Louise Linton is here to save us
There’s little need to scrutinize the big things when the little ones tell you all you need to know about the sorry condition of the Republican Party.
Let us begin our melancholy tour with the Steve Mnuchins — he, the secretary of the treasury, she, his wife Louise Linton.
Actually, it’s more her than him. Linton is a showboat former model with a tart tongue and a designer wardrobe.
Louise Linton lives to condescend. Blond, trim and chic, she lords it over the common folk who have no idea the suffering and heartache of high office, the demands made on official families without whom the Republic would be in shambles.
Answering the Instagram of an Oregon woman who took exception her traveling on the government’s dime, Linton let it be known she was, hypothetically at least, prepared to storm the sands of Iwo Jima, if that’s what the country requires.
Replying to JenniMiller29, the wife of the billionaire secretary of the treasury said the following (reader alert — grammar is optional this high up): “Lololoh. Have you given more to the economy than me and my husband? Either as an individual earner in taxes OR in self-sacrifice to your country? … Pretty sure that the amount we sacrifice per year is a lot more than you would willing to sacrifice if the choice was yours.”
Stand aside, JenniMiller29, you sniveling non-patriot. Louise Linton is here, ready to serve and save you.
The Republican war on science is well-known. But now the party has turned on mathematical analytics. The corruption of statistics is a serious matter.
Just prior to the vote in the Senate on the tax overhaul, the GOP adopted a strategy to strangle in its cradle the report of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) which was unfavorably blunt about the consequences of the legislation.
Instead of providing an overall stimulus to the economy, the changes in the tax code proposed by Senate Republicans would explode the deficit by one-trillion dollars, the non-partisan staff of economists explained.
It was the last thing Republican leaders wanted to hear. As a result, two pages of talking points were distributed to members of the Republican caucus amounting to a deliberate campaign to discredit both the analysis produced by the panel and the panel itself.
“We think they lowballed” the bill’s revenue projections, said Sen. John Cronyn of Texas, the second in command in the Senate.
Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina commented that “there’s no doubt that JCT has been consistently underestimating the activity in our economy.”
Finally, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rang down the curtain on the JCT analysis. He declared that far from being a revenue loser, as JCT projected, the tax plan, he was “totally confident”, would be “a revenue producer.”
Playing along, House Republicans temporarily sidelined the high praise for the Joint Committee on Taxation which appeared on their website. To wit, “The people who prepare our cost estimates are the best in the business, and they have been working on this issue for years.”
Sometimes senators should just keep their mouths shut, especially when it exposes some pretty ugly and mistaken assumptions about their fellow-Americans. Such was the case with Republicans Orrin Hatch of Utah and Iowa’s Chuck Grassley.
Days after getting into a loud back-and-forth with Democrat Sherrod Brown about the tax bill, during which he declared he had come up the hard way (he was born in Pittsburgh), Hatch uttered the following:
“I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help keep people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger, and expect the federal government to do everything.”
It was widely supposed that Hatch was speaking of Medicaid, which has been helping the WORKING poor make ends meet for the past half century.
Grassley was little better, maybe worse. “I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people who are investing, as opposed to those (who spend) every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”
(Note: fewer than one in 500 estates owe the federal treasury money. Nevertheless, the Senate bill doubles the tax exemption on multi-million dollar estates while the House would eliminate all estate taxes.)
As a matter of governance, Republicans favor investors over consumers, Wall Street over Main Street, the rich over the middle class and poor. And now, the House Republicans’ war on the FBI makes it pretty clear that a segment of the party prefers law-breakers over law-enforcers.
The soul of the Republican Party lies in tatters.
Notice, Donald Trump’s name has not even been mentioned, although it’s clear the president brings out the worst in the party.
Two names drive the point home: Steve Bannon and Roy Moore.
A Moore victory in Alabama on Tuesday would shred whatever small sliver of decency remains in a once great party. Only one thing would be worse: allowing him to take a seat in the Senate — the Senate of George Norris, Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater, and Howard Baker, great Republicans all.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation and Our People. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail .com.