Conservative Fox News host Tucker Carlson opened his primetime show Wednesday night by surprisingly lauding Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s recently released plan for “economic patriotism*,” all while blasting Republican policies.
Summarizing Warren’s proposal, which calls for an “aggressive intervention on behalf of American workers” and a new Department of Economic Development, Carlson—who has mockingly called Warren “Fauxcahontas” and “Lie-awatha” in the past—asked regular Republican voters if they would disagree with any of the things he just described.
“Was there a single word that seemed wrong to you? Probably not,” he noted. “Here’s the depressing part: Nobody you voted for said that or would ever say. Republicans in Congress can’t [won't, but for being owned by the Kochtopus] promise to protect American industry.”
Saying the GOP is scared of “making the Koch Brothers mad,” Carlson told his viewers the “words you just heard are from Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.”
“Yesterday, Warren released what she’s calling her plan for economic patriotism,” the right-wing host said. “Amazingly, that’s pretty much exactly what it is: Economic patriotism.”
Praising her proposal for not mentioning “identity politics” but instead being “about preserving good-paying American jobs,” Carlson added: “Many of Warren’s policy prescriptions make obvious sense.”
“The U.S. government should buy American products and it should. We need more workplace apprenticeship programs. We see American companies take research and use it to manufacture products overseas like Apple did with the iPhone. She sounds like Donald Trump at his best.”Fret not friends, Carlson didn't proclaim his love for Warren. He was able to separate his thoughts about the plan from his antipathy for the candidate herself, resorting to describing her thus,
a “gun-grabbing abortion extremist,” he [then] complained that the current political landscape is full of “trust-fund socialists” or “libertarian zealots.”
The solution, he said, would be some blend of economic nationalism and social conservatism.
“Why couldn't you have a party that is economically nationalist and socially conservative? Why is that so hard?” Carlson said, pivoting to blast Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for saying Republicans are “not fans” of tariffs.
“Imagine a more supercilious, out of touch, infuriating response,” he exclaimed. “You can’t, because there isn’t one.”
“In other words, says Mitch McConnell, the idea may work in practice but we’re against it, because it doesn’t work in theory. That’s the Republican Party, 2019. No wonder they keep losing. They deserve it. Will they ever change?”Sen. Warren seems to have been one of the few Democratic presidential wannabes who has correctly read the electorate over the last four to six years and gotten to the bottom line.
Other of the candidates have seized on issues that matter to the overall American electorate (i.e. today Cory Booker addressing the affordable housing crisis) without chopping at the roots.
In the crowded field, Warren is the ONLY one who has thus far distinguished herself as a policy leader. She does so with a clear and resounding message that says she "gets" what the American people see and experience. That insight and understanding goes well beyond the economic indicators that chumps like Trump lean on.
What freaking difference does it make to Main Street Americans (who barely survive from paycheck to paycheck) that the Dow Jones Industrial Average might be rising because of corporate stock buybacks enabled by massive federal tax cuts?
* I have been a fan of Elizabeth Warren for a long time. Her combination of deep knowledge of how American capitalism works, her capacity to narrate the lived experience of American working families and tie it to radical reforms, and her sheer integrity are unsurpassed.
Her rollout of one brilliant policy proposal after another and her ability to connect those to a political understanding of the American situation has been just stunning. But Warren’s latest plan is in a class by itself, even for Warren. She calls it an Agenda for Economic Patriotism.
Warren’s proposal does nothing less than turn inside out the globalist assumptions pursued by the past several administrations, Democrat and Republican alike. Where they have pursued more globalization of commerce as an end in itself (and as a profit center for U.S.-based multinational corporations and banks), Warren’s goal is to bring production and good jobs home.
Even better, she knits it all together with a coherent plan, beginning with a new Department of Economic Development “with the sole responsibility to create and defend quality, sustainable American jobs.”
The new Department will replace the Commerce Department, subsume other agencies like the Small Business Administration and the Patent and Trademark Office, and include research and development programs, worker training programs, and export and trade authorities like the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. The new Department will have a single goal: creating and defending good American jobs.
Globalization didn’t just happen, Warren points out.
"America chose to pursue a trade policy that prioritized the interests of capital over the interests of American workers. Germany, for example, chose a different path and participated in international trade while at the same time robustly—and successfully—supporting its domestic industries and its workers."
Warren proposes that every tool of American national policy be directed towards the goals of reclaiming domestic industry and producing good jobs for American workers.
It’s not a question of more government or less government. It’s about who government works for.
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