Lincoln Mitchell: The Republican Party’s Problem Is Not Going to Be Easy to Fix
Republican economic policies have always favored the wealthy, but this year was far more extreme and less subtle. Thus, the ticket looked like the spirit of Montgomery Burns and Ayn Rand had been placed inside the bodies of two generic politicians from central casting. There was no attempt to hide or change policies that were not just conservative but explicitly focused redistributing wealth upwards. CEOs spoke unabashedly about coercing workers to vote Republican; operatives all but boasted about efforts to limit the franchise of poor people; moderate social programs were implausibly, and laughingly, described as socialism; and in a time of economic suffering the vibe given off from the Party made Marie Antoinette seem comparatively sensitive to the plight of the needy.