Trump and His Allies Are Worried About More Than November

[Zorro]

The temporary imposition of popular relief programs in response to the coronavirus makes Republicans nervous.

In the face of mass unemployment and a rapidly contracting economy, President Trump is desperate to end the pandemic lockdown and bring the country back on line. That’s why he spent the past week asserting his “total” authority to reopen the economy (“The president of the United States calls the shots”) and promising a rapid return to normal: “Our country has to get open, and it will get open, and it’ll get open safely and hopefully quickly — some areas quicker than others,” he said on Tuesday.

Republicans in Congress, likewise, are urging an end to the freeze. “It should have happened yesterday,” Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, chairman of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, told Politico. Representative Trey Hollingsworth of Indiana acknowledged the chance of “loss of life” from an early end to social distancing but asserted, nonetheless, that it was better than the alternative. “It is policymakers’ decision to put on our big boy and big girl pants and say it is the lesser of these two evils,” he said to a local radio station. Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana was even more blunt during an interview on Fox News on Wednesday. “We gotta reopen, and when we do, the coronavirus is going to spread faster, and we got to be ready for it.”

No doubt there is real concern for the economic and health consequences of an extended shutdown. But Republicans, and Trump in particular, are also thinking about November. If the president knows anything, it’s that his fate rises and falls with the state of the economy. And if he loses his campaign for re-election, then in this polarized environment of nationalized politics, he’s likely to take congressional Republicans down with him.

But I think there’s another element underlying the push to reopen the economy despite the threat it poses to American lives, a dynamic beyond partisanship that explains why much of the conservative political ecosystem, from politicians and donors to activists and media personalities, has joined the fight to end the lockdown.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/opinion/coronavirus-relief-trump.html

This editorial nails it. Republicans are in a rush to reopen the economy before millions more voters come to understand and appreciate the value and benefits of sensible, progressive, government-sponsored social relief programs. That is a direct threat to current Republican political philosophy and policies.

[The Magistrate]

1. Exactly, Sir

Their whole anti-government line evaporates like summer snow....


"Defeat of a hated enemy is something to be for."

[brewens]

2. They don't want people to realize the hamster wheel can stop without the world ending.

It's nothing less that the threat of tearing down a whole belief system they have built up over the last 40 years or more. Yes, we do need big government and it needs to do good things for the people.

[NEOBuckeye]

6. 40 years of bad ideas and bad ideology got us here

It’s time to drown American Conservatism in a bathtub.

[NEOBuckeye]

3. Fuck the Conservative ecosystem

These bastards put profit and power over the well being of humanity and the nation. Something has got to give, and if it’s the human race vs them, it’s time for them to be shut down.

[iemitsu]

8. Capital money.

Capitalism is only about money there is no room for humanity, society or the community.
It it the cruelest system ever devised.

[3Hotdogs]

12. Insert "their" between put and profit in your first sentence,

then ya got a home run.

They don't give a shit about anyone but themselves.

Note what happened with Orange Buttplug's charitable foundation.

[Eyeball_Kid]

23. It's not conservatism that's the issue.

It’s loosely or completely unregulated capitalism that’s the most imposing threat. It’s fascism. Conservatism can be a negotiable position. Fascism is not. And what we’re faced with right now is emerging fascism that is hidden behind “conservative bravado”. Fascists hide behind a legitimate political philosophy. Fascism has no alternative. It has to be dissolved or it will always creep back.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

4. Which is IRONIC because.....Republicans OPPOSE....

A higher Minimum Wage
Health Insurance and access for all
Paid for higher education
Equal rights for women
Union representation for workers
Mail in and Absentee voting

Just to name a few points......

[Quemado]

5. The last sentence of your post should read

That is a direct threat to the 1%, who are the employers of Republican politicians.

[Walleye]

7. Yes. Nailed it

[empedocles]

9. Republicon's may well be thinking, a lot, about 'pre-November' problems:

- if trump polls are going down
- if trump polls are going down a lot
- if trump gets crazier yet
- their own election prospects
- prospects for trump dictatorship
- prospects for attempted trump dictatorship failing
- the wide net for 'treason'

[dalton99a]

10. Kick

To even begin to tackle this crisis, Congress had to contemplate policies that would be criticized as unacceptably radical under any other circumstances. At $2.2 trillion, the initial relief package was a bill that was more than twice the size of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed in 2009. Further aid is almost certainly forthcoming, and Democrats, at least, are contemplating trillions more in additional stimulus, including universal basic income for the duration of the crisis, a COBRA expansion that would cover 100 percent of health care costs for laid-off and furloughed workers and a proposal to cover payrolls for nearly every business in America. On top of all of this, the Federal Reserve is flooding the economy with trillions of dollars in rescue loans and bond purchases, to stabilize markets and keep interest rates low.

In one short month, the United States has made a significant leap toward a kind of emergency social democracy, in recognition of the fact that no individual or community could possibly be prepared for the devastation wrought by the pandemic. Should the health and economic crisis extend through the year, there’s a strong chance that Americans will move even further down that road, as businesses shutter, unemployment continues to mount and the federal government is the only entity that can keep the entire economy afloat.

But this logic — that ordinary people need security in the face of social and economic volatility — is as true in normal times as it is under crisis. If something like a social democratic state is feasible under these conditions, then it is absolutely possible when growth is high and unemployment is low. And in the wake of two political campaigns — Bernie Sanders’s and Elizabeth Warren’s — that pushed progressive ideas into the mainstream of American politics, voters might begin to see this essential truth.

[PatrickforO]

22. Yep!

[Chainfire]

11. Hey, if the people get health care

the next thing they will want is a fair share of the wealth of the country! This has to be nipped in the bud, no matter how many it kills.
Nip it, nip in in the bud!

[stillcool]

13. cut off the freaking bud

count the bodies later.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

14. Yup. Voters might realize this happens when Reaperpublicons try to strangle govt in a bathtub. . nt

[bucolic_frolic]

15. Trump wants to reopen America to Corona Virus Wave 2!

And just wait until the best and brightest of workers fail to return to work because they've started their own home business or expanded a hobby into a business and don't want to commute 2 hours a day, answer to the man, or hobnob with Rat Race Republicans over cocktails anymore

[Grokenstein]

16. They made "let 'em die in the street" a slogan.

Now they're making it a reality.
A passive-very-aggressive version of "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out."

[yaesu]

17. The idiots following these dangerous terrorist republiCons will pay a heavy price & will have the

deaths of many thousands on their hands.

[dugog55]

18. Capitalism, Conservatism, Christianity (Right Wing)

all need to go if we are to have the "America" the majority dreams about. It will never happen with Republicans in charge. That possibility ended when Eisenhower finished his second term. Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Shrub and now Trump. One long, continuous downward spiral only momentarily interrupted by Democrat Administrations.

This country is broken, and the Dems are truly the only ones that want to repair it.

[patphil]

19. It won't take much more of this pandemic for people to realize that national health care is good.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

20. Let's gather up the Repugs who say the economy is more important than people,

that there are "acceptable losses" to prevent an economic disaster, and have them take a tour of one or more of the hospital whose medical staff is overwhelmed by patients. Oh, and make sure they do it without PPE, and that they sign a waiver that says they will not receive a ventilator if they become infected.

Then let them go on Fox and babble their racist shit.

[PatrickforO]

21. Biden wants to lower the eligibility age for Medicare.

Unemployment is paying extra.

Those are good things.

Yeah, once more people have Medicare, nobody is going to want to give that up, and younger people will see that and ask, "Hey, why can't we have that, too?"

[zentrum]

24. Very interesting.