Republicans Think They Can Get Away With It. They Might Be Right

[flamingdem]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/opinion/republicans-trump.html?action=click&algo=top_conversion&block=trending_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=218982741&impression_id=731882445&index=3&pgtype=Article®ion=footer


The leaders of the governing party can’t seem to stop doing and proposing unpopular things.

By Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson

Mr. Hacker and Mr. Pierson are the authors of the forthcoming “Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality.”

Does the Republican Party have a death wish?

Its most prominent leaders — particularly President Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader — have dug themselves into positions that defy all conventional rules of electoral survival. In an election year, even ideologically extreme politicians should try to do popular things and avoid doing unpopular things — if for no other reason than so that they can resume pursuing their extreme goals after Election Day.

Instead, top Republicans in Washington are pulling out all the stops to do unpopular things and avoid doing popular things. Their main proposals — more tax cuts for the rich, corporate legal immunity, pushing the post office into bankruptcy — have strikingly little support among voters, even among Republican voters. Meanwhile, they are resisting highly popular measures, such as additional relief for states, localities and ordinary workers, that would almost certainly increase their likelihood of holding onto power this fall.

This situation isn’t just surreal. It’s genuinely scary. In a democracy, leaders of a governing party shouldn’t act as if they can brazenly defy large majorities of voters and still hold onto power. The alarm bells only get louder when you begin to examine why current Republican leaders think this way — and why they might be right.

The United States is a profoundly polarized nation. Yet despite angry protests on the far right, the pandemic has actually lessened the divide among American voters. Large bipartisan majorities favor much more aid to states, localities and workers; believe the federal government has primary responsibility for ensuring adequate Covid-19 testing; and support a cautious reopening of the economy guided by public health expertise.

By contrast, large bipartisan majorities oppose states having to declare bankruptcy; the post office going insolvent; helping out corporate executives, the wealthy and big business with bailouts and other special deals; states handling testing on their own or a quick reopening without robust safeguards.

Rather than celebrating and heeding this unusual convergence, top Republicans in Washington have snubbed it. They have rejected what bipartisan majorities demand and demanded what bipartisan majorities reject. And they’ve done so knowing that voters will soon get their say.

In a few cases, they may believe voters will eventually move toward the party’s stances. In others, they may be posturing so Democrats have to yield costly concessions. And yet, as the stalemate wears on, it becomes harder and harder to avoid the simplest explanation for Republicans’ poisonous positions: They are devoted to them, and they think they can get away with them.

> more at link

[mr_lebowski]

1. Thanks for showing us the whole thing, but it's against the rules, IIRC (nt)

[Me.]

2. I'm Not Getting Their Point

why do they think they can get away with it?

Also, this doesn't make sense to me, but perhaps my reasoning is off....

"Large bipartisan majorities favor much more aid to states, localities and workers; believe the federal government has primary responsibility for ensuring adequate Covid-19 testing; and support a cautious reopening of the economy guided by public health expertise."

"By contrast, large bipartisan majorities oppose states having to declare bankruptcy; the post office going insolvent; helping out corporate executives, the wealthy and big business with bailouts and other special deals; states handling testing on their own or a quick reopening without robust safeguards."

How are these contrasting views?

[flamingdem]

3. Sorry that I edited the article

The whole article was important to read and there's a firewall for the NYT. Other than that
the repubs are impossible to understand. They've lost their humanity AND their sense.

As the official death toll from Covid-19 passes 100,000, these plutocratic priorities look even more glaring. Amid a crisis that’s laid bare American inequality, Republicans’ first instinct has remained the same: to go to the mat for the superrich. They’ve twisted relief bills to provide unrelated tax cuts and no-strings bailouts, shuttered the Senate amid a national health and economic crisis (though opened it long enough to strong-arm conservative judges onto the bench) and continued to float toxic ideas in an election year — say, making people give up some of their Social Security benefits in return for a financial lifeline today. If there’s an idea popular among conservative billionaires and nobody else, Republicans are probably pushing for it now.

But if Republicans lose big in the fall, then those who benefit from their consistent embrace of plutocracy lose, too. Why do Republicans and their organized allies think they can get away with it — or at least have a good enough chance to justify the risk?

The answer offers a stark warning about American democracy. Republicans benefit from two formidable bulwarks against electoral accountability. The first is tribalism: Republican elites have encouraged their high-turnout voting base to see every election as an epic battle to save white Christian America from a socialist, secular, gun-seizing left, with right-wing media and surrogate groups like the N.R.A. leading the charge.

The second bulwark isn’t solely of Republicans’ creation. Our political system guarantees less populated areas outsize clout in the Senate and gives control over election administration to the states. Republicans have built a growing advantage in rural America over the past two decades. The result is that the Senate (and, to a lesser extent, the Electoral College) remains a counter-majoritarian stronghold — not invulnerable to electoral reversal but highly resistant to it.

[Me.]

4. I Find Their Reasoning Weak

Tribalism...yes they rely on that but their numbers are falling and when your children are hungry or parents dying priorities change

Electoral College...yes they often have an advantage but the votes are the votes and if it's not close they lose. The only difficulty is having electors, who have pledged to do so, vote as a majority in their state want.

Another problem for the authors is that they haven't taken HIS instability into account. He is getting worse and worse and more and more people are speaking up. His hardcore base has been estimated at anywhere between 12-23 %. Not an overwhelming number. But when you see news reports and the crowds gathered it looks more than it actually is.

[flamingdem]

5. Let's hope your reasoning is correct

Otherwise we loose the country

[Me.]

6. My Biggest Fear

I keep waiting for him to implode/explode big time, can't figure out why it hasn't happened already when he spends every day raging. And I can only see it escalating. His most hated word, NO, is being handed over to him on a regular basis. Yesterday the Gov. of N. Carolina said no to his blackmail and Twitter is fact-checking him.

[czarjak]

7. They see Democrats as the Party of Blacks, and they'll always hate Blacks. Period.

[live love laugh]

8. They do it because they can without consequence and they know it. They've gerrymandered, suppressed

and bumper sticker messaged themselves into a virtually invulnerable position.

As long as we play by the old rules, the “fair” rules...we’ll lose even if we win because our wins are unsustained in comparison to theirs.