1. I'm not sure taxing ammo counts as common sense. Everything I've read suggests that it would not be remotely workable.
2. Anyway, again we're back to the border, I see. The southern border cannot be closed, and we don't want it to be closed. I mean, I suppose it depends on what you mean. You see, you guys have this trick you play, where you say, "I'm for closing the borders!" and then someone like me says, "closing the border would be bad." So then you come back with, "see, you want open borders, no restrictions on anything." That's typical MAGA logic.
The southern border cannot be closed because the US has obligations under international law to be available for refugees and asylum claims. To close the southern border is basically to withdraw from the Geneva Convention. I cannot emphasize too much how idiotic that would be. Immigration carries so many benefits for the United States.
There's no reasonable debate that immigration is good. All that fearmongering you inject into your veins is baseless. The optimal level of immigration is up for debate, as well as the way immigration is structured are debatable. But the lies you hear about immigrants or migrants bringing crime or disease -- it's all bullshit. You might find one or a handful of examples of something bad; that doesn't make it any less bullshit. It just means critical thinking is necessary.
3. That platform would not win nationally. When was the last time "fiscal restraint" won an American election? Every single fucking election, the GOP talks about new across the board tax cuts; the Dems talk about more focused tax cuts. Cutting spending has no natural constituency, because why do you think the spending is there in the first place? That's what the complete and utter failure of DOGE signifies -- there just isn't the "waste, fraud or abuse" in government spending. Every presidential campaign since Clinton has talked about cutting waste and fraud. We've had multiple commissions study the issue; we've had multiple rounds of cutting waste, etc.
The problem is that the average voter has no idea what "waste" even means. People like ZenMode just assume that everything he doesn't understand is just waste, which would have the odd effect of making the US government into a garbage dump with a flower growing on the edge.
But anyway, the spending is there for a reason, and almost all the time, that reason still exists when that spending goes on the chopping block. And the public choice dilemma also remains. Occasionally there can be exogenous factors, like the so-called "peace dividend" that can change the spending infrastructure but that's exception, not rule.
Dems tried to run on cutting the military budget. It did not work. There's no political appetite for cutting defense, because it's the ultimate public choice dilemma -- and the defense budget has been used by the GOP for years as a way of proving their manliness, and they paint as weak anyone who points out the useless spending and extraordinary waste.
The defense budget will not be reduced until the parties can work on a bipartisan basis, or if the Dems crush the Pubs to such an extent post-Trump that they will be electorally safe.
