Making the GOP Unpopular Again
By Eric Levitz
The Republican Party has almost nothing to offer the average voter. Large majorities of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in most cases; taxes on the rich should not be cut; undocumented immigrants should be given a path to legalization; the environment should be prioritized over energy production; and the government should spend more money on Medicaid.
But most Americans also think their government is corrupt and untrustworthy — and don’t get them started about those clowns in Congress.
For as long as the GOP was in the opposition, this latter fact provided cover for the former one. Congressional Republicans could perform conservative purity for their base, while offering vague promises of “change” to the broader, dissatisfied public. And since Paul Ryan and company couldn’t actually pass their most heinously unpopular ideas into law, delivering for the tea-party crowd didn’t preclude appealing beyond it: In their fight against Obamacare, Republicans could equate Medicaid expansion with Stalinism to everyone on their email lists — while attacking the law for cutting Medicare and failing to provide truly universal coverage to the general public ...
But now, Americans’ dissatisfaction with their government is no longer a crutch for the GOP, but a handicap. And fulfilling the party’s obligations to its base — while stringing along swing voters with sweet nothings about a “better way” — is much more difficult. Republicans tried to find a way to do both during the health-care-reform fight, and ended up alienating the party’s hard-liners and moderates alike. Americans finally discerned that the Republican alternative to Obamacare was a tax cut for the rich — and, for the first time, Obama’s signature law became popular ...
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/trump-is-making-the-gop-heinously-unpopular-again.html
