Taxed, Worst-Case Scenario

found online by Raymond

 
From Infidel753:

Well, they did it. No longer can we say “the Republicans can’t get anything done”. The bumbling and duplicity of the process that passed tax “reform” has been amply described on many sites, and I’m not going to rehash it. The point is, they finally got a serious piece of legislation class warfare passed.

Why did they do it? Why did they go all out for an unpopular bill that hands the Democrats multiple talking points to use against them next year? For one thing, as we’ve all heard, some of their rich donors were threatening to cut them off if this didn’t pass; for another, they may have thought it would unite their fragmented base (which is frustrated by the lack of progress on the wall, ACA repeal, etc.), even if the rest of the country doesn’t like it. It could even be merely that the ideological imperative here was much stronger than with other issues — if there’s one obsession that holds all Republicans in thrall, tax cuts for the rich is probably it.

I’ve also seen a more Machiavellian idea suggested: Republicans can see the writing on the wall — demographics, Trump’s unpopularity, generic-ballot polls — and they know they’re doomed to massive losses in 2018 and 2020 no matter what they do. So they’re focused on pleasing the giant corporations and the ultra-wealthy to whom they might go for jobs as lobbyists or whatever after the voters have turfed them out, rather than pleasing their constituents.

My worst-case scenario is something a little different and more sinister…

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