----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/opinion/krugman-makers-takers-fakers-.html?ref=paulkrugman&_r=0
Republicans have a problem. For years they could shout down any attempt to point out the extent to which their policies favored the elite over the poor and the middle class; all they had to do was yell “Class warfare!” and Democrats scurried away. In the 2012 election, however, that didn’t work: the picture of the G.O.P. as the party of sneering plutocrats stuck, even as Democrats became more openly populist than they have been in decades.
As a result, prominent Republicans have begun acknowledging that their
party needs to improve its image. But here’s the thing: Their proposals
for a makeover all involve changing the sales pitch rather than the
product. When it comes to substance, the G.O.P. is more committed than
ever to policies that take from most Americans and give to a wealthy
handful.
Consider, as a case in point, how a widely reported recent speech by Bobby Jindal the governor of Louisiana, compares with his actual policies.
Mr. Jindal posed the problem in a way that would, I believe, have been
unthinkable for a leading Republican even a year ago. “We must not,” he
declared, “be the party that simply protects the well off so they can
keep their toys. We have to be the party that shows all Americans how
they can thrive.” After a campaign in which Mitt Romney denounced any
attempt to talk about class divisions as an “attack on success,” this represents a major rhetorical shift.
But Mr. Jindal didn’t offer any suggestions about how Republicans might
demonstrate that they aren’t just about letting the rich keep their
toys, other than claiming even more loudly that their policies are good
for everyone.
Meanwhile, back in Louisiana Mr. Jindal is pushing a plan to eliminate the state’s income tax,
which falls most heavily on the affluent, and make up for the lost
revenue by raising sales taxes, which fall much more heavily on the poor
and the middle class. The result would be big gains for the top 1
percent, substantial losses for the bottom 60 percent. Similar plans are
being pushed by a number of other Republican governors as well.
Like the new acknowledgment that the perception of being the party of
the rich is a problem, this represents a departure for the G.O.P. — but
in the opposite direction. In the past, Republicans would justify tax
cuts for the rich either by claiming that they would pay for themselves
or by claiming that they could make up for lost revenue by cutting
wasteful spending. But what we’re seeing now is open, explicit reverse
Robin Hoodism: taking from ordinary families and giving to the rich.
That is, even as Republicans look for a way to sound more sympathetic
and less extreme, their actual policies are taking another sharp right
turn.
Why is this happening? In particular, why is it happening now, just
after an election in which the G.O.P. paid a price for its anti-populist
stand?
Well, I don’t have a full answer, but I think it’s important to
understand the extent to which leading Republicans live in an
intellectual bubble. They get their news from Fox and other captive
media, they get their policy analysis from billionaire-financed
right-wing think tanks, and they’re often blissfully unaware both of
contrary evidence and of how their positions sound to outsiders.
So when Mr. Romney made his infamous “47 percent” remarks, he wasn’t, in
his own mind, saying anything outrageous or even controversial. He was
just repeating a view that has become increasingly dominant inside the
right-wing bubble, namely that a large and ever-growing proportion of
Americans won’t take responsibility for their own lives and are mooching
off the hard-working wealthy. Rising unemployment claims demonstrate
laziness, not lack of jobs; rising disability claims represent
malingering, not the real health problems of an aging work force.
And given that worldview, Republicans see it as entirely appropriate to
cut taxes on the rich while making everyone else pay more.
Now, national politicians learned last year that this kind of talk plays
badly with the public, so they’re trying to obscure their positions.
Paul Ryan, for example, has lately made a transparently dishonest
attempt to claim that when he spoke about “takers”
living off the efforts of the “makers” — at one point he assigned 60
percent of Americans to the taker category — he wasn’t talking about
people receiving Social Security and Medicare. (He was.)
But in deep red states like Louisiana or Kansas, Republicans are much
freer to act on their beliefs — which means moving strongly to comfort
the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted.
Which brings me back to Mr. Jindal, who declared in his speech that “we
are a populist party.” No, you aren’t. You’re a party that holds a large
proportion of Americans in contempt. And the public may have figured
that out.
No comments:
Post a Comment