AFTER EIGHT YEARS of Republican fealty to Donald J. Trump, few would argue that the party is still defined by Ronald Reagan’s famous three-legged stool of the religious right, fiscal conservatives and neoconservative hawks.
But if the Republican Party is no longer in Reagan’s image, it’s not necessarily a populist-conservative MAGA monolith, either.
The last New York Times/Siena College poll found that only 37 percent of Republicans count as part of Mr. Trump’s loyal base.
And while majorities of Republicans side with Mr. Trump on almost every issue, those majorities are often quite slim: Around 40 percent of Republican-leaning voters support aid to Ukraine, support comprehensive immigration reform or say abortion should be mostly or always legal.
ut if the Republican Party isn’t quite a MAGA monolith, what is it? To better understand the party today, we split Republican and Republican-leaning voters into groups, based on the results of our Times/Siena poll. The groups were defined by how Republican-leaning voters felt on the issues — not how they felt about Mr. Trump.
The results depict a Republican coalition that consists of six groups:
The Moderate Establishment (14%). Highly educated, affluent, socially moderate or even liberal and often outright Never Trump.
The Traditional Conservatives (26%). Old-fashioned economic and social conservatives who oppose abortion and prefer corporate tax cuts to new tariffs. They don’t love Mr. Trump, but they do support him.
The Right Wing (26%). They watch Fox News and Newsmax. They’re “very conservative.” They’re disproportionately evangelical. They believe America is on the brink of catastrophe. And they love Mr. Trump more than any other group.
The Blue Collar Populists (12%). They’re mostly Northern, socially moderate, economic populists who hold deeply conservative views on race and immigration. Not only do they back Mr. Trump, but he himself probably counted as one a decade ago.
The Libertarian Conservatives (14%). These disproportionately Western and Midwestern conservatives value freedom and small government. They’re relatively socially moderate and isolationist. Other than the establishment, it’s Mr. Trump’s worst group.
The Newcomers (8%). They don’t look like Republicans. They’re young, diverse and moderate. But these disaffected voters like Democrats and the “woke” left even less.
Mr. Trump’s dominance of the Republican Party is founded on an alliance between the Right Wing and Blue Collar Populists, two groups that combine to represent nearly 40 percent of Republicans — and about two-thirds of Mr. Trump’s MAGA base of seemingly unshakable support.
The Blue Collar Populists and the Right Wing don’t always agree. In particular, they split on the issues of the religious right, like same-sex marriage and abortion. But these two groups are big Trump supporters. They mostly agree with him on his defining issues and they share his deeply pessimistic, even cataclysmic view of the direction of the country, including fear of the declining white share of the population.
The alliance between Blue Collar Populists and the Right Wing has left Mr. Trump’s potential opposition in disarray. Before Trump, the party’s mainstream prevailed against Right Wing candidates by uniting Traditional Conservatives and the moderate factions — both Establishment and Blue Collar. That blueprint for victory appears to be closed, at least for now.
Without a natural factional base, Ron DeSantis has struggled to maintain a steady foothold in the race. In fact, Mr. Trump leads Mr. DeSantis among every group of Republican voters identified in the analysis. The rest of the party, beyond Mr. Trump’s base, may not always back Trump policies, but it’s not necessarily anti-Trump. And the closest thing to an anti-Trump group in the party — the Moderate Establishment — has become alienated from the rest of the party.
If anyone is voting for gigantic GOP tax cuts for billionaire elites and is not a billionaire, then they are voting against their own interests.
So you’re of the opinion that people should vote entirely on greed rather than on principled views?
How is it greed if you’re poor and voting for rich people to get tax cuts?
It isn’t. That’s my point. The guy I was responding to made the claim that people should not vote for anything good if it isn’t directly good for them, individually. The greedy perspective is voting for higher taxes on someone else just because it isn’t your pocket.
I was arguing that people should vote based on principles. For instance, it isn’t voting against your interest to support tax cuts if you believe that everyone should be paying less taxes
You are operating the assumption that everyone is paying their fair share of taxes. Billionaires in the US pay 8.2% in federal taxes, which doesn’t include all their untaxable assets and tax evasion schemes. The average tax payer pays 13.3%, up to 37% depending on their tax bracket.
You might think that 5% isn’t a big difference, but keep in mind that 5% of a billion is $50,000,000. Billionaires don’t become billionaires through ‘hard work and ethics’. They become billionaires through exploitation of the ghastly federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, a wage that would be about $21.5 per hour if it kept up with inflation. Keep in mind that this is the bare minimum, not a livable wage, which would be closer to $30 per hour.
Billionaires are typically born with hoards of intergenerational wealth, in wealthy neighborhoods with well funded schools. Your zip code will largely tell you whether or not you succeed. The American Dream has long been dead and it’s time to wake up.
The only fair taxation is no taxation. Beyond the utopian ideal and into the real world, the fairest tax is the lowest possible tax.
This makes absolutely no sense.
Is it also fair to disproportionately tax the middle class when compared to the rich?
How does the fairness argument hold up when taking into account that the minimum wage is 1/3 of what it should be (considering inflation and not even taking cost of living into account) and the extreme anti-union efforts accross almost all industries?
Oh yeah, big daddy corporations are going to treat us fairly and maintain order. No need for taxes or a government. Just let all the corporations make the decisions. Need that road fixed? Well you should have built it closer to the Amazon warehouse, that’s not our problem. Fix the road yourself.
But the GOP has almost never cut taxes for the working class. They maintain the status quo while cutting taxes for the wealthy.
That’s the whole “trickle down” thing. Sure, they usually don’t increase taxes on working people (see: flat tax for exceptions to that), but they also support cutting services for poor people.
Tax cuts for some is better than for none
Why are tax cuts for the wealthy productive? That flies in the face of about 40 years of US economic data
Because the goal of politics isn’t to optimize people like they’re robots. Everyone deserves to keep as much of their money free of taxation as possible.
what fucking principles?
Ones you’re presumably too stupid to understand
like what, shitbird?
respectfully, please do elaborate
You’re seriously struggling to figure out how it’s possible to have a principled stance against taxes?
The only thing I am seriously doing is trying not to get caught up in your very negative tone.
Personally, I think people against taxes in general underestimate how much public funded technology and infrastructure they use. For example, the Internet, the GPS system, the roads, etc. etc…
In your answer to another user you presume that they are too stupid to understand why someone would have the balance tip in favor of not paying any taxes at all. Apparently, I am too stupid to understand this, too, therefore, I respectfully asked you to elaborate on this. You did not, you only continued your toxicity.