Warning for GOP: Many People In Trump Country Hate the 'Big Beautiful Bill'
A lot of people in Trump country are bringing up their anger about Republicans' Big Betrayal Bill, and even when they don't pay attention to the news, they know a lot about what it cuts.
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The Big Betrayal Bill has become part of political socialization, and that should serve as a warning to Republicans.
A lot of people in Trump country are bringing up their anger about Republicans' Big Betrayal Bill, and even when they don't pay attention to the news, they know a lot about what it cuts.
As we’ve shared before, we are located in a Trump 69.2% county in western Pennsylvania. Our Congressional Representative is Trump’s/Republicans’ Majority Chief Deputy Whip, Guy Reschenthaler. In case you’re wondering about him and how he lives the Republican Party’s “family values”, Reschenthaler has split from his wife this year and just two months later, began dating a Fox News reporter, according to Page Six.
In other words, Reschenthaler is living the modern day Republican dream, sans adopting a brown-skinned boy to live with him or running a Bible camp where a lot of kids are abused. He preaches family values while he does whatever he wants.
The usual casual conversation around these parts is pure Trump cult propaganda, with little breaking through other than January 6th and Trump’s first impeachment trial, both of which many of his supporters were troubled by until the Goebbels-esque talking points were distributed.
Before the propaganda, I heard people call Trump a “traitor” after he was impeached for pressuring Ukraine's leader for a “favor” that amounted to Trump asking another country to interfere in an election. I also witnessed them expressing dismay, disgust and shock over the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
After the propaganda wash, these same people expressed that these things didn’t happen, and if they did it was Antifa or media lies, because “Demonrats” own the media.
It can be frustrating to live in a part of the country where the mainstream media has no lived experience, save for the one reporter they will send every presidential election to profile a few Trump supporters who are careful to not say the things they know will feed into the stereotypes about them, but still manage to reveal the bleakness of their lives.
And, surprise! Not all Trump supporters are in economic hardship. At least not here. Plenty of well-educated people here are deep in the cult, throwing a spanner in the theory that economic hardship is behind their racism and hatred of the “other.” Although it’s true that people experiencing economic hardship are easier to manipulate with hatred of the “other” and typically easier prey for an autocrat’s cheap talking points, so creating good paying jobs in areas like this is a way to shore up democracy.
Former President Joe Biden was doing that. But he didn’t take enough credit for it, and the media didn’t give it to him. And so people remained ignorant of where their job came from. Obviously we can’t know how or if that would have impacted their votes, people can be very stubborn about their tribe, but it certainly didn’t help matters.
These are the kinds of insights that can only be gained by living among people every day. Trump supporters are very aware of the way they are portrayed in the media, and are very careful to tone down certain beliefs and comments when they think they’re being quoted or observed by the media, which goes again to suggesting that these are not “stupid” people, contrary to the easy way many on the Left portray them.
If only it were that easy.
The one thing they all have in common is the confounding talking points they pass around like clockwork. This leads to casual conversation like the experience I had whilst getting an MRI a day after a mass shooting, when the tech casually and falsely blamed Black Lives Matters for why we don’t have gun control.
Or the tailor who blamed President Obama for why Medicaid wasn’t expanded here under the then Republican Governor. On and on it goes. The mis- and dis-information is rampant, and all coded to favor Trump and his Republicans.
And so it was a huge surprise, almost an earthquake, when in recent days I’ve heard people in casual conversation complain about Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”
What should be especially concerning for Republicans is that when I’ve asked what news they follow, they tell me they don’t follow the news. I’m pretty confident many of these folks don’t want to tell me what they actually read or watch, but I do believe some of them when they say they don’t pay attention to the news.
So this means that the anger at the “Big Beautiful Bill” has trickled into a casual understanding that surpasses those who pay attention to the news. That is not good for Republicans.
The issues raised by people in this area — and again, these are casual conversations with people not in a protest setting or other setting that would lend itself to people who might be Democrats and/or highly politically aware — also surprised me.
They raised the issue of the bill’s cuts to school lunches and the Jobs Corps program, which even the current Labor Secretary admits “help[ed] young adults build a pathway to a better life” for 60 years.”
Guess who needs job training programs? A lot of people in rural Trump districts like this one, especially because many of these folks are economically stra\pped due in part to decades of job losses in the area and subsequent decline.
The cuts to Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare are huge here as well, even among young people, some of whom recall their parents being on Social Security and how it offered their family the only stability it had. Some of the people who shared these thoughts with me were sharing deeply personal, emotional memories of single motherhood, of poverty, of pain during which the only saving grace was a policy or program that Republicans are trying to cut.
Branding Can Be Hard to Shake
These conversations have taken place over the last few weeks and even after the Parliamentarian disallowed some of the Republican cuts, which is perhaps even more concerning for Republicans because it suggests that they have been branded as supporting these cuts, even if the cuts don’t go through.
It’s entirely possible that by the time midterms roll around, Republicans will have gaslit and distracted enough to overcome the impressions their policies are making on the People, but it’s also possible that some people will be traumatized enough to not forget.
One thing is certain, these draconian, inhumane and un-American cuts have become the topic of impassioned but casual conversation in a Trump 69.2% district. These are not conversations among friends; they’re the passing conversation at the grocery checkout, the hair salon, and in the Dollar Store line.
Even Trump supporters here don’t want to talk about what he’s doing anymore. People who are obsessed with him suddenly don’t want to talk about Trump, and have offered up their disagreement with what he’s doing in various areas — usually areas about which they are knowledgeable, suggesting that if only they were knowledgeable about other areas, they might understand that Trump is not and has not appointed knowledgeable people to almost any top position.
Casual conversation is not scientific and it’s not evidence.
But it does offer an insight into an entire group of people who are not understood well by mainstream media, and 69.2% of these people supported Donald Trump. It does demonstrate how people’s personal experiences outside of explicit news consumption can impact their understanding of policies. Most importantly, it offers insight into people’s implicit understandings of the consequences of these Republican policies, and how those policies might be in conflict with some of their values.
Political Socialization
The Big Betrayal Bill is becoming an agent of political socialization.
Political socialization is where people get a casual understanding of policies through discussions with others and their personal experiences as well as folk theories of politics, in which people’s intuitive understanding which can be based on received wisdom rather than deep factual knowledge or news takes.
Our family of origin and our peer groups are big agents of political socialization, but shifts in public ideology can also be driven by social movements, impacts of an election that change a person’s perceptions, education experiences, and changing peer groups.
Political socialization is one reason why far-right reactionaries currently identifying (falsely) as “conservatives” have “othered” every demographic in the opposition party and attacked facts until we no longer can agree on reality. This walls off their supporters and creates a safe, closed off system of information through which they can easily mislead. It insulates their supporters from getting information outside of their carefully controlled epistemic closure bubble.\
But the Big Betrayal Bill seems to be breaking through that bubble.
Long Term Consequences?
The Big Betrayal Bill is at least beginning to become a part of people’s understanding of Republican policies, even in a deep Republican district. Is that enough to overcome culture war issues? I doubt it. But it’s enough to cut into the leads ruby red districts have offered Republicans in Pennsylvania, and it makes sense to extrapolate out that this might be happening in other states as well.
Here’s hoping some elite making millions by strategizing for the Democratic Party understands how to capitalize on this information and will take a break from failed civility politics long enough to act on it. Here’s hoping they understand that their campaign needs to be three words or less for impact in places like this.
The negative political socialization happening over the Big Betrayal Bill leaves Republicans facing a challenge that won’t be as easily overcome with propaganda as many of their past challenges like running a candidate who led a violent attack against the United States and is a convicted criminal on a separate matter, because it is something about which many of these folks have personal experience.
As already demonstrated, even hardcore Trump supporters with whom I’ve spoken often disagree with him when it comes to areas about which they have expertise. Personal experience is a form of expertise, and because it’s rooted in emotion, it’s often a hardened value or belief.
The Big Betrayal Bill might be a noose around Republicans’ necks that they as a party will wear for years to come.
What do you think about the reality of Trump’s bill seeping into even the reddest areas of the country? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This is how long-term political change happens. It's not the hardcore supporters that will flip, but those people who vote one way because that is what their friends and neighbors do, and they might not really pay attention to politics, but when things start to impact them, then people become open to looking around, and open to change. The problem in our country has been that too many people have become polarized and closed off to change, but Trump's party has gotten so extreme that it is more open to rejection than ever before.---Jason
I think your very good observations point to the impossibility of reasoning with MAGA, at least the hardcore ones. Whether because of branding or political socialization - or because of cult-like psychology, as some other authors have proposed - Trump supporters are immune to reason. They see the world as they wish it to be (or better put, as they are told it is by Trump), not as it is. And any effort to challenge that perception is met with extreme defensiveness triggered by their cognitive dissonance. The upshot of which is that logical argument, calm discussion, and spreading factual information just won't work on them. They can't be persuaded. Which is tragic - I know MAGA whom I sincerely wish could be rescued from themselves. But that just isn't possible, at least for now. Better to marginalize them, resist them, and create structural impediments to their gaining power - that, rather than trying to win MAGA over through campaign promises, is the best bet for saving our democracy.