LOOK, IT'S THE OLD REPUBLICAN PARTY THAT EVERYONE WANTS BACK, AND IT'S AFTER YOUR MONEY!

We all know who the real enemy is, right? It's Donald Trump -- he's everything that's wrong with politics, the most dangerous man in America, and if only we could put him in prison, or he'd just go away, we could have the old Republican Party back and everything would be fine again!

That's what we're told, isn't it? Well, here's the old Republican Party, which never really went away. Jonathan Chait writes:

The November elections will likely give Republicans control of the House of Representatives as a platform from which to oppose the Democratic-controlled White House. And one thing Republicans will do with this power, in all probability, will be to try to provoke a crisis in order to extort Democrats into accepting spending cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

Bloomberg’s Jack Fitzpatrick interviewed several Republican contenders to lead the House Budget Committee. They all said, with varying levels of specificity, that they plan to instigate a debt-ceiling standoff to force Biden to accept cuts to retirement and health-care programs....

They are already floating their message: The Republicans will insist they won’t raise the debt ceiling unless Biden agrees to Republican-designed spending cuts, and they will blame him for the global meltdown if he refuses their demands....

Last June, the Republican Study Committee, a conservative caucus that includes more than three-quarters of the House Republicans, released a sweeping domestic-budget plan. It received little attention in the mainstream media. The plan, notes Fitzpatrick, would

gradually raise the Medicare age of eligibility to 67 and the Social Security eligibility to 70 before indexing both to life expectancy. It backed withholding payments to those who retired early and had earnings over a certain limit. And it endorsed the consideration of options to reduce payroll taxes that fund Social Security and redirect them to private alternatives. It also urged lawmakers to “phase-in an increase in means testing” for Medicare.

On top of partially cutting Medicare and Social Security and partially privatizing the latter, the RSC plan would implement various regressive tax cuts favored by the GOP.

Are you nostalgic yet? No wall, no Putin worship, no election conspiracy theories -- just pure old-fashioned transfers of wealth from the have-nots and have-lesses to the have-so-damn-much-they-can't-spend-it-alls. Shouldn't you work an extra five years so Elon Musk can set a few more autonomous vehicles on fire and Wall Street can skim a significant percentage of your Social Security money off the top -- and barely be taxed on the windfall?

Yeah, putting plutocratic greed front and center is what we missed about the GOP, isn't it? Donald Trump ruined the party! It used to be awesome!