Tax cuts > democracy

And to stick with a theme, it’s not just extreme cowardice that brought us to this point, it’s extreme greed as well.  I don’t know how else to characterize people being so damn cavalier about democracy in their desire for ever lower taxes.  Loved this in Yglesias‘ recent mailbag:

One thing that has genuinely changed is that an American business community that was pretty wary of Trump during his term in office has looked at Biden and remembered that Democrats favor higher taxes and tougher business regulation and Republicans don’t. Biden, for example, is cracking down on abusive bank overdraft fees. You might ask yourself “what kind of person would throw in with fascists just to avoid government regulation of abusive bank overdraft fees?” But that is, in fact, exactly how right-wing authoritarian movements come to power: Rich people decide that right-wing authoritarians will help them have more money.

Back in 2020, I think a lot of these business-type Republicans hoped that Trump losing would bring back the old version of the GOP that they liked more. But Biden has both gotten more done than they thought he would (which to them is bad), and it’s also clear that the old free trade GOP isn’t coming back, one way or another. So you may as well back the guy who promises you tax cuts.

Of course, as is often the case, greed makes people short-sighted.  Businesses perform better in flourishing democracies, not quasi-authoritarian states like Hungary.  But, of course, all the “lower my taxes” people like to just ignore the overwhelming evidence of Trump’s threats to American democracy because it is far more mentally convenient to do so.  If I were going to get a tattoo of a quote– and to be clear, I never will!!– it would be this from Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

 

 

Republican cowardice got us here

Good stuff from Chait today:

A recent poll breaks down the Republican electorate in the cleanest way. Asked if they believe Joe Biden won the 2020 election legitimately or only due to voter fraud, Nikki Haley has a 56-point margin among those who believe Biden legitimately won. But Trump has a staggering 74-point margin among those who don’t.

Haley’s problem is that only 42 percent of the voters believe Biden won in 2020. Worse, New Hampshire, chock-full of independent and socially moderate Republicans, is one of her better states. Nationally, some two-thirds of Republicans believe Trump genuinely won.

Incumbent presidents who are running for reelection almost always win the nomination. Why? Because they won last time, and parties like nominating winners. Defeated candidates who run for the nomination usually lose. Why? Because they lost last time, and parties hate nominating losers.

If Republicans wanted their party to nominate somebody other than Donald Trump — and most of the party’s elected officials and donors did, at least secretly — then they needed their voters to understand that he lost the 2020 election. But doing so required hard steps they were never willing to take.

The outbreak of conscientiousness that swept through the Republican Party after January 6, 2021 gave way like a fever. One week after the insurrection, Axios reported that Republicans were “divided whether to do it with one quick kill via impeachment, or let him slowly fade away.” The framing of the question answered itself: Why take on the risk of fighting Trump and alienating his supporters when he would simply go away on his own?

Soon after, they decided the handful of Republicans who continued to oppose him were making themselves a bother, and either stood by or actively joined in efforts to remove them from their posts. National Review, the headquarters of anti-anti-Trump Republicanism, wrote exactly two months after the insurrection, “so long as the House Republican caucus is unwilling or unable to break with Trump, and so long as Trump and his most-devoted supporters demand that they not change their mind and not change the subject, the caucus’s leadership may as well reflect that.”

The party was divided over Trump’s election lies and coup attempt, but the divide had an asymmetric quality. One faction was obsessed with litigating its beliefs and repeating them endlessly, while the opposing faction only wanted the issue to go away. The outcome of this one-sided argument was inevitable. The percentage of Republicans who believed Trump has steadily risen.

Now, I’m actually generally fairly forgiving of cowardice.  I’m not sure how brave I (or most people) would be in tough situations. That’s why we value bravery.  But, standing up to Trump’s lies, especially in 2021, did not require some extraordinary amount of bravery.  What we’ve seen from so many Republican goes beyond cowardice to a complete power-hungry, moral rot that is just completely inexcusable.  And, here we are with quite arguably the most corrupt, self-centered, anti-Democratic politician in American history on the verge of his party’s presidential nomination.