While Donald Trump campaigned like a populist, he is governing like a real Ayn Randian Republican of the GOP Establishment. Because his rhetoric is opposed to his actual policies, he continues to dupe his base. Eventually, reality will sink in. Unfortunately, by then the many Republicans intend to quit Congress after the damage is done leaving Trump to hold the bag,
Donald Trump just does not know how ignorant he is. Unfortunately, for him, it will catch up with him at precisely the time when he is running for reelection if he makes it that long.
Fox News Juan Williams wrote a piece at The Hill titled “GOP establishment using Trump for its own ends” that points out how the GOP Establishment has taken over Trump’s agenda.
The real problem is that tax cuts for the rich are not what candidate Trump promised his populist supporters. Trump said he was going to raise taxes on the rich and eliminate deductions that favored the investor class, while cutting taxes on the middle class. He also said he was going to end the carried interest deduction that allows hedge fund millionaires to pay at a lower tax rate than working-class Americans.
The bill Trump signed does the exact opposite. It gives a big tax cut to the rich and allows the carried interest deduction to remain. Trump has distracted the nation with his clown show while the “too big to fail” crowd of corporate lobbyists, the Chamber of Commerce and the Koch brothers passed a tax bill to make themselves even richer. This is a triumph for establishment Republicans.
Williams then explained how Republicans used Trump’s buffoonery as a bait and switch technique to attain their goals.
For most of 2017, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) were ridiculed on right-wing talk radio and conservative websites for not advancing the Trump agenda. The Republican Congress’s approval ratings sank lower than Trump’s. But in retrospect, it looks as if McConnell and Ryan never cared about their low ratings. They wanted the president to fill up the front pages with his attacks on them, as well as bluster, bullying and scandal.
It allowed them to work without the glare of public scrutiny for a rushed tax bill that gives small, temporary breaks to Trump’s “forgotten” working people while the wealthiest one percent of taxpayers get 83 percent of the benefit.Establishment Republicans also let Trump have the spotlight while working in the dark to advance three other long-held agenda items. Firstly, allowing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve; secondly, repealing the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act; and thirdly, pushing poorly qualified but pro-business and anti-regulation judges onto federal courts.
And then the coup de grace, the GOP Establishment intend to use the same technique on steroids in 2018.
Establishment Republicans plan to use Trump as a distraction once again in 2018. While Trump is caught up battling the special counsel probe into alleged collusion between his 2016 campaign and Russia, McConnell and Ryan plan to cut federal spending on social safety net programs, including welfare, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
These are politically popular programs. Trump promised during the 2016 campaign not to cut Social Security. But now the populist politician will again be reneging on a pledge. He is being repositioned by the GOP establishment into demanding smaller government and making their case that starving big government begins by cutting spending on domestic programs. Trump and the Republican majority in Congress will not mention their 2017 tax cuts that drove up the deficit by more than $1 trillion.
Progressives continue to have, a fight, on their hands. Republicans are consistent and determined to impose their will, the transfer of wealth from the many to the few.
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