Ron Brownstein thinks it is a bad political move:
With their opposition to President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan, Republicans are doubling down on a core bet they’ve made for his presidency: that the GOP can maintain support among its key constituencies while fighting programs that would provide those voters with tangible economic assistance.
Last month, every House and Senate Republican opposed Biden’s massive $1.9 trillion stimulus plan, even though it delivered significant benefits to working-class white voters, the GOP’s foundational voting bloc, including increased health-care subsidies and expanded tax credits for families with children. That pattern is repeating with the infrastructure plan, even though it directs billions of dollars to rural communities, which are indispensable to Republican political fortunes.
That resistance represents a political gamble, because the proposed benefits—including $1,400 stimulus checks, and rural broadband in the infrastructure plan—are large enough and visible enough that voters may be more likely to feel them in their daily life than most legislative actions. Republicans “are going to have to explain how they are voting against the interests of their base, because I think there [would] be meaningful impacts” on their voters from the plans’ provisions, says Jeff Link, a Democratic consultant who led a research project last year that tried to improve his party’s performance among rural voters.
Read the rest at The Atlantic:
