Republican presidential candidates (from left) Jon Huntsman, Herman Cain, Rep. Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Gov. Rick Perry, Rep. Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum prepare to debate during the event sponsored by CNN and the Tea Party Express at the Florida state fairgrounds on Sept. 12 in Tampa.
The Republicans are yearning for its return but for some reason it isn’t. I wonder what that might be?
President Joe Biden has spent his first 100 days pushing massive spending bills, proposing higher taxes and enacting progressive policies. But unlike his Democratic predecessor, President Barack Obama, a mass movement in opposition hasn’t materialized yet.
At this point in his presidency, Obama faced the Tea Party revolt. On April 15, 2009 ― Tax Day ― thousands of protesters took to the streets in cities across the U.S. to demonstrate against high taxes and increased government spending following the Great Recession. In Washington, D.C., a crowd even forced a temporary shutdown of the White House after they hurled tea bags onto the executive mansion’s lawn.
Republicans insist the same type of backlash is coming for Biden if he continues down the path he’s on. But the party, still reeling from years of Donald Trump and a Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, faces a problem: some of Biden’s policies are very popular.
That’s particularly true of the coronavirus stimulus. Turns out, people are less displeased with spending when it puts dollars in their pockets, as Republican Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) acknowledged to HuffPost this week.
“Even my counties back in Indiana are happy, which is a very conservative area,” said Braun, a deficit hawk. “They’re asking, ‘How can I spend $15 million in a rural county?’ I think the spending part of it was smart politically because they put a sugar high out there and put a smoke screen to how radical some of the legislation may end up being.”
What if it isn’t really radical at all and people are happy to have the government do something positive for a change? What if people never really gave a damn about “deficits” and other abstract fiscal policies but were just mad that the government was helping “others” and didn’t feel they were getting their fair share?
The Republicans are hoping against hope that their tired old tropes will reawaken the nation to embrace the ghost of Ronald Reagan and hate Joe Biden but it isn’t happening. I think it’s because the base of the party is irrevocably hooked on the red meat racist demagoguery of Donald Trump and those kinds of abstractions just don’t get their blood pumping anymore.
It’s clear these officials think they can get traction by screaming “Marxism” over and over again and trying to conflate that with “cancel culture” in order to create more opposition to Biden’s agenda. So far, it’s not working. Republicans want unadulterated victimization and racist propaganda. See: Tucker Carlson. This old-fashioned Reaganomics crapola just doesn’t sell like it used to.