MAYBE STEALTH AND EPISTEMIC CLOSURE WEREN'T THE BEST MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR YOUR CRAPPY TAX BILL

Everyone hates the Republicans' godawful tax bill, including key parts of the Republican coalition:

The tax plan that Republicans are soon expected to pass has grown more unpopular in the last two months, with nearly two-thirds of Americans believing it’s designed mostly to help corporations and the wealthy, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll....

According to the poll — which was conducted before the House and Senate voted on the tax bill — 24 percent of Americans say that the Trump-backed tax plan is a good idea, versus 41 percent who believe it’s a bad idea.

That’s an increase in unpopularity from October, when 35 percent said it was a bad idea, and 25 percent said it was a good idea....

Notably, just 28 percent of rural Americans and 29 percent of whites without a college degree — key parts of Trump’s 2016 base — say it’s a good idea.

The professional right is disgruntled because Americans, hearing that the bill lavishes most of its benefits on the rich and will ultimately make most non-rich people pay more, don't appreciate the temporary tax cut they'll get. Conservatives are complaining that the mainstream media has provided a distorted picture of the bill.

Well, Republicans, this is what you get when you write a bill in stealth, behind closed doors, and ram it through Congress without hearings or a decent amount of time for public discussion. You didn't want to sell this bill. You didn't want to talk about it at all. You didn't want to be required to defend it.

And you've handed over the vast majority of your messaging to right-wing media outlets that have spent the past couple of months not talking about the glories of the bill but, rather, about kneeling football players, the War on Christmas, Uranium One, and Robert Mueller as a traitorous agent of Satan. So even your base rarely heard the talking points in favor of your bill.

You assumed that you'd have enough support from the heartland if Mitch McConnell croaked out a few supportive phrases and Trump occasionally gave the bill a thumbs-up in between Twitter tantrums, because hey, who is Joe Sixpack going to believe, you guys doing a half-assed job of selling the bill or the LIE-beral media? It's as if you assumed that none of the mainstream media's reporting on the bill would ever get through to voters because your voters don't pay any attention to the MSM. This time, they were paying attention.

You got outmessaged. That wasn't supposed to happen. This bill was supposed to pass with minimal fanfare and minimal reporting on its consequences. But the mainstream press didn't play along, and neither did many of your voters. Oops.