Director of Consumer Issues at @Taxreformer and @tholos, formally founder of @austaxpayers. #Freecon. Tweet mainly about freedom, harm reduction, and capybaras.
Washington, DC
Joined November 2008
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Tim Andrews retweeted
In his first sit-down interview since Tuesday’s election, President Donald Trump speaks with 60 Minutes’ Ross Douthat about the Republican losses in the midterms, congressional investigations, the wars in Iran and Ukraine, the economy and more.
Sunday on 60 Minutes.
Tim Andrews retweeted
🤖 Made with AI
Tim Andrews retweeted
Percentage of "normie" conservatives and libertarians who claim that Iran had no effect on the election: 0%
Percentage of NatCons, Postliberals, and Vanceguard types who refuse to utter the word "tariff" in their election postmortems and wish to focus solely on Iran: 100%
Tim Andrews retweeted
A lot of people are trying to avoid the point, maybe because it's only going to get worse. But I confront it head-on. nationalreview.com/corner/po…
Tim Andrews retweeted
There’s a false narrative building on the right that our side turned out but voted Democrat. The people pushing it want to reorient the GOP on ideology and principles rather than acknowledge their policies raised prices in a clear cost of living election.
Tim Andrews retweeted
The nativist right has invented its own way to put its ideological predilections over actually winning.
Me for @compactmag: compactmag.com/article/again…
"We mass imported a population from cultures that are diametrically opposed to the United States."
@JohnDoyle, @NickJFreitas, and @AuronMacintyre break down the impact that demographic changes and immigration have on the outcome of elections:
Tim Andrews retweeted
This is a perfect encapsulation of the thinking of the new Republican elite that thinks it’s in touch with the concerns and priorities of normal Americans but is actually living a complete fantasyland detached from reality.
Voters in every single state said tariffs did more to hurt than help. They raised costs *and* hurt manufacturing employment.
Anyone who is still pushing this way of thinking as a justifiable economic or political agenda should be ignored.
MAGA is dead. The tariff-happy new right is a failure. The midterms made that perfectly clear. We don’t have to pretend otherwise anymore.
Tim Andrews retweeted
Interesting debate on tariffs vs war cause of the GOP disaster. IMHO, there was a huge degree of cowardice by many conservatives in opposing the tariffs out of the gate, which is why you see all this idiotic Israel-Iran finger pointing. So here's my take: There's never ONLY one reason why anything happens in markets, politics or life for that matter. Recent elevated deisel and gas prices didnt help the GOP cause. BUT the evidence is clear: Trump & Vance--right out of the box--placed a regressive consumption tax on goods and services aka tariffs. They hit working class people hardest but the impact was universal. They were so insane at first that the markets--which are not comprised of a bunch of lefty stock traders--collapsed in a way I havent seen since the the 2008 crisis (bonds imploded at one point as well meaning people weren't buying our debt). The markets recovered as the admin backed off the most onerous of the levies and AI drove valuations and economic growth. BUT Trump kept tariffs to some degree (in some cases a large degree) on everything and it hurt small businesses and consumers (I know this through plenty of reporting). We never got the manufacturing renaissance @howardlutnick predicted. Yes, AI is in correction mode, so that spending is winding down. But border states that went blue (Texas and Michigan) were hit hard by tariffs as were GOP stalwarts, farm states like Kansas and Iowa. One major reason Trump was elected in 2024 was elevated prices from the Biden inflationary spiral. He then elevated them more on working class people, who btw aren't thinking of control of the house and senate and esoteric political debates, but putting food on the table. So blame Israel and Iran all you want (elevated petro prices didnt begin Day 1 of the Trump admin), the main reason is staring the conservative movement in the face. Again, there was a huge degree of cowardice by many conservatives in NOT opposing the tariffs out of the gate. You're paying the price for that as well
Mollie, first love and respect you too. Second, I’m not saying Iran was not a factor, or even a major factor. But it’s not the whole story which is what Vance claims (“The reason we lost is the war”)
Polls show tariffs played an even bigger role. I happen to like tariffs as a tool of coercion (but not as much as a source of revenue). But many who want to blame Iran are silent on tariffs (perhaps because they support tariffs?).
War but no tariffs, do Republicans win? Tariffs but no war, do we win? No trade war with Canada and do we win the four border states? All of it is unknowable. But the Vance narrative that “The reason we lost is the war” is demonstrably false.
And, as I point out in my column today, it was not the Iran *war* but the Iran *ceasefire* and the disastrous MOU Vance negotiated which extended the war that was deadly at the polls. That’s Vance’s initiative. Months of botched negotiations disastrously extended the conflict — and with it the high prices Americans are paying at the pump. If the war ended in April, gas prices could have been below $3 on Election Day.
So Vance trying to blame the war alone is disingenuous. It was bigger than that, and he bungled his job which was to reach a peace deal to end it.
Tim Andrews retweeted
Imagine if you could reduce your debt by dividing it onto three credit cards!
Well Mark Carney says today you can.
Tim Andrews retweeted
The entire point of repeating "it was the war" is to deflect attention away from overwhelming evidence that the central economic idea of the populist right has been a huge political and economic failure.
Tim Andrews retweeted
I agree with James Talarico on almost nothing, but the way he carries himself (says nice things about people he disagrees with, being polite, etc) is a big part of his appeal.
The era of bombastic overheated rhetoric is over. The era of exuding quiet competence is here.
Tim Andrews retweeted
The @NRO Editorial: Repeal the Tariffs nationalreview.com/2026/11/r…
Tim Andrews retweeted
"Lame-duck Republican majorities could show their willingness to address Americans’ concerns by voting to repeal every tariff imposed in the past two years (or at least limit them to areas of true strategic importance).
"Such a gesture would be the start of an affordability agenda worthy of the name, and a step toward healing the GOP’s wounded reputation for sound economic stewardship."
Tim Andrews retweeted
The tariff experiment failed on its own terms: higher prices, no manufacturing boom, and vast majority of voters stating it harmed the economy.
Democrats should take the hint. Don't run a softer version of Trump's trade agenda. Win on cost of living by making things cheaper to build, buy, and import!
"Buried somewhere in the wreckage of Tuesday’s stunning Republican defeat is President Donald Trump’s signature economic policy: The notion that tariffs on foreign goods will deliver a better life for everyday Americans." washingtonpost.com/business/…
Tim Andrews retweeted
Denial is always the first stage. Dems spent $58M on ads attacking tariffs in House races alone. That's 40 times what they spent in the 2018 midterms.
GDP was up 3.4 points this quarter while real wages are down. Tax cuts are delivering growth but tariffs are raising prices.
Here's the reason I don't but the "tariffs killed us" line. Yeah, Trump dropped from 47 to 40 on approval after Liberation day and stabilized there. Tariffs were at 37 percent approval.
In his first term, Trump's tax cuts started at 29 percent approval, and his popularity stayed stable at 40. 40 is the baseline of Trump/Republican approval rating in boom times, and in inflation. The tax cuts never went above water in Pew. So yeah, he might have gotten a thermostatic reaction this year based on economic policies, just as he did in 2018. When Trump fell after Liberation Day he fell to the exact same level he had been at when he was supposedly enacting True Reaganism (plus some tariffs) in his first term.
Trump's second term tax cuts are also underwater. Politico had them at 35 percent in October. The difference between 2018 and 2026 is that on top of this, Trump added a Middle East war that immediately raised gas prices and grocery prices without defending the war to the American people or getting their buy in. That's how you go from a 2018 rebuke to a Watergate level disaster.
Given what is reported in the Times last night about the internal polling showing the electoral disaster exactly tracking with hostilities, and the internal polling showing that MAGA 2024 voters who didn't show up in 2026 cited the war first, I can't believe we are having this debate at all anymore.
But we have to go through this ridiculous "Iran war has never really been tried." "Do the incredibly unpopular thing harder." and "We were stabbed in the back by the communist wreckers" b.s.
Tim Andrews retweeted
The ultimate proof against the myth that the "transatlantic accent" was fake and only used in radio/film. Some people legitimately sounded like that back in the day
