All that they care about is hurting the groups of people whom they hate, and they will tell whatever lie that it takes to trick normies into giving them the power to hurt those people.
Remember when MAGA would seize upon every mention of gas prices or inflation to perpetrate their implacable hate for the closest scapegoat Democrat that was handy at the moment? Remember when they pretended to be concerned about the government “spending itself into debt?”
Well, forget all that. Now MAGA is telling us that high gas prices are a good and necessary thing. And that national debt? Under Trump the national debt now exceeds the annual Gross Domestic Product for the first time since World War 2.
The birth of cynical economic messaging
The early MAGA movement, then called the Religious Right, realized that being up front about their pro-censorship and anti-liberty policy agenda made them unelectable. Their end run in the early 1990s was to switch to the tactic of running so-called “stealth candidates” for public office.
Pioneered by early Religious Right activists such as Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition, a stealth candidate was a candidate that concealed their intense bigotry and theocratic policy agenda from the general public. Outside of evangelical circles, stealth candidates campaigned on mundane issues such as cutting taxes and government spending. These candidates’ real constituents — members of politically militant evangelical churches — knew exactly what these candidates’ real policy priorities would be. Their church-based supporters knew in advance what they were getting; there was no need to state those policy positions openly.
Today, the tactic of pretending to care about a prevailing normie issue is deployed in whatever form it takes to destroy the Democrat(s) who stand in their way. The borderline slandering of Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass over her supposed mismanagement of wildfire prevention and recovery isn’t about wildfires. It’s about destroying the Democrat by any means possible and hoping that smearing a Democratic official over a seemingly normie issue will pave the way for a MAGA to take her place — nevermind that the hoped-for MAGA replacement has no experience with big city management or disaster recovery whatsoever.
Enter “Christian Economics”
The theological school of thought with the most brutal designs for government is known as “Christian Reconstructionism,” or in the words of its proponents, theonomy. It is safe to say that nearly all of the people in Trump’s inner political orbit are theonomists. And, theonomy comes with its own distinctive economic doctrine. “Christian economics,” as it is called, is a harsh variant of the hands-off capitalism championed by the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
“Christian economics” gives fluency to the talking points that MAGA would use to promote its candidates to normie voters. Who doesn’t like lower taxes? The financial sink-or-swim philosophy lends itself well to the anti-welfare rhetoric that MAGA uses to sow resentment toward “government handouts.” To the extent that resentment toward welfare, Medicaid, and similar aid programs might feel justified, much of the organic resentment stems from the determination of who qualifies for such programs. Oftentimes, truly needy people are unjustly disqualified from receiving aid due to some unfair or cruel disqualifying criterion. MAGA skillfully plays upon that resentment.
Their supposed solutions to inflation and gas prices sound great because Christian Economics endows them with the fluency and verbiage to sound authoritative, expert, and convincing. But the only time when they mean it is when the effect is to hurt people. All the rest is bait and switch.
The fraudulent quest for fraud
Today, a leading MAGA campaign slogan is how they are going to root out fraud in government. But note that their intended targets are always Democrat-run states. MAGA is furiously attacking Minnesota’s supposed fraud problem because of the state’s fearless resistance to abuses by ICE. California is targeted with cynical allegations of fraud because of Governor Newsom’s ballsy, in-Trump’s-face resistance to ICE terrorism in his state.
Are government programs dealing with the problem of fraud? Of course. Wherever there is a government program that involves payouts, subsidies, or funding, there will always be attempts at fraud. That’s just the nature of any program that can be exploited to milk it for free money.
But don’t believe MAGA’s phony concern about fraud for an instant. After all, MAGA made a fully informed decision to vote grand scale fraud right into the White House. The promise to investigate fraud is just a hook to trick normies and decent people into voting them into power.
Always remember: MAGA doesn’t care in the least about the normie issues that they’re hammering Dems with. The sole purpose of MAGA’s posturing about normie concerns is to destroy the Dem in their path and clear the way for power. And once in power, they will use the entirety of that power to do harm to the people whom they hate.
That’s why they run. To hurt people.