Why Republicans Never Become Wise

The new administration and Project 2025 remind me of William Blake’s saying, “If the fool were to persist in his folly, he would become wise.” Republicans certainly persist in their folly, but they never become wise. We’ve had almost 50 years of trying conservative ideas at state and national levels, and their track record of failure doesn’t shake Republicans’ confidence. Why?

Self-deception is why the fool never becomes wise. Republicans insist that cutting taxes on the wealthy supercharges the economy and creates jobs while raising taxes inhibits growth. But the opposite has happened over the last 50 years. When taxes were raised, the economy boomed; when taxes were cut, economic growth flattened.

Red states have tried the same thing with similar results, most notoriously the model 2012 Kansas experiment, which led to brutal budget cuts, reductions in the state’s credit rating and below-average growth.

After every failure, Republicans ignore the outcome, blame bad luck, or claim their policies didn’t go far enough. They don’t look at the results honestly and adjust their thinking. This pattern appears everywhere in Republican politics: “run the government like a business,” “right to life,” and on and on.

Democrats must hammer home not just that Republicans lie to the public but that they lie to themselves and never learn from their mistakes. Don’t just detail how conservative policies hurt people; force Republicans to confront the fact that those policies fail even by Republicans’ own standards. Call Republicans out when they try to explain away their own failures. Paint their self-deception as proof that Republicans know their ideas are bad but don’t have the courage to face it. Show them to be a party of fools that no one would want to belong to.

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