House GOPers go back to basics
by digby
House Republicans plan to run on tried-and-true issues in 2020: repealing Obamacare and reducing the national debt, even though the GOP fell short of both goals the last time the party had full control of Washington.
“The first thing we would do is make sure our debt is taken care of,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters during a meeting of party members in Baltimore to work on their election-year agenda.
They don’t really have anything else to run on. And anyway, their real agenda is licking Trump’s boots as vigorously as humanly possible. The details are unimportant.
It does take some gall to run on reducing the debt after three years of Trump’s free-spending on tax cuts and the military for no good reason, but really, what else do they have? I suspect they’re keeping their powder dry for a Trump win in which they would immediately commence rolling Obamacare into the “entitlements” definition. Trump won’t be running again (or he’ll be planning some kind of Reichstag fire to stay in office illegally. In either case, if the GOP takes the congress back as well (certainly possible — they cheat) they’ll go for it.
And obviously, the minute a Democrat takes over they will turn into shrill shrieking debt harpies. Screwing the economy and blowing up the deficit on taes and the military and then hectoring the Democrats into cutting spending on programs that help real people has been their go-to since Reagan. I don’t think they’ve had a new idea since 1982.
Let’s hope this agenda sounds as absurdly out of touch this cycle as it did in the last and McCarthy is kept out of the leadership of the House until the end of his career. Hopefully, that will be soon.
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