What Will the GOP Do if It Wins?
Wait, are the midterms really about entitlement cuts?
This week on The Reason Roundtable, Matt Welch, Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman, and Fiona Harrigan, filling in for Katherine Mangu-Ward, discuss the heated rhetoric surrounding the upcoming midterm elections, theorize what a GOP-controlled House would entail, and answer a listener's question about how libertarians can avoid being labeled "jihadists."
0:48: Discourse over the midterms
19:54: The GOP's anti-immigration ads
32:15: Weekly Listener Question:
"Please see the following comment from British Conservative Party MP Robert Halfon: 'The government has looked like libertarian jihadists and treated the whole country as kind of laboratory mice on which to carry out ultra, ultra free-market experiments,' he told Sky News. How can we prevent libertarians from being slandered as such? If, as the U.K. markets suggested, freer economic policy requires short-term suffering to achieve longer-term gains, do Americans have the stomach required to approach such policies?"
48:21: What have we been consuming?
Mentioned in this podcast:
"Republican House Majority Will Try to Melt Down Global Economy," by Jonathan Chait
"Republicans Plan Debt Crisis to Force Cuts to Medicare and Social Security," by Jonathan Chait
"McCarthy Suggests a G.O.P.-Led House Would Question Aid to Ukraine," by Catie Edmondson
"Rishi Sunak to become Britain's next prime minister," by Jill Lawless
"'If you focus on the deficit, then tax increases are on the table.'" by Peter Suderman
"Why is everyone picking on the Bush 'tax cuts' rather than the Bush 'spending increases'?" by Nick Gillespie
"The 19 Percent Solution," by Nick Gillespie and Veronique De Rugy
"Is Libertarianism a 'Stealth Plan' To Destroy America?" by Nick Gillespie
"Grover Norquist: The GOP Tax Bill Is Good Enough For Now (He's Planning to 'Whine Later')" by Nick Gillespie
"The Grover Norquist of Spending Cuts: Jonathan Bydlak and the Coalition to Reduce Spending," by Nick Gillespie
Send your questions to roundtable@reason.com. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.
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Audio production by Ian Keyser
Assistant production by Adam Czarnecki
Music: "Angeline," by The Brothers Steve