Republicans who only three months ago were screaming class warfare at any mention of inequality have suddenly found religion and are lamenting the fact that economic gains in the US have gone to the wealthiest for decades.
Talk of Wealth Gap Prods the G.O.P. to Refocus (NY Times) and Washington’s Economic Focus Turns to Middle-Class Angst(WSJ).
Mitt Romney wants to "end the scourge of poverty", Jeb Bush says "the last eight years have been pretty good ones for top earners, they've been a lost decade for the rest of America". You can trace the rise of inequality in America back to the moment Republicans started focusing on bringing the capital gains rate down. The GOP haven't been through enough stages of grief to admit that yet.
They have nevertheless, finally acknowledged that Climate Change is Real.
The Senate on Wednesday voted that “climate change is real and is not a hoax” as Democrats used the Keystone XL pipeline debate to force votes on the politically charged issue ahead of the 2016 elections.
The “hoax” amendment to the pipeline bill from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) passed 98-1, with only Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, the chairman of the Senate Republican campaign arm, voting “no.”
They've even given up on their own litmus tests and
dropped their abortion bill.
What's driving all this change of heart just two months after an election where every Republican was as reactionary as Franco?
That's easy, they know that bashing the poor does well in mid-terms, not so well in presidential election years when a more diverse citizenry comes out to vote. In other words, it's all about 2016.
The fault dear friends, is that we've failed miserably to increase the number of voters participating in mid-terms. When we make election day a public holiday and switch to universal voter registration, the GOP will realize they have to be reasonable throughout the four year election cycle.