How do GOP elites keep getting away with screwing their own constituents? A great new analysis from @Jacob_S_Hacker and colleagues bring deep context to this question. Cultural resentments/pro-rural electoral bias protect GOP lawmakers from accountability: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
@Jacob_S_Hacker “Red America is falling farther behind, but politicians who represent it at all levels have gotten more unified on an economic agenda that hurts the people who live there."
@Jacob_S_Hacker. Great stuff tracing this regional divergence back over decades:
@Jacob_S_Hacker If regional inequalities are a big problem, red states should want expanded federal cash transfers and more spending on social insurance and infrastructure.
But GOP leaders everywhere are even more unified behind the rejection of such solutions:
The new voter suppression effort in Georgia is a horror. It's telling that this comes in the very state that made Biden's rescue bill possible. Indeed, that bill's popularity is itself making anti-majoritarian tactics more urgent for the GOP. My latest: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Biden’s bill could boost the income of the poorest fifth by 20%, help millions save on health care and cut child poverty in half. Yet Republicans are off spinning wild tales about checks going to terrorists.
The Trumpified GOP's descent into anti-leftist delirium gives Biden and Dems a major opening. Going big on the economy and infrastructure could deal a crippling blow to authoritarian populism just as it devolves into a QAnon-ified Trump cult. New piece: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
This quote from Ron DeSantis perfectly captures the bankruptcy of Trumpism's hallucinatory anti-leftism:
“We can have academic debates about conservative policy. But the question is, when the left comes after you: Will you stay strong, or will you fold?”
Biden and Dems have an opening to create a new synthesis: Ambitious progressive economics (infrastructure!) combined with boldness on issues Dems often fear (immigration, climate).
Biden's comments on Amazon unionization fit into this:
The GOP opposition strategy is more radical than in 2009. This time they're betting they can win back power through voter suppression and countermajoritarian tactics, even if Biden succeeds. They don't need to be part of the conversation at all. New piece: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Republicans have entirely ceded the field in the debate over two of the biggest crises of modern times.
In 2009 at least you had people like Paul Ryan making BS arguments about deficits.
Now Rs are barely making a public case at all. Because they can't:
Stephen Miller is running a disgusting shadow war against Biden. Central to it is the claim that Biden is reverting to Trump policies, including "kids in cages."
It's nonsense. This isn't "kids in cages" redux at all. Here's my effort at an explainer:
Republicans are objecting to the 1/6 commission having a broad purpose in its investigation of the factors leading up to the insurrection, a Dem aide tells me.
The problem is not partisanship. It's GOP radicalization.
Will Republicans really pick anyone for the commission who will back an accounting that includes the role of Trump/his election lies in inciting the insurrection?
Doubtful. Rs are too tied up in all that themselves.
Ted Cruz now says the media is attacking him due to Trump withdrawal. This may seem silly. But Republicans are increasingly recentering Trump as chief victim in US public life amid an ongoing retreat into their right wing fictional universe. New piece: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
The pull of the Hannity disinformation vortex is so strong that Republicans are incentivized to tell lies that counter truths that *Republicans themselves* have admitted to elsewhere:
The Texas disaster actually shows the terrible trade-offs at the core of *conservative* governance.
But in a fictional universe where it can be blamed on leftist economics with no sense of obligation to basic facts/reality, that truism is easily erased: