Why aren’t Republicans trying to please voters?

Instead, top Republicans in Washington are pulling out all the stops to do unpopular things and avoid doing popular things. Their main proposals — more tax cuts for the rich, corporate legal immunity, pushing the post office into bankruptcy — have strikingly little support among voters, even among Republican voters. Meanwhile, they are resisting highly popular measures, such as additional relief for states, localities and ordinary workers, that would almost certainly increase their likelihood of holding onto power this fall.

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This situation isn’t just surreal. It’s genuinely scary. In a democracy, leaders of a governing party shouldn’t act as if they can brazenly defy large majorities of voters and still hold onto power. The alarm bells only get louder when you begin to examine why current Republican leaders think this way — and why they might be right…

In a few cases, they may believe voters will eventually move toward the party’s stances. In others, they may be posturing so Democrats have to yield costly concessions. And yet, as the stalemate wears on, it becomes harder and harder to avoid the simplest explanation for Republicans’ poisonous positions: They are devoted to them, and they think they can get away with them.

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