Ideology Uber Alles

.@JakeSherman: Did you make any progress on unemployment?

Schumer with back turned to camera: "They’re sticking to their position."

— Alan He (@alanhe) August 3, 2020

Gee, wonder why?

Think about it. If you were a president who let a pandemic get out of control, because you thought it would hurt enemies more than friends, you’d want your team, in this case the Senate Republicans, to dump as much cash as possible onto the economy in the hope that saving it would bring victory. Knowing that’s your best shot (aside from cheating in various and sundry ways), you tell your team to stop bickering and vote for the Heroes Act, the $3.5 trillion aid package already passed by the House. But while your team was on board last time, pushing $2.2 trillion into the economy, almost certainly preventing a drop in GDP from being worse than nearly 10 percent, this time is different. This time, your team is worried about debt. It’s worried about people being “overpaid.” It’s worried about things getting in the way of your being reelected.

Something happened between last time and this time. That something is obvious: poll after poll showing the incumbent behind the challenger by double digits in swing states (or ahead of the challenger within the margin of error in normally safe states). The Republicans, especially in the Senate, seemed to be losing faith in this president and now are looking toward a day when they will need to stand on conservative ideology to oppose a Democratic agenda. The president, meanwhile, can’t see what’s happening, not even when his own Cabinet member goes on TV and uses the same talking points cosplay fiscal hawks use to justify why they won’t support any measure to batten the economy. (Maybe the president didn’t notice, because he was golfing!) Trump can’t quite see he’s being snookered into believing the House Democrats are threatening his reelection by holding things up. They are not. The Republicans are.

The fact is, the rich made out fairly well in the Great Depression.  They were then, as now, shielded from the worst effects of a collapsed economy.  They expect to be again.  Besides, Europe is recovering, and it's a global economy. And the ideology of Republicans like Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell is expected to serve them well; and probably will.

Host Nicolle Wallace said that it’s clear Republicans don’t know their own districts if they’re fighting back against unemployment stimulus. She cited a special over the weekend that showed the long lines at food pantries where people driving expensive cars in Dallas were hoping to get canned goods.

John Cornyn may find he's expendable, because the Big Idea can never fail, it can only be failed, and Ted Cruz is its messenger and vanguard for at least four more years.  What is the GOP "strategy"?  To serve the Big Idea that brought us Donald Trump, obviously.  Besides, got to have some way to blame the Democrats for the countries problems, even as the Democrats solve them (again) and put the country on the road to fiscal responsibility and financial restoration (again).  That's the "strategy" so the GOP can take control and wreck it all (again), in the name of "conservative ideology."

The Lincoln Project, among others, claims their gonna cleanse the Augean stables this time.  We'll see.  As usual, it all comes down to "we, the people."  We vote for this clown show, over and over and over again.  In the meantime, I stand with Kurt Vonnegut:

"The winners are at war with the losers, and the fix is in.  The prospects for peace are awful."

(And Garrett Haake still think the "narrative" is the guiding light of the Capitol, and only Democrats can be in "disarray":

“I do this for a living and I don’t know what their unified position is on those unemployment benefits,” confessed Haake on MSNBC Monday.

The idea that they have no "unified position" is one he cannot conceive.)