After having had control of all branches of government for 2 years, we revisit what the GOP under Trump has accomplished (or failed to)
So for part-one of this monster post, I talked about how the Democrats have ideas and actually implement those ideas when given the chance. Now I’d like to talk about the exact opposite of that, which is Republican governance.
Remember the halcyon days of Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and the Freedom Caucus running on abject fucking racism to win election after election despite having neither the will nor the intellect to actually do anything? Ah, memories. Let’s run down some of them:
If given control of government, the GOP would rein in the god-like excesses of Barack Obama
They would shred the Affordable Healthcare Act in the first hour of their session and replace it with something newer, something better, something that would cover more Americans for less money because of the free market
They would roll back senseless burdensome regulations and unleash the true economic might of American industry, swelling our GDP growth to levels of 4, 5, 6%
They would rein in government spending!
They would finally balance a budget and stop adding to the national debt!
They would give hardworking Middle Class Americans a giant tax cut so that we could all breathe a little easier with regards to money
A return to limited government! Like Ronald Reagan! The government would get out of your way!
It’s been a year and a half of unified Republican government, and let’s see what they’ve done:
Some CRA nonsense to undo Obama policies
Neutered a couple of agencies they didn’t like
Spent a shitload of taxpayer money on Scott Pruitt’s James Bond fantasies
Given away a trillion and a half dollars to corporations in a bill literally written by lobbyists
Failed spectacularly to pass anything approaching actual ACA repeal or replacement
Locked in trillion+ dollar surplus for the next 10 years
Ended budget sequestration so we can spend more money we don’t have on the military while spending the same amount of money we don’t have on non-defense programs.Confirmed Neil Gorsuch to a stolen SCOTUS Seat
Become so terrified of Dear Leader that they’re attacking the FBI, politicizing investigations, and straight up pretending he can be a king if he wants to be
What does the modern GOP actually stand for? I’d argue it’s wanton tribalism. Because no matter what Trump does, what line he crosses, what norm he violates, he’s still their guy.
The reality is that the GOP hasn’t had ideas in forty years. Reagan had some ideas around military Keynesian economics, cutting taxes to end stagflation, and greatly reducing the size of the government. W had ideas about whether or not bombs were cool. Trump is fundamentally devoid of ideas other than ideas that make him look stronger and more authoritarian like his BFF Vladimir Putin. Trump doesn’t actually care about NFL protests or abortion or anything, really, aside from his own sense of worth. But he sees those as useful tools to stoke the anger and resentment of his base of fanatics so he plays the game. Every criticism the GOP had of Obama has been exposed under Trump as naked hypocrisy. The debt is worse. The spending is higher. The executive overreach is unprecedented. The relationship with the press is more antagonistic than ever. The flagrant disregard for the rule of law pushes us daily toward a Constitutional crisis. The sitting President is under investigation as part of a wide-ranging criminal probe that has already resulted in dozens of indictments and five guilty pleas.
But taking all of that away, if you’re a regular ole Republican voter: what has this term done for you? The uncertainty around healthcare has caused premiums to go up. The stock market rallied under Trump but GDP growth is at the same low level it was under Obama (revised down to 2.2% in Q1 of this year). Unemployment continues its downward trajectory (remember when Trump said actual unemployment was 25%? What happened to that number?). By most conceivable metrics, he’s done very little. It’s hard when you’re golfing four days a week and watching Fox and Friends the rest of the time.
So what’s left? Now that the ideas — the ideas on taxes, on government overreach, on foreign policy — have been stripped away? What does the modern GOP actually stand for?
I’d argue it’s wanton tribalism. Because no matter what Trump does, what line he crosses, what norm he violates, he’s still their guy. No matter what, he’s already won. I’ve made this argument before but it’s the difference between viewing the 2016 election as an audition/job interview (you got the job, now it’s time for some fucking performance reviews) and viewing it as the Super Bowl (lol), an end in itself. There’s no bar to measure Trump by because he cleared it the day he wasn’t Barack Obama, the day he wasn’t reflective of a new and scary America where a foreign-sounding guy with a weird name who’s (half) black could be the leader of the free world. Trump won on Nov 8 and the bar hasn’t been raised an inch since then.
Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell have the same experience of lowered expectations. They’re still not the libs, so GOP voters will forgive them all of their vandalism, all of their destruction, all of their violations of norms, because giving a shit about Constitutional norms is apparently now acceptable to own the libs.
Part of my issue here is the inauthenticity of the whole charade. If you want to say that you’re voting because you like a guy who fucks with your enemies, fine. But don’t sit there and tell me it’s because of economic anxiety, except when he’s good for your 401(k) and even though he’s not, uh, well, the NFL is back where it should be, or whatever. And then they get mad at us. Oh we’re not understanding of them, of their pain, that they’re actually nice people and not racist assholes who call ICE on anyone that looks like they’ve been out in the sun recently. I’m tired of it. I look at guys like Putin, and at least they own their shittiness. Putin doesn’t decry himself as a victim. He kills people that threaten him and then he moves on.
These people have no ideas and they never did. They only care about wins and trolling the liberals. They have no measurement for success beyond that. They don’t care that he’s lazy as shit, that he’s burning their money to play golf, that he’s enriching himself, that he’s engaged in multiple different lawsuits. He won, the liberals are mad, so he’s doing something right. They see a scary future of hip-hop and Hamilton and a majority-minority nation and they look at him in his ensconced privilege and they see the good ole days, the way things used to be. Trump is the finger in the dam holding back the flood of progress. That’s it. He’s doing his best to hold back a future that scares them. That’s the only bar for him.
There are no ideas left. There weren’t many to begin with. Now it’s just tribalism as philosophy and as ideology. When a party’s devoid of ideology and focused solely on winning…Donald Trump isn’t sui generis, he’s the fucking end product of the last 40 years.
-Chris Baugh
Original publish date: June 6th, 2018