The liberal media have found yet another way to attack the GOP and praise Democrats. On Tuesday evening’s The Beat with Ari Melber, political strategist and guest, Chai Komanduri, slammed Republicans as the “post-policy party.”
When asked to elaborate, Komanduri responded:
[T]he GOP has abandoned policy because they know that they have lost on policy. They know they have lost the policy debate. I think we underestimate the impact of the gay marriage decision and the acceptance of gay marriage on the GOP. Now they see a whole younger generation that does not agree with them on income inequality, on climate change, and on racial justice. And they know that they have lost the policy argument. So when you have lost the policy argument, what do you do? You try to own libs on Twitter because you can't beat their policy papers.
Unsurprisingly, Melber tied this to Trump’s takeover of the party and claimed there is a lack of interest to work on the party’s platform. Komanduri took his turn to attack Trump: “Trumpism is basically to avoid any kind of really intelligent policy positions, but try to win on cultural, tribal battleground terms.” He ranted about how the GOP still wins despite not worrying about policy.
Komanduri concluded with a tortured pop culture comparison between Republicans and Democrats and characters from the movie 8 Mile:
At the end of the very great movie 8 Mile, Eminem, after winning the rap battle, talks to his friends. His friends say, let's go and party. He says, no, I'm going to go to the factory and work. The GOP are the friends who have decided to go and party. The Democratic Party is like Eminem. We're going to the policy factory, working to create policies to help working-class Americans.
This analogy comes at an interesting time because the Biden administration and House Democrats have failed to meet deadlines and pass legislation on ideas as simple as infrastructure. Of course, Komanduri neglected to mention this point and instead characterized Democrats as the hardworking “get it done” party. The liberal media constantly complains about Republicans’ infrastructure proposals, “voter suppression” laws, and COVID policies which clearly indicates that they do have principles and policies, just not liberal ones. It seems that the left now uses “post-policy” and “anti-democratic” to simply describe any view that isn’t their own.
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Below is a transcript of the segment, click "expand" to read:
MSNBC's The Beat with Ari Melber
06/01/2021
6:44 p.m. EasternARI MELBER: This is an idea you’ve been kicking around and credit to many. As soon as they dropped any pretense of a platform, other people have talked about it. But you say that it’s really relevant here in just these few weeks we have been living through when you look at priorities. So let me ask the question like this, Chai. Do you mean it literally when you critique Republicans as post-policy now?
CHAI KOMANDURI: They`re clearly a post-policy party. And I think the real story here is how the GOP`s abandonment of policy has been a precursor to its abandonment of democracy. The two have become somehow very much linked. Obviously, we talked about the 2020 platform, where the GOP just simply said, we all believe whatever Trump wants us to believe. It was seen as a very minor story at the time. Now I think it's can be viewed as a very major story. That was really a red warning light. We really didn't know what Trump was going to end up asking them to believe.
But, boy, they certainly have shown that they will believe it. And they have done this for really three reasons. The first is, you know we have talked about before, a political calculation. There's only five gerrymandered House seats that they need to win in 2020. They can do that by cranking out their base. The second is, it's quite fun to actually abandon policy. You don't have to spend long nights at the library, no pouring over economic graphs, no math at all, really. So it's actually quite rewarding for them to, like, abandon this whole pretense of policy entirely. And the third -- and I think it's really something that we should talk --- think about very deeply -- the GOP has abandoned policy because they know that they have lost on policy. They know they have lost the policy debate. I think we underestimate the impact of the gay marriage decision and the acceptance of gay marriage on the GOP. Now they see a whole younger generation that does not agree with them on income inequality, on climate change, and on racial justice. And they know that they have lost the policy argument. So when you have lost the policy argument, what do you do? You try to own the libs on Twitter because you can`t beat their policy papers. That`s simply what the GOP now has become. That's the direction they have simply chosen to follow.
MELBER: Yeah, and you mentioned the platform history, which is instructive. We dug this up here for the convo. June 10, Republican National Committee announced, for the first time since its founding before the Civil War, the party would not draft a new platform. They said they were just carrying over 2016. And it was discussed at the time by the, again, Republican-friendly "Wall Street Journal" as a symbolization of Trump's takeover of the party. It was also, to your point, Chai, a time where you have power. So, a president with power can put just about anything in the platform.
KOMANDURI: Right.
MELBER: And yet the complete lack of interest in doing so tells us what?
KOMANDURI: Well, it tells us that Trump --- Trumpism is basically to avoid any kind of really intelligent policy positions, but try to win on cultural, tribal battleground terms. I mean, if you think about it, Trump did -- Trump's policies were always nonsense, whether it was having Mexico build a wall, having universal health care that was going to be more comprehensive and cheaper somehow than the ACA. There was not a single page of policy details to support any of his claims on policy. But it didn't matter to 90 percent of Republicans, and he still won anyway, which is why the GOP simply has decided to follow this path. They know that they can still win by simply appealing to culture and tribalism and not having to worry about policy. Look, let me create -- give you a movie analogy. At the end of the very great movie "8 Mile," Eminem, after winning the rap battle, talks to his friends. His friends say, let's go and party. He says, no, I`m going to go to the factory and work.
The GOP are the friends who have decided to go and party. The Democratic Party is like Eminem. We`re going to the policy factory, working to create policies to help working-class Americans. The problem is, in this particular movie, the guys who decide to go and party can be rewarded equally, if not more, than the guy who decided to go and work in the factory. That, I think, is the problem and the tragedy of all this.
