Slow Boring

It’s pretty easy to persuade a large minority of the public of something, but the people you persuade are almost certainly going to be people who would vote for you anyway. Convincing high-value persuasion targets is a lot harder. And there can be huge second-order downsides to convincing your supporters of things that are not actually true. It may feel savvy to support sloppy, misleading, or inaccurate work from your own side, but it’s often counterproductive.

I don’t think that makes a ton of sense. Regardless, though, it doesn’t match what’s actually happening with DOGE, which is that Musk is promising people their benefits will go up even as Republicans enact multi-trillion dollar tax cuts.

If you take the misleading tweets seriously, deportations will boost the economic fortunes of American citizens. The fact that this is not actually true is something that Republicans should think about, but don’t seem to be.