Republicans are becoming the party of big government
President Donald Trump’s populist renovation of the Republican Party is ushering in a new era of America’s center-right as a champion of the New Deal social safety net.
What’s a Democrat to do? (More on that momentarily.)
No less than Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has become an outspoken voice for extending the Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies relied on by millions of Americans. The Georgia Republican, 51, has always prided herself on running for Congress — in 2020 — because she opposed the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The Trump acolyte was disgusted with GOP failures to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature health insurance reform law.
But Greene’s U-turn shouldn’t be all that shocking to anyone paying attention.
“The Republican Party has been fundamentally transformed by Trump,” said Paul Sracic, an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington.
Sracic spent years as a political science professor at Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio, ground zero for this transformation. He watched firsthand as Trump, beginning in 2016, attracted legions of longtime working-class Democrats to the GOP. They might have been socially conservative — indeed, many were — but they were the exact opposite of the typical suburban fiscal conservative. They now occupy prime real estate in the Republican governing coalition, and so Sracic isn’t surprised at the GOP’s party-of-government turn.
“These former Democrats think that the government caused their problems by the actions it took, particularly with regard to trade, and so they think........
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