The Best of Reason: Can Free Markets Win Votes in the New GOP?

As the party grows more populist, ethnically diverse, and working class, will Republicans abandon their libertarian economic principles?

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The Best of Reason: Can Free Markets Win Votes in the New GOP?

This week's featured article is "Can Free Markets Win Votes in the New GOP?" by Stephanie Slade.

This audio was generated using AI trained on the voice of Katherine Mangu-Ward.

Music credits: "Deep in Thought" by CTRL and "Sunsettling" by Man with Roses

Comments

[Roberta]

TL;DL but the answer is of course they will, because where else they gonna go get them? Even in the darkest days of Nixonomics, Republicans proffered freer markets than Democrats, and the gulf between the parties has grown since. Nixon's administration inaugurated all those commissions that eventually bore fruit in deregulation in the decade that followed.

[MasterThief]

The weird part is that there's probably a lot of overlap between TEA party people, right wing libertarians, and MAGA support. Slade is very concerned by the new GOP even though in many ways it closely resembles the priorities the grassroots have long held. Fiscal sanity and general free market sentiments have been standards for the GOP base. The problem is with the "moderate" RINOs the base despises who Slade prefers when she isn't outright shilling for Democrats. She can't cry about the right here when they mostly agree with free markets whilst giving her support to the left who no longer gives lip service to wanting free markets.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul. they/them)]

Today's Trump and Biden articles:

Trump:

Shadow of Bush v. Gore looms over Supreme Court’s Trump ballot case

Republicans fear they will be targets in Trump’s ‘retribution’ campaign

Trump is not immune from prosecution in his 2020 election interference case, US appeals court says

Biden:

Border security and Ukraine aid collapses despite Biden’s plea for Congress to ‘show some spine’

[charliehall]

Republicans were NEVER liberarian. From 1854 to 1932, the Republicans were much more the government intervention party than the Democrats, promoting massive Massive MASSIVE corporate welfare including high protective tariffs for politically powerful industries. In 1913, the Democrats finally enacted a law restoring tariffs to sensible levels for the first time since 1861, but the benefits died with World War I and the Republicans went back to All Corporate Welfare All The Time in 1921. The notorious Smoot Hawley law helped make the Great Depression worse and Donald Trump wants higher tariffs than those levels.

Finally, Eisenhower, a true internationalist, rejected almost a century of Republican orthodoxy and agreed to the low trade barriers that FDR had promoted. The Corporate Establishment was horrified but they couldn't attack a national hero. Ronald Reagan was a free marketer at heart but even he had to cave to help the steel industry that had been so badly mismanaged that it truly deserved to die. The largest US steel manufacturer immediately took Reagan's aid and bought an oil company rather than modernize its plants. (I am not creative enough to make this up.)

Much of Biden's Industrial Policy is unhelpful but Trump's is much more far-reaching and will have much more devastating consequences. Trump does not like free markets at all and his MAGA cult turns on a dime for him. We need to re-elect Biden and to support every remaining free market oriented ("neoliberal" is the pejorative term for them) Democrat. I don't think that there are any free market oriented Republicans left. 🙁

[The Last American Hero]

What other form of tax replaced those tariffs in 1913? The totes libertarian income tax?

[aajax]

Free markets can win some votes, but protectionism will outweigh anything they do there. As for principles, the GOP has abandoned all liberal principles. Their principle is, “Trump is the principle”.