Republicans gonna Republican

Jamelle Bouie makes the point that, even though the OAFPOTUS is a narcissistic, infantile, horrible human being, his policies look exactly like those of most other Republican presidents:

As nearly every commentator under the sun has observed for the past decade, Trump is unique — and to his critics, transgressive — in ways that defy traditional categorization.

And yet, the most salient detail about Trump as an actual officeholder is that he is a Republican politician committed to the success of the Republican Party and its ideological vision. In this way, he is little more than a vehicle for the policy agenda of the most conservative Republicans, willing to sign whatever they might bring to his desk.

He spearheaded an assault on the federal administrative state, fulfilling a dream that dates back to conservative opposition to the New Deal, and has put his presidency behind large and unsustainable tax breaks for the rich as well as vicious cuts to the social insurance state.

[A]s irresponsible as [this week's tax] bill is, there is a dog-bites-man element to its existence. If we understand that Trump is, in most respects, an ordinary Republican president, then it is not news to learn that a Republican president wants to cut social services for the poor to sustain a large tax cut for the rich.

What’s striking isn’t that this is happening, but that Trump, in his 10 years on the American political scene, has successfully obscured his rigidly partisan agenda with claims of populism and ideological heterodoxy. His occasional gestures toward support for existing social programs or greater taxes on the rich — and his willingness to say anything to amass power — are enough to persuade many voters (and some professional political observers) that Trump will somehow moderate the Republican Party or turn it away from its traditional agenda. If anything, it’s been the opposite: Trump’s willingness to do everything favored by his partisan fellow travelers has only accelerated the Republican Party’s dash toward ideological and policy extremism.

Yes, you can attribute some of the worst of this administration to the specific authoritarian vision of Trump and his allies. But a good deal of what we have seen — and what we will see — is simply what happens when you elect a Republican to the White House.

When George W. Bush left office in 2009, the United States was mired in two wars and the global economy was in free fall. When Donald Trump left office after his first term, the United States was mired in a deadly pandemic and its economy was recovering from a free fall.

That’s two Republican presidencies over 20 years that ended in disaster. There is no reason to think that Trump’s second term will be the exception that breaks the rule.

I think Bouie is correct. All the insanity and deliberate incompetence (if such a thing exists) coming out of the White House distracts from the fundamental point that Republicans have wanted all of this since the parties flipped in the 1960s. Like GWB and Reagan and Nixon, the OAFPOTUS basically wants to turn the country into Mississippi.