Mediaboss Marketing

At 54 years of age, martial artist, sitcom actor, comedian, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) pundit, psychedelics advocate and eat-what-you-kill moose hunter Joe Rogan finds himself the biggest podcaster in the world - and an increasingly divisive figure.

The Joe Rogan Experience, a meandering discussion show interrogating conspiracy theories and blending libertarian political chat with celebrity interviews, was named Spotifys most-heard podcast of 2021, a little over a year after the host signed an exclusive $100m (82m) deal with the audio streaming giant.

Leaked data acquired by Business Insider last summer revealed that the podcast accounted for 4.5 per cent of all shows heard on the platform during its debut month of September 2020, cornering 14.9m hours of total global listening time.

A spokesperson for the service said The Joe Rogan Experience had been its number one podcast every month since and that its audience had only grown in the interim - and the show was already a huge hit beforehand, its bullet-headed host claiming a whopping 190m downloads per month during an interview with Aubrey Marcus in April 2019.

The calibre of Rogans guests is a central reason for the pods popularity, welcoming everyone from a famously-stoned Elon Musk to Kanye West, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Lance Armstrong, Mike Tyson, Jack Dorsey, Dave Chapelle, Kevin Hart, Miley Cyrus, Matthew McConaughey and Edward Snowden.

Whether he is in conversation with renegade scholars about astrophysics, ancient civilisations, drugs, survivalism or scientology, joshing with raconteur friends like Uncle Joey Diaz or Duncan Trussell or, more controversially, hearing out right-wing denizens of the intellectual dark web like Alex Jones, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopoulos, Rogan offers everybody an equal opportunity to state their case without being shouted down, for better or worse.

That is no small gesture in a tangled American media ecosystem so often defined by poisonous hostility and confrontation in post-Trump 2022.

But The Joe Rogan Experiences transfer to Spotify has coincided with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and seen the broadcaster entertain even more dubious and potentially harmful propositions than usual.

Most recently, a New Years Eve episode in which his guest Dr Robert Malone likened contemporary American society to that of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and espoused the theory that mass formation psychosis was leading people to accept Covid-19 vaccines without question was taken down by YouTube but is still live on Spotify.

That has prompted 270 scientists and members of the medical community to write an open letter to the company saying that Rogan allowing Malones claims to pass unchecked could damage public trust in scientific research and sow doubt in the credibility of data-driven guidance offered by medical professionals.

The letter continues: This is not only a scientific or medical concern; it is a sociological issue of devastating proportions and Spotify is responsible for allowing this activity to thrive on its platform.

The Independent has contacted Spotify for comment.

This is hardly the first time Rogan has courted controversy during the Covid era.

He caused a major storm in April last year when he suggested on air that healthy young people do not need to get a vaccine, earning him a rebuke from Dr Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to US president Joe Biden, and forcing him to backtrack and insist: Im not an anti-vax person.

Im not a doctor, he continued. Im a f***ing moron and Im a cage fighting commentator whos a dirty stand-up comedian. We just told you Im drunk most of the time and I do testosterone and I smoke a lot of weed. But Im not a respected source of information even for me!

While that disclaimer largely shrugged off responsibility for his considerable influence, Rogan did, to his credit, subsequently invite Dr Rhonda Patrick back onto the show to explicitly debunk prevalent vaccine-denier falsehoods.

I really appreciate that Joe is willing to have conversations with people with whom he disagrees and that hes respectful in his discussions. Its refreshing! one YouTube commenter wrote beneath a clip of their exchange, as clear an insight into his appeal as you could wish for.

Rogan has since raised eyebrows by suggesting that ID cards containing proof of vaccination status take America one step closer to dictatorship and by announcing that he had taken ivermectin, a deworming medicine also used to treat livestock, when he himself contracted Covid in September, subsequently attacking CNNs chief medical correspondent Dr Sanjay Gupta over the networks coverage of his actions.

Joe Rogan confronts Sanjay Gupta over CNN 'lies'

The ivermectin spat even earned him a telling off from celebrated shock jock Howard Stern, the provocative American radio host and perhaps Rogans most obvious forerunner.

Recent appearances by Dr Peter McCullough and the aforementioned Dr Malone, two men with a track-record of pushing improbable theories concerning the pandemic and its origins, have raised further questions about how Rogan wields his power, given the immense popularity of his show.

The host has come a long way since he first launched The Joe Rogan Experience with friend Brian Redban way back on Christmas Eve 2009.

He was born in Newark, New Jersey, in August 1967 and is of Italian-Irish stock, his parents separating when he was a child and Rogan subsequently relocating with his mother first to San Francisco, California, then to Gainesville, Florida, and finally to suburban Boston, Massachusetts, as a teenager.

Speaking to Rolling Stones Erik Hedegaard in 2015, Rogan remembered his policeman father as a very violent, very scary guy, who, the host contends, would have turned his son into a psychopath had he continued to play a role in raising him, hence the adult Rogans decision never to seek to re-establish contact.

The podcaster describes suffering from an unshakeable sense of alienation as a youth, despite never wanting for friends, and took up first karate and then taekwondo after a humiliating encounter with a bully in high school, which prompted him to vow never to be unable to defend himself again.

I was terrified of being a loser, he told Rolling Stone. Superterrified of being someone who people just go, Oh, look at that f***ing loser. You know? I was always thinking that the other kids were going to turn on me at any moment. I was weird. I just f***ing drifted.

By the time he retired from competitive martial arts at 21 for a brief stint at Boston University, Rogan had won the US Open Championship taekwondo tournament as a lightweight and been full-contact state champion for four consecutive years, also instructing others in the discipline.

Persuaded by friends to try his hand at stand-up comedy, Rogan took to the stage at the notorious Stitches club in Boston in 1988, enjoyed it and commenced a career as a comic, taking inspiration from the likes of Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks and Sam Kinnison, betraying a taste for convention-baiting even then.

His brash, incredulous, wild-eyed stage persona, tackling subjects from Bigfoot to self-satisfied vegans and the inherent weirdness of attempting to enact the role of human being on a vast rock hurtling through infinity, is a world away from the relaxed manner he adopts during his podcast recordings, sat back in a Cypress Hill T-shirt against a brick wall bearing pictures of Elvis Presley and Jimi Hendrix.

Taking odd jobs to make ends meet - delivering newspapers, working as a chauffeur for a private eye who had forfeited his driving licence - Rogan eventually moved to New York City and then Los Angeles in the early 1990s in order to fully commit to a career at the mic, attracting notice with a set on MTVs Half-Hour Comedy Hour.

That led to him winning the lead in the nine-episode Fox baseball sitcom Hardball in 1994 and, in turn, a regular role in NBCs NewsRadio between 1995-1999, on which he replaced Ray Romano and befriended the tragic but great sketch comic Phil Hartman, who would later be murdered by the wife whom Rogan says he advised his friend to leave.

His passion for martial arts made him a natural for UFC punditry - although he initially resisted the industrys overtures, preferring to watch the bouts from the stands in peace - before eventually taking a job as a backstage interviewer in 1997 and moving on to become a colour commentator, where his flare for verbal invention made him an instant hit.

Joe Rogan serving as a ring announcer at a UFC bout in Las Vegas, Nevada, last summer

(Getty)

Thereafter, he set up his own blog at the turn of the millennium, Joe.Rogan.net, foreseeing the potential of the web as a forum for mass communication, andpresented the gross out game show Fear Factor on NBC between 2001 and 2006.

Retraining his focus on stand-up, Rogan went viral in 2007 when a video of him confronting fellow comic Carlos Mencia at The Comedy Store in Hollywood over a stolen joke began to circulate, an incident that saw him banned from the venue and dropped by his agents but which won respect from his fellow professionals.

Then came the podcast, with Rogan again proving himself to be ahead of the curve by daring to try something new and embarking on what would become the defining project of his eccentric and itinerant career.

Thirteen years on, there are more than 1,760 episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience out there, with three more landing every week, each one commonly more than two hours in length, rendering it near-impossible to become a completist - or even find an entry point for the uninitiated.

The hosts curiosity about his guests often oddball positions is never less than sincere and he does not usually allow nonsense to go unchallenged, frequently getting into heated debates with interviewees, memorably sparring with jiu jitsu flat-earther Eddie Bravo, for instance, or with Candace Owens over a flip remark she made about not believing in climate change.

However, the Dr Malone affair suggests he does not always go far enough.

Writing about that episode, The Independent columnist Noah Berlatsky took the broadcaster to task for abusing the misplaced trust he enjoys from his fans, saying: Rogans audience is a mix of people who distrust establishment media, people who distrust the left, and people who seek out alternative, scientifically unproven health advice. Not surprisingly, this is a perfect stew for disinformation about a public health crisis that has been intensely politicised by reactionaries.

Before the pandemic, Devin Gordon of The Atlantic also sought to pin down the essence of Rogans appeal, particularly among men, and defined his principal audience as: Guys who get barbed-wire tattoos and fill their fridge with Monster energy drinks and pre-ordered their tickets to see Hobbs & Shaw.

Making a point of sampling the mushroom coffee and other supplements Rogan advertises on his show, Gordon is reasonably sympathetic and writes: The hard truth for some of Rogans critics in the media is that he is much better at captivating audiences than most of us, because he has the patience and the generosity to let his interviews be an experience rather than an inquisition.

He is a tireless optimist, Gordon argues, as well as driven, inexhaustible, and an honest-to-goodness autodidact but carries the fatal weakness of showing too much compassion for bad actors.

The democratic value of making his considerable platform available to the likes of such pseudo-intellectual provocateurs-for-pay and division-stokers as Jones, Peterson, Shapiro, Yiannopoulos and Owens is not a given, even if his intentions are honourable.

While Rogan does not identify as a Republican and resists political labels, he certainly shares some of the rights anxieties about the shifting role of traditional masculinity in the 21st century, recently ranting somewhat hysterically that: You can never be woke enough, thats the problem. It keeps going. It keeps going further and further and further down the line and if you get to the point where you capitulate, where you agree to all these demands, itll eventually get to straight white men are not allowed to talk.

Joe Rogan claims straight white men arent allowed to talk

Heated opposition to wokeness and cancel culture is actually a relatively conventional stance among conservative-leaning comedians, who see both phenomena as antithetical to the radical free speech most comics endorse for the sake of their livelihoods.

But is Rogan conservative-leaning? His refusal to overtly align with either side of the aisle permits him space to pursue pet issues like the above, cannabis legalisation or gun rights without being committed to any one set-menu ideology.

However, it can also look like plain indecision on his part.

He briefly endorsed Democratic outsider Tulsi Gabbard for president in 2020, before changing horses and opting for Bernie Sanders, only to ultimately cast his vote for Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen, all the while promoting baseless Trumpian lines questioning Bidens mental fitness for the Oval Office given his advanced years.

Since Bidens inauguration, he has continued to dabble, recently advising Michelle Obama to run for the Democratic nomination in 2024, despite the former first ladys stated resistance to seeking political office, and joining Gettr, a new right-wing alternative to Twitter founded by Donald Trumps former campaign manager Jason Miller, seemingly a protest against populist congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greenes exile from mainstream social media.

Anti-fascist podcaster Jim Stewartson has gone so far as to brand Rogan Steve Bannons gimp, getting himself booted off Twitter temporarily for his trouble, but that is surely too reductive and unfair to the man.

Perhaps the hosts own explanation of the impact psychedelic drugs have had on shaping his psyche and singular social outlook is the real key to his character.

You know what you figure out in the middle of a trip? he asked Rolling Stone. That all these assumptions and preconceived notions of who you are, theyre all bulls***. Youre just an organism who is trying to find normalcy by repeating patterns.

Joe Rogan is not interested in even trying to be consistent because he is smart enough to know that allowing ones opinions to become set in stone means an end to personal growth, a death of sorts, and so keeps his mind open at all times, unafraid to take soundings from all quarters, always prepared to be convinced and never shutting himself off from the possibility of new horizons and new ideas, however absurd.

Learn, learn, learn, ladies and gentlemen, he tells his audience. Thats what Im getting out of this. I think its very important to continue to challenge your mind.

Which is more than fine, but perhaps a little more discrimination here and there wouldnt hurt.

Continue reading here:
Joe Rogan: How the cage fighting commentator and dirty stand-up comedian became the king of podcasting - The Independent

But then comes the complicating factor, the part of my experience that turned me more right-wing. Because in the second phase of my illness, once I knew roughly what was wrong with me and the problem was how to treat it, I very quickly entered a world where the official medical consensus had little to offer me. It was only outside that consensus, among Lyme disease doctors whose approach to treatment lacked any C.D.C. or F.D.A. imprimatur, that I found real help and real hope.

And this experience made me more libertarian in various ways, more skeptical not just of our own medical bureaucracy, but of any centralized approach to health care policy and medical treatment.

This was true even though the help I found was often expensive and it generally wasnt covered by insurance; like many patients with chronic Lyme, I had to pay in cash. But if I couldnt trust the C.D.C. to recognize the effectiveness of these treatments, why would I trust a more socialized system to cover them? After all, in socialized systems cost control often depends on some centralized authority like Britains National Institute for Health and Care Excellence or the controversial, stillborn Independent Payment Advisory Board envisioned by Obamacare setting rules or guidelines for the system as a whole. And if youre seeking a treatment that official expertise does not endorse, I wouldnt expect such an authority to be particularly flexible and open-minded about paying for it.

Quite the reverse, in fact, given the trade-off that often shows up in health policy, where more free-market systems yield more inequalities but also more experiments, while more socialist systems tend to achieve their egalitarian advantages at some cost to innovation. Thus many European countries have cheaper prescription drugs than we do, but at a meaningful cost to drug development. Americans spend obscene, unnecessary-seeming amounts of money on our system; America also produces an outsize share of medical innovations.

And if being mysteriously sick made me more appreciative of the value of an equalizing floor of health-insurance coverage, it also made me aware of the incredible value of those breakthroughs and discoveries, the importance of having incentives that lead researchers down unexpected paths, even the value of the unusual personality types that become doctors in the first place. (Are American doctors overpaid relative to their developed-world peers? Maybe. Am I glad that American medicine is remunerative enough to attract weird Type A egomaniacs who like to buck consensus? Definitely.)

Whatever everyday health insurance coverage is worth to the sick person, a cure for a heretofore-incurable disease is worth more. The cancer patient has more to gain from a single drug that sends the disease into remission than a single-payer plan that covers a hundred drugs that dont. Or to take an example from the realm of chronic illness, just last week researchers reported strong evidence that multiple sclerosis, a disease once commonly dismissed as a species of hysteria, is caused by the Epstein-Barr virus. If that discovery someday yields an actual cure for MS, it will be worth more to people suffering from the disease than any insurance coverage a government might currently offer them.

So if the weakness of the libertarian perspective on health insurance is its tendency to minimize the strange distinctiveness of illness, to treat patients too much like consumers and medical coverage too much like any other benefit, the weakness of the liberal focus on equalizing cost and coverage is the implicit sense that medical care is a fixed pie in need of careful divvying, rather than a zone where vast benefits await outside the realm of whats already available.

Read the original post:
Opinion | How Being Sick Changed My Health Care Views - The New York Times

MINOT, N.D. Wednesday evening I got word from my sources in legislative District 7 that state Rep. Rick Becker, the founder of the Bastiat Caucus wing of the North Dakota Republican Party, wouldn't be seeking re-election to his seat this cycle.

I was told he wouldn't be on the ballot at all for any race.

Later in the evening, Becker made that news official with an announcement to the dozens tuning into his local television show.

The activists in the Bastiat wing of the NDGOP, who have been fanning the flames of division in North Dakota's dominant political party for some time, will insist that they have the momentum. That they represent true Republicanism, as opposed to all those Republicans In Name Only, and are poised to take over.

Becker's decision to retire from elected office tells us a different story.

I can't say I'm surprised at the development.

I argued that the writing was on the wall for Becker's political career two weeks ago.

Let's consider the situation he finds himself in.

This spring the Bastiats attempted to organize a takeover of the NDGOP's district-level leadership. They threw everything they had at the effort, and got almost nothing for it .

Redistricting wasn't kind to Bastiat lawmakers. People such as Sen. Jason Heitkamp, Rep. Mike Schatz, Rep. Terry Jones, Rep, Gary Paur, Rep. Kathy Skroch, Rep. Sebastian Ertelt and Rep. Jeff Magrum saw their district lines redrawn in ways that diminish their chances of re-election.

The Bastiat ranks will almost certainly be diminished when the Legislature's 2023 session convenes.

A publicity stunt at a recent meeting of the NDGOP's state leadership fizzled when some Bastiat-aligned district chairs marched out of the room in protest of proposed rule changes to the party's endorsement process. Few joined them , and the Bastiats ended up standing outside the meeting in the cold while the rest of the party went about its business inside.

When the NDGOP picked a new chair last year, they didn't choose Bob Wheeler , an outspoken anti-vaxxer and Facebook keyboard warrior who had the backing of the Bastiat wing.

Meanwhile, Becker was facing a challenge to his endorsement for re-election on the NDGOP ticket by a leader of his own district party. Retha Mattern, the vice-chair of the District 7 Republican Party, announced a campaign for the House before Becker , the incumbent.

I don't have to tell you, dear readers, that a party leader challenging their own incumbent is not something that happens very often.

On a professional level Becker, a plastic surgeon by trade, is now facing calls for action against his medical license because of his pandering to anti-vaxxers and COVID-19 conspiracy theorists. While I think such an action would be a mistake , there's little doubt in my mind that the criticism factored into Becker's decision to give up his political career.

Photo by Will Kincaid / Bismarck Tribune

Becker was left with few good options. The ranks of his allies have been thinned, he's alienated vast swaths of his own political party, he's earned the enmity of leaders in the state's medical community, and the Trump-driven political shift that fueled his metamorphosis from thoughtful libertarian into a populist culture warrior isn't aging well .

Who can blame him for opting out?

As for what's next, I've had many speculate that Becker will attempt to lead his movement as a political pundit.

Color me dubious.

The ratings for his television show are so low they're difficult to measure through the traditional surveys, and his digital audience doesn't seem much larger. On Facebook, his videos garner maybe a few hundred views per episode . The last episode he put on the show's YouTube channel garnered seven views after more than a week online.

You read that right.

Seven.

There's a video of a guy farting on a snare drum that has almost 9,000 views.

I'd be surprised if Becker was still doing his television show a year from now.

It would shock me if he were a relevant figure in North Dakota politics at all.

We have a long way to go yet, but I suspect his decision not to run for the Legislature is the first sign that the Trump-era of politics in North Dakota, for all its sound and fury, is coming to an end.

The rest is here:
Port: Nobody wants to be the king of the clowns - The Dickinson Press

Sam Bright unravels the ties between Conservative leadership hopeful Liz Truss and Westminsters network of opaque libertarian think tanks

Boris Johnsons premiership of the Conservative Party is dying. It is currently unclear how slowly or quickly the rot is taking hold, but there is little doubt that his political career is on a steep, downward trajectory.

His Downing Street team held multiple parties in breach of lockdown rules both this year and last, some of which were attended by the Prime Minister. The public backlash has been fierce, with focus groups telling former Downing Street pollster James Johnson that the Prime Minister is a coward.

There was something about him that made him a bit more personable to me, one voter in the focus group said, who backed the Conservatives for the first time in 2019. Its gone now, because weve lost that trust in him. Now hes just a buffoon He cant be trusted.

Scenting an opportunity, rivals to Johnsons throne are now encircling the Prime Minister preparing their campaigns for the moment when his leadership begins its final descent. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is a front-runner in this pack, by virtue of her popularity among Conservative Party members.

But Truss also has another crucial constituency of support that may bolster her efforts to seize control of the Conservative Party: for years, she has developed close ties to the Tufton Street network a group of libertarian think tanks and lobbying groups, many of which are opaquely funded, that for years have exerted considerable influence on the policy decisions and the operation of the Tories.

Several of the groups are currently or were formerly based in brick-clad offices along Tufton Street in Londons Westminster, creating an association between a political ideology and the address as well as suspicions that these libertarian organisations closely coordinate their work.

Tufton Street is much like Fleet Street the former habitat of the newspaper industry. While the titles that were once based there have now scattered across London, Fleet Street is still used as a shorthand phrase for the industry much like Tufton Street and the world of libertarian politics.

Indeed, Shahmir Sanni, a Brexit whistleblower who formerly worked within the Tufton Street network, says that these groups regularly held meetings at 55 Tufton Street to agree on a single set of right-wing talking points and to [secure] more exposure to thepublic.

These organisations are bound by their support for Brexit the Vote Leave campaign was originally registered at 55 Tufton Street and their vigour for low taxes, laissez faire economics, a smaller state, and seemingly close relationship with Liz Truss.

Attempting to institutionalise a right-wing political ideology, the Conservative Party has deployed the public appointments system to install sympathetic individuals in prominent government roles.

This strategy has been adopted by Truss, seen actively during her time as International Trade Secretary from July 2019 to September 2021, which involved the awarding of public positions to Tufton Street insiders.

In October 2020, for example, the radical, right-wing website Guido Fawkes gleefully reported that Truss had appointed a swathe of free market think tankers to her refreshed Strategic Trade Advisory Group a forum of businesses and academics, which meets regularly to consider the UKs international trade policies.

These appointments included:

Lord Hannan himself was also appointed as an advisor to the Board of Trade a commercial body within the Department for International Trade in September 2020. His Initiative for Free Trade was formerly based at 57 Tufton Street, sharing an office with Colviles Centre for Policy Studies, based around the corner from the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Following these appointments to the Strategic Trade Advisory Group, former Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake wrote to Truss, asking whether proper due diligence had taken place in the recruitment process. Brake asked her to explain what additional checks had been carried out on the organisations that employ these individuals which have a history of failing to declare their donors to ensure that they are not funded by those who might be deemed to be agents of a foreign principal.

Core members of Truss own team have also been drawn from the Tufton Street network.

Sophie Jarvis who previously worked as head of government affairs at the Adam Smith Institute has been a special advisor to Truss at the Department for International Trade and now the Foreign Office. Nerissa Chesterfield, former head of communications at the Institute of Economic Affairs, was also employed as a special advisor to Truss from August 2019 to February 2020 leaving to work for Rishi Sunak, one of Trusss main competitors for the Conservative leadership.

Truss has also recently been given responsibility for post-Brexit negotiations with the EU tasked with ensuring a diplomatic resolutions to various trade disputes. Assisting Truss in this task is Minister of State for Europe Chris Heaton-Harris who chaired the European Research Group, a network of hard-right Eurosceptic Conservative MPs, from 2010 to 2016.

In August 2019, Truss appointed eight advisors to recommend locations for new, post-Brexit freeports ports where normal tax and customs rules do not apply two of whom were senior members of Tufton Street think tanks. One was Tom Clougherty head of tax at the Centre for Policy Studies. Clougherty was previously executive director of theAdam Smith Institute, managingeditor at the libertarian Reason Foundation, and senior editor at the CatoInstitute co-founded and part-funded by the Koch brothers, two radical, right-wing American billionaires.

Truss has surrounded herself with Tufton Street figures, with her departments often relying on their policy advice. She and her ministers held a swathe of official meetings with representatives of Tufton Street think tanks and lobbying groups during her time at the Department for International Trade, departmental records show.

Controversially, two meetings between the Institute of Economic Affairs and Truss were removed from departmental records in August 2020 justified on the basis that they were personal rather than official meetings. Labour accused Truss of appearing to be evading rules designed to ensure integrity, transparency and honesty in public office, and the records were subsequently reinstated.

It was also revealed in December 2018 that Truss met with five American libertarian groups during a visit to Washington D.C. that cost taxpayers more than 5,000. The organisations included:

The majority of these organisations have been closely associated with climate change denial or policies that obstruct efforts to address climate change and its effects.

Americans for Tax Reform belongs to aninternational coalition of anti-tax, free-market campaign groups called the World Taxpayers Associations, according to DeSmog. This includes the TaxPayers Alliance an influential UK libertarian pressure group founded by Matthew Elliot, who was the CEO of the Vote Leave EU Referendum campaign.

Elliott, an authoritative figure on the right, reserved special praise for Truss after an event hosted by Policy Exchange in September 2021, in which they both participated. Truss was on great form, he said, outlining a bold, exciting vision for how boosting international trade benefits UK consumers and workers across the country.

Help to expose the big scandals of our era.

Truss, along with a number of her colleagues, recently signed up as a parliamentary supporter of the Free Market Forum a new free market project launched by the Institute of Economic Affairs and advised by Elliott.

The MP for South West Norfolk since 2010, she is viewed widely as a political chameleon a former Liberal Democrat and a supporter of the Remain campaign in 2016 but her libertarian convictions have been evident since entering Parliament in 2010.

At the September 2021 Policy Exchange event, the Oxford University graduate emphasised her desire to [champion] open markets and free enterprise, saying that protectionism is no way to protect peoples living standards. This could well have been a veiled swipe at her boss, Boris Johnson, who has been seen as an interventionist Prime Minister using state spending and powers to achieve his political objectives, and raising taxes as a result.

At this critical time, we need trade to curb any rise in the cost of living through the power of economic openness, Truss added.

These sentiments chime with the attitudes of the Tufton Street network, establishing Truss as the Thatcherite contender in the upcoming Conservative leadership contest whenever it may take place.

Johnson has authoritarian instincts, and is certainly not a moderate Prime Minister. However, whichever direction the Conservative Party takes in the post-Johnson era, it seems likely to be more radical particularly in relation to economics. Truss, as the Tufton Street candidate, represents the sharp end of this spear.

Byline Times is funded by its subscribers. Receive our monthly print edition and help to support fearless, independent journalism.

New to Byline Times? Find out more about us

A new type of newspaper independent, fearless, outside the system. Fund a better media.

Dont miss a story

Our leading investigations include Brexit, Empire & the culture war, Russian interference, Coronavirus, cronyism and far right radicalisation. We also introduce new voices of colour in Our Lives Matter.

Read more from the original source:
Liz Truss: The Tufton Street Candidate Byline Times - Byline Times

Staff Report| The Reporter Times

The following individuals have signed up for the upcoming primary elections in Morgan County scheduled to take place on Tuesday, May 3.

This list of candidates was provided to the Reporter-Times on Tuesday, Jan. 18.

'A rare opportunity': Martinsville partners with global company to develop fiber network.

Candidates must file by noon on Friday, Feb. 4.

Richard Myers (Republican)

Kenny Hale (Republican)

Randy Mitchell(Republican)

Stephanie Elliott(Republican)

Tammy Parker(Republican)

Julie Brittain-Minton(Republican)

Chip Keller (District 1) (Republican)

Melissa Green (District 2)(Republican)

Kelly Alcala (District 3)(Republican)

Pam MItchell(Republican)

Charlie Haynes (independent)

Duane Stanley (independent)

Walter Worley (independent)

Danny Chenault(Republican)

Loren Moore (District 2)(Republican)

Philip Fowler (District 3)(Republican)

Sharon McIntosh(Republican)

Lester Duncan (District 1)(Republican)

David Hermann(Republican)

William Snyder(Republican)

Bill Mitchell(Republican)

Charlene Pugh(Republican)

Jon Fletcher(Republican)

Billy Abraham(Republican)

John Phillips(Republican)

Tom Carter(Republican)

Jim Lankford(Republican)

Larry Ellis(Republican)

Denise McClure(Republican)

Kristin Alexander (Libertarian)

James Johnson(Republican)

Ronald Burnett(Republican)

Francie Zoller-Teeters(Republican)

Continued here:
Here are the candidates who have filed to run in the upcoming election by Tuesday, Jan. 18 - Reporter-Times