Here in California, billionaires are under attack as the Democrats are pushing a referendum that would levy a 5 percent wealth tax on unrealized gains and other assets of these very rich people in the Golden State. In Washington, DC, Donald Trump is telling big financial corporations that he’s going to limit their credit card interest rates to just 10 percent instead of the 20 percent or 30 percent they’ve been charging their customers. On the one hand, these are terrible economic policies. They are the opposite of classical conservatism. It’s ridiculous to tax unrealized gains because they haven’t yet been realized, and it’s also dumb to drive rich people who started businesses out of your state. Cutting the allowable interest on credit cards is going to make it harder for a lot of people with lousy credit to get cards. But, on the other hand, screw the billionaires and the giant financial corporations.
Here’s the thing. We Republicans only have limited political capital. You can only do so much stuff, even though Donald Trump is pushing the envelope and doing a lot of stuff. That’s taking a lot of time, and it’s taking a lot of his power. So, my question is, how much political capital should we as conservative Republicans spend on billionaires and financial corporations?
My suggestion is that we spend none.
Zero.
Zilch.
Nada.
And there’s a wonderful symmetry to this, because they’ve spent none of theirs on us. Oh, there are a few billionaires here and there who’ve done amazing things for our freedom and prosperity – Elon Musk‘s work saving free speech by buying Twitter should
put him on Mount Rushmore, and the appreciation of Tesla's stock has done a lot for our 401(k)s. But most of these billionaires are leftists who have eagerly funded the Democrats in California. Putting aside how they’ve tossed Americans aside to import labor from foreign countries and thereby screwed our people, they bought into all the commie nonsense. They supported all the things that turned the Golden State into the Brown State – California used to be known for its swaying palm trees, but now it’s known for maps of hobo poop.
And these billionaires have been behind it. They have supported it. They have funded it. And now the monsters they created are coming for them. They would love our help.
My response? I think I’m going to have an overpriced cheeseburger for lunch. It’s overpriced because of ridiculous Democratic policies that these billionaires supported here in California.
The billionaires weren’t there for us when we needed them. They wouldn’t hire us. They never stood up for our rights – in fact, they helped trample them. They despise us in large part. They think we’re scum. And it’s only recently that a significant number of them have come around to realize that they made monsters. Now they want our help, and they are Schiff out of luck.
Again, there are a few good ones out there – Palmer Lucky and Peter Thiel come to mind – but most of these billionaires are leftists. They aren’t dumb. They are likely to do the smart thing and move out to red states. Unfortunately, we can expect they’ll bring their garbage politics with them. They’ve shown no evidence that they’ve learned their lesson. Even somebody like Bill Ackerman, who was stunned to find the institutions he’s been funding are eager to celebrate people who want to murder Jews, can’t quite make the leap to conservatism. Like most of them, he is an ally of convenience, and the second a Democrat pretends to be even remotely sane, he’s going to breathe a sigh of relief that he no longer has to play footsie with the likes of us proles and start writing blue checks again.
So, tell me why we Republicans should get out there and take the side of the billionaires. Tell me why we should take the political heat for supporting these guys and spending our valuable time on them when our own people have huge concerns we haven’t yet addressed. Tell me why we should stand up for the mega-rich guys who care nothing about our constituents. I guess you can make the argument that after they come for the billionaires, they’re going to come for the millionaires, but that’s not a great argument. If we can successfully fight the billionaire confiscations, we can successfully fight the millionaire confiscations if they come. So again, why should we pause our agenda to help out people with a proven track record of not giving a damn about what happens to us?
The same with the financial corporations. Oh yeah, free enterprise and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Save that baloney. They don’t practice free enterprise. They practice corporatism, working closely with the government to secure their advantages at our disadvantage. Remember how Joe Biden was the Senator from MBNA? These corporations love the Democrats. They give money to the Democrats, they give support to the Democrats, and they screw us.
Remember how they eagerly offered up information without warrants to the feds persecuting the people who stood up for fair elections? Remember how they debanked conservatives and companies like gun makers to please their Democrat friends? Remember how they embraced DEI wholeheartedly and discriminated against Americans of pallor with penises while standing shoulder to shoulder with perverted deviants who don’t know what bathroom to use? Well, we remember.
Oh yeah, let’s go help them. Let’s spend our valuable time, attention, and political bandwidth to help people who hate our guts.
Again, the billionaire tax is terrible policy. The credit card limitation is also a terrible policy, or at least that is classically how we understand it – after the tariff experience didn’t turn into Armageddon, I think a lot of us are rethinking our past notions of what good and bad economic policy is. But in any case, why the hell would we put our butts on the line for these big corporations and let the Democrats screw with us about it? Why would we take the heat for them? What’s in it for us?
Yeah, that’s a transactional question. But politics is a transactional business, and that’s one of the refreshing things about Donald Trump. He doesn’t expect people to do things for him if he’s not giving them something, and he’s certainly not going to do anything for them if he’s not getting something. For too long, we had these femboy Republicans standing up for alleged principles that don’t really exist – if you think the giant corporations are practicing anything like free enterprise, I can’t help you – and defending people who turned around and stabbed us in the back.
Let's go out of our way to help the friends and allies in our coalition. The people who are not our friends and allies in our coalition can go pound sand. Now, this is going to horrify the invertebrates, but that’s OK. If I please them, I’m screwing up. Instead of practicing politics like a bunch of incel nerds at a Model UN convention, we should practice politics the way politics has always been practiced through all of human history. You help those who help you, and you don’t waste your efforts to help your opposition.
But have no fear, billionaires. We are open to you fully and transparently admitting your past failures and committing to fighting for the kind of freedom we support in the future. We are going to need some concrete evidence of that, in the form of enormous checks to our causes, because words aren’t enough. But we are willing to allow you into our coalition if you demonstrate that you’ll support us in return for our support of you. The same thing with giant financial corporations. When the checks stop flowing into the Democrats’ coffers and start flowing into ours when you publicly renounce your DEI nonsense, and when you wholeheartedly support laws that will prevent future corporations from targeting conservatives and conservative affiliates, then we might be willing to consider spending some of our precious political capital helping you out.
But right now? You want us to take the political heat for taking your side in this fight?
Don’t make me laugh. You’re on your own.
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