Joe Scarborough’s new populist stance is shockingly similar to Bernie Sanders’ message
Joe Scarborough in one segment destroyed everything that the Republican establishment holds dear. Channeling Bernie Sanders was a surprise. He does not give credit to Sanders but instead to Donald Trump.
“The problem with the Republican Party over the last thirty years,” Joe Scarborough said. “They haven’t, we haven’t developed a message that appeals to the working class Americans economically how Donald Trump does. You look at the fact; we talk about cutting capital gains taxes. That ten thousand people that are in the crowd cheering Donald Trump, they are never going to get a capital gains cut because it doesn’t apply. We talk about getting rid of the death tax. The death tax is not going to impact the ten thousand people in the crowd for Donald Trump. We talk about how great free trade deals are. Those free trade deals never trickle down to those ten thousand people Donald Trump’s crowd.”
Chuck Todd interjected. “Sound like Bernie Sanders!”
And then this shocker.
“Herein lies the problem with the Republican Party,” Scarborough said. “It never trickles down. Those people in Trump’s crowd, those are all the ones that lost the jobs when they get moved to Mexico and elsewhere. The Republican donor classes were the ones who got rich off of it because their capital moved overseas and they made higher profits.”
Inasmuch as Scarborough admitted that Republican policies have been a failure, he implied that had the GOP elected ‘real conservatives’ somehow a populist message would have come to pass. He talks about a conservative populism that has only existed in the figment of his imagination.
Scarborough did get something else right. Only a Republican not tethered to the donor class could have the economic message that Donald Trump has co-opted from Bernie Sanders.
“How interesting that the Republican said okay we are going to have all these trade deals and tax cuts that benefit our wealthy donor class,” Scarborough said. “But we will give them the social issues. We will give them abortion. We will give them gay marriage. We will give them guns, And they will vote for us. What we are fighting this year is, they will even support a guy who says Planned Parenthood is good if he comes with an economic approach that they feel could actually help them win the future.”
It almost seems like everyone has co-opted the revolution was attempting to build with appealing rhetoric to each candidate’s respective bases.
(h/t Morning Joe)