About a week ago, I was reading the transcript of an Ezra Klein interview with Reihan Salam, a right-wing intellectual working for the Manhattan Institute. Salam is practically bubbling with market-based ideas for making America a better place to live. He represents the acceptable face of the GOP.
After I finished reading the interview, however, I could not help thinking that Salam is just kidding himself for a living. The GOP has zero interest in policy. A plurality of its voters–the reactionary core–doesn’t want to make life in America better; it wants to make it as miserable as possible for the 51 percent of the population that voted for Biden. Most of the rest care only about tax cuts and deregulation; they will only embrace reforms that don’t cost them money.
Salam’s ideas, regardless of their merit, are going nowhere. He is just another useful idiot for the folks who would be happy to turn America into an ash heap as long as they can rule over it.