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Comment by oxymoran | Hacker News Reader

If the republicans were smart, which they mostly aren’t, they would let Thiel be their nominee for president next time around. I would vote for him over nearly anyone the dems are going to throw out there.

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Peter Thiel was born in Germany, acquiring American citizenship only later, and is presumably not eligible to be president of the US on that basis.

Proudly declaring "I have a great solution that no one has ever thought of before," without putting in the due diligence to understand feasibility and consequences, is close to the literal definition of the reactionary mindset.

More concisely, it is hubris plus gumption minus diligence.

The "hubris plus gumption minus diligence" mindset can be frequently found among adherents of all sorts of ideologies. If anything, reactionaries are likely to shy away from solutions that no one has ever thought of before in favor of solutions that they think have worked before.

“They think” is the key word here. It’s usually informed by woefully misinformed understandings of history and science. That’s what makes it “gumption-based” rather than “evidence-based.” This is what differentiates the reactionary from the conservative.

To some extent I agree with you, which is why I wrote "they think". Most people's ideologies are based on misinformed understandings of history and science. Reactionaries are probably more likely to be misinformed than conservatives and, in general, other kinds of moderates are. But I doubt they are more likely to be misinformed than progressives are. I think maybe in general, moderates are more likely to be well-informed than extremists. Gumption-based approaches are common among progressives and reactionaries alike. Maybe even more common among progressives, although I wouldn't put money on it.

Is a concept like 'feeding babies is better (i.e. cheaper and healthier) than jailing adults' progressive and so probably based on misinformed understandings of history and science, or is it not progressive?

I'm losing track of how this works, of late. Canadian-born Ted Cruz was able to run for president, with at least one state ruling that he was eligible[1]. Of course there were the made-up controversies about Barack Obama, which I think can be dismissed. John McCain, meanwhile, seemed to get some kind of clearance from Congress to be able to run, as we was born in the Panama Canal zone[2].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cruz#Citizenship 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain#2008_presidential_...

The key words are "natural born citizen" aka you are an American citizen the moment you are born. All babies born on American soil automatically qualify, as well as babies born abroad to a US citizen. Ted Cruz and John McCain both fall in the latter category.

Interestingly this definition is commonly agreed upon but not written down in the constitution, and the Supreme Court has never taken up this challenge.

And of course our first few presidents could never have been a "natural born citizen".

Funny that you mention it. The full text is "natural born Citizen or a Citizen of the United States at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution".

Is that actually smart though? I think such a strategy would rely a lot on inertia of existing voters (he is kind of Christian but how many republicans would vote in a gay man?) as well as finding new voters (hoping for masses of new voters after a big ideology shift sounds like a good route to failure, though trump had success with it). And obviously he would need to run and win the primaries, both of which seem unlikely to me.

Honestly I think the republicans will have to stick with trump for a while yet after having tied themselves to him in the last four years. Unlike Thiel, Trump can definitely win a lot of votes. He managed to come a very close second in what, after four years of trump and half a cocked up pandemic, ought to have been an easy win for the dems.

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