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Jan 17, 2022·edited Jan 17, 2022Liked by Chris J. Karr, David Thornton, Jay Berman

I think when we refer to moderates in the GOP, it's important that we are refer to their temperament and not necessarily political philosophy. While Susan Collins is definitely an ideological moderate, GOP Senators like Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, and others of their ilk have amassed a distinctly right of center voting record, to varying degrees. In other words, reliably to solidly conservative. The same can apply to Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and most of the others who impeached Trump after 1-6. They have solidly right of center voting records, and are more moderate temperamentally, and conservative ideologically. In an age where Trump and his hard core supporters refer to anyone not sufficiently obsequious to Trump as a "RINO", the mainstream media often mistakenly refers to hard edged Trumpists as solid conservatives. While I don't think they intend to do so, they unwittingly help hard core MAGA folks try to redefine the barometer of fealty to conservatism as how loyal one is to Trump. I'm glad that you properly refer to MTG, Boebert, Gosar as radicals, who are pretty far removed from being fusionist conservatives(aka classical liberals).

When it comes to the tax reform of 2017, had the President not engaged in ruinous trade wars and then trying to save face by doling handouts to those most impacted by the ham fisted tariffs, that tax reform might've very well worked as intended. Another thing to note is when there was a GOP trifecta from 2017-2019, then President Trump and many congressional Republicans were fiscally profligate on the spending side of the ledger. While congressional Republicans had problems with profligacy in years past, they largely stopped trying and in many cases didn't even pretend to care about government spending. By March of 2020, we didn't have any budgetary and fiscal leeway to deal with a once in a century global pandemic, and are in a fiscally precarious position. I still think the 2017 Tax Reform was one of the better accomplishments(along with Operation Warp Speed) of the Trump administration and GOP Congress(major credit goes to former Speaker Paul Ryan, as the tax legislation bears a lot of his work). It is just too bad it coincided almost concurrently with some bad policies(tariffs, spending, etc).

As for Obamacare, Republicans have talked about repealing ever since it was enacted into law by Obama and a Democratically controlled Congress in 2010. I think support for repealing Obamacare eroded significantly when Trump started running for President, and especially when he took office, and sapped so much political capital with his behavior. Since repealing Obamacare was a visible GOP priority, and Trump as President was essentially the titular head of the party, the latter's political stench became associated any repeal efforts. And another thing to note is that the GOP base as a whole these days tends to be more blue collar and less affluent than in years past. They tend to have a more favorable view of federal entitlements, and that may have had an impact on the popularity of repealing Obamacare. It's disappointing that federal entitlements get little if any pushback from the two major political parties that have and will continue to alternately hold power in Congress and the Presidency.

If Biden and congressional Democrats keep governing the way they do, the GOP will end up incredibly lucky ducks in enjoying a midterm rout not because of how good they are, but because the Democrats shot themselves in the foot and caused a lot of self-inflicted political wounds. This is unlike 1994 and 2010, when the GOP largely deserved to win the majority by virtue of their own actions.

Major kudos are in the order for the FBI for freeing the hostages, with the only death coming from the gunman. These folks in federal law enforcement represent some of our very best, and deserve our thanks. Being over 20 years removed from the 9-11 terrorist attacks, its easy to forget that threats from jihadists still exist externally. Hopefully, we can try to avoid electing isolationists to Congress to best extent we can.

I've not had time during the holidays to make Steve's butternut squash bisque, but I'll look forward to making it as time becomes available. Since you say it is quite good, I'm very interested in making a pot of it sooner or later.

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