The Big Oh Shit

The Republican Party was essentially an enterprise run by and for plutocrats that managed to win elections by playing to the cultural grievances and racial hostility of working-class whites. Bigotry, however, was mainly a show put on for the rubes; the party would go back to its pro-rich priorities as soon as each election was over.  Billionaires may have started the Republican Party on its march toward extremism, but they’ve clearly lost control of the forces they conjured up. The G.O.P. can no longer put intolerance back in the closet after each election so as to focus on the real business of tax cuts and deregulation. Instead, the extremists are in charge. Despite a lost election and a violent insurrection, what’s left of the old Republican establishment has abased itself on the altar of Trumpism.  But while power in the Republican Party has shifted almost completely away from the conservative establishment, the party is still committed to an economic ideology of tax and spending cuts.  For now Republican politicians are doing Democrats a big favor, clinging to discredited economic ideas that even their own supporters dislike.  Will the Republican Party find its way out of the Trumpian woods?  To do this, Republicans will have to start promoting policy that appeal to a majority of voters.  They can no longer depend upon name-calling and labeling Democrats as liberals or socialists to win national elections.  The prime issues that served to rally Republicans like abortions and tax cuts have also failed as winning strategies.  The American people recognize the country faces serious problems that demand serious solutions.  Republican campaigns can no longer afford to be solution free and successful Republican politicians can also no longer be solution free.  One lesson Trump taught America is good government is far mor important than small government.  One could even say that good government trumps tax cuts as a successful election strategy.  And that, for Republicans remains a big OH SHIT!