Beer, brussels sprouts, Bernie Madoff and today's GOP

On Friday, Larry Kudlow, who was Donald Trump's top economic adviser, told Fox News viewers that Joe Biden's climate plans would force Americans to stop eating meat. On July 4, he declared, you'd have to "throw back a plant-based beer with your grilled Brussels sprouts."

Kudlow's remarks raise several questions. What, exactly, does he think beer is made from? Also, doesn't he know that grilled brussels sprouts are, in fact, delicious?

More important, why would anyone believe this assertion about Biden's plans, or expect anyone else to believe it? Why were Kudlow's claims echoed by many Republicans, from Donald Trump Jr., to members of Congress, to the governor of Texas?

To answer this question, it helps to think about Bernie Madoff, the infamous fraudster who died April 14. Seriously.

About Biden and burgers: The administration has, in fact, said nothing at all about changing America's diet. Furthermore, anything along those lines would be very much at odds with Biden's whole approach to climate change, which is to rely much more on carrots than on sticks, to provide positive incentives to invest in low-emission technologies rather than discouraging emissions with taxes or regulations.

Whether that approach will prove sufficient is debatable, but it is the approach the administration is taking, and telling people to stop eating meat would be completely out of character.

So where is this coming from? Kudlow took his cues from a sleazy article in the Daily Mail, a right-wing British tabloid. The article didn't actually assert that Biden is proposing to restrict meat consumption; instead, it offered a series of speculations about what might happen. Among other things it took the most extreme scenario from a University of Michigan study of how reduced meat consumption could affect greenhouse gas emissions — a study released in January 2020 that had nothing whatsoever to do with the Biden plans. The Daily Mail also used a deceptive graphic to make it seem as if this was an actual administration proposal.

What's clear, however, is that neither Kudlow nor other Republicans touting an imaginary war on meat saw any need to check out their story, felt any concern that their audience — Fox News viewers, Republican voters — would find the claim that Joe Biden is coming for their red meat implausible.

Why not? That's where Bernie Madoff comes in.

The revelations about Madoff's immense Ponzi scheme and how he pulled it off introduced many of us to the concept of affinity fraud: scams that prey upon people by exploiting a sense of shared identity. Madoff defrauded wealthy Jews by convincing them that he was just like them.

A similar approach has long been an essential part of the Republican political strategy. As the party's economic policies have become ever more elitist, ever more tilted toward the interests of the wealthy, it has sought to cover its tracks by running candidates who seem like regular guys you'd like to have a (meat-based?) beer with.

The flip side of this strategy is a continual attempt by the GOP to convince voters that Democrats, who represent a much more diverse set of voters than Republicans, aren't people like them; call it disaffinity fraud.

Right-wing media are pushing this narrative nonstop. According to a Morning Consult poll last month, more Republicans said they'd heard "a lot" about the move to withdraw some Dr. Seuss books than said the same about Biden's huge COVID-19 relief bill.

It doesn't matter that Joe Biden isn't actually trying to ban hamburgers or — to take another false claim right-wing pundits and politicians keep repeating — that he hasn't "taken down" the border with Mexico. Republicans have pretty much given up even trying to make a case against Biden's actual policies, let alone proposing serious policies themselves.

Instead, it's all smears. Democrats, declared Kudlow, are "ideological zealots who don't care one whit about America's well-being." That's pretty rich coming from a man famed for his unwavering commitment to the doctrine that cutting taxes on the wealthy solves all problems, no matter how often his predictions fail.

But never mind; the point is that Kudlow and others consider it OK to throw out wild claims about what Democrats are up to, because those are the kinds of things woke liberals would do, aren't they?

Will the public go along? The Biden administration thinks not, betting it can overcome the power of affinity fraud with policies that offer real benefits to working Americans. Unfortunately, there's no guarantee that this strategy will work.