There’s a brief but interesting article up on the American Prospect site by music historian J. Lester Feder that plays off the Dixie Chicks “controversy” to remind people that country music’s famous political conservatism was yet another legacy of Richard M. Nixon’s Southern Strategy.Feder’s right that country music got politicized in the Nixon Years, and I can add a few examples to his account, from personal memory.He rightly tags Merle Haggard’s “Okie From Muscogee” as the apotheosis of country conservatism, and reports ol’ Merle’s claim that the song was a parody. He doesn’t mention Merle’s follow-up superpatriot hit, “The Fightin’ Side of Me”, that was clearly beyond parody:I read about some squirrely guy who claims that he just don’t believe in fightingAnd I wonder just how long the rest of us can count on being freeThey love our milk and honey but they preach about some other way of livingBut when you’re running down my country, hossYou’re walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me.This tune anchored a live album, recorded in Philadelphia, that was a red-white-and-blue extravaganza. I remember it vividly. My parents, huge Haggard fans (they actually got to hang out with him a bit at an Atlanta country music venue called the Playroom, in those innocent, pre-arena days of the genre), naturally had a copy, and made sure I heard the cut that included his spot-on impressions of other country stars, most notably fellow Bakersfield legend and country-rock pioneer Buck Owens (whose ex-wife Bonnie was Merle’s then-wife and backup singer).Haggard did, a couple of years earlier, turn down a request from George Wallace to endorse his 1968 presidential candidacy. But other country stars–if I remember correctly, they included both Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn–did sing for George. And one of my favorite memories from the 1968 campaign was an ad featuring Grand Ol’ Opry fixture Roy Acuff, who did a soulful musical intro about the nation’s many problems, and then the camera pulled back to show Roy standing next to a gigantic, hideous photo of Richard Nixon (Acuff himself ran for Governor of Tennessee as a Republican back in 1948, and in 1970, campaigned for fellow country singer Tex Ritter in 1970, running for the same office with the same futile result).Perhaps the best example of the abrupt transition from populism to conservatism that Leder talks about was Whisperin’ Bill Anderson, a Georgia country crooner whose band, the Po’ Boys, was rooted in the Depression populist tradition. But in the early 70s, he did a song, “Where Have All Our Heroes Gone?” that arguably captured the rightward, nostalgic trend in country music more presicely than Haggard’s pugilistic odes (though Loretta Lynn’s “God Bless American Again,” co-written with Conway Twitty, which she typically delivered against a backdrop that featured a spotlighted Old Glory, did so as well in a less explicitly political vein).The omission in Leder’s piece that surprised me the most was the obvious antecedent to the Dixie Chicks’ liberal heresy: Earl Scruggs. An alumnus of Bill Monroe’s band, co-founder of the vastly popular Flatt and Scruggs duo, and basically, the inventor of bluegrass banjo pickin’, Scruggs scandalized much of his following by performing at the big 1969 anti-Vietnam War rally in Washington.And Earl’s still around, probably chuckling a bit at the Chicks’ successful notoriety and multiple Grammies. Scruggs picked up his first Grammy the same year as his anti-war appearance, for Foggy Mountain Breakdown, and won a second Grammy for a re-recording of the same piece, in 2002.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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May 8: How Obamacare Undermined Republican Appetite for Medicaid Cuts
There’s a new and important problem facing Republicans as they seek to hammer Medicaid yet again, as I explained at New York:
In the long Paul Ryan era of Republican budget-cutting efforts (when Ryan was House Budget Committee chairman and then House Speaker), Medicaid was always on the chopping block. And when the program became a key element of Democratic efforts to expand health-care coverage in the Affordable Care Act sponsored by Republicans’ top enemy, Barack Obama, Medicaid’s status as the program tea-party Republicans wanted to kill most rose into the stratosphere. No wonder that the last time the GOP had a governing trifecta, in 2017, there was no single “big beautiful bill” to implement Trump’s entire agenda, but instead an initial drive to “repeal and replace Obamacare” along with measures to deeply and permanently cut Medicaid. Rolling back health coverage for those people was Job One.
So now that Trump has returned to office with another trifecta in Congress, an alleged mandate, and a big head of steam that has overcome every inhibition based on politics, the law, or the Constitution, you’d figure that among the massive federal cuts being pursued through every avenue imaginable, deep Medicaid cuts would be the ultimate no-brainer for Republicans. Indeed, the budgetary arithmetic of Trump’s agenda all but demands big Medicaid “savings,” which is why the House budget resolution being implemented right now calls for cuts in the neighborhood of $600–$800 billion. And it’s clear that the very powerful House Freedom Caucus, thought to be especially near and dear to the president’s heart, is rabid for big Medicaid cuts.
To be sure, the extremely narrow GOP margin in the House means that so-called “moderate” Republicans (really just Republicans in marginal districts) who are chary of big Medicaid cuts are one source of intraparty pushback on this subject. But the shocking and arguably more important dynamic is that some of Trump’s most intense MAGA backers are pushing back too. OG Trump adviser Stephen Bannon issued a warning in February, as The New Republic’s Edith Olmsted reported:
“Steve Bannon, former architect of the MAGA movement turned podcaster, warned that Republicans making cuts to Medicaid would affect members of Donald Trump’s fan club.
“On the Thursday episode of War Room, while gushing over massive government spending cuts, Bannon warned that cutting Medicaid specifically would prove unpopular among the working-class members of Trump’s base, who make up some of the 80 million people who get their health care through that program.
“’Medicaid, you got to be careful, because a lot of MAGA’s on Medicaid. I’m telling you, if you don’t think so, you are deeeeeead wrong,’ Bannon said. ‘Medicaid is going to be a complicated one. Just can’t take a meat ax to it, although I would love to.’”
Bannon didn’t comment on the irony that it was the hated Obamacare that extended Medicaid eligibility deep into the MAGA ranks (with voters in deep-red Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Utah insisting on taking advantage of it), making it a dangerous target for GOP cuts. But in any event, particularly given Trump’s occasional promises that he’d leave Medicaid alone (which didn’t keep him from supporting the deep 2017 cuts), there existed some MAGA sentiment for finding “savings” elsewhere.
The volume of this sentiment went up sharply when one of the flavor-of-the-year right-wing “influencers,” Trump buddy Laura Loomer (reportedly fresh from laying waste to the National Security Council staff) went after a conservative think-tanker who was advising HFC types on how to savage Medicaid, per Politico:
“In a social media post Monday, Loomer called Brian Blase, the president of Paragon Health Institute, a ‘RINO Saboteur’ for helping draft a letter circulated by 20 House conservatives that advocated for deep cuts to Medicaid in the GOP’s domestic policy megabill.
“’In a shocking betrayal of President Donald Trump’s unwavering commitment to America’s working-class families, and his promise to protect Medicaid, [Brian Blase] … is spearheading a dangerous campaign to undermine the Republican Party’s midterm prospects,’ Loomer said on X.”
Loomer’s blast at Blase was clearly a shot across the bow of the House Freedom Caucus and other Republicans who are lusting for Medicaid cuts and/or are focused on deficit reduction as a major goal. She called Medicaid “a program critical to the heartland voters who propelled Donald Trump to his election victories” and warned that Medicaid cuts could badly damage Republicans in the 2026 midterms.
The perpetually shrewd health-care analyst Jonathan Cohn thinks MAGA ambivalence about Medicaid cuts could be a game-changer. After citing data from Trump’s own pollster showing support for Medicaid among Trump supporters, Cohn noted this could have an impact in Congress:
“Trump himself has said he is going to protect Medicaid — although, as is always the case, it’s hard to know exactly what he means, how seriously he means it, or how much thought he has even given to the matter.
“But Trump’s own uncertainty here is telling, just like the pushback to Medicaid cuts from the likes of Loomer. Together they are a sign of just how much the politics around government health care programs has changed in the last few years — and why this piece of Trump’s big, beautiful bill is proving so tough to pass.”
It wouldn’t be that surprising if there’s a thunderbolt from the White House on this subject before the House budget reconciliation bill is finalized. If there isn’t, nervous House Republicans may be forced to read his ever-changing mind.