A gas-tax holiday won’t prevent the MAGA reckoning
Published 7:14 p.m. today
North Carolina Republicans are trying to bribe the voters into having amnesia. The GOP legislature has indicated that a plans to suspend the state’s gas tax, offering a slight reprieve from the catastrophe Donald Trump’s war in Iran has created at the pump. Republicans’ hope seems to be that a 41-cent discount in the price of gas will blunt the reckoning their party is due for in next month’s elections. It is a futile effort.
In American politics, high gas prices are lethal. Surging fuel prices contributed to the political collapse of George W Bush’s administration. Both Barack Obama and Joe Biden faced some of their stiffest political headwinds when gas prices rose. We are a nation of drivers. Captive to an automobile culture, Americans suffer a fundamental economic blow when the cost of gasoline makes transportation more expensive. The nation’s political leaders take the blame—whether their culpability is real or not.
What is particularly devastating about the current, expensive state of gas is that Donald Trump absolutely deserves the blame for it. Gas was perfectly affordable before Trump started his splendid little adventure in the Middle East. When the bombs fell, they killed both innocent people and the ability of Americans to afford fuel. Trump is directly responsible for Americans’ anguish at the pump. And Republicans in our state are fully aware that Trump’s disastrous forays into the morass of Middle Eastern warfare will cost them badly this Fall.
Hence the gas-tax holiday. I suspect that Senator Berger, an astute political strategist, does not believe that a 41-cent discount on $4 gas will salvage his party’s electoral prospects completely. But Republicans seem to believe they can convince struggling voters into laying off at least a little bit of their frustration with the GOP. The gas-tax holiday is a political stunt, but Republicans are hoping that voters lack the sophistication to recognize that they are being bamboozled. At least enough to salvage the supermajorities.
