The Stupid Party: Still in the 1990's

Just had a brief and somewhat civil exchange with a classical Wisconsin Pubbie who is carrying the water for classical Pubbie causes, such as "free trade."  (Clearly, he didn't check with Abe Lincoln about that "classical" Pubbie position, but.....oh, well.)

Our Governor, and a bunch of other Pubbie folk here, have been waving "The Sky Is Falling" signs here in the barnyard, convinced that the (D) Party will wreak havoc on the pubbies.  This is not merely a fund-raising ploy; after all, off-year elections are generally horrible for the party which owns the White House.

But here's a question:  WHICH Party owns the White House?  Trump is not a Democrat, although he loves him them (D) deficits.  He's only a marginal Republican, although he loves him some Constitutional-type judges.

Could he......is he..........holy switcheroo, Batman!!  Is he a Shape-Shifter??

Nah.  He's kind of a Ronald Reagan.  And as some of us recall, Reagan won by securing the votes of "Reagan Democrats."  

Think I'm wrong, eh?  Let's look at Pennsylvania, where a 'moderate' Democrat prevailed just a week ago.  THIS is the district which Trump took by 20%.  Twenty percent!



...Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District is a classic “Reagan Democrat” district, where the party of Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy still holds a 46 percent to 41 percent registration edge even though Republicans now win most, but not all, of the elections. Senator Bob Casey, Jr., carried the district by 11 points in ousting Rick Santorum in 2006, when Casey was still seen as a culturally conservative, pro-life Democrat in the mold of his father, the late Governor Bob Casey. In his 2012 reelection campaign, however, when his liberal colors had become clearer, Casey, Jr. lost the 18th by nine points. The last Democrat to represent the area in Congress, Frank Mascara, who served from 1995 through 2002, got his college degree at 41 and opposed gun control and abortion. Some 23 percent of the district’s voters are union members, compared to 11 percent nationwide....

[The preceding Congressman was a Republican]  ...reliably right-wing on social issues and even most fiscal issues, Murphy had a lifetime AFL-CIO score of 44 percent, making him one of the most labor-friendly Republicans in the House....Murphy was a Trumpian long before Trump. He was defying some Republican economic orthodoxy while reaching out to union members and stressing the kind of right-of-center issues that appeal to normal people, not just Ayn Rand buffs....

So the Stupid Party runs this guy:

...GOP candidate Rick Saccone said he “was Trump before Trump was Trump,” unlike Murphy, he wasn’t. Rather, other than supporting Trump’s tariff plan (de rigueur in southwest Pennsylvania) he ran on his record as a traditional anti-union fiscal conservative....

He was also as inspiring as a glass of brackish-warm water on a hot summer's day.  But let's stick with the red-highlighted text here.  

When the Wisconsin (D) Senatorial candidate comes out for quasi-tariff legislation, does the Pubbie Party think she is trying to LOSE?   Was it just coincidence that she took that position within 10 days of Trump's tariff announcement?  HELL, NO!!  She had to move that fast to grab some of the momentum--of which there was a metric crap-ton going with Trump.

But our Pubbie pals will not support Trump's tariffs.  Nosirree, Bob!!  Fuggedaboutid.  Let Eau Claire, Janesville, and Neenah--the subject of Tammy's commercial--go hang.  We, the Pubbies, are going to let China disembowel US manufacturing because that's what Ricardo, the Koch Boys, and Von Mises tell us to do.

Oh, yes, there's more.

...He [Trump] understood the GOP is an increasingly working-class party, that much of the party’s base is “part of the ‘47 percent’” that Mitt Romney vilely dismissed as “takers,” and that “blue-collar conserv­atism . . . built on a broad range of social values issues” and featuring “accommo­dation of the economic interests of the party’s voters”...

...As F. H. Buckley has written, drawing on recent Voter Study Group data showing that 73 percent of voters are liberal on economic issues such as taxes and inequality but 52 percent are conservative on social issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and immigration, “the sweet spot in American politics, the place where elections are won, is the socially conservative and economically liberal quadrant.”
By contrast, the fashionable “socially liberal but economically conservative libertarians” represent less than 4 percent of the electorate....

Well.  Scott Walker is gingerly pushing a few 'economically liberal' positions such as giving away $100.00 for every child in the State, and giving away a bunch of money to a diaper plant.  These happen to be so awkward that they are embarrassing, but Walker seems to have a clue.

(Why not $100.00 to each tax-paying resident, Scott?  Why not a 0.5% reduction in corporate tax for all corporations?)  EDIT TO ADD:  On the other hand, Walker could propose NO $100.00 tax gifts, and NO tax holidays.  He could use the cash to pay down State debt instead--which is a mutually-agreeable use of the money.

And just for fun the author addresses the Pubbie Blowhards who wrung their hands over the NW Wisconsin Senate loss:  (I'm looking at YOU over there at the JSOnline op-ed page).

.....we’re likely to be hearing a lot of the usual hand-wringing from both parties’ chattering classes in the wake of PA-18 about how the GOP has to win back Hillary Clinton’s affluent professionals. But the culturally trendy upper and upper-middle classes have been moving away from the Republican Party for at least 30, if not 50, years, long before Donald Trump came down the escalator. At this point, to be blunt, they’re never going to vote for us again no matter how many third trimester babies we abort, transgenders we let into the girls’ locker room, and illegal aliens we give sanctuary to. 

Oh, well.