Semafor said today that "a critical mass of conservatives do not trust McCarthy to lead them..."
Conservatives. Is that what they are?
John Boehner's description of the same crowd in his memoir:
"What they're really interested in is chaos... They want to throw sand in the gears of the hated federal government until it fails."
Are the sowers of chaos properly called "conservatives?"
Is MAGA conservative?
Why do #journalists with a commitment to accuracy maintain this fiction?
I think you'll find that in American politics, terms like conservative and liberal have drifted so far over the generations as to have largely lost meaning.
Even just talking to self-described conservatives you'll hear vastly different political ideas.
That's just how the vernacular changes over time.
I absolutely avoid those terms myself! :)
I try to use more concrete, more well-defined terms. For example, I might talk about people holding certain policy preferences that are relevant to the discussion, or I might use terms "Democrat" and "Republican" since at least I can refer to official party platforms.
Also, I absolutely hate when reporters frame Supreme Court justices as conservative or liberal especially since their approaches don't fit nicely into two categories like that, much less with connection to broader senses of those terms.
Yeah, the terms need to be retired in general conversation.
A huge problem (that I first really NOTICED in the late aughts but assuredly began sooner than that) is that American Press tends to treat "Conservative" and "Liberal" as literally interchangeable with "Republican" and "Democrat" respectively when they never have been, and now less than ever.
We currently have a Neofascist Authoritarian Party with a small handful of genuine Conservative elements, and a Conservative party with a somewhat larger cohort of Liberal elements.
@LumiKlovstad your comment is really funny to me as it takes some poorly defined terms and throws in a few more just for the fun of it.
It's simultaneously a bit circular and insubstantial, except for the mud it slings.
@jayrosen_nyu
If you think I was belittling you, you misunderstood, and I'm happy to clear that up.
No I'm not belittling you. I'm just pointing out that this use of language is kind of funny, defining conservative in terms of conservative plus terms like fascist which have even less in terms of substantial meaning.
I assume you were expressing exactly what you wanted to. It's just the art of how you did it that's interesting.
@jayrosen_nyu @volkris Thomas Zimmer refers to them as the reactionary right. But he's a historian, not a journalist.
@volkris When I come upon a phrase that is essentially meaningless, I remove it from my writing. What do you do, sir?