Robert Frost on justice and mercy
Recently commenter “Selfy” linked to this article and offered the following quote from it:
Mr. Rigney echoes this critique of systemic racism but reserves most of his ire for feminism, which he blames for many of empathy’s ills. Because women are the more empathetic sex, he argues, they often take empathy too far.
He found an encapsulation of this theory at Mr. Trump’s inaugural prayer service, where a woman preached from the pulpit. During a sermon that went viral, Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde pleaded with the Republican president to “have mercy” on immigrants and LGBTQ+ people, prompting a conservative backlash.
“Budde’s attempt to ‘speak truth to power’ is a reminder that feminism is a cancer that enables the politics of empathetic manipulation,” Mr. Rigney wrote for the evangelical World magazine.
Which immediately reminded me of a post I wrote back in 2019. The following is a repeat of that post.
Anyone who’s read this blog for a while is well aware of how much I admire both the poetry and the thought of Robert Frost.
For example, there’s this [in the excerpt that follows, Frost uses “justice” in the traditional sense rather than in the leftist “social justice” sense]:
Frost was convinced that the conflict between justice and mercy in human affairs is an eternal and universal moral problem of humanity, and not merely a contemporary political partisan concern…
With these facts in mind Frost’s criticism of the New Deal as “nothing but an outbreak of mass mercy,” is clearly more than mere partisan politics. In 1936, in the midst of attacks on [his collection of poetry] A Further Range by the political Left, Frost wrote to Ferner Nuhn, a young New Deal acquaintance and friend of Henry Wallace, that “strict justice is basic” for a free society, and freedom implied that some people succeeded and others failed. The winners reaped the rewards of their talents and efforts, but what about the losers? Frost acknowledged that government “must do something for the losers. It must show them mercy. Justice first and mercy second. The trouble with some of your crowd is that it would have mercy first. The struggle to win is still the best tonic. . . . Mercy . . . is another word for socialism.” Frost believed that what was commonly called “distributive justice,” the attempt to spread the wealth of society to the masses, through graduated in-come taxes and other such devices, was really distributive mercy misnamed. Frost drew out for Ferner Nuhn the logical consequences of a system of socialistic mercy:
“The question of the moment in politics will always be one of proportion between mercy and justice. You have to remember the people who accept mercy have to pay for it. Mercy means protection. And there is no protection without direction. A person completely protected would have to be completely directed. And he would be a slave. That’s where socialism pure brings you out.”
What most people fail to realize is that even in societies where you have mass mercy or “distributive justice” people still compete for status. That is hard wired into human beings and even in societies like the old USSR people still jockeyed for status. In that instance, that meant climbing the ladder of the Communist Party and having access to party-member-only department stores, a dacha out in the country, overseas travel, etc. etc.
Then you can add to that another tic common with liberals is the smug certainty that they themselves won’t have to live with the negative consequences if their political choices, only those awful deplorables will have to suffer.
When the writer Rose Wilder Lane visited the Soviet Union in the 1920s, the villager who was her host complained about the growing bureaucracy that was taking more and more men from productive work, and predicted chaos and suffering from the centralizing of economic power in Moscow. At first she saw his attitude as merely “the opposition of the peasant mind to new ideas,” and undertook to convince him of the benefits of central planning. He shook his head sadly.
“It is too big he said too big. At the top, it is too small. It will not work. In Moscow there are only men, and man is not God. A man has only a man’s head, and one hundred heads together do not make one great big head. No. Only God can know Russia.”
This man’s insight prefigures Hayek’s writing about the role of knowledge in society, not to be published until 1944. His comments, her other observations while in the Soviet Union, and her own thinking about the way that economies actually work convinced her that:
“Centralized economic control over multitudes of human beings must therefore be continuous and perhaps superhumanly flexible, and it must be autocratic. It must be government by a swift flow of edicts issued in haste to catch up with events receding into the past before they can be reported, arranged, analyzed and considered, and it will be compelled to use compulsion. In the effort to succeed, it must become such minute and rigorous control of details of individual life as no people will accept without compulsion. It cannot be subject to the intermittent checks, reversals, and removals of men in power which majorities cause in republics.”
Also from Rose Wilder Lane:
“Nobody can plan the actions of even a thousand living persons, separately. Anyone attempting to control millions must divide them into classes, and make a plan applying to these classes. But these classes do not exist. No two persons are alike. No two are in the same circumstances; no two have the same abilities; beyond getting the barest necessities of life, no two have the same desires.Therefore the men who try to enforce, in real life, a planned economy that is their theory, come up against the infinite diversity of human beings. The most slavish multitude of men that was ever called “demos” or “labor” or “capital” or”agriculture” or “the masses,” actually are men; they are not sheep. Naturally, by their human nature, they escape in all directions from regulations applying to non-existent classes. It is necessary to increase the number of men who supervise their actions. Then (for officials are human, too) it is necessary that more men supervise the supervisors.”
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/60703.html
As I recall, Frost had a few things to say about good fences, too. (I understand that the standard narrative makes his poem out to be anti-fencing, but I like to think that, as a man of the country, he knew that there are good reasons for fences.) I’m also reminded that another man of letters, G.K. Chesterton gave us some timeless wisdom cautioning against removing fences without knowing why they were put up in the first place. Seems to me that too many people these days are anxious to tear down fences, not to mentioin just about every societal bulwark that has been erected to protect and sustain civilization. All in the name of “freedom,” by which, of course, they mean anarchy. And I would be remiss if I failed to also include Ben Franklin’s advice for dealing with poverty. “I am for doing good to the poor, but…I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed … that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer.” A wise man, that Franklin.
What a powerful idea: mercy run amok. Leave it to a genius like Frost to point that out.
Wow. Robert Frost. I had no idea.
I think Frost was confused.
In recent years, I’ve come to believe seeking and working out a balance between the Truth and Grace that Jesus in the Biblical narrative was said to have been full of, is really what is at the heart of the Narrow Way he also talked about that’s hard to find and walk, but leads to life. Which is different from the “Empathy is at the heart of Jesus’ life and ministry,” view held by Ms. Corsello, as quoted in the Selfy link.
While reading the book, Baffled by Love: Stories of the Lasting Impact of Childhood Trauma Inflicted by Loved Ones, by Laurie Kahn, I found a more contemporary version and affirmation of my view on this in her definition of love as Accountability and Compassion. Two seemingly opposites practiced together as key components of Love.
Simply put, when it comes to Justice and Mercy, Truth and Grace, Accountability and Compassion, I believe a balance of both is needed; not one above or ahead of the other. While such a combo is not easy or comfortable for humans (and their egos) to manage, seeking and finding ways to hold and practice both together is necessary for goodness, love, and light to be realized.
@ physicsguy > “mercy run amok”
That’s a great title for a book!
That’s interesting. It happened that one of Frost’s famous poems came up in conversation with one of my favorite coworkers just today.
Frost’s own comment on “Mending Wall” was “good fences really do make good neighbors, you know.”
It’s about mindless application of rules.
I’m old enough to remember a time when there was no government welfare, and no social security. The family was the place where people in need went first. The family would share what they could but expected the person to do what they could to help themselves get work. Or at least contribute something to the family’s daily chores. There was accountability.
If the family couldn’t or wouldn’t help, then the church was the next stop for the indigent person. The church was open to helping, but once again, expected an effort to get back on their feet. It was a social safety net, but there was effort expected and accountability.
I never saw a homeless person when I was a child. There were a few hobos who would knock on doors and ask to do some work for some food, but they were transient. The police and city government would not allow them to tarry. I knew from an early age that I had to work to make my way in the world. It was an incentive.
Those who dream of an egalitarian society are usually slackers and lay abouts. They want a bigger piece of the economic pie with less/no effort. Then there are the people who dream of being in charge of such a society. It makes them feel virtuous to want to help so many little people. Those two groups gravitate toward socialism/communism. It’s been tried many times. It has always failed. Yet, the myth of that ideal society lives on.
Someone needs to find a way to put a wooden stake through the heart of this myth.
Frost is quoted as saying “the people who accept mercy have to pay for it. Mercy means protection. And there is no protection without direction.” I beg to disagree; mercy is not a charity.
My larger comment disappears when I hit “save” on my edit. Multiple times. Bah.
In considering laws that are not enforced, I’ve concluded that most of Justice is punishment. Without punishment ,there is no justice. (Social Punishment Warriors!). The punishment system comes into play when norms or laws are violated.
The 3 purposes of punishment are
1) change the behavior of the violator—the pain of punishment, very often merely embarrassment for rudeness, pushes more norm-al behavior,
2) as an example to others, so that they don’t violate the law or norm,
3) for closure of the incident allowing folks to continue day to day. Also more easily allows forgiveness by the victims.
Civilized society needs & requires punishment to enforce norms—cancel culture is one semi-non-legal ways of punishing the non-woke.
We need more separation between Justice and Fairness. Life is not fair (God is not fair?) Most unfair aspects of life involving people can’t be adjusted: place of birth, parents, genes, IQ, height, facial beauty, Talent.
Yet we want Fair Competition, for status & other rewards. We need, as a society, to accept that the purpose of competition is to induce, thru reward, better behavior. Not for Cosmic Justice, so often secretly against life’s Unfairness, but so that each person tries hard within the rules, for their own best reward. The desire for a Fair Life is why the dream of Socialism won’t die, even tho it’s like the desire for unicorns.
Mercy, giving little or no punishment to violators, often works at much less social cost when violators admit they wrong, apologize, and promise not to do it again. It needs to be case by case to induce changed behavior.
When the Justice/ punishment system replaces punishment with mercy, the 10% or so frequent criminals commit more crimes.
Strictly speaking, with nothing but mercy at argument, the most sadistic murderer should be let go with a chunk of cash to make up for the inconvenience of being prosecuted.
It’s a sliding scale with a good many issues at stake including some kind of “justice” in terms of what does he/the crime merit as deserving. Somewhere, independent of us is a need for balance. So it would seem.
Then, of course, mercy for the guilty is cruelty for the innocent if only future victims.
— J.J.
Can’t be done.
I’m going to have to a take a counterview to the prevailing right-wing wisdom on this.
Yes, that’s how things used to work…but the change was not forced on the public. The public, in the USA and elsewhere, more or less demanded change, because the former arrangements (family then church) was widely perceived as inadequate.
It’s certainly true that it’s gone too far the other way, but the people demanding change were not layabouts. It was mostly working-class people who worked harder than most of us today ever come close to doing. Miners and farmers and manual laborers.
This is one of the reaons the GOP has repeated a cycle over and over for more than half a century. They’ll win an election on Democratic social insanity and or national security issues. Or because the Dems take a good thing too far.
Then the GOP in power attempts either to implement the Business Agenda, or to roll back the New Deal. The former is deeply unpopular. The latter is politically impossible, because the electorate has zero tolerance for it. So the following election sweeps the Dems back into power.
One of the turning points for Trump in 2016 was when he came out against cuts to Social Security. The commentariat mocked him for it, since he was running in a GOP primary, that was supposed to be a core GOP goal…but it wasn’t. Not for the GOP voters.
As Vance observed at one point, most Republicans are former Democrats.
All the arguments since FDR’s time have been about the balance between Mercy and Justice, between empathy and necessity. But there’s no going back to the pre-FDR era. The electorate won’t stand for it.
— Richard Aubrey
Which is precisely what the hard-core Left would do. It’s been a joke for decades that liberals believe violent criminals should be treated as sick people in need of treatment, at worst. Often, they see them as legitimate rebels against an illegitimate society. They see the criminals as victims.
This last has become especially pronounced in recent years, such as with the murdered health insurance exec, or the gloating about the deaths of the kids the recent shooting.
— Richard Aubrey
But many modern liberals see the victims as having it coming.
You really can’t emphasize this too much. At its core, the Left sees America, and Western Christendom as a whole, as fundamentally, inherently, foundationally illegitimate. They have no right to exist. They have no right to judge anyone or any act, since they are themselves wrong and invalid.
This has been true at its core since the Left was born in the French Revolution. It’s always diluted in practice, of course, it’s almost never seen in a pure form in any individual. But it’s the heart of the philosophy, of the Lefty worldview.
The Leftist urge to coddle murderers at home is the same impulse that makes them see Israel as evil and the Palestinians as Israeli victims, just at a different scale. It’s why they instinctively side with the enemy whenever America is at war. The only reason they side with Ukraine against Russia is the historical accident that it was a left-wing government that was in charge when it started and many right-wingers opposed it for their own reasons.
It’s why they want the public disarmed. They see the public as a dangerous armed mob of villains.
The hatred at the heart of the Left is often muted in individuals. Many lefties repeat the talking points and vote for lefty parties just out of how they were raised or their social group, and don’t give any thought to what it all means. Some of these people sincerely deny hating, and they don’t hate, they’re just mouthing the talking points.
But the core activists and true believers? They hate. When they tell you they want you dead, believe them.
J.J. says he recalls a time when there was no Social Security.
Social Security Act was passed in 1935. That’s 90 years ago, so I’m forced to conclude J.J. is older than 90.
If so, congratulations from an octogenarian. Parts of us are failing, but not our brains!
HC68:
The public, in the USA and elsewhere, more or less demanded change, because the former arrangements (family then church) was widely perceived as inadequate.
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I don’t remember that part – could you refresh our memories?
I remember learning about introduction of Federal income tax under cover of “the War effort” and Wilsonian expansion of the bureaucracy.
I remember learning about vigorous opposition to Roosevelt’s New Deal and how it actually extended the misery of the Depression.
Labor unions were the heroes of all those 30s Bolshie folk songs – but have now been revealed and discredited as just another heavy-handed mafia.
I think many young Americans understand that Social Security will be bankrupt long before they are eligible.
They also understand that the real minimum wage is zero.
Don’t be so quick to say the welfare state cannot be rolled back… Millei managed to do it in Argentina.
— BenDavid
You learned incorrectly, or half-correctly, on both points.
Yes, there was vigorous opposition to the New Deal, but it was dwarfed by public support. It was never even close. That’s how FDR was able to win four consecutive terms, and it’s why he won essentially every political confrontation. The general public was behind him.
Yes, FDR won the court-packing battle, too. The public didn’t support his court packing plan, that’s true. But they also wanted Federal judges to quit trying to block the New Deal implementation.
Justice Owen Roberts reversed himself on a couple of cases, enabling the New Deal implementation to go through. It was famously called ‘the switch in time that saved the nine’, meaning the nine SCOTUS Justices. If not for that, odds are pretty close to 100% FDR would have successfully packed the Court.
If there had not been tremendous public support for FDR and the New Deal, the entrenched opposition could easily have blocked it. The courts were against it, the entrenched business class was against it, there was huge resistance, but it was never close to a majority.
As for the New Deal making the Depression go on longer, that’s probably not true. It’s a right-wing talking point, no different than the stuff lefties spin on gun control or the like, not an established bit of history. It’s very, very hard to break a deflation spiral, which is what the Depression was. The most common break for a deflation spiral is war, and World War II ended the Depression.
Another right-wing talking point that used to get trotted out in favor of ‘free trade’ was that the Smooth-Hawley Tariffs cased the Depression. Again, not really true, but a useful talking point in defending NAFTA and so forth.
— BenDavid
Along with workplace safety regulations that made life vastly safer and easier for the working class, holidays, unemployment benefits, a five day work week (at least as an ideal), and various protection against arbitrary mistreatment.
In their time, the unions did vast good for the working class. They later became corrupt, but it’s no use pretending they were not necessary and useful and that they didn’t fill a need.
The employer class, if they can, will grind the employee class down toward slave labor conditions, just as the employee class will try to capture every penny of profit for themselves and reduce their own work if they can. It’s dangerous when either one gets too much control.
— BenDavid
I heard talk radio people like Hannity saying exactly the same thing twenty years ago, when Bush II was alienating his support with SoSec privatization talk. The only thing it produced was Obama. Romney pursued the same line of thinking in his general election bid. Result: More Obama.
— BenDavid
Totally different situation. Argentina is not the USA, and the history is totally different.
You can roll back the welfare state…to a point. But most people simply don’t have the necessary risk tolerance to embrace libertarianism voluntarily.
Classic example: Chile. The Pinochet dictatorship instituted massive free market reforms in Chile, and it was so successful that it was sometimes called the ‘Chilean Miracle’. When the dictatorship fell and electoral democracy was reinstituted, both the Western left and right were disappointed. The lefties wanted to vote in a socialist system, but the voters retained most of Pinochet’s economic policies. But not all. They insisted on an old age pension and various other protections.
We spent years hearing about ‘the libertarian moment’ in America. In came and passed with hardly a ripple, and Trump took control of the GOP by recognizing that most of its voters are at least somewhat sympathetic to the New Deal. There just aren’t very many libertarians.
”But there’s no going back to the pre-FDR era.”
Oh, we _will_ be going back. We will either go back gradually in an intelligent way, or we will go back all at once after the crash. But one way or another we will be going back.
As BenDavid said, the real minimum wage is zero.
Oh, we _will_ be going back. We will either go back gradually in an intelligent way, or we will go back all at once after the crash. But one way or another we will be going back.
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Thanks for the wish cast.
I remember learning about introduction of Federal income tax under cover of “the War effort” and Wilsonian expansion of the bureaucracy.
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No, a constitutional amendment was enacted the year before the United States entered the war and had been percolating for about twenty years at that point.
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There was no ‘ wilsonian expansion of the bureaucracy’ prior to the war and demobilization after the war was completed within about two years.
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Right now, the Congress seems intent on pretending we can engage in massive public sector borrowing indefinitely and Trump isn’t giving them much pushback. This will not end well.
Along with workplace safety regulations that made life vastly safer and easier for the working class,
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See the work of W. Kip Viscusi on the promotion of safety. A number of vectors influence the safety regime and government regulation is one of the weaker ones.
We spent years hearing about ‘the libertarian moment’ in America. In came and passed with hardly a ripple, and Trump took control of the GOP by recognizing that most of its voters are at least somewhat sympathetic to the New Deal. There just aren’t very many libertarians.
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Social Security and its sequelae have a large public constituency. That was one aspect of the New Deal. Social Security itself paid no benefits prior to 1940, though unemployment compensation was in place.
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Other aspects of the New Deal have less of a public constituency if any at all. That would include the Roosevelt Administration’s affection for cartel formation, production controls, price controls, and price manipulation; the Wagner Act labor relations regime; general relief; large scale work relief; and benefits allocation according to odd or opaque criteria. During the war, you had a comprehensive price-controls-and-rationing regime. Among subsidiary governments, you had the advent of public housing and (here and there) rent control. A lot of cr!p policy in that era.
The employer class, if they can, will grind the employee class down toward slave labor conditions, just as the employee class will try to capture every penny of profit for themselves and reduce their own work if they can. It’s dangerous when either one gets too much control.
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Neither assertion is true.
I’m old enough to remember a time when there was no government welfare, and no social security.
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The oldest person in the country at this time was born around 1910, when local public schools, municipal hospitals, state asylums, state sanitoriums, state workhouses, and veterans hospitals were all familiar phenomena.
— Art Deco
Yes. Many aspects of the New Deal proved unpopular and were rolled back. But the core of it retained (and still retains) majority support. SoSec is undentably popular, and the voters are tolerant neither of elimination nor privatization. The voters still believe the Federal government has a role to play in regulating the economy, they just don’t like how the Democrats are using that power (or not using it, in some cases). The voters believe in a certain amount of economic protectionism. In fact, a typical MAGA voters looks an awful lot like moderate Democrat circa 1960.
Every so often, Republicans fall into the trap of deceiving themselves that the public is finally ready to reject FDR, or embrace Ayn Rand or libertarianism generally. It’s always self-deception. Trump captured control of the GOP precisely by recognizing where the GOP voters really were and what they really wanted and believed in, and it was not ’19th century classical liberalism’, laissez-faire, or Randianism. In 2016, Trump through those tropes onto the fire and by doing so roared into an upset primary win in defiance of the entire Party establishment.
— Art Deco
Both assertions are true, and we have ample historical practical experience to demonstrate it.
For example, right now, the eagerness of the corporate class for open borders and free trade is precisely an example of the employer/investor class acting in their own interest, and thus against the interest of the employee class. Both ‘free trade’ and uncontrolled illegal immigration (to say nothing of things like H1B abuse) function to drive down employee wages and reduce employment security.
It’s not an evil plot, just conflicting economic interests.
But the core of it retained (and still retains) majority support.
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There was no ‘core’, just a jumble of initiatives. Social Security remained. The classical gold standard never returned. There were a scrum of zombie programs which remained from some combination of inertia, lobbying, and the complications involved in restructuring distorted markets. The Carter administration worked to dismantle some of them.
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The voters still believe the Federal government has a role to play in regulating the economy, they just don’t like how the Democrats are using that power (or not using it, in some cases). The voters believe in a certain amount of economic protectionism. In fact, a typical MAGA voters looks an awful lot like moderate Democrat circa 1960.
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From 1854 to 1981, the Democratic Party was less inclined toward protectionism than was the Republican Party. Reducing tariff levels was a Roosevelt Administration initiative.
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Prior to 1933, there was a body of corporation law, commercial law; estates, powers, and trust law; insurance law; admiralty law; law governing mineral rights; real estate law; anti-trust law; banking law; occupational licensure; utilities regulation; and health-and-safety codes. They were less voluminous and the balance of verbiage was more tilted in favor of state-and-local legislation than federal legislation. The New Deal was notable for expanding the verbiage and bite of federal labor law and for organizing cartels in various sectors. NB, the preference for industrial unionism dovetailed with the affection for sectoral cartels.
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Every so often, Republicans fall into the trap of deceiving themselves that the public is finally ready to reject FDR, or embrace Ayn Rand or libertarianism generally. It’s always self-deception.
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Paul Ryan is an Ayn Rand aficionado. Alan Greenspan was an acolyte of hers. Neither did anything to promote Objectivism while in office. Ron Paul (who is not a Rand moonie) has never been an influential figure in the Republican Party. Milton Friedman and Richard Epstein have certainly been promoters of libertarian thought and policy; I’m not seeing how it’s ‘self-deception’ to draw ideas from either one.
HC68, I am more firmly persuaded of your IDEOLOGICAL argument:
The Democratic Party has been captured/hijacked by Obaman TRANSFORMATION, more specifically, by a combination of Alinsky+ Cloward-Piven + WEF/WTF methodologies—manufacturing and maximizing multiple, concurrent CRISES of many varieties so as to totally overwhelm Western civilization, thus bringing about its end and replacing it with some kind of supposedly “benevolent” flavor of Totalitarianism in a “velvet glove”—IOW SLAVERY—for the “good of humanity”, to “save the planet” and “stamp out racism”, etc. (we’ve seen it all before, if not quite with the powerful tools available to the current crop of unscrupulous conspirators).
That is the overarching strategy.
The tactics involved are those intentional acts of subterfuge, subversion and sabotage we have seen consistently—and with malice aforethought—perpetrated by the uber-corrupt, if DETERMINED—“Biden” administration and which continue to be espoused by a derailed but NOT down-and-out Democratic Party (of liars, brigands and criminals); by Britain’s MONSTROUS and FOUL Labour Party; and by the odious perverts that comprise the EU, all supported by an uncouth cohort of conniving billionaires.
Trump and his supporters have their hands full battling to overcome this modern-day hydra.
Paul Ryan was a huge ‘free trader’. He was big on open borders. During Trump’s first term, he tried to arrange to send various amnesty bills to Trump, while twisting and dodging to make it look like he was being forced. Yet he was held up as the epitome of conservatism and the voice of the right wing.
At one point, in answer to complaints that the GOP majority had done nothing useful for their voters, Ryan offered as an example that they had made it easier for American oil producers to export oil.
Yeah. That was really high on the proto-MAGA voter priority list. The problem is that the base voters wanted things that are anathema to the business class.
Back in 2016, before Trump entered the race, the first Republican to declare was Cruz. There was general laughter that choked when he raised (IIRC) 30 million dollars in two days, because the actual GOP base was so hostile to the idea of Jeb Bush or some other ‘business wing’ Republican.
But then something happened. The Dems refused to grant Obama Trade Promotion Authority, without which he coudn’t negotiate the latest ‘free trade’ catastrophe. Did the GOP sit back and munch popcorn? Did they make demands? Nope.
Instead, Cruz and Ryan published a pro-free-trade op ed together, while Mitch McConnell organized the GOP to give Obama the necessary votes to receive TPA. Which McConnell and Ryan then tried to sell as ‘rolling the Dems’. The GOP voting base was infuriated over the whole thing, a huge chance to kill a major ‘free trade’ bill had come and the GOP had grabbed the football and ran down the field to their own touchdown zone, and bragged about doing it.
That was one of the things that knocked Cruz off track and gave the opening into which the Donald stepped.
The GOP/MAGA base hates ‘free trade’. They hate open borders immigration. They want big business and Wall Street cut down to size. The business lobby wants the opposite of all that, and they are the donors. Every single time the GOP has followed the donor’s preferred path in the last several decades, the result has been electoral disaster.
JD Vance once said, before the election, that the only Biden appointee he thought had been doing a good job was Linna Khan, who the corporate wing of the GOP detest. But Vance has his finger on the voting base.