Indeed, there is some public data, such as from YouGov earlier this summer, pointing to how information on Project 2025 had started to emerge from closed-off partisan bubbles. “Overall, 20 percent of U.S. adult citizens say they’ve heard a lot about Project 2025, while 39 percent have heard a little and 42 percent have heard nothing at all,” the YouGov report reads. “Most Independents with an opinion about Project 2025 dislike it (7 percent favorable, 38 percent unfavorable), while Republicans are more positive (26 percent favorable, 12 percent unfavorable).”

This all explains why Trump and his senior staff have — falsely — claimed that he has nothing to do with the conservative project, to the point that he got his supporters to boo Project 2025 during a campaign stop. Trump and his ilk realize how much attention the project is receiving from voters and how woefully unpopular many of the outlined policy prescriptions are to the average citizen. In recent weeks, as Rolling Stone previously reported, Trump had privately vented to political advisers that Project 2025, specifically the abortion-related components of it, risked tanking his electoral chances ahead of November.

      • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        This is pretty indicative of why they lean on the culture wars so hard. The bulk of their actual policy stances are not popular at all

        • Zron@lemmy.world
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          They know they are unpopular.

          Conservatives only account for a little more than 30% of the population, most of them are older too.

          They know that young, average Americans dislike their policies, which is why they made this playbook. They need to get someone in power who can execute all of their fantasies before they lose all chances of getting elected in our current system, and they need to change the system so they can cling to power.

          In order to energize their remaining voters, they need to make the alternative to them appear threatening, so they fabricate all of this nonsense like migrant crime and culture wars, to make the current America seem like a violent and dangerous place, when the actual numbers show that this is literally the safest time to be alive in American history.

          This is the lashing out of an old, dying beast. But they are still incredibly dangerous, as Project 2025 shows. They have a plan to seize power and maintain it through political appointees and the usurpation of the checks and balances we have left. Once they control most of the government, it will be impossible to route them out without crippling the country.

          They published the damn plan for anyone to see, and if even half of it goes through we won’t be the same country anymore.

          • cygnus@lemmy.ca
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            Conservatives only account for a little more than 30% of the population, most of them are older too… They know that young, average Americans dislike their policies, which is why they made this playbook.

            It’s comforting to believe this, but look at pics of the Charlottesville march, or even of Jan 6. They aren’t that old.

            • Zron@lemmy.world
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              There’s also not that many.

              Hundreds of people, yes, maybe a couple thousand at charlottesville and Jan 6th, but there’s almost 400 million Americans. If they were really that popular, I’d expect 10s of thousands of people at protests like that.

              It’s all about scale, and they don’t have it.

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            Conservatives only account for a little more than 30% of the population, most of them are older too… They know that young, average Americans dislike their policies, which is why they made this playbook.

            The sheer number of under-40 hardcore conservatives is going to be rather staggering to you if you leave Lemmy. And many of them are gun-clutching, boot-licking, fox-news-parrotting racist homo/transphobic bud-light-hating election deniers just like the evil older crowds. And they’d happily vote in P2025.

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    They really must have thought no one would read it.

    All they had to do was say they wanted to cut veterans’ benefits and they already lost enough people to tell Project 2025 to fuck off.

    There are over 16 million veterans in this country and who knows how many people in their families that rely on them and the benefits they receive. That sort of thing getting out is just poison.

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      They really must have thought no one would read it.

      I think some of those wish list items are placed in there to cut out “by reaching across the aisle” during negotiations

      But for a lot of the culture war bullshit, they genuinely seemed to have fallen for their own lie about there being a “silent majority” which wanted those things

      They want Saudi Arabia in America because they desire the absolute control and power the royal family in SA has over its people. The culture war bullshit is just a means to an end

      Edit, case in point https://www.advocate.com/politics/mark-robinson-wife-abortion-north-carolina-republican

      But there are many other examples of hypocrisy

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      It was fine until the SC immunity ruling. Nobody was reading the 900 page policy book, and it sounded like conspiracy theory crap to normal folk.

      This was actually very clever, since there’s so much braying about conspiracy bullshit everywhere, most not-terminally-online people just react with eyerolls to anything that sounds too outrageous, which this did. Remember that the prevailing wisdom out there is that politicians are liars and both sides exaggerate to score political points, with us calling them fascists and them calling us communists, etc etc.

      But then the SC came around and said Presidents get to commit crimes. This is a simple principle everyone can understand, so it can be communicated very easily, and that’s exactly what happened. And lo-and-behold, it was not an exaggeration, that is exactly what the SC said.

      This made everyone take the proj 2025 thing much more seriously, turning what had been fodder for supporters and under-the-radar for everyone else into a pretty big across-the-board loss. John Roberts and his more “moderate” conservatives essentially torpedoed the Heritage Foundation. lol

      The real question for future historians will be: Did he do it on purpose? Before that ruling, the nation was largely sleepwalking towards authoritarianism. Now it’s a fight, and that SC ruling was the tipping point, a bit of an “is this what you want?” sort of wakeup call. I don’t think so personally, but it’s a fun question. Either way, the two things combined into a collosal self-own for the authoritarian movement.

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        The only good thing about fascism is that it destroys itself. If it destroys itself because of that SC ruling before it even really gets going, I won’t complain.

        Hopefully it implodes soon.

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      Which revelation is actually most helpful and beneficial. I mean ultimately a 2 or even 3+ party system, where each party is serious about doing the best for all of the US and the world would be ideal. And for Nov 2024, GOP needs to lose and lose hard.

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      I worry that they felt confident laying this out because they believe the fix is in, and that no popular resistance is going to stop it.

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      If Harris/Walz want to pull large swaths of people to their side, all they need to do is focus on VA cuts and how anti-union it is. Have Walz pop into a could IBEW halls and outright say “this organization will cease to exist if you don’t vote out P25”.

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      We are absolutely BLESSED that Paul Dans, the author and architect of the 2025 plan resigned publically. I get that he was falling on his sword for displeasing his orange Lord, but for the rest of us it lent legitimacy to the document that up until then, republicans denied even existed. With his headline resignation, it just fucking CONFIRMED everything we’ve been warning people about.

      Small blessings. Let us appreciate them.

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        I saw that simply as a ploy to try and convince people it would go away. The Heritage Foundation has been meddling in our politics since the 70’s. They’ve not given up and we should absolutely assume that anyone on the right will adopt their policies.

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          Also, the team’s major work is already done. They write up this 900 page document ahead of the election and then publish it. That’s it, that’s all they do.

        • ameancow@lemmy.world
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          Oh it absolutely was a ploy, but it was mishandled or misjudged, it had the opposite effect as they wanted and now it’s sticking to Trump.

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    Who are these 42% who are completely unaware? What media are they consuming? Are they using tools to block real information from reaching themselves? Like an ad blocker but for real information?

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      I think you overestimate how much people care. There is a large swath of America who simply works, watches streaming/tiktok, hangs out with their friends who do the same thing and simply don’t pay attention to the world around them

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        It’s definitely this. There is a huge number of people who were sold “both sides” years ago and pay exactly 0 attention as long as they can still do the things you listed.

    • Addv4@lemmy.world
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      Or possibly they might support one goal, but not know/care about the others. Fox tends to push single issues pretty hard, and the voters probably don’t know about the other ones that are less popular.

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      That was “earlier this summer”. There was a lot of chatter about it here and I assume on other more left learning corners of social media, but it really only started hitting the traditional news outlets in the last month or so.

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    The reaction to Project 2025 has really surprised me. There’s nothing new in it that hasn’t floated around in the worst parts of conservative circles.

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      When you put it in writing, then read it, you realize just how scary it is. I think there are still some Dementia Don the racist rapist with 34 felonies voters that have just a little bit of decency left in them and see that and go “wow, no”. They might not tell their friends they’re not voting or voting for Harris, but I’m sure there’s a few out there.

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      You’re not wrong, but most people don’t pay attention to what’s going on in conservative circles. The entire conservative project has to deal with the fact that their policies are fundamentally unpopular and would obviously hurt the vast majority of people. Therefore, they tiptoe around what they actually want. “We’re going to reduce taxes”, for example, only ends up reducing taxes for rich people, and often increases taxes on everyone else. But the statement in a vacuum doesn’t give that away.

      Their big mistake this time is that they thought they could go full mask off and win easily.

    • Will420@lemmy.world
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      The difference being that the contents were only publicly espoused by a small number of people. But Project 2025 looks like the official gameplan for the Trump Presidency. Which is far more frightening.

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    From a non-American: can’t wait to see Trump & co. disappear from our daily feed after November for good.

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      We’ll be lucky if he disappears for 4 years when he loses (more likely Johnson will refuse to certify election results or enough red states will claim irregularities to move to a contingent election where he wins even having significantly lost the electoral college), but there’s a 0% chance he won’t be back in 4 years to try again even if he does actually shut the hell up for 4 years after losing.

      EDIT: Oh look, they’ve already started making it super-legal in battleground states: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/06/georgia-local-election-boards-allowed-withhold-vote-certification

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        He can’t keep delaying his legal troubles, and he’s an old man who eats a lot of McDonalds. There’s a very high chance that this is his last attempt.

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        Losing the presidency for three turns would be the longest Dems hasn’t held the oval office in a long time, I don’t see Harris, if winning, losing a second term, positivity and enthusiasm have been a massive relief to me, I can’t be the only one

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      I’d love to believe that he and his supporters would just vanish. But I don’t see them going quietly. It seems like his “first” term was a learning experience for him. With him being more prepared for a second term. He really had no clue about how to do an administration change in 2016 and was back tracking from policies immediately as soon as he won the election. Going from “Lock her up”, to it was just a campaign slogan in a couple of hours. If he loses this time. It really is the end for him and perhaps the Republicans. So they’ll be better prepared for a January 6th like event. With the Supreme Court being in his pocket.

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      It’s been a thing since 1980 and we’ve enabled nearly 75% of it so far

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    This is why they’re weird. They were bragging about Project 2025 a few months ago, because since everyone in their little far right bubbles wanted authoritarianism, they assumed normal people did.

  • Sam_Bass@lemmy.world
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    As it should be. No fucking sane person would dream that mess up let alone run a campaign on it

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      I don’t think that they wanted to run on it. As it’s completely toxic, just appealing to a few nuts. I think it was almost supposed to be a secret game plan for after the election. But the authors couldn’t keep their mouths shut about it.