I never thought I’d say this, but I miss the voodoo economy.
It was shocking at the time when an eccentric economic doctrine — the claim that tax cuts pay off — effectively became the official line of the Republican Party. It was a disappointment to see the doctrine’s grip on the party becoming increasingly entrenched, even as evidence of its falsity continued to accumulate: Clinton’s economic boom, Bush’s mediocre economic performance even before the 2008 financial crisis, the disastrous tax cut in Kansas, the failure of Trump’s tax cuts to generate an investment boom.
And the voodoo economy continues to do real damage to this day. The Republicans who control Mississippi, a poor state with terribly underfunded education programs and which is closing hospitals, recently decided to boost the state’s economy… by cutting taxes.
As far as I know, however, harangues about the harms of high marginal tax rates have not inspired any domestic acts of terrorism.
As has been widely reported, the man accused of shooting 10 people to death in Buffalo is a devotee of the “replacement theory”, which claims that sinister elites – especially Jews, of course – are deliberately bringing in immigrants to displace and weaken white Americans. . So were the men accused of massacres at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 and an El Paso supermarket in 2019.
Replacement theory used to be a fringe doctrine, but today, in thinly disguised form, it is attracting significant support from the GOP mainstream.
As the Times documented, Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show amplified the doctrine more than 400 times. And unless you dismiss Carlson as a mere media figure, remember David Frum’s speech: “Republicans originally thought Fox worked for us. Then we found out we worked for Fox.”
In any case, a growing number of prominent GOP politicians also advocate thinly veiled versions of replacement theory. Elise Stefanik, the third Republican in the House of Representatives, posted Facebook ads claiming that Democrats want to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants to “bring down our current electorate.” JD Vance, the Republican nominee for the Ohio Senate, claims that “Biden’s open border” is bringing “more Democrat voters flooding this country.”
Why is paranoid style dominating the Republican Party? The facts have little to do with it. Some of the most anti-immigrant politicians come from places with almost no immigrants: less than 5% of Ohio residents and less than 4% of those in the Stefanik district of New York are foreigners. In New York City, the percentage is nearly 38%.
Nor does there seem to be a popular wave promoting this political change. Yes, large numbers of Americans are anti-immigrant, racially hostile, or both. But that was always true. Public opinion seems, to say the least, to be more favorable to immigration than in the past; indicators of racial tolerance, such as the approval of interracial marriage, are at historically high levels.
What has changed, however, is the behavior of Republican elites, who used to deny conspiracy theories but now enthusiastically embrace them when it seems politically convenient.
This is, I would say, where the voodoo economy comes in – not as an idea, but as a determinant of the kind of people who became Republican politicians.
The rise of the supply-side economy coincided with the rise of the movement’s conservatism — an interconnected network of elected officials, media organizations, think tanks and lobbying firms. As the movement’s core ideology involved cutting taxes on the rich, it was generously supported by billionaires and corporate interests, and that, in turn, meant it offered job security to anyone who remained loyal enough.
Who was attracted by this movement? Many were careerists: people happy to serve as “apparatchiks”, following whatever party line was at the time. They may have signed up to promote low taxes and a weaker safety net, but most of the party immediately joined MAGA (Make America Great Again) when the winds turned.
Stefanik is a perfect example: a Paul Ryan protégé who quickly turned to all-out Trumpism, including false allegations of voter fraud, and now to the promotion of the grand theory of replacement.
Someone like Vance, who is not a professional political agent, is actually the exception that proves the rule. His defining characteristic is opportunism: a Trump whistleblower turned slave acolyte, a self-proclaimed champion of the rural poor who opposes any program that might help them. And its own lack of an ethical center is likely why Donald Trump endorsed it.
So when I say I miss the voodoo economy, what I really mean is that I miss the illusion – which I shared – that the impact of its rise would primarily be limited to tax and spending policy. What we know today is that the adoption of eccentric economics portended the general moral collapse of the republican establishment.
That meltdown opened the door to paranoia and conspiracy theorists of all stripes — and the consequences were deadly. There is, I would say, a direct line from the Laffer curve to January 6 and to Buffalo.
Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves
