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Notes -
The abortion debate below brought to mind something I've been thinking about for a while. There's been a convergence of sorts between mainstream Republicans/conservatives and the far-right, but there are still many differences, such as on the Single Mother Question. The far-right (which includes most people on this website) views single mothers negatively, while the mainstream conservative view is very different. For instance, here's what Speaker Mike Johnson said about Medicaid:
Mainstream conservatives and the far-right agree that the welfare state serves to subsidize single motherhood, but only the latter thinks it's a bad thing. Mainstream conservatives' embrace of single motherhood is connected with abortion politics. One mainstream conservative pundit put it succinctly: "you can't be pro-life and anti-single mom." Many on the far-right responded to her tweet with "just watch me" and others scratched their heads, wondering what she meant. But there's a certain logic to it. Much of the motivation for abortion comes from women not wanting to be single mothers. You can respond to this in two ways:
The far-right prefers option 1, I've heard it many times on this website. But do you think it will actually be effective in changing behavior? I personally suspect that given the options of not having sex or having sex at the risk you might have to drive out of state and get an abortion and then get shamed by some online anonymous far-rightists, the latter will be the popular option. Just a vague suspicion I have. So it doesn't surprise me that many conservatives choose option 2. It also harmonizes better with the current conservative political coalition, which is increasingly reliant on the votes of low-class and non-white voters who have higher rates of single-motherhood. We wouldn't want to be elitist, looking down our noses at the salt-of-the-earth working class now would we?
This strikes me as an odd theory based on the fact that married folks with kids remain the core of the Republican coalition.
The reality is position 2 is a compromise position because you go to the war with the army you have. And the army of married folks are very nice people who are uncomfortable letting toddlers and homeless people die in the streets to save 5% of GDP or whatever the numbers bear out to be. The married people also have been paying social security and medicare all their adult lives at this point and want that security they were "promised". Thus, entitlement reform is a losing issue. Not with me, presumably me and you could win tens of thousands of votes nationwide campaigning on a platform of eliminating Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, LINK, and all the other poverty-reduction programs. But that doesn't work for a party that wants to have presidents and congressional majorities.
So what do you do? You target the unsympathetic leeches like single guys age 29 playing lots of COD, because those are the cuts you CAN make. The alternative is you lose handily, the cuts you made are reversed, more foreigners are added to the roster, and they lop off a lot of penises and breasts of confused 15 year olds.
You are insufficiently cynical here. You target the unsympathetic leeches publicly in order to maintain support, and then cut Medicaid for everyone in a bill you don't give your own backbenchers time to read. 29yo single guys playing COD don't consume a lot of expensive healthcare (and when they do it is an ER visit after a car crash - which will end up as an uncollected bill for the hospital if Medicaid doesn't pay) - there is no way you are getting the size of Medicaid cuts the GOP are looking for without taking healthcare away from people who are actually sick, and the people writing the legislation know this.
Page me when such cuts actually happen. Will continue to put money on fiscal hawks rolling snakeyes.
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