Voters Are Shutting Out GOP Messaging

Daniel Dale-- as he has been for years-- was warning again today that Trump is a big fat liar. Reporting for CNN, he noted that "Trump has issued more statements lying about the 2020 election than statements talking about any other subject"-- about a third of all his public communications since he was finally expelled from the White House (after his failed coup). Thanks largely to Trump, normal people-- not Fox viewers and people addicted to Hate Talk Radio-- have learned not to trust anything coming out of the GOP and its media sock puppets. Here's what the pig has been carrying on about:

This morning, Paul Kane, looked into why the GOP's attacks on Biden have been falling flat with everyone other than brainwashed right-wingers. "According to Republican thinking," wrote Kane, "Biden and his congressional allies are pushing an unnecessarily big-spending slate of legislation that is risking the first major bout of inflation in more than four decades. But these Republicans, particularly those in the Senate, have not been able to break through to much of America with that particular note, unable to place much political pressure on Democrats who are wavering on these proposals. In a late April Washington Post-ABC poll, 65 percent of Americans supported the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that Biden signed into law in March, while just 31 percent opposed it. Support for Biden’s $2 trillion spending plan on roads, bridges and other infrastructure ranged in April, the last time it was reliably polled, from 49 percent approval in a Fox News poll to 68 percent approval in a Monmouth survey. But every poll shows support levels well above those not approving of that kind of mega-spending plan."

Republicans have tried to beat the drum against the Biden agenda. For weeks Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has hammered away, echoing the critique from Larry Summers, former top economic adviser to the Clinton and Obama administrations, that the pandemic relief package spent way too much money and could prompt an inflation run.

But that message has, so far, been largely drowned out, especially in the conservative media echo chamber that is intensely focused on cultural issues that spark outrage and help ratings but do little to help win elections.

...Internal [GOP] estimates are that half of these news conferences have pushed economic messages, such as the inflation threat and a poor jobs report released in early May, while the rest have focused on issues ranging from the Israel-Hamas war and the release of emails from Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert.

Republicans acknowledge that some events drive a message to base voters already inclined to be in their corner, as demonstrated by Thursday’s news conference about increased concerns that the coronavirus may have emanated from a Chinese lab leak.

So far they are having less impact than their GOP predecessors did 12 years ago as the Obama administration came to power amid the Wall Street crash. That 2009 stimulus proposal, worth nearly $800 billion, was viewed favorably by voters initially, but much less so than Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.

...[I]t’s harder to build a message against big government spending after the Trump administration oversaw a roughly $9 trillion jump in the federal debt, with 2020 spending hitting new levels to battle the twin health and economic crises... Still, Republicans are eager to run that 2009-10 playbook again without any apologies for their previous deficit-busting record.

...Some Republicans fear that as long as their conservative echo chamber focuses on cultural issues, it will give Biden room to shore up support among independent voters who will decide the next few elections.

In the late April poll from Fox, voters overwhelmingly supported Biden’s plan to finance his expansive agenda: 63 percent supported raising taxes on those making more than $400,000 while just 33 percent opposed that.

It would be a mistake for progressives to take much comfort in Kane's analysis. A couple of days ago I was talking about Republican Party messaging with Alan Grayson, the former Orlando firebrand congressman currently running for the Senate seat held by Marco Rubio. "What’s most interesting to me," he told me "is that the GOP has come up with a framing that allows the party to appear that way to those voters. For instance, if you asked those voters why they thought that Democrats are the party that panders to racists, they would refer to identity politics, political correctness, affirmative action and attacks on 'white privilege.' In other words, they haven’t been hypnotized, they’ve been fed a storyline that they believe in. Meanwhile, the Democrats vehemently deny being socialists. The Democrats generally aren’t even offering an alternative framing."