QOTD -- Why They Did It

 

Paul Waldman, writing about "Why They Did It," in his Substack The Cross Section, offers a reason why the MAGAt Republican party/ cult was bound and determined to pass its Big Ugly Bill, despite its historic unpopularity:

... They despise Medicaid and have contempt for everyone who uses it. The same goes for SNAP, aka food stamps. They desperately want to cut taxes for the wealthy, and always have. They don’t just want to roll back Biden-era climate policies, they want to destroy the entire green energy and manufacturing sectors of the economy. Their hearts flutter excitedly at the sight of a gang of masked thugs pummeling a landscaper or arresting a 6-year-old with leukemia; the thought of spending $150 billion so ICE can seize millions of immigrants and cart them off to a network of brutal detention centers fills them with joy.

That’s just part of what’s in the bill, but the point is that this is the fulfillment of their fondest policy wishes. If it costs them their House majority and maybe even their Senate majority as well (a long shot, but not impossible), they’re willing to do it. Because they believe in it.  [snip]

So while the short-term political outlook for Republicans is very bad, the more they look at the long term — in politics, but especially in policy — the better this bill looks. They pushed right up to the limit of what their budget could do and still hold enough votes to win a majority. And with every immigrant parent torn from their children’s arms, every family that loses their health coverage, every young person who decides to forego college, every rural health clinic that shuts down, every research grant that gets revoked, every solar energy project that gets dismantled, they can sit back, smile, and say, “This is why we came to Washington. No matter what happens tomorrow, it was worth it.”

Michigan Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern asked of these MAGAts "What is wrong with you people?" Our simple answer is, they're immoral, authoritarian- worshiping, torture- porn cowards whose only aim in life is to punch down -- punch down on the afflicted, the poor, the "other," all the people they despise. They've been given power to do so, ironically by some those same despised populations who will now reap the consequences of their vote.