WE ARE ALL THIRD WAY:

[S]aying the country is returning to normal has political benefits. Most Americans are conservative in that they fear newness. The problems of the status quo might be bad, but the solutions might be just as bad, or worse. What's more, the Republicans are masterful at exploiting that fear. Every time the Democrats propose a solution to the problems we all face, they find ways to heighten fears, or cast the Democrats as being so outside the boundaries of normal politics that anything they say is un-American.

Crises of the size and scope of the covid pandemic, however, destabilize everything, including the natural, understandable and conservative fear of newness. With so many Americans getting sick and dying, the electorate became (I'm speculating here) more receptive to experiment. Anything's better than living in fear of joblessness, isolation and death. The urge to act was so strong that even a formerly conservative political party, the same one that once said we're too "broke"2 to spend money in the aftermath of the 2008 panic, quickly embraced the idea of spending money like never before.

Which is to say the Republicans under Donald Trump normalized liberalism and its preference for a government that's more active in the lives of individuals. That's not to say they became a liberal party. Far from it. It's to say the party that demonized the very word "liberal" made it acceptable for Americans to receive government aid without thinking of themselves as communists. In a very real sense, the Republicans broke the spell that anti-government rhetoric cast over the electorate for 40 years.

Fear-mongering has always been the GOP's greatest weapon. With that mostly out of the way, thanks to the Republicans themselves, the Democrats are free to move ahead with policy ideas that have been incubating for years. The passing of the American Rescue Act marks their moment. Unlike previous stimulus bills, it pushes more money to more people living in the bottom half of society than any law since the Great Society programs of the late 1960s.3 If it works, it will not only normalize but solidify the idea of using the government as a clearinghouse for distributing wealth more equitably.

For the Republicans, this should be terrifying. They face the real possibility of being so outside the mainstream of political discourse the scariest of scare tactics won't work on a national audience. In the past, they could paint the Democrats as radical. Lots of people already believed they were. But now that Biden is making permanent what the GOP itself began, the Republicans must work twice as hard at demonizing them, coming off like fools. Ted Cruz said Biden's "radical agenda" is masked by being "boring." Translation: Bidenism could be a new acceptable and defensible norm.

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