Can Tax Reform Really Save the Republican Regulars in 2018?

… The repeated defeat of health care legislation has only raised the perceived stakes for the passage of a major tax initiative. “Republican leaders are making no attempt to mask their fear,” reported the New York Times on Thursday, “predicting that failure to pass a tax overhaul in the coming months will lead to a wipeout in next year’s midterm elections.” The argument is simple enough: if tax reform falls apart the way health care reform did, incumbent Republicans will have no major accomplishments to run on, and disgruntled conservatives will respond in 2018 by supporting insurgent challengers in Republican primaries and/or by declining to vote in the November general election.

But accepting this logic requires viewing tax reform as itself a sufficiently valuable prize in the eyes of Republican-leaning citizens that its passage alone is likely to represent the difference between loyalty to the current stock of party incumbents and widespread disaffection or rebellion. There are at least two reasons to be skeptical of this assumption. CONT.

David A. Hopkins, Boston College