"The Republicans (GOP), traditionally the US’s anti-tax party, now
promise to use tariffs to wage trade wars, to massively deport
immigrants and to stop drug trafficking. But tariffs are simply the name
of one kind of tax (on imported goods and services). So the GOP becomes
both anti-tax and pro-tax.

Likewise, the traditional party of minimal government, today’s GOP now
favors massive subsidies to industries that big government will select
as well as economic sanctions and bans on enterprises and whole
countries that big government will select. Beyond the right-wing
ideology and financial self-serving, Donald Trump reflects deeper contradictions in the GOP’s evolution.

The GOP, traditionally the laissez-faire party of private enterprise,
now favors increased government control of what private enterprises can
and cannot offer in markets for reproductive healthcare, control
medications and devices and also for vaccines and drugs. The GOP,
traditionally supporting “freedom,” now insists on blocking the free movement of people across borders and favors protectionist economic
policy over a commitment to “free trade.”
..
In the moment, those contradictions give Trump some power. Amid the
confusion, he decides. But soon conflicts among US policies will expose
the incoherence of Trump’s project and thereby sap his power.

The Democratic party was, at least since the Great Depression of the
1930s, the “progressive” party of working people, unions, and oppressed minorities. Yet the rise of the “centrists” across recent decades
shifted the Democrats rightward.

As they became grateful recipients of corporate and billionaires’
donations, the Democrats increasingly supported the donor class by
fielding “moderate” candidates, moderating their policies and programs,
and publicly marginalizing the party’s remaining progressive wing.
..
Multiple, intense and persistent contradictions within both parties
suggest that some underlying, historic shifts may be underway. In my
view, the first of those shifts is the peaking and subsequent decline in
recent decades of the US empire and its allies (especially the G7). This
shift reflects and feeds the concurrent rise of the Global South, China
and the BRICS."

https://asiatimes.com/2024/12/political-contradictions-point-to-end-of-us-empire/

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