Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson praised Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, for her recently unveiled economic proposal.
Warren’s so-called “Plan for Economic Patriotism” earned the prime time Fox News Channel host’s admiration for its attention to specific elements ailing society.
Partial transcript as follows:
Yesterday, Warren released what she’s calling her “plan for economic patriotism.” Amazingly, that’s pretty much exactly what it is: economic patriotism. There’s not a word about identity politics in the document.
There are no hysterics about gun control or climate change. There’s no lecture about the plight of transgender illegal immigrants. It’s just pure old fashioned economics: How to preserve good-paying American jobs. Even more remarkable: Many of Warren’s policy prescriptions make obvious sense: she says the US government should buy American products when it can.
Of course, it should. She says we need more workplace apprenticeship programs because four-year degrees aren’t right for everyone. That’s true. She says taxpayers ought to benefit from the research and development they fund.
And yet, she writes, “we often see American companies take that research and use it to manufacture products overseas like Apple did with the iPhone. The companies get rich, and American taxpayers have subsidized the creation of low-wage foreign jobs.” And so on. She sounds like Donald Trump at his best. Who is this Elizabeth Warren, you ask? Not the race hustling, gun grabbing, abortion extremist you thought you knew.
Unfortunately, Elizabeth Warren is still all of those things too. And that is exactly the problem, not just with Warren, but with American politics. In Washington, almost nobody speaks for the majority of voters. You’re either a libertarian zealot controlled by the banks, yammering on about entrepreneurship and how we need to cut entitlements. That’s one side of the aisle.
Or, worse, you’re some decadent trust fund socialist who wants to ban passenger cars and give Medicaid to illegal aliens. That’s the other side. There isn’t a caucus that represents where most Americans actually are: nationalist on economics, fairly traditional on the social issues. Imagine a politician who wanted to make your healthcare cheaper, but wasn’t ghoulishly excited about partial birth abortion.
Imagine someone who genuinely respected the nuclear family, and sympathized with the culture of rural America, but at the same time was willing to take your side against rapacious credit card companies bleeding you dry at 35% interest — would you vote for someone like that? My gosh. Of course. Who wouldn’t? That candidate would be elected in a landslide. Every single time.
Yet that candidate is the opposite of pretty much everyone currently serving in Congress. Our leadership class remains resolutely libertarian: committed to the rhetoric of markets when it serves them; utterly libertine on questions of culture. Republicans will lecture you about how payday loan scams are a critical part of a market economy.
Then they’ll work to make it easier for your kids to smoke weed because, hey, freedom. Democrats will nod in total agreement. They’re on the same page.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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