Meet the post-Trump Republicans, same as the pre-Trump Republicans
We’ve been here before. Republicans have control of the House, but not the Senate or the White House. Some newly elected and some pre-existing lunatics and grandstanders are demanding that spending cuts get enacted or they will have the country default on its debt payments. That is exactly what was going on 12 years ago. Today, the situation is both better and worse than it was back then.
What makes it better is that the House majority is very narrow. While that can empower the hardliners, it can just as easily empower more moderate members. The situation today is also better because, since we have been through this before, we know that we need to do everything possible to avoid defaulting starting right now even though the deadline is not until the summer. The debt ceiling and its dangers has been a hot topic in Congress and the press since the beginning of the year as it was clear from the get go that there was going to be plenty of drama leading up to its deadline.
What makes things worse is that most everyone seems to be complacent. Nobody knows how it will end, but the more people think everything is going to be fine, the more likely it makes it that there will be a default. A default would be catastrophic, which is why nearly everyone thinks it will not happen. Not defaulting is my assumption as well, but it is not set in stone. The most hardline Republicans in the House are true believers. They really do not care if a default happens. Among House Republicans who are not crazy, none of them so far have advocated for a clean debt ceiling increase. They, too, have demanded that spending cuts be a part of it. That may just be what they are saying now and will change, but it may not.
The position of Biden and his staff has been the same from the start. They are not negotiating over the country’s full faith and credit. That is exactly the right position. What House Republicans are saying is “give us spending cuts we could never get enacted or we’ll blow up the economy.” There is no negotiating with that. Nobody should expect to get anything in return for not committing economic sabotage. The only proper response to anyone making that demand is “NUTS!”
Think of it this way: if Democrats only controlled the House and threatened to default unless all private health insurance was eliminated, would that be acceptable? If your answer is yes and also yes to what House Republicans are doing now, you are consistent and insane. If your answer is no to both of those, you are consistent and rational. If your answer is yes to one of those and no to the other, you are a hack and not to be taken seriously.
One Democrat who has supported some negotiation with House Republicans is Joe Manchin. He has advocated for essentially agreeing the raise the debt ceiling in exchange for creating a blue ribbon commission to look at deficit reduction. That may be something Democrats wind up agreeing to and may be something I could live with. It might even be a good idea because it would give Republicans more opportunities to talk about Medicare and Social Security (entitlements) cuts while Democrats get to talk about raising taxes on the wealthy.
That last point drives home what I have been writing for some time about Trump and his many imitators and would-be successors. Trump is a terrible candidate, but it never ceases to amaze me how much better his instincts are than most Republicans, especially those in Congress. His imitators in Congress and elsewhere are not just personally revolting and crazy, they are incredibly dumb. They combine Trump’s toxic personality with draconian, unpopular spending cuts. A Democratic strategist could not have invented that in a lab.
Trump himself has said that in the debt ceiling fight, Republicans should not touch entitlements. He still has it. Other Republicans have completely ignored his insights on that matter and are reintroducing their many unpopular ideas that he put on ice. One of the concessions Kevin McCarthy made to become Speaker was to allow for a vote on a national sales tax. That is an idea that has been around for 20 or so years now and is quite possibly the worst tax policy there is. It would eliminate the income, payroll and estate tax and replace them with a 30% sales tax. For most everyone, that would be a substantial tax increase and would be extremely regressive. The ads write themselves. “Republicans want to eliminate taxes on the wealthy and raise the price of gas and groceries.”
Another concession made by McCarthy to become Speaker was to promise to balance the federal budget in 10 years with no tax increases. Doing so without massive cuts to entitlements is mathematically impossible. Like with a national sales tax, the ads write themselves.
The core ideology of the pre and post-Trump Republicans
For clarity, when I say Republicans here, I am referring primarily to Republicans in Congress, but also to some Republican state officials. While there is variance with the latter, the former have almost all quickly begun reverting back to where they were pre-2016. Rank-and-file Republican voters are a different story. Unlike big donors and congressional Republicans, they are not government-hating ideologues, as Trump proved.
It is becoming clearer everyday that the biggest legacy Trump will likely have with Republicans is not a change in policy, but a change in behavior, i.e., no moral standards and the elevation of entertainers. For all the talk since 2016 about Republicans becoming a workers’ party, they are still, at their core, the party of management and business owners. They still cling to the belief that the social safety net and progressive taxation are bad and that the key to prosperity is to cut (or eliminate) taxes on those at the top so they will work their magic and create jobs for everyone else. Remember how much talk there was in the 2012 campaign about “job creators”? If you missed it, I have good news for you, it’s probably coming back.
Trump was an aberration. His opposition to entitlement cuts was sui generis and is not something many other Republicans are looking to emulate. The sway of big donors still holds, as does the belief that taxes are the only thing that matters when it comes to promoting economic growth. It is not enough to just cut taxes though. The social safety net must be slashed because it encourages laziness. Things like the minimum wage and worker protection laws violate freedom of contract and employers’ rights while unions are an intrusion onto business owners’ property. The Progressive Era, the New Deal, the Great Society and the Affordable Care Act were abominations.
All that may sound like a love of free market economics, but it is not. If the large majority of elected Republicans truly did believe in free market economics, they would be focusing on areas where bad policy is holding back growth the most. They would start with housing. Republicans on the national and state level would be pushing to cut back on zoning laws so more housing could be built to lower costs. On jobs, they would be pushing for a reduction in licensing laws and cracking down on anti-competitive practices of employers, i.e., non-compete covenants. On healthcare, they would be pushing to get the FDA to approve more medicine faster and would be encouraging more immigration of medical providers. Very few elected Republicans are doing any of those things.
The ideology pushed for by almost all Republicans in Congress and in some states does not really care about regulation per se. Its focus is on boosting what it sees as the fortunes of managers and business owners above all else. If that means cutting back on regulations protecting workers, consumers, investors or the environment, that is fine. If it means leaving in place regulations and tax loopholes that benefit big wigs, that is just as well.
It is not enough to push for things that make those at the top even wealthier. Rhetoric is a big part of their ideology. Business owners and managers are to be worshipped and praised profusely. They are “job creators” and “makers.” They are the only reason the world still turns. Whatever they say must be deferred to without question. Everyone must sing their praises all the time lest their feelings get hurt and they go on strike.
Trump did a good job of not only opposing entitlement cuts and neutralizing the issue, but also of talking about workers and claiming he understood them. He campaigned in 2016 not on tax cuts or deregulation, but on infrastructure spending and bringing back manufacturing jobs. He seldom spoke about taxes or regulations and never used phrases like “makers versus takers” or “job creators.”
Paul Ryan is no longer in Congress, but his ideas still are. Part of that is because Trump did not have an ideology that transcended him. While he made some smart moves on policy and rhetoric, he does not care about ideas. His whole thing is just being aggrieved and thinking entirely about himself. Maybe a new ideology will replace Paul Ryanism, but it will have to come from someone else.
Many Republicans today claim to be fighting against corporations. Don’t be fooled. The fights Republicans are having against corporations are not about tax or regulatory policy. They are about culture war battles. That is true on the federal and state level. Ron DeSantis has made a name for himself fighting against “woke capital,” but neither he nor any major Republican figures are arguing for raising taxes on corporations or their owners. They are not arguing for supporting unions or other measures to give workers a voice. They are just ranting and raving about wokeness while doing nothing of substance beyond a few ad hoc, retaliatory measures.
The DeSantises of the world love to fight culture war battles, but at the end of the day they will allow business managers and owners to do as they please and will fight to lower their taxes no matter what. Business managers and owners may not like being on the receiving end of culture war insults, but they absolutely love the tax cuts and other goodies the DeSantises of the world will deliver for them.
Stay focused on what truly matters
One thing I have been trying to do for the last several months is to write as little about culture war issues as possible. Of the many reasons I have for doing that, one is that they are a distraction from things that most voters care about and which affects their lives. My main focus in writing this blog is to write about things that can be affected by policy. Virtually every fight in the culture wars does not qualify as such. Very few culture war fights can be addressed by policy nor are they things that most voters even know about.
That does not mean that culture is not important, it most certainly is. It just is usually not something that can be affected by changes in policy on any level. As for culture war fights, occasionally they are something that most voters care about. The success in fighting for gay rights is the best recent example, but such cases are the exception. Most culture war fights are fads that go away on their own without any lasting change. The fight over wokeness will likely wind up being one of those.
The fight over abortion is a big issue and will be for some time although I hesitate to put it entirely under the culture war umbrella, but that is for another blog post. With the exception of that issue, almost every fight today that is considered to be part of the culture wars involves things with very low stakes. Issues such as gender affirming care and transgender athletes, for example, affect very few people and are not things that many voters are even familiar with, let alone passionate about. Similarly, arguing over pronouns is completely foreign to most voters and involves no substantive policy issues.
I mention all this because I do not want to get distracted and I do not want other people getting distracted either. When it comes to electoral politics, a big focus of mine, being a culture warrior is a loser in competitive races. No matter which side of it you are on, if that is what you are talking about, you are out of touch. The results of the midterms should have made that clear.
I have written before about problems Democrats have had with becoming distracted by culture war topics, especially as it relates to wokeness, but Republicans are guilty of it, too, and I would argue are much worse offenders. Many of their candidates for national and state offices last year centered their campaigns on things like pronouns, critical race theory and transgender athletes. Most of them lost and emphasizing things voters were not interested in probably played a big role.
It is tempting to get distracted by the latest outrage. That outrage may even be justified at times. In the case of DeSantis, he is a gold, silver and bronze medalist in the jackass Olympics. He has never seen a culture war battle he did not want to jump right into. He has successfully cornered the anti-vaxxer market and has done everything he can to use the force of government to go after things that he calls woke.
All that said, while I dislike those things, they are a distraction. I mention the example of DeSantis because he is a textbook case of the potential dangers of fighting culture war battles at the expense of substantive battles. He almost certainly will announce his run for president sometime this year. How he will turn out running against Trump is anyone’s guess, but he may prevail and if so Democrats will have to run against him the smart way.
What would the smart way be? It is very simple and boring. What has gotten Republicans, including Trump, in the most trouble is not personal behavior or culture war fights. It is old fashioned economics. Remember, the core belief among almost every congressional Republican is that the social safety net and progressive taxation are bad. Those are very unpopular positions and when he was in Congress, DeSantis was very much a proponent of both of those ideas. Unlike Trump, he has been an advocate of cutting entitlements and voted for it every chance he got. If he is the Republican nominee in 2024, that will likely be his biggest weakness, as long as it is exploited.
It will be critical for not just Biden, but Democrats and left-wingers of any significance to stay on message against him. He is a culture warrior through and through. It is what seems to drive him more than anything else. It is also a great way to get opponents to fight on his turf. Consciously or not, when people like him start culture war fights, they are trying to bait Democrats and those on the left. Taking the bait or not will be up to them.
It is no accident that Republicans love to engage in culture war battles. They have an economic agenda that appeals to almost nobody. When Democrats and those on the left engage in culture war fights, they are playing Republicans’ game. Playing that game is not only a great way to get distracted, but also to wind up making the DeSantises of the world look like the reasonable ones.
Should DeSantis be the nominee in 2024, he will probably not want to talk about his enthusiasm for entitlement cuts or most of his voting record in Congress. He will want to run on his record as governor, which will include plenty of culture war fights. It will be up to Democrats and their allies on the left to not respond in kind and to not elevate that. The benefits of not responding to his culture war instigations are twofold. One is that it lets Democrats keep the focus on things that really matter to voters and hit him where it really hurts. The other is that it makes him the one who is out of touch.
Keep your eye on the ball. Voters care about substantive, mostly economic matters that affect their lives and the lives of those they know and care about. Anyone who is talking about the latest culture war fight is not talking about those things. Any candidate who is talking about things voters are not interested in is, by definition, out of touch. Let that candidate in 2024 be DeSantis (or any other Republican), not Biden. Biden will need to have the discipline to avoid being the out of touch one, but he will need help from other Democrats and everyone else who thinks the social safety net and progressive taxation are good.
Just remember this: the core belief among a vast majority of Republican elected officials is that progressive taxation and the social safety net are bad. Their goal is to cut back on or eliminate those things. They cannot win on that agenda so they engage in culture war fights. When Democrats or anyone on the left engages with them in culture war fights, they are getting distracted from what really matters. Every second that is spent on culture war fights is one second that can’t be spent talking about their unpopular economic ideas.