WaPo | To understand why the current conservative
crack-up so confounds the Republican establishment, you have to
recognize that the party is facing two separate but simultaneous
revolts: one led by Ted Cruz, the other by Donald Trump.
The first is well described by E.J. Dionne Jr. in his important new book, “Why the Right Went Wrong.”
For six decades, he explains, conservatives promised their voters that
they were going to roll back big government. In the 1950s and early
’60s, they ran against the New Deal (Social Security). Then they railed
against the Great Society (Medicare). Today it is Obamacare.
But they never actually did anything. Despite nominating Goldwater
and electing Nixon, Reagan and two Bushes, despite a congressional
revolution led by Newt Gingrich, these programs endured, and new ones
were created.
The simple reason for this is that while Americans
might oppose the welfare state in theory, in practice they like it. And
the bulk of government spending is on the middle class, not the poor. Social Security and Medicare take up more than twice as much of the federal budget as all non-defense discretionary spending . One middle-class tax exemption — for employer-based health care — costs the federal government more than three times the total for the food stamp program.
Whatever
the reality, Republicans kept promising something to their base but
never delivered. This has led to what Dionne calls the “great betrayal.”
Party activists are enraged, feel hoodwinked and view those in
Washington as a bunch of corrupt compromisers. They want someone who
will finally deliver on the promise of repeal and rollback.
Enter Cruz. How did a first-term senator, despised within his party
both in Washington and Texas, get so far so fast? By promising to take
on the party elites and finally throttle big government. Cruz has said
that he will repeal Obamacare, abolish the IRS and propose a constitutional amendment to balance the budget — which would mean hundreds of billions of dollars in spending cuts.
Trump’s
supporters, on the other hand, are old-fashioned economic liberals. In a
powerful analysis, drawing on recent survey data from the Rand Corp., Michael Tesler
shows that the Trump voter is very different from the Cruz voter. “Cruz
outperforms Trump by about 15 percentage points among the most
economically conservative Republicans,” he writes. “But Cruz loses to
Trump by over 30 points among the quarter of Republicans who hold
progressive positions on health care, taxes, the minimum wage and
unions.” Trump is well aware of this fact, which explains why he has said repeatedly he won’t touch Social Security
or Medicare, spoke fondly of the Canadian single-payer system,
denounces high chief executive salaries, promises to build
infrastructure and opposes free-trade deals.
