Republicans ignore $1.9 trillion Biden bill and roast ‘trans Potato Head’

Donald Trump may be out of power but his style – focusing on hot-button identity issues instead of policy details – appears to be dominating the party.

Republicans are increasingly focusing on issues such as the changing of Mr Potato Head’s name to the gender neutral “Potato Head” over policy issues. Picture: Getty Images

Just days before President Joe Biden passed one of the most consequential spending bills in American history, Kevin McCarthy, the Republican minority leader, was reading Dr Seuss on Twitter.

“I am Sam. I am Sam. Sam I am,” read the most powerful Republican in the House of Representatives, as $1.9 trillion poured into the American economy, advancing progressive policy priorities and sending $1400 cheques to voters. “I do not like that Sam I am. Do you like green eggs and ham?”

What, one might wonder, was going on? McCarthy was reading from Green Eggs and Ham in response to a decision made by the estate of Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr Seuss) to stop publishing six books by the much-loved children’s author because they contained material deemed racially offensive. The issue inflamed conservative media, dominated the airwaves and drew angry condemnation from senior politicians, including Ted Cruz, a Texas senator, who blamed the Seuss decision on Biden.

While the new Democratic president delivered the first big instalment in what he hopes will be a once-in-a-generation policy transformation, akin to Roosevelt’s New Deal, Republicans appear to be fixated on culture war issues that they cannot even legislate on.

“Republicans have effectively opted out of this debate,” said Amanda Carpenter, a former Cruz speechwriter. “They’ve ceded the battlefield on policy because they preferred to talk about Dr Seuss. This is huge stuff that Biden’s pulling off that’s going to help him politically in the coming years and they’re doing readings from Green Eggs and Ham.

“That’s not even one of the books that was banned. At least read from the banned book!”

Other issues that have absorbed conservative time include Winston Marshall withdrawing from playing banjo with the band Mumford & Sons after he expressed support for a right-wing book, the changing of Mr Potato Head’s name to the gender neutral “Potato Head” and, of course, Harry and Meghan’s interview with Oprah, with Donald Trump Jr alleging that the Duchess of Sussex has a “narcissistic personality disorder”.

Donald Trump may be out of power but his style, fighting every cultural battle no matter how trivial, focusing on hot-button identity issues and media coverage instead of nitty-gritty policy details, appears to be dominating the Republican Party.

Jim Jordan, a prominent Trump ally and congressman from Ohio, wants to hold congressional hearings on “cancel culture”. Matt Gaetz, a Florida congressman and another Trump ally, vented that the artist formerly known as Mr Potato Head had become “America’s first transgender doll”. Ric Grenell, Trump’s former director of national intelligence, called the duchess a “classic woke narcissist”.

“Republicans have ceded the policy issues,” Carpenter said. “The performance is their only point these days. They’ve become so focused on media, and social media, that they don’t have a serious governing platform. They just want to be heard.”

So have the Republicans become a culturally inflamed rump that relies on outrage, the politics of resentment and the disproportionate rural weighting of America’s political system to cling on to what power it can?

Many conservatives view it differently, drawing on the analysis by the media pioneer Andrew Breitbart that culture lies upstream of politics. Culture matters, they argue, because it touches the heart of people’s identities and sense of America as a country.

“There are a lot of people angry with and scared of the cancel culture moment,” said the conservative radio host Erick Erickson. “People aren’t going to remember in November 2024 about their $1400 cheques. But they may very well remember about the cancel culture moment the country is going through and vote Republican.”

The Republican task is complicated by the fact that Biden’s “American Rescue Plan” is broadly popular, with 61 per cent of Americans – including 41 per cent of Republican voters – supporting it, according to a Morning Consult poll.

Erickson believes that, for now at least, Republicans in Washington are likely to make more headway arguing about Dr Seuss than about loose spending or the risk of inflation. In part he puts this down to the mainstream media’s liberal bias, which makes it difficult for stinging critiques of Biden’s agenda to gain attention. But it’s also about what motivates conservative voters.

“Washington spending is something that voters are used to,” Erickson said. “Rapid cultural shift is something they’re not.

“When people are afraid their kids can’t get a job because of a tweet, or because they said something nice about a book online like Winston Marshall, they’re way more worried about that. They’ve never seen anything like this before.”

He added: “Arguing about Dr Seuss in and of itself is a silly thing. Arguing about Dr Seuss as one more straw on the camel’s back adds up to something significant that I don’t think the Democratic Party really understands. Culture is always a more powerful force than economics.”

The other problem Republicans have is Biden himself. Whether because he is an old white man, a moderate or just a sympathetic figure, Biden just does not energise the outrage machine.

The Times