"If you’re not rich, you blew your money on booze and women." Shareblue exec nails GOP disdain

The Republican Party has never shied away from loudly airing its repugnant views on low-income and middle-class Americans.

But in the fight over the GOP’s tax scam bill, the party has truly managed to outdo itself.

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch insisted that the government couldn’t possibly spare any money to help children with cancer because Republicans had to give it all to their rich donors, while his Utah colleague, Rep. Chris Stewart, openly declared that “[the] point is for corporations to pay less” — not to help out working families.

But Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley had the most appalling take on why no one but the rich deserved tax breaks.

Grassley defended the bill’s elimination of the estate tax because it benefits people who “are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”

That is what an elected official, who is ostensibly in office to serve the people, thinks about many of those people.

As Shareblue Media Executive Editor Jess McIntosh said on MSNBC’s “All In With Chris Hayes” Monday evening, “I think the comments lately have been incredibly illuminating to show exactly the disdain that the Republican Party has for working families.”

“They literally believe if you are not rich, you blew your money on booze and women,” she continued, noting that comments like Grassley’s will have a resounding ripple effect.

“American workers are hearing that all over the country right now,” she pointed out, and they are not going to take kindly to such a warped view of their lives.

It is stunningly cruel and out of touch to give even more money to people who already have all they could possibly need, while inflicting tax hikes on those who live paycheck to paycheck and spend “every darn penny they have” on things like rent, food, and health care.

And to smear those working families as frivolous children who waste their money on luxuries and vices is nothing short of repugnant.

But this is the Republican Party — this is what it have always been, and what it seems increasingly comfortable telegraphing to the nation.

And it is what will continue to haunt the party as November 2018 draws closer each day.