They’re At It Again: The GOP is Demanding Biden Shoot Santa Claus

Slippery Republicans who voted for Trump’s stimulus are fighting Biden’s stimulus…because an election is coming

Photo by Kevin Grieve on Unsplash

There’s a Democrat in the White House, so, predictably, Republicans are screaming that President Biden must shoot Santa: “No good things for Americans when a Democrat is in charge!”

This morning on CNN, Republican Senator Pat Toomey argued that Biden should get no stimulus out of Congress — none — even as the economic recovery stalls, almost a million people a week are newly filing for unemployment, and American children are going to bed hungry.

(Toomey is the same slippery senator who argued in 2017 that the GOP should ignore Democratic objections to Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut for billionaires, as Tapper pointed out on his CNN show.)

Republicans and “conservatives” are playing the same game they did when Barack Obama started his presidency in 2009: shrink the size of the recovery by gutting stimulus funds so people will become cynical about the promises of a Democratic president. Block any Democratic attempts to truly help the people.

From Larry Summers to Mitt Romney to Pat Toomey, these billionaire-compliant trolls insist they’re worried about the size of the national debt and the possibility of inflation. What they’re really worried about is that Democrats will put the country back together and thus win big in the 2022 and 2024 elections…and raise taxes on the uber-rich to pay for it.

Cynicism is a poison that kills democracies. But Republicans have fought hard against the efforts of every Democratic president since 1992 because cynicism is the GOP’s friend.

When Americans don’t believe government can help them, they’re less likely to participate in elections and Republicans are more likely to win. When Democrats can deliver benefits to Americans, however, they consistently win elections.

The GOP learned this lesson in the New Deal era from 1932 until 1980, when they repeatedly lost elections with their austerity politics, and therefore put their “Two Santa Clauses” program into place as both a political and a governing strategy, starting with the…