Chances are that you don’t think providing liability protection to employers relative to the virus is a high priority item at this stage of the pandemic, but it is for Mitch McConnell. A payroll tax cut, on the other hand, is at the top of Trump’s list. What does that tell us about the GOP?
In McConnell’s case, he always carries water for the donor class, because he thinks raising money and winning elections are the same thing. If you want to convert the GOP to “national conservatism,” you’re going to do it over his dead body. In Trump’s case, like most Republicans, he thinks tax cuts and deregulation are the solutions to every economic problem; he doesn’t have the mental agility to come up with anything else when conditions change. The payroll tax cut idea was positively demented when the country was locked down; today, it is merely stupid, because it would do nothing to address the lack of consumer confidence arising from the pandemic.
What does this mean for the next few days, and the economic cliff to come? Chaos, of course. That’s the GOP’s stock in trade.