The GOP settles for offering “symbolic, substance-free BS” because enough conservatives are already persuaded that Republican policies obviously benefit the middle class, so there is no pressure to make Republican policy actually serve the interests of Republican constituents. It is taken for granted that this is already happening, but voters have been showing for several cycles that many of them do not believe this. Politically Democrats have been gaining ground in such unlikely places as Ohio and Indiana, which would be inexplicable if the GOP obviously and reliably represented working- and middle-class Americans. Of course, lately these voters don’t see it that way, but instead see the right’s pseudo-populists denounce workers for being overpaid, reject measures that would direct some spending to American industries that their free trade zeal has helped gut and even talk about a spending freeze in the middle of a severe recession.
Larison goes on to puncture another GOP delusion:
However, it is important to bear in mind that some significant part of this build-up of debt was not simply profligacy, but seemed to be necessary for many households to make up for stagnating incomes that were becoming increasingly inadequate during the housing bubble. ... As we all know, income stagnation is something that most conservatives and Republicans have spent years pretending was not happening, because it did not fit in with the assumption that working- and middle-class Americans were thriving as part of the “greatest story never told.”
Perhaps disgust with GOP BS is reaching a boiling point. Derbyshire smacks around the radio gasbags, Ruffini knocks down the Joe-the-Plumber nonsense and now Larison is speaking with sanity about economics. Is the GOP we've come to know and despise on its way out?
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