Republicans Repudiate 40 Years of Tougher Copyright Laws
I'm not sure its fair to say "Republicans", as if there's some consensus outside of the paper, regardless of the amount of Republicans in the Republican Study Committee. I doubt most of them know the paper exists, never-mind what conclusion it might draw. There's also no saying what percent of republicans and percent of democrats might agree with the paper. For all we know 70% of democrats and 40% of republicans might agree with the conclusion (pulled out of a hat, I might expect the % agree to be roughly the same for both parties).<p>It's unfortunate, and I'm having a hard time finding a way to put it nicely, but other issues seem to take up most of that party's time. If the Republican party pivoted to being a fiscally conservative and socially apathetic party then they might actually do very well.<p>If they spent their news cycles advocating research on the myriad topics in american law that border on cultish in acceptance, such as copyright and, sure, poverty reduction programs that may or may not be worth their salt, they might do great. We could use a party of respectable scrutinizers that stand skeptical of any longstanding policy that might be costing citizens (or civilization) too much.<p>But they don't do that. Instead they spend their news cycles (conservative news stations and radio) on all this cultish crap of their own. Obscene amounts of doom-saying over every thing they might dimly disagree with. XYZ is going to "take away" guns, and kill jobs, and "ruin" (ruin!) the economy, and force an end to all prayer, and other ridiculous characterizations. Taxmageddon is the newest one. Taxmageddon. Returning to 90's tax rates is the End of Days.<p>Lofty policy other than tax cuts, if they are thinking about other policies at all, are certainly rarely talked about, at least on the national stage.<p>It's an interesting paper we've got on our hands here, but we have no reason to believe that the majority of republicans <i>know it exist,</i> never mind that they are ready to be serious and sincere about examining party priorities that might stop the entire rest of their platform from being a blocking issue towards voting for them.