Elections
Will the Republican Establishment Survive the Coronavirus?
There’s going to be less tolerance for the kind of Republican who would make things harder for working people by subsidizing the loss of their labor power to Central American migrants or wage slaves in China.
By Matthew Boose • April 17, 2020
The big unresolved question of the Trump era is simple: What happens when Donald Trump’s presidency is over? Has the Republican Party really become more “populist,†or will the GOP revert to the neoliberal, neoconservative status quo?
The coronavirus has brought this question into focus like never before. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a supposed populist of the Left, dropped out in a humiliating and shameful surrender, right in the middle of an economic catastrophe that threatens to wipe out what is left of the working class he claims to champion. For his part, Donald Trump has not turned out to be, so far, as aggressive a populist as some might have expected.
President Trump will run whatever campaign he likes, but the playbook has practically been written for him: double down on the pro-worker, anti-globalization politics that won him his first term. Joe Biden, a barely conscious, Wall Street plutocrat—and a stooge for China, no less—is an obvious and easy foil.
Whatever happens this November, it is questionable whether the establishment politics that came before Trump will survive an unprecedented pandemic that is already testing the GOP’s commitment to “limited government.†The coronavirus has unleashed an enormous bi-partisan appetite for spending that is not likely to subside when the immediate health threat goes away.
The meltdown is only just getting started, but the signs of devastation are sobering.
Last week was Wall Street’s best since 1974, but that was cold comfort for 22 million Americans currently out of work. For perspective, that’s one-in-seven U.S. workers. Some predict the unemployment rate could swell to 30 percent, worse than the Great Depression.
When the full impact hits, will Americans tolerate austerity from their government? For the undeceived, the answer is obvious. Of course not. Especially when Wall Street is getting generous bailouts, how will admonitions to stick to “limited government†sound to millions of people living in destitution?
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https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/17/will-the-republican-establishment-survive-the-coronavirus/
