Big tax cuts for corporations and the rich doesn't look much like a winning populist strategy. So many firms, possibly prompted by the GOP, chose to use employee bonuses to demonstrate that they weren't only thinking of shareholders. These, of course, are a 'one-offs' and represent a much smaller commitment than wage increases which have to be paid for many years rather than just once. But they have allowed the administration to boast that its tax cuts are putting money into peoples' pockets even if it's only a one time benefit, never mind that it has created an even bigger hole in the federal budget that at some point will cause a day of reckoning. And when that happens, the programs that will be cut will be those that help most vulnerable. But by then those who voted for the package will be safely retired from congress on their lobbyists salaries.
On the other side of the scale, the things the GOP and its voters have given up as part of the bargain they made electing Trump are many and intangible.
They have given up on the idea that our leaders set a moral tone to be aspired to.
They have abandoned the idea that honesty is a virtue.
They have chosen cynical self-interest over high-minded pursuit of a worthy common goal.
In short they have given up on some of the foundational ideas that underpinned the fabric of what America stood for.
And that's something that won't be easily or quickly rebuilt.
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