Paul Ryan is an Ayn Rand aficionado. Alan Greenspan was an acolyte of hers. Neither did anything to promote Objectivism while in office. Ron Paul (who is not a Rand moonie) has never been an influential figure in the Republican Party. Milton Friedman and Richard Epstein have certainly been promoters of libertarian thought and policy; I’m not seeing how it’s ‘self-deception’ to draw ideas from either one.

Paul Ryan was a huge ‘free trader’. He was big on open borders. During Trump’s first term, he tried to arrange to send various amnesty bills to Trump, while twisting and dodging to make it look like he was being forced. Yet he was held up as the epitome of conservatism and the voice of the right wing.

At one point, in answer to complaints that the GOP majority had done nothing useful for their voters, Ryan offered as an example that they had made it easier for American oil producers to export oil.

Yeah. That was really high on the proto-MAGA voter priority list. The problem is that the base voters wanted things that are anathema to the business class.

Back in 2016, before Trump entered the race, the first Republican to declare was Cruz. There was general laughter that choked when he raised (IIRC) 30 million dollars in two days, because the actual GOP base was so hostile to the idea of Jeb Bush or some other ‘business wing’ Republican.

But then something happened. The Dems refused to grant Obama Trade Promotion Authority, without which he coudn’t negotiate the latest ‘free trade’ catastrophe. Did the GOP sit back and munch popcorn? Did they make demands? Nope.

Instead, Cruz and Ryan published a pro-free-trade op ed together, while Mitch McConnell organized the GOP to give Obama the necessary votes to receive TPA. Which McConnell and Ryan then tried to sell as ‘rolling the Dems’. The GOP voting base was infuriated over the whole thing, a huge chance to kill a major ‘free trade’ bill had come and the GOP had grabbed the football and ran down the field to their own touchdown zone, and bragged about doing it.

That was one of the things that knocked Cruz off track and gave the opening into which the Donald stepped.

The GOP/MAGA base hates ‘free trade’. They hate open borders immigration. They want big business and Wall Street cut down to size. The business lobby wants the opposite of all that, and they are the donors. Every single time the GOP has followed the donor’s preferred path in the last several decades, the result has been electoral disaster.

JD Vance once said, before the election, that the only Biden appointee he thought had been doing a good job was Linna Khan, who the corporate wing of the GOP detest. But Vance has his finger on the voting base.

The Democratic Party has been captured/hijacked by Obaman TRANSFORMATION, more specifically, by a combination of Alinsky+ Cloward-Piven + WEF/WTF methodologies—manufacturing and maximizing multiple, concurrent CRISES of many varieties so as to totally overwhelm Western civilization, thus bringing about its end and replacing it with some kind of supposedly “benevolent” flavor of Totalitarianism in a “velvet glove”—IOW SLAVERY—for the “good of humanity”, to “save the planet” and “stamp out racism”, etc. (we’ve seen it all before, if not quite with the powerful tools available to the current crop of unscrupulous conspirators).

That is the overarching strategy.

The tactics involved are those intentional acts of subterfuge, subversion and sabotage we have seen consistently—and with malice aforethought—perpetrated by the uber-corrupt, if DETERMINED—“Biden” administration and which continue to be espoused by a derailed but NOT down-and-out Democratic Party (of liars, brigands and criminals); by Britain’s MONSTROUS and FOUL Labour Party; and by the odious perverts that comprise the EU, all supported by an uncouth cohort of conniving billionaires.

Trump and his supporters have their hands full battling to overcome this modern-day hydra.

Other aspects of the New Deal have less of a public constituency if any at all. That would include the Roosevelt Administration’s affection for cartel formation, production controls, price controls, and price manipulation; the Wagner Act labor relations regime; general relief; large scale work relief; and benefits allocation according to odd or opaque criteria. During the war, you had a comprehensive price-controls-and-rationing regime. Among subsidiary governments, you had the advent of public housing and (here and there) rent control. A lot of cr!p policy in that era.

— Art Deco

Yes. Many aspects of the New Deal proved unpopular and were rolled back. But the core of it retained (and still retains) majority support. SoSec is undentably popular, and the voters are tolerant neither of elimination nor privatization. The voters still believe the Federal government has a role to play in regulating the economy, they just don’t like how the Democrats are using that power (or not using it, in some cases). The voters believe in a certain amount of economic protectionism. In fact, a typical MAGA voters looks an awful lot like moderate Democrat circa 1960.

Every so often, Republicans fall into the trap of deceiving themselves that the public is finally ready to reject FDR, or embrace Ayn Rand or libertarianism generally. It’s always self-deception. Trump captured control of the GOP precisely by recognizing where the GOP voters really were and what they really wanted and believed in, and it was not ’19th century classical liberalism’, laissez-faire, or Randianism. In 2016, Trump through those tropes onto the fire and by doing so roared into an upset primary win in defiance of the entire Party establishment.

The employer class, if they can, will grind the employee class down toward slave labor conditions, just as the employee class will try to capture every penny of profit for themselves and reduce their own work if they can. It’s dangerous when either one gets too much control.

— HC68
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Neither assertion is true.

— Art Deco

Both assertions are true, and we have ample historical practical experience to demonstrate it.

For example, right now, the eagerness of the corporate class for open borders and free trade is precisely an example of the employer/investor class acting in their own interest, and thus against the interest of the employee class. Both ‘free trade’ and uncontrolled illegal immigration (to say nothing of things like H1B abuse) function to drive down employee wages and reduce employment security.

It’s not an evil plot, just conflicting economic interests.