Bidenomics might save GOP in Arizona
Tiana Lowe Doescher
Video Embed
Despite the Arizona Republican Party‘s best attempts to turn a longtime swing state blue, the abysmal economy under Democratic control of the White House and the Senate may save the state for the GOP come 2024. And this is no right-wing conjecture; rather, it was NBC News that found on the ground that “Bidenomics” is proving a bust in the Grand Canyon State.
“They should quit worrying about the college kids paying back that money and start worrying about us who are trying to work for a living with these food and gas costs,” one independent in central Arizona told the network. “I’m on Social Security and [inflation] is killing me.”
WRAY LIED ABOUT NOT TARGETING CATHOLICS
A different, unemployed independent said that former president Donald Trump “may talk bad to people and he may not know how to talk, but I think he was a good president. A lot of people thought that Trump was racist. He’s not. He actually created a lot of job opportunities for a lot of people.”
The polling doesn’t indicate a mere general distaste for Joe Biden, who became the second Democrat since Harry Truman to win Arizona in the 2020 election. While a Public Opinion Strategies poll gave Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) a near-double-digit lead over Biden in the state, Trump’s margin has also been expanding, with Emerson now finding Trump 1.5% ahead of Biden in a head-to-head match-up in 2024.
And per NBC’s reporting, it has little to do with the border, the culture wars, or anything else the terminally online Arizona GOP would rather focus on. Instead, as will continue to be the dominant and totally ignored truth about the 2024 election, it’s about the economy, stupid.
One of the most pernicious lies about Bidenomics is the president’s assertion that “every American willing to work hard should be able to say where they grew up and stay where they grew up,” and that somehow that is a good thing. By contrast, this country was created by pioneers who took advantage of the best, burgeoning opportunities, and Arizona is specifically a beneficiary of this reality which Biden wishes to deny.
Arizona has the fourth-highest net migration of any other state in the union and the sixth-highest rate per 1,000 inhabitants. Millions of Americans are happily leaving where they grew up to start businesses, benefit from school choice, and build new houses in the laissez-faire domains of the Sun Belt and the South. But the worst inflation in 40 years has eaten into the real economic growth gained by Arizona, creating a crisis for its residents.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
This is the main reason the Bidenomics branding has proven a bust: The cost of Biden’s industrial policy, which explicitly benefits the areas of the country everyone is leaving, is a nearly 20% increase in prices since Biden took office for the two-thirds of the state which resides in the Phoenix metropolitan area.
At the absolute minimum, Trump did little to no harm on this front. Under his tenure, the greenback was strong and stable, while federal deregulation led to real economic growth without any of the inflation we’ve seen in Biden’s presidency. In an area with lesser demand or more federal benefits, perhaps the grass wouldn’t look greener, but in Arizona, the tweets are increasingly looking like a small price to pay for price stability.