Mike Pence Showcases the Cultish Republican Opposition to Using Government for Anything – Esquire

Mike Pence was on Fox News Tuesday prior to the president*s bizarre virtual town hall. (Why was he yelling about windmills again?) Pence was asked about the possibility of actually using the Defense Production Act to produce the medical supplies needed to fight the pandemic. Pences answer was even more evidence that the Republicans would rather have Americans sicken and die rather than give up their continually failing economic gospel.

"American industry is stepping forward as never before," Pence replied.

From the start, the administration* has treated the DPA as though it were some sort of Damoclean weapon by which it can force compliance from American industries. "Watch out, Ford. Make them ventilators or the DPAll gitcha! This is because, for politicians like Pence, a product of a Republican Party that married itself to supply-side snake oil and disdain for self-government, it is inconceivable to imagine that the federal governments demanding that industries respond to a worldwide crisis cannot be more effective and efficient than waiting for those corporations to engage their civic consciences to do so. And they will adhere to that faith over your grandmothers dead body.

And then there's the administrations insistence that the states take the lead in fighting the pandemic, despite the fact that the governors are screaming their throats raw for help. Markets over government. Leave it to the states. Its the basic gospel of the cult.

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Mike Pence Showcases the Cultish Republican Opposition to Using Government for Anything - Esquire