The comparisons to Kenneth the Page are unfair … to Kenneth, who I have to believe would govern better than Jindal. But look: once people actually grasp what GOP tax and budget policy is about (screwing the working class to benefit the rich) they hate it. Hate it. If we had a halfway decent press corps we'd never see a Republican majority again.
Jindal's plan exploded because it was zero sum. It cut taxes on the rich and raised them on the poor. It had to be zero sum because states have to balance their budgets.But the federal budget doesn't have to balance, and this fact underpins the entire Republican policy strategy over the last three decades. Before Ronald Reagan, Republicans cared a great deal about controlling the budget deficit and very little about cutting taxes for the rich. In an environment where every dollar into one account had to come from another, giving a lot of the dollars to a tiny number of people is almost invariably unpopular.
That's why the GOP's makeover into a more plutocratic party occurred simultaneously with its abandonment of old-fashioned fiscal conservatism. Lower taxes for the rich can work politically only if you obscure the fact that eventually the money has to come from somewhere else.
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