Jimmy Kimmel picked up on the fact that-- with the exception of Jeff Sessions' (KKK-AL) immigration plan-- Trump hasn't given the morons backing him for the GOP nomination any specifics about anything. Everything he does will be the greatest or fabulous-- from the wall he plans to build to the replacement for Obamacare he plans to wave his magic wand and bring into being, to everyone he hires to work for him, like Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter. That's the genesis of the video above.Not exactly a revered figure among the Trumpists, former Republican Majority Leader-- and former congressman-- Eric Cantor pointed out this week that aside from the absurdity of the $600 billion wall, Trumpy wants to upend sacrosanct Republican fiscal policies that benefit the very rich at the expense of everyone else. Trump, for example, has expressed an intention of doing away with carried-interest deductions, a mainstay of hedge-fund managers' ability to grow fortunes that have historically taken generations to accumulate. Trump:
I would take carried interest out, and I would let people making hundreds of millions of dollars a year pay some tax, because right now they are paying very little tax and I think it’s outrageous. I want to lower taxes for the middle class.…The middle class is getting clobbered in this country. You know the middle class built this country, not the hedge fund guys, but I know people in hedge funds that pay almost nothing and it’s ridiculous, okay?
Greg Sargent picked right up on it for his Washington Post column Friday morning. Would Trump's vague promises to tax the rich cause Republicans to finally turn on him-- when his misogyny, his racism, his dumbed-down approach and his childish insults towards Republican Establishment figures have only increased his ratings? Sargent disagreed with the assessment by Justin Green, political editor of Independent Journal Review, who figured Trump's threats to tax the rich "might frighten the donor class, but the bulk of conservative voters aren’t especially worried about protecting low taxes for rich people." Sargent found polling data that shows that Republicans are worried about protecting low taxes for rich people.
A Gallup poll this spring found that while a majority of Americans overall favors redistributing wealth with higher taxes on the rich, only 29 percent of Republicans agree, while 70 percent disagrees. Among conservatives it’s 32-66. A Pew poll in 2014 found that while a majority of Americans favors raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations to expand programs for the poor, only 29 percent of Republicans agree, while 59 percent of Republicans favor lowering taxes on the wealthy to encourage investment and growth.
What Trump is proposing is gutting the whole idea-- failed idea-- of trickle-down economics. Apparently in his universe the whole bogus pretense of job creators needing special tax incentives is... just as bogus as it is in Bernie Sanders' world. If Trump ran against Hillary Clinton, his economic agenda could be more populist and further left than hers! Back to Sargent:
Trump does seem to have broken with GOP dogma here, and to my knowledge, none of his Republican rivals have responded directly to it. But Marco Rubio is justifying his call for eliminating taxes on capital gains and dividends by arguing that investment creates jobs for people like his bartender father. It’s an interesting contrast.One of the odd paradoxes of Trump’s rise has been that even as he is little more than an entertainer, his willingness to say what other Republicans won’t has forced out into the open genuine policy debates among Republicans that had previously been shrouded in vagueness or imprisoned within party orthodoxy. His call for mass deportations has unmasked GOP evasions over what to do about the 11 million, forcing something close to a real debate on that question. His vow not to cut Social Security benefits has led some to ask whether GOP voters might actually disagree with party dogma on the need to cut them.If Republicans respond to Trump’s (apparent) apostasy on taxes, the debate would be useful, not to mention fascinating, and could shed more light on whether Republican voters really agree with GOP orthodoxy on “protecting low taxes for rich people,” as Green puts it, in the name of job creation.
This all depends on who, exactly, these Trump supporters who have rocketed him to the top of the heap are. Do they actually vote in Republican primaries? You probably remember the video below, shot by Nancy Pelosi's daughter for Bill Maher's show. Long before Trump decided to run for the Republican nomination, Alexandra Pelosi interviewed the kind of people who were already ready for Trump. Recall the fella living in squalor with no front teeth who, when Pelosi pointed out that being a Republican hasn't worked for him, insisted that Republican policies could work for him. He and the rest of these poor doofuses are the Trump base, far more than the wealthy or educated Republicans who dominated the party when your grandfather looked at the GOP.