People focus rightfully on Fox News as the main media outlet to carry the message for Trump and Republicans, but there is also a very large adjacent pundit class with figures like Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman, and Tim Urban who basically have built a permission structure for conservatives to see themselves as liberal and to utterly ignore how extreme the Republican Party is.
Who else would you put in this group? I'd also say that many of these people don't even know that they're doing this.
@mattsheffield Brooks, at least, knows he’s conservative, and I think Douthat probably would as well if you forced him to put a label on it, along with a few others. French certainly wouldn’t deny it.
There ARE some genuine progressives in the mix, of course, but I personally suspect the majority have convinced themselves their neoliberalism is really a sterling example of “independent thinking.”
@ronhogan Definitely Brooks and Douthat would describe as conservative.
Among the neoliberals, I think they probably would not even realize that they are neoliberals and that globally, neoliberalism is regarded as a conservative ideology.
Matthew Sheffield
Ron Hogan