Vox - Republicans are confident they can ignore voters preferences. Thats alarming.

[TomCADem]

With the help of a hermetically sealed echo chamber of right wing media, plus the support of hundreds of millions of campaign cash, Republicans really do not need to listen to voters. Indeed, there is an incentive to nominate unstable deeply polarizing figures who reinforce the narrative of persecution by the mainstream media.

https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/12/7/16745584/republican-agenda-unpopular-polls-tax-reform

Tax experts are in widespread agreement that the GOP tax cuts are bad policy — a giveaway to the rich paid for by the middle class and poor, with little upside for the economy. But Congress writes legislation that experts hate all the time. What’s really striking is that the people Congress is supposed to represent also hate the GOP tax cuts, with only around 30 percent of Americans expressing approval.

Nor are the tax cuts the only recent Republican legislation that has garnered terrible poll numbers. So did the effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Indeed, the GOP health care drive had even less popular support.

Massively unpopular bills used to be unicorns. You didn’t see them. And for an obvious reason: They could cost politicians their jobs. But now we’ve seen two unicorns in the first year of our all-Republican government. What gives?

The puzzle isn’t explaining why the bills are so unpopular: Their basic design runs exactly counter to voters’ stated preferences. Americans don’t consider tax cuts a high priority, and they are spectacularly unenthusiastic about reducing taxes on the rich in particular. Which, it turns out, is exactly what the GOP tax bills aim to do, even as they threaten to raise taxes on many Americans and prompt future spending cuts. Despite all the deception and haste, most voters get this.

[pbmus]

1. The voters that get the deception better be voicing there ...

Knowledge in every way possible....NOW....

[Garrett78]

2. It makes one feel helpless and hopeless. We'll have to take to the streets to save our lives.

The article from the OP is a good read, though it doesn't talk enough about how complicit the corporate media is.

As I wrote in another thread, Trump knows that as long as he maintains his base he can keep doing whatever he wants. Voter suppression, gerrymandering, a disorganized opposition party and a pathetic media means 35% support (or even less) is sufficient.

[TomCADem]

3. This Is Why Ryan Has Been Pushing Cuts for Medicare...

...I think they understand that this is there window to do so. Take out Medicare and Social Security and just keep yelling Fake News, attack minorities and immigrants, and insist that Americans will end up in better shape while Fox News, Rush, etc. run interference.

[pbmus]

5. We all become modern slaves...

[mythology]

4. A majority of their voters support it

Between the House being so gerrymandered, and so many Senate seats not competitive, along with the voting public being more accurately sorted (as in people who identify as left/right or as Democrat/Republican as opposed to how that used to be far more mixed) and institutional stickiness (see how the ACA went from being a big part of why we got shelled in 2010 to it being something people fought like hell for in 2017 or how hard we had to work to get rid of the disastrous Bush tax cuts for the wealthy), there is actually far more incentive for so-called unicorn bills. One could easily make the case that the ACA was a unicorn bill.