- Moderator
- #1
…and he is a Republican. But he identifies the real issues we are facing with two broken parties controlled by their extremes, nationalization of what should be local politics, and entrenched politicians in safe districts that never have to do a damn thing for their constituents to get re-elected. He also identifies the external threats we SHOULD be addressing but can’t because we are obsessed with insignificant “culture war” issues that fire the “base”. His ideas on immigration should have something both wings can support but will it? It is both common sense and humane and protects our borders.
www.theatlantic.com
The Revenge of the Normal Republicans
Will Hurd thinks there are enough normal voters to deliver him the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. But is he right?
“Some of my friends, some of my former colleagues, they are desperate,” Hurd tells me. “They are so desperate to hold on to their positions, to hold on to their power, that they make really bad decisions.”
Those bad decisions are evident when it comes to big, history-forming events, such as the party’s enabling of Donald Trump’s assault on American democracy. But the bad decisions are also made subtly, in response to smaller episodes every single day, often to accommodate the party’s ugliest impulses. (The third chapter of Hurd’s book, written as an open letter to the Republican Party, is titled “Don’t Be an Asshole, Racist, Misogynist, or Homophobe.”)
The desperation—lawmakers catering to the loudest voices in the party base—is not healthy, Hurd says. It’s the by-product of safely partisan districts that provide more incentive to light fires than put them out. It’s the consequence of the public’s collapsing faith in the core institutions of civic society, which invites national politicians to weaponize disputes that should be addressed at the local level. It’s the expression of a country in decline—a country convinced that its existential concerns are not Chinese sabotage and Russian disinformation, but face masks in public and vaccines for a virus.
On what we could be facing:
Hurd’s book is notable for many reasons—his personal and professional journeys are legitimately compelling—but most of all for its rebuke of America’s proportionality problem. Drawing on his diverse experiences, from chasing down intelligence overseas to parsing classified documents in Congress to working with groundbreaking tech companies today, Hurd argues that we are woefully unprepared for what is coming our way. Quantum computing has the potential to break every form of encryption that guards our money and our secrets. Artificial intelligence could cut the service-based workforce in half—every two years. Biomedical advances will force questions about the ethics of rewiring our brains and halting the degradation of human cells. In the meantime, China will continue its siege of the American economy—swiping our intellectual property, snatching up our real estate, sabotaging our investments—while Russia will intensify its decades-old campaign to delegitimize our systems of government and turn Americans against one another.
His subtext is plain enough. To confront these challenges, Hurd’s colleagues in the Republican Party might need to rethink their fixation on transgender athletes and critical race theory.
“Everyone treats everything these days like it’s some damn emergency. And it’s got to stop,” Hurd says. “We’re going to be dealing with issues that are so complicated, and so life-altering, that they make the stuff we’re dealing with right now look like tickle fights.”
On immigration:
Why wouldn’t they want Hurd’s input? Simple. Because they knew he wasn’t going to tell them what they wanted to hear. They knew Hurd would offer a set of solutions—the mass streamlining of legal immigration for both high-skilled workers and low-skilled laborers; the construction of a cutting-edge “virtual wall” utilizing cameras and fiber-optic cables to monitor illegal crossings; the granting of citizenship to millions of “Dreamers”; the surge of funding to local agencies dealing with a mass influx of asylum seekers—that would antagonize the loudest voices in both party bases.
The Revenge of the Normal Republicans
Will Hurd thinks there are enough normal voters to deliver him the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. But is he right?
www.theatlantic.com
The Revenge of the Normal Republicans
Will Hurd thinks there are enough normal voters to deliver him the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. But is he right?
“Some of my friends, some of my former colleagues, they are desperate,” Hurd tells me. “They are so desperate to hold on to their positions, to hold on to their power, that they make really bad decisions.”
Those bad decisions are evident when it comes to big, history-forming events, such as the party’s enabling of Donald Trump’s assault on American democracy. But the bad decisions are also made subtly, in response to smaller episodes every single day, often to accommodate the party’s ugliest impulses. (The third chapter of Hurd’s book, written as an open letter to the Republican Party, is titled “Don’t Be an Asshole, Racist, Misogynist, or Homophobe.”)
The desperation—lawmakers catering to the loudest voices in the party base—is not healthy, Hurd says. It’s the by-product of safely partisan districts that provide more incentive to light fires than put them out. It’s the consequence of the public’s collapsing faith in the core institutions of civic society, which invites national politicians to weaponize disputes that should be addressed at the local level. It’s the expression of a country in decline—a country convinced that its existential concerns are not Chinese sabotage and Russian disinformation, but face masks in public and vaccines for a virus.
On what we could be facing:
Hurd’s book is notable for many reasons—his personal and professional journeys are legitimately compelling—but most of all for its rebuke of America’s proportionality problem. Drawing on his diverse experiences, from chasing down intelligence overseas to parsing classified documents in Congress to working with groundbreaking tech companies today, Hurd argues that we are woefully unprepared for what is coming our way. Quantum computing has the potential to break every form of encryption that guards our money and our secrets. Artificial intelligence could cut the service-based workforce in half—every two years. Biomedical advances will force questions about the ethics of rewiring our brains and halting the degradation of human cells. In the meantime, China will continue its siege of the American economy—swiping our intellectual property, snatching up our real estate, sabotaging our investments—while Russia will intensify its decades-old campaign to delegitimize our systems of government and turn Americans against one another.
His subtext is plain enough. To confront these challenges, Hurd’s colleagues in the Republican Party might need to rethink their fixation on transgender athletes and critical race theory.
“Everyone treats everything these days like it’s some damn emergency. And it’s got to stop,” Hurd says. “We’re going to be dealing with issues that are so complicated, and so life-altering, that they make the stuff we’re dealing with right now look like tickle fights.”
On immigration:
Why wouldn’t they want Hurd’s input? Simple. Because they knew he wasn’t going to tell them what they wanted to hear. They knew Hurd would offer a set of solutions—the mass streamlining of legal immigration for both high-skilled workers and low-skilled laborers; the construction of a cutting-edge “virtual wall” utilizing cameras and fiber-optic cables to monitor illegal crossings; the granting of citizenship to millions of “Dreamers”; the surge of funding to local agencies dealing with a mass influx of asylum seekers—that would antagonize the loudest voices in both party bases.
