Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

Anti-immigration is a new GOP sentiment. Traditional small-government libertarianism/conservatism is pro-immigration. Look at Bush and Reagan. Anti-immigration is more in line with the labor movements, like the one run by Cesar Chavez.

> both reject social programs aimed at helping those in poverty (including healthcare, such as the Affordable Care Act

Not true at all. Many GOP members I know would be pro-gov't healthcare if we had our borders under control. The main difference I see between the dems and GOP in this regard is nationalism.

> both oppose unions

Not really. Trump's policies are incredibly popular among union members even if not popular with union leadership. Those two groups have different interests.

> It's the anti-union, labor-exploiting wealthy who are the stars of the GOP.

Who no one in the GOP likes anymore. Honestly, go read patriots.win or something, they'll tell you exactly what they think of the wealthy GOP.

That's a popular trope, but not really supported by any evidence. Take, for example, sanctuary cities...which can be seen as a form of illicit globalization. The popular trope suggests that undereducated and low income native American citizens would lose by attracting large quantities of low cost labor. But the exact opposite is true: native blue collar employment and wealth increases, welfare dependence and poverty decreases.

Perhaps the purveyors of the popular narrative should read up on David Ricardo. It's been 200 years since he died, and people still haven't caught on that more trade is a universal good...something economists have nearly universally accepted for literal centuries now.

I dunno about that. Most people don't really care if their benefits are any good. And I've never seen a single job listing that went more in depth than "great benefits".

> Finally, anything more than essential coverage could and should still be privatized, and paid for by individuals. Much like today’s life insurance today. e.g., long cancer recovery and care.

Yeah, that's true in most if not all countries with universal healthcare. Of course, as someone else alluded to, it's a difficult distinction to make. I don't care about the mole on my face but a mole might legitimately effect someone else's mental health.

Which reflects a philosophy of government and a desired system of laws.

> I wonder how people like that function. Like, they chose a party, and automatically agree and favour everything that party says? That's weird. If not, like if you only believe in 2-3 of their core things, but disagree with the rest, why do you still talk about party affiliation?

Usually it’s the other way around: parties, politicians, and activists specifically court and/or alienate people based on broad cultural affinities, and once they’ve established those affinities, maybe they can communicate their policy and ideological agendas. Both parties have actually substantially changed their policy agendas over the past few years to maintain those cultural affinities.

> What happens when you have a conflicting opinion with the party? Especially considering the party in question is blatantly anti-science. Take climate change for instance. There are young Republicans that aren't braindead or brainwashed enough to think it's a sham and want it taken seriously, but they're still stuck only with the Republican party as a choice because the the main things they believe in match only with them. And then have to support the party which proudly says that climate change means no more burgers, so it's obviously stupid and wrong and God wouldn't have wanted it!

This seems like a parody of what Republicans actually believe, but let me detach from the object level a little bit here: it sounds like you really would not, yourself, prefer to live in a state governed by Republicans. Well, you don’t have to!

> Or, hear me out... compromise?

Federalism is a compromise.

> Otherwise you'd have half the country living in a backwards, religious law-based, science denying country with lots of guns, high teen pregnancies and child abandonment and mistreatment.

Aside from the “lots of guns” thing, this sort of reads as a biased stereotype to me. But I’m trying to avoid the actual object-level political differences here.

It seems by “compromise” what you really mean is, “red states shouldn’t be allowed to decide their own laws”. I somehow doubt you’d be so sanguine about urban Democrat-dominated parts of the country having to “compromise” with those awful, awful Republicans.

Whereas what I mean by “compromise” is—you don’t have to like the other side, or agree with them, or try and come up with a compromise set of policies you can both live under. You can just leave them the hell alone and mind your own business, and in exchange, they will leave you the hell alone and mind their own business.

The US is roughly the size of the European Union, while individual US states are comparable in population to European countries, though a little smaller on average. I think the differences in law and policy between, say, California and Idaho are not as broad as some of the differences between EU member states.