'Playbook of the Reagan-era GOP': Expert explains why MAGA is pushing wildly unpopular policy
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson speaks to the press, as Republican lawmakers struggle to pass U.S. President Donald Trump's sweeping spending and tax bill, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 2, 2025. REUTERS/Annabelle Gordon
During a scathing presentation on June 30, CNN data guru Harry Enten showed just how wildly unpopular the proposals in President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" are. Enten compared several different polls, including a Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) poll showing the megabill's "new favorable rating" at -29.
Most Americans, Enten emphasized, view the megabill's proposals as "terrible, terrible, terrible." And Democrats are warning that if it becomes law, its draconian Medicaid cuts will cause millions of Americans to lose their health insurance in order to give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires.
Yet with the bill having narrowly passed in the U.S. Senate and gone back to the U.S. House of Representatives for consideration, Trump and his MAGA loyalists are doing everything they can to pressure House Republicans into getting it passed before July 4.
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In an op-ed published by the New York Times on July 3, finance professional Noah Millman lays out possible MAGA motivations for wanting to get the bill passed despite how badly it performs in poll after poll. And he argues that MAGA Republicans are thinking long-term.
"The bill is strikingly unpopular among voters," Millman explains. "Even some Republican lawmakers who voted for the bill have expressed varying degrees of ambivalence or outright hostility. So why are they behaving in a way that appears to be both politically self-destructive and potentially ruinous for the country? The answer may be that Republicans aren't focused on solving a fiscal problem. They're focused on solving a political problem, one that extends beyond the midterm elections. "
Millman adds, "In doing so, they may be borrowing a page from the playbook of the Reagan-era GOP."
MAGA Republicans, according to Millman, may view Trump's "big, beautiful bill" — unpopularity and all — as a way to preemptively hurt the next Democratic presidential administration.
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"Any negotiation over cutting spending and raising taxes will start from a base line of where spending and taxes are when the negotiations begin," Millman argues. "That's where the Big Beautiful Bill comes in: The GOP bill isn't good for the economy, and it's terrible for America's fiscal health. But it does reset the base line. Mr. Trump's first-term tax cuts were structured to expire after a certain number of years to limit their official cost…. The Republican bill would make Mr. Trump's tax cuts permanent, depriving the next Democratic president of that leverage."
Millman continues, "Similarly, when Democrats come back into office, they will undoubtedly fight to restore Medicaid and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) from the new bill's cuts. That will take the energy that might otherwise have gone into expanding social spending from its previous base line. And the fight is likely to be happening in the context of a much more dire fiscal situation, where unpopular tax and spending changes will be unavoidable."
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Noah Millman's full New York Times op-ed is available at this link (subscription required).
