The Republicans claim they have a deal on their tax bill. And they're rushing to get it done -- before Doug Jones takes his seat. Why? Paul Krugman thinks that the main reason for their behaviour is that they've been living in a bubble:
Today’s Republicans are apparatchiks, who have spent their whole lives inside an intellectual bubble in which cutting taxes on corporations and the rich is always objective #1. Their party used to know that it won elections despite its economic program, not because of it – that the whole game was to win by playing on social issues, national security, and above all on racial antagonism, then use the win to push fundamentally unpopular economic policies. But over the years the party has seemed increasingly out of touch with that reality, imagining that if only it preaches the gospel of supply-side economics loudly enough voters will be won over.
More than anything else, however, they want to put points on the board. Barack Obama tried the same strategy:
I’m taking the phrase from Rahm Emanuel, who believed that Obama could gain electoral capital simply by racking up legislative victories. The idea is that voters are impressed by your record of wins, or conversely that they’ll turn away if you don’t win enough.
The truth is that this strategy didn’t work at all for Obama, who won a lot of stuff in his first two years then got shellacked in the midterms. And think about the things that have been going wrong for Republicans in special elections: desertions by highly educated suburban voters, massive African-American turnout, weak turnout by rural whites. Which of these is likely to be improved by a massive, unpopular corporate tax cut? Still, the idea that you have to win something seems to have a grip on the GOP, and of course especially on our childlike president.
The stuff this bill does will hit the fan in time for the mid term elections. And the coalition which organized in opposition to Roy Moore will enter the polling booths of the nation.
The reckoning is underway.
Image: Scream Magazine
7 comments:
Its the old two step. Nwit Gringwitch said he wanted to drown entitlements in a bathtub. This has been a Republican strategy since FDR.
What happens that given the choice between butter and bullets the majority chooses butter.
This plan will yield neither butter nor bullets, Steve.
While their base may lap up the Republicans' empty economic rhetoric like thirsty dogs, Owen, it is hard to believe thinking individuals will be so easily fooled by such thin gruel. But I guess it will take a major defeat for any semblance of sanity to return to the Grand Old Party.
It's strange, Lorne. They appear hell bent on self destruction -- like their president. Welcome back.
Lorne, some <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_the_Matter_with_Kansas%3F>light in the darkness</a> was provided in 2004. Sadly IMHO things have gotten worse since that time.
The fear is and the goal of the Republicans is to be Serbian. The white tribe is still dominant in the USA.
IMHO Black Lives Matters is a front. There is so much astro turf in the USA its bigger
than the plastic wasteland floating in the doldrums of the pacific.
The Tea party was Astro Truf, Black lives matter is astro trurf, ANFITA is astro truff.
The real people are scared to death about the future and the manipulators what them to hop like rabbits into the stew of the future that really has no place for rabbits.
Owen the plan of the Repugs is to make the debt deficit so high that society can either go bankrupt or chose between eating and national security. They want to burn down the country to save it.
They're nihilists, Steve, pure and simple.
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