Analysis: How Dr. Seuss explains Biden's big win on Covid bill

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:
Greg Sargent
@ThePlumLineGS
"It's clear that Democratic moderates are displaying less fear of being tagged with the 'big government' label from the right than during the early months of the Clinton and Obama presidencies."

@RonBrownstein nails a key aspect of this political moment:

Analysis: How Dr. Seuss explains Biden's big win on Covid bill
The Republican Party's inability to ignite a grassroots backlash against the $1.9 trillion Democratic Covid relief bill moving toward final passage underscores the GOP's transformation into a...
cnn.com
12:09 PM · Mar 9, 2021

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/08/politics/biden-covid-relief-bill-republicans/index.html

[lagomorph777]

1. There's no actual mention of Dr. Seuss except in the headline.

click-bait.

[pecosbob]

2. Ringing the deficit bell isn't working for the GOP any more...it's all dog whistles now

(CNN)The Republican Party's inability to ignite a grassroots backlash against the $1.9 trillion Democratic Covid relief bill moving toward final passage underscores the GOP's transformation into a coalition energized primarily by cultural and racial grievance -- and the opportunity that opens for President Joe Biden to advance his economic priorities.
Although every House and Senate Republican voted against the rescue plan, it has not generated anything like the uprisings against new government spending and programs that engulfed Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama during each man's first year in office. Indeed, throughout the legislative fight, congressional Republicans and conservative media outlets like Fox News appeared more interested in focusing attention on peripheral cultural issues, like whether Dr. Seuss had become a victim of liberal "cancel culture."
That stress on cultural complaints reflects the shifting source of motivation inside the GOP coalition, with fewer voters responding to the warnings against "big government" once central to the party's appeal and more viscerally responding to alarms that Democrats intend to transform "our country," as former President Donald Trump often calls it, into something culturally unrecognizable.

"Concerns about cultural influence, political power and status are really overwhelming other ideological concerns on the right," says Daniel Cox, a research fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who recently published an exhaustive national survey of attitudes among GOP voters. "Traditional conservative principles, whether it's commitment to a strong national defense or support for limited government, do not animate Republican voters."

As concerns about big government recede, anxiety about America's changing identity in an era of growing racial and religious diversity has emerged as the core unifying principle of the GOP coalition. A February poll from Echelon Insights, Anderson's firm, offers one measure of that shift. Asked their top priorities, Republican voters identified illegal immigration, lack of support for the police, liberal bias in media and general moral decline among their top five concerns; high taxes was the sole economic issue that cracked the list.