They Haven’t Figured Out How to Steal Your $1400 COVID Relief. Yet.
It’s finally dawned on certain elected officials on the right side of the aisle that they might have blown it when it comes to handling COVID relief.
Polling from Politico/Morning Consult shows the American Rescue Plan garnering 72% support among voters (with just 21% opposing it) and Biden with a 62% approval rating. A CBS-YouGov survey found that 71% of Americans think the $1.9 trillion plan will help the middle class more than wealthy Americans.
Teri Kanefield succinctly described GOP thinking these days, which accounts for their flailing attacks on ‘cancel culture’ and the sudden rise of a 'border crisis.'
According to Yale history professor Timothy Snyder, Republican leaders' motives are likely deeply cynical. Snyder proposes a concept called "sadopopulism," which refers to politicians who purposefully govern in a way that makes life worse for the bulk their supporters. Snyder presents the strategy in a few easy steps:
Identify an "enemy."
Enact policies that create pain in your own constituents.
Blame the ensuing pain on the "enemies."
Present yourself as the strongman who can fight the enemies.
This polling has got to piss off Republicans. So Republicans are gonna do what they’re good at, which is to be the skunk at a garden party.
Twenty-one Republican state attorneys general are threatening to sue the Biden administration over its new $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus law, decrying it for imposing “unprecedented and unconstitutional” limits on their states’ ability to lower taxes.
That’s right, folks. While DC’s conservative crusaders were re-inventing cancel culture as a national security threat, those sneaky Democrats slipped some language into the recently passed legislation saying that funding provided to states and localities couldn’t be used to fix deficits created by “trickle down” schemes..
From the Washington Post:
This year, Biden ultimately sought — and lawmakers later approved — $350 billion in new stimulus spending to help local governments steady their finances and pay for the costs of responding to the crisis. The funds drew bipartisan support from mayors, county leaders and governors, even though Republicans in Congress blasted it as wasteful spending — and falsely contended that it only benefited Democratic-led states.
The aid, however, isn’t unfettered. Local governments can use the dollars to cover the costs of their first responders, provide enhanced pay for essential employees and even make improvements to local infrastructure. But states cannot use the money to address their rising pension costs, nor can they appear to take the dollars and then cut taxes, essentially tapping Washington’s help to make up for any lost revenue either directly or indirectly.
GOP attempts to scuttle COVID relief by complaining about the national debt didn’t hold much water, especially when compared to their tax cut plan for corporations and fat cats.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham hoped to play the race card by calling the legislation "reparations" for Black farmers.
Arkansas Sen.Tom Cotton apparently forgot about his vote in favor of an earlier COVID-19 relief bill that included payments to incarcerated humans, so his whining about this aspect with the latest legislation didn’t have the impact he hoped for.
Florida GOP Sen. Rick Scott’s call for governors and mayors to return money from the coronavirus relief package was flatly rejected by his state’s Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Via Politico:
“It doesn’t make any sense,” said DeSantis, when asked about Scott’s suggestion. “If Florida were to send the money back, [Treasury Secretary Janet] Yellen is going to send it to Illinois, California, New York or New Jersey. I don’t think that would make sense for Floridians — for us to be giving even more money to the blue states that already getting such a big windfall in this bill.”
https://twitter.com/essenviews/status/1372570056157106184?s=20
From Kerry Eleveld at Daily Kos:
Even Democrats have been baffled by the Republican whiff on such a major battle. John Anzalone, an external Biden adviser and former Biden campaign pollster, was amazed that Republicans settled on framing the package as unrelated to COVID-19 when so many Americans who will get the relief money are specifically reeling from pandemic-related illness, joblessness, and financial struggles.
“This is just really mind-boggling,” Anzalone said. “At a time that we’re going through three or four crises at once, they have basically just punted. They've completely punted.”
But the lack of a coordinated GOP campaign with only helter-skelter attempts to mount an opposition is really emblematic of a much bigger problem for the Republican party—it no longer knows what it is or what it stands for. With no core values to operate on after they spent four years surrendering the party to a completely unmoored Donald Trump, Republicans don't have any go-to plays or even messengers for that matter.
And once again, their main messenger—Trump—was so consumed with his own pity party over the lost election and impeachment that it crippled the party's ability to settle on a line of attack and prosecute it in the media.
What’s left for Republicans to do is to figure out a way to undo the cash injection. Look for a miraculous plan for a stimulus that starts with people sending back $1400 to the treasury and ends with vague promises of something better… kinda like they did with Obamacare.
Looking down the road, GQP Senators are aiming to stalemate September votes on raising the debt ceiling, spending cuts and unemployment benefits in the hope that they can sell themselves as caring about the national debt.
Unless things go really squirrelly, I don’t think this will fly, especially if Democrats revive earmarked spending, a move that will peel off key GQP votes via promises of local level goodies.
The Grand Old Party’s nutball caucus is still oblivious. A dozen members of the House of Representatives took a stand against a resolution to honor law enforcement that responded to the January 6 Capitol riot. It seems as though they were unhappy about language characterizing the Capitol siege as an insurrection.
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