Mormons" is like nicknaming Muslims "Mohammeds" or "Qurans" or nicknaming Islam "the Mohammed Church" or "the Quran Church".
Or, to use a less hypothetical example, it's like calling Muslims and Islam “Mohammedans” and “Mohammedanism”, respectively.
Of course his successor is trying to erase all of that by banning even using LDS ... now you must say they're a "Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints"
There was a time when we simply preferred to be LDS, then we started embracing Mormon cause that's what people called us anyways so might as well go with it if it allowed opportunities to proselyte/teach the gospel etc...
I left the church in 2017 though after reading https://cesletter.com it woke me up to just how much of a cult the church is, and how white-washed their history is...
I was taught by my Bishop an ex member of the seventy that Joseph Translated the bible by using an ancient Urim and Thumim device in a breastplate with seer stones.
Church now admits nope: He used a stone he found digging a well, dropped it in a hat and put his head over the hat.
There's also too many similarities with The book of Mormon and other similar books of that time like "The Late War".
Anyhow, I think the new "rules" about ditching LDS, Latter-day Saints, and Mormon nomenclature at every chance came out iirc around 2017-18 it was after I had my membership removed... My wife's still a member but she's a lot less believing especially after how the church didn't really come out very strong in favor of protecting people from the pandemic and re-opened a lot of wards.
The prophet was a cardiologist he could've done more to persuade the members to wear masks but did not.
I don't know enough to dispute the doctrine/dogma points you've brought up.
All I know is if someone asks me to use a different term when referring to them, I usually oblige out of respect. That goes for transgender people that want me to use different pronouns/names, religious people that want me to use different terms, etc. If someone says "please don't refer to people of my tribe as 'Native Americans', we prefer the term 'Cherokees', I'm not going to start debating them and be like "well, your leaders last decade wanted 'Native American' so I refuse to call you what you currently prefer". Intentionally ignoring a request like that is incredibly disrespectful and rude, in my opinion.
I think this is more of a state culture thing than anything else. Regardless, political parties tend to be pretty different from state to state and vs the federal overarching party.
There is a lot of case law surrounding obscenity, and courts have ruled that bans on obscenity do not necessarily violate the first amendment (there are a variety of tests involved). The rationale never seemed sound to me, but somehow I have not been appointed to the Supreme Court.
It might be a violation of the first amendment, but I think that'd be unlikely.
Access to such is already heavily restricted based on the viewers age and the content (including the actors age) and that seems to be generally socially acceptable. I think that the "important" part of the first amendment is usually focused on government control of speech that is made in opposition to the government, this doesn't appear to violate that in any way so I'd guess that the supreme court would probably be okay with this law from a purely first amendment perspective.
A more applicable law would seem to be Article 1 Section 8 (the interstate commerce clause) but that is also pretty weak - I believe that certain states already have widely differing views on adult content so even that might not stand up.
I in the long run you're doing your worldview a disservice by simplifying political parties into a single axis. Especially for Utah, which can be a bit of an outlier on moral issues due to the state's large LDS population
> I in the long run you're doing your worldview a disservice by simplifying political parties into a single axis.
Probably. But after years of being compared to socialists and communists on a constant basis, despite not ever having met a liberal who had any interest in socialism or communism for the US -- it's hard to avoid seeing politics in the USA as anything other than a two-team sport.
Utah politics have a unique religious aspect to them. The majority of Utah residents belong to a religion which only 1.8% of the US population as a whole follows.
UT has more overbearing regulations than any other state. They are also far and away the most conservative state. Not all conservatives in the US are aligned with them, it’s just that the cult majority have regulatory capture.
> UT has more overbearing regulations than any other state
Like what? Are you referring to alcohol laws? Because last I checked you could still by beer at the grocery store in Utah, but you cannot do that in Montgomery County, Maryland (most populous county of one of the bluest states).
Utah has actually made some interesting changes lately. Within the last few years they've legalized Budweiser and gotten rid of the Zion Curtain mandate (which seemed like an awful idea in terms of safety. One waiter told me they called it the "Cosby Curtain").
Maybe some day Utahns will be able to order a glass of wine at dinner before they've decided what they want to eat.
> Not necessarily taking one side ot the other, but they also have very restrictive fireworks laws.
Utah is a really dry state. Fireworks have a bad tendency to start fires out here, fires that can get rather large. It's not that they're spoilsports (with respect to fireworks), it's that they have experienced some significant downsides.
But if that's really the reason, then why not regulate it like burning rather than have only specific dates that they can be used? From what I remember, there's only 4 or 5 holidays/weeks they can be used.
Honestly I like the 4% ABV limit on beer. It forces brewers to make interesting flavors, rather than just blowing you away with ludicrously high ABV masked in hops.
Small government means that when you see a family starving you don’t have enough to give them to get back on their feet because it’s all been spent on a military contract. It means that we can’t afford a healthcare program like every other civilized country in the world because we need to keep insurance companies from going under (except your kidneys; your kidneys have universal healthcare, did you know?). It means we can’t afford to build decent roads or pay for inner city schools because god forbid we educate people and they vote for their own economic interest. Small government means don’t regulate Wall Street because what if the stock market looks bad and boomers lose retirement portfolio value. And it means letting an 11 year old die in his own bed by freezing to death than forcing Texas to upgrade their power grid because companies saving a dime is more important and Texans would rather sacrifice lives than do anything about what had happened to them.
But also no porn, no abortions, no disrespecting POTUS (unless he is black), no access to healthcare or safe policing for brown people, and no vote unless you are male, white, and uneducated.
The GOP has been morally bankrupt since they took in the Southern Democrats and the parties flipped in ideology. They are the same party that thought owning human beings was justified as long as it padded profits and never really recovered from losing that argument. They are the party that unironically supports flying traitorous flags because it’s their heritage. They are the same types of people who would have sided with England in the American Revolution because you have to love your country no matter what. And they are the same people who are getting cozy with the people who fly swastikas because anything is apparently better than being a democrat.
Are you really surprised at this particular headline coming from a conservative state?
Many Republican voters would also like to know the answer to this question.
Edit: If your point is that many Republican policies don’t represent the supposed political ideals of Republicans, then you don’t have to look very hard to find out this is a very popular complaint amongst Republican voters.
