drachefly wrote:
I mean, will that be enough for them to not support single-payer.
It used to be. I mean, decades of Republican railing against moochers and takers wasn't just aimed at libertarians, it was meant to attract white working-class voters who thought that minorities were lazy and undeserving but weren't particularly wedded to free-market ideology. That appears to be turning into a less attractive pitch as the population gets older and sicker and decently-paying blue collar jobs continue to disappear. So I think we're starting to reach the point where the desire for universal healthcare outweighs the prospect that some minorities might claim it.
But we're also going to see demands to define eligibility upwards. One (aborted) leaked executive order floating around in the first couple of weeks of the Trump administration proposed deporting
legal immigrants for being a burden on the taxpayer, due to having claimed benefits that they were at the time legally allowed to use (e.g. food stamps). And you hear the far right clamoring to remove birthright citizenship so that you can't become American simply by being born in the US. This probably requires a constitutional amendment so it won't happen.
Anyway, that appears to be happening among the electoral base. The politicians are a different story. Republican politicians are not going to abandon their corporate donors so easily.
Quote:
letting their enemies give them what they want for free wouldn't be anathema to them.
I doubt the Republicans would give it to them for free, even if the corporate wing were overpowered by the angry populists. They'd demand some very ugly immigration crackdowns in return.