The coronavirus pandemic has forced Republicans to (tacitly, quietly) make some startling admissions about the party's ideology. EricLevitz writes
A liberal is a conservative who’s been mugged by reality. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images/2019 Getty Images As the coronavirus pandemic shutters America’s storefronts and fills its ICUs, the GOP is camouflaging a whispered confession beneath a cough. The party’s admission is so quiet most Republicans can’t even make it out themselves. But listen carefully to recent directives from the Trump administration and its allies and you’ll hear unmistakably: Our theory of governance is a lie.1.
But conservative orthodoxy has always been too detached from reality to command strict adherence. A theory of government assembled out of the self-affirming delusions of the reactionary rich — and seething, amnesia-laden nostalgia of white cultural traditionalists — is bound to be a poor compass for guiding the ship of state. This was true before the coronavirus reached our shores.
In truth, Donald Trump’s immigration policies have never been commensurate with his demagogic rhetoric. The president has expended little-to-no effort on punishing employers who avail themselves of undocumented labor . But his administration has never before formally acknowledged the fact that undocumented workers are essential for keeping America fed.
Unlike many less-wealthy nations, the U.S. lacks the state capacity necessary to rapidly deposit cash relief into citizens’ bank accounts or cover the wage bills of struggling firms. As a result, the Trump administration was forced to structure its small-business bailout as a forgivable-loan program implemented through private banks, rather than a grant program implemented by the federal government.
In Florida, the GOP has confessed this point more forthrightly. As the Sunshine State’s deliberately underfunded unemployment-insurance system crashed last week, an adviser to Republican governor Ron DeSantis described the government office as a “shit sandwich.”
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