When every Senate Republican voted against President Biden’s $1.9 trillion rescue package over the weekend, it revived a question that analysts have asked about the modern GOP for decades: Why do so many conservative Americans vote against their own economic interests?
A new analysis by three leading political scientists theorizes this question in a fresh way: by comprehensively analyzing the political economy of red states, relative to that of blue ones. In so doing, they have captured some striking truths about this political moment.
Its key finding: We’re in the grip of a paradox. Even as areas that vote Republican continue falling behind blue America economically — helping widen those oft-discussed regional inequalities between cosmopolitan and outlying areas — GOP elites everywhere are growing more committed to an increasingly uniform and regressive agenda that does little to address the problem.
“Red America is falling farther behind, but the politicians who represent it at all levels have gotten more unified on an economic agenda that hurts the […]
Looks like a strategy to me: create problems, sow discontent, blame it all on the “other.” It’s purely a war of mind control.
We need a wealth tax, and need to get rid of money in politics. Every politician should pay the same amount for their election campaign and run on their ideas and then stick to them if they do get elected or else should be replaced.