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Romney2020.jpg

The Republicans Strategy For 2020 Is To . . . Kill Their Base?

By Emily Cutler | Late Night TV | January 11, 2018 |

By Emily Cutler | Late Night TV | January 11, 2018 |


Romney2020.jpg

Have you guys heard? Republicans are doing a bang up job of running the country. Despite holding the White House, both houses of Congress, and cheating their way into a Supreme Court seat, they’ve managed to pass all of a tax bill. And it’s a shitty tax bill that most politicians have been unable to defend at that. Why is it that a party that basically controls the government right now can’t get their agenda passed? Mostly because they’re incompetent and bad at their jobs. (Fun fact, rereading what I wrote about Bannon a year ago is so laughable now. Bannon didn’t implement the Muslim ban the way he did because he was unaware of how the public would react, or because he was trying to distract us. It’s because he was doing his job and was unaware that his job no longer consisted only of “Pissing Off Liberals.”)

But Republicans aren’t going to take their shocking inability to govern lying down. They’ve got a new plan, and it doesn’t just involve sacrificing all of the values, beliefs, and shame in order to hypocritically push through, under the dark of night, laws that most of their constituents don’t want. And they’re not just going to keep playing their greatest hits (if by greatest hits, you mean the guy who got his ass handed to him back in 2012 because they’ve all just given up). No, Republicans are trying a different tactic: straight up killing their constituents.

See, I’ve already tried to frame the fact that the GOP is actively making life worse for the poor in a somewhat humorous light, and the GOP was all, “Oh she thinks we’re fucking joking.” And, of course, it’s very much not a joke. The Republicans stand for restricting reproductive health care and reduced access to health care for most people, and outlawing abortion and upping the birth rate. As with people who insist on eating gas station sushi, the GOP has a specific but terrible idea of what they want, and they don’t care who gets hurt by it. Does it make sense? Fuck sense. Is it morally ethical? Fuck morals and their ethics. Is it fiscally conservative? WHAT’S THAT?

I’ve spent a good deal of time trying to figure out how Republicans square their self-professed values with the actions that they take. It seems to be more Christian and more monetarily responsible to extend life-saving health care access to everyone in the country. Building hospitals to cover everyone, even in areas of sparse population, would better those individuals lives, save money on emergency transit and loss of life, and endear Republicans to the people who are supposed to be their base. They should be doing that, right? But that’s only if you believe that people use a set of principles to guide their decisions and inform their positions. We don’t mostly. Which means that the preferred position for most Republicans, the steadfast belief that motivates all their decisions is “Fuck ‘em.”

Which also means, Jesus Christ, maybe Bannon was doing his job.