The Republican Party Never Changed

Jonathan Chait: “One of the curious things about the recent revolt by far-right House Republicans is that it was led by some of the party’s Trumpiest figures, yet they were essentially insisting that Congress return to the time before Donald Trump. The Republican-rebel demands — that their leaders stage shutdowns and debt-ceiling threats in the service of bug-eyed hysteria over the budget deficit — ‘harken back to the tea-party era,’ noted Politico.”

“Before the symbol of the right became guys in red hats warning that immigrants and the deep state were destroying the country, it was guys in tricorne hats warning that the stimulus and Obamacare were destroying the country. And now they are back.”

“When Trump won the nomination in 2016, it was widely believed that the Republican Party’s ideological character had changed in some fundamental way. ‘His surprising election marked a replacement of the GOP’s free-market conservatism’ — exemplified by Paul Ryan — ‘with a more populist, big-government conservatism,’ noted budget hawk Brian Riedl a few years ago, bemoaning the ‘final nail in the tea-party coffin.’ Seeing the nails pop out and the coffin spring back open might seem terribly confusing. What happened to the party’s great philosophical evolution?”