Conservative admits smart people not Conservative

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Wikipedia describes Santorum as a "devout, practicing Catholic" and if so, then he should listen to what several Popes have said since the 1950s.

My particular favorite quotation is from Pope John Paul II in 1996

A quick question:

Why use one word - "regulation" - to refer to restrictions on market competition, and another - "conservatism" - to refer to restrictions on social competition?

True, most people will never beat out Elon Musk, but most men won't be Don Juans either. Most women won't find Prince Charming no matter how many times they roll the marital dice. Most of those people support sexual liberty and no-fault divorce.

Apply the same rational lens to all three - money, sex, relationships - and you might find the same things:

Deregulation opens up opportunity for a small number of people with sought-after qualities (useful or not), but it forces everyone else to compete harder. Regulation limits some opportunities, but it offers stability.

People like the same misconduct and the same fantasies, just in different places

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Yet another myth disproven.

Oh, come off it

Democrats have plenty of their own dimwits. Sure, they're less likely to believe in Noah's Ark, but they're more likely to believe in astrology, UFOs and various brands of animism.

When I was working as a Democratic organizer, we had a heck of a time convincing our base that we needed to cut local government debt. We were five years into the post-bubble economy, four years into a nasty war, and we weren't slashing government. Most of it came from higher taxes. They'd talk about how awesome countries like Norway are, then fight tooth and nail against the fiscal policies needed to pay for government, let alone build up a sovereign wealth fund like Norway's.

The smartest people I know are conservative.

I don't have a single liberal in our family.

Except my grandmother, but she wasn't really liberal, rather she'd say,"I vote liberal, because the devil you know, is better than the devil you don't."

Looking down on non progressives as inferoir intellectually and morally seems to be the center of the progressive world view. I am not saying every progressive feels this way many don't but from reading columns, comments sections and forums in the last 20 years it has been rare to see this idea not expressed often. At one time liberals actually looked up to working class people, wanted to help them, logically try convince them to change the views instead of name calling.

People have figured out they are bieng looked down upon and politicians have used that to get elected and pass laws that are an anathema to progressives. Trump is only an extreme example of the consequences of making people feel looked down upon. Even if the American people decide Trump has gone too far and do not elect him the resentment won't go away. I can defintly see a scenario where the progressives feel validated in their feeling of superiority and double down fueling more resentment and trouble later because people will be hurt. And if Trump is elected the elitists can curse the stupidity of the American public while the agenda is now the exact opposite to what they want and people get hurt. While they might be at least partially right, despite how smart they think are they will not understand how they were as factor in creating this situation.

At one time, 'working class' generally meant progressive. But that was a very different time. Unions existed in substantial numbers and balanced the power of the investor class. Now it's not unheard of for unions to be managed by...the same law firm that is retained by the corporation or corporate owners. Also, while working class people were afraid of an outside enemy (ie USSR & their nukes) , they actually led fairly cushy lives. Home + 2-car ownership was in reach and even expected, as was a good salary and a guaranteed pension when they grew too old to work.

Definitions & words change over time, though. "Working class" once meant anyone who lives off wages or salary. "Capital" class meant those who lived off invested money. Over the last generation, people have been trained to believe that "working class" is the same as "menial labor" or "service industry"; Working class has been equated to "lower class". Middle class has been sort of redefined as "almost investor class" and Upper Class as the capitalists. A side effect of this created an assumption that "progressive" values should only be held by the working class, which came to mean lower class only. It was a nifty slight of hand worthy of any good street grifter, as now the upper working class has allied themselves with the capitalists and will vote against their own interests.

Oh, and while "conservative" vs "liberal" thinking does appear to have some biological components (but mostly learned values), intelligence does not appear to correlate with either. Then again "intelligence" can be seen as a very narrow measure of privilege, so the numbers are not all that useful either way.

To apply the term progressive to the working class I don't think is correct, while these people might be in favor of unions and government assistance and other stuff progressives support they never accepted "progressive" social values and have remain personally quite conservative. Progressive social values have gone completely wacko cuckoo, political correctness is suffocating this country and the people naturally are resisting. Most normal people are not ideologues, they vote based on economic or social/cultural self-interest so they are malleable in terms of how to accomplish this. Democrats have moved away from the working class to the corporate donor class, environmentalists, and divisive identity politics all of which pretty much directly oppose the interests of American working class. They have become the dominant party of capital, the party of Wall Street.

This is why Trump scares Democrats so much since economic nationalism is good for the working class while globalism is how these big huge corporations how screwed the working class for decades now, Trump is not an ideologue on social issues and is rebelling against this totalitarian political correctness. Trump wins with your pocketbook, he wins at foreign policy, he promises to be a warrior for the American people which the special interests are at war with. There will be a realignment, American political parties have always shifted in terms of internal factions but the reality is that GOP electorate liked what Trump had to say and his stances on the issues more than what the GOP was offering. Trump essentially ran as an independent in the GOP primary, they rejected the party platform straight up because there is no way Trump would have survived all that he has survived without that.

Over time, the specific grievances or needs of the progressives have changed depending on the era. But the progressive label itself has historically been associated with those who do not possess as much wealth or power. Specifically, because they were more apt to want change in the way things were done. The "have nots" if you will (specifically compared to those who owned the corporations/companies/means of production). The "haves" - Capitalists, generally, in our culture - held power and so wanted as little change in that respect as they could get away with.