Republicans Prepare to Attack America with Santa Claus
thomhartmann
Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)
2022/11/18 · 07:17
Here’s how it works, laid it out in simple summary:
To set up its foundation, the Two Santas strategy dictates, when Republicans control the White House they must spend money like a drunken Santa and cut taxes on the rich, all to intentionally run up the US debt as far and as fast as possible.
They started this during the Reagan presidency, and tripled down on it during the presidencies of Bush and Trump.
Massive tax cuts and uncontrolled spending during Republican presidencies produced three results: they stimulated the economy with a sort of sugar high, making people think that the GOP can produce a good economy; they raised the national debt dramatically (it’s at $31 trillion today, 100% of which tracks back to Reagan’s, Bush Jr.’s, and Trump’s massive tax cuts and Bush’s two illegal off-the-books wars); and they made people think that Republicans are the “tax-cut Santa Clauses.”
Then comes part two of the one-two punch: when a Democrat is in the White House, Republicans must scream about the national debt as loudly and frantically as possible, freaking out about how “our children will have to pay for it!” and “we have to cut spending to solve the crisis!”
The “debt crisis,” that is, that they themselves created with their massive tax cuts and wild spending.
Do whatever it takes: shut down the government, crash the stock market, and damage US credibility around the world if necessary.
This will force the Democrats in power to cut their own social safety net programs and even the crown jewel of the New Deal, Social Security, thus shooting their welfare-of-the-American-people Santa Claus right in the face.
And, sure enough, here we are again with a Democrat in the White House.
Following the script, Republicans are again squealing about the national debt and saying they will refuse to raise the debt ceiling, possibly crashing the US economy.
And, once again, the media is preparing to cover it as a “Debt Crisis!” rather than what it really is: a cynical political and media strategy devised by Republicans in the 70s, fine-tuned in the 80s and 90s, and since then rolled out every time a Democrat is in the White House.
Politically, it’s a brilliant strategy that was hatched by a fellow most people have never heard of: Jude Wanniski.
Republican strategist Wanniski first proposed his Two Santa Clauses strategy in The Wall Street Journal in 1974, after Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace and the future of the Republican Party was so dim that books and articles were widely suggesting the GOP was about to go the way of the Whigs.
There was genuine despair across the GOP, particularly when Jerry Ford couldn’t even beat an unknown peanut farmer from rural Georgia for the presidency.
Wanniski argued back then that Republicans weren’t losing so many elections just because of Nixon’s corruption, but mostly because the Democrats had been viewed since the New Deal of the 1930s as the “Santa Claus party.”
On the other hand, the GOP, he said, was widely seen as the “party of Scrooge” because they publicly opposed everything from Social Security and Medicare to unemployment insurance and food stamps.
The Democrats, he noted, had gotten to play Santa Claus for decades when they passed out Social Security and unemployment checks — both programs of FDR’s Democratic New Deal — as well as their “big government” projects like roads, bridges, schools, and highways that gave a healthy union paycheck to workers and made our country shine.
Even worse, Democrats kept raising taxes on businesses and rich people to pay for all that “free stuff” — and Democrats’ 91% top tax rates on the morbidly rich didn’t have any negative effect at all on working people (wages were steadily going up until the Reagan Revolution, in fact).
It all added, Wanniski theorized, to the public perception that the Democrats were the trueparty of Santa Claus, using taxes on the rich to fund programs for the poor and the working class.
Americans loved the Democrats back then. And every time Republicans railed against these programs, they lost elections. . .
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