MSNBC host Joe Scarborough complained on Tuesday that the Republican Party was fracturing because it had advocated economic policies benefiting the richest Americans for the last 30 years with the promise that the wealth would "trickle down" to others -- but it never did.
"The problem with the Republican Party over the past 30 years is they haven't -- and I'll say, we haven't -- developed a message that appeals to the working class Americans economically in a way that Donald Trump's does," the former Republican lawmaker explained. "We talk about cutting capital gains taxes that the 10,000 people that in the crowd cheering for Donald Trump, they are never going to get a capital gains cut because it doesn't apply."
"We talk about getting rid of the death tax," he continued. "The death tax is not going to impact the 10,000 people in the crowd for Donald Trump. We talk about how great free trade deals are. Those free trade deals never trickle down to those 10,000 people in Donald Trump's rallies."
"You sound like Bernie Sanders," NBC's Chuck Todd pointed out.
"But herein lies the problem with the Republican Party," Scarborough complained. "It never trickles down! Those people in Trump's crowds, those are all the ones that lost the jobs when they get moved to Mexico and elsewhere. The Republican donor class are the ones that got rich off of it because their capital moved overseas and they made higher profits."
GOP strategist Nicole Wallace griped that Republicans "let Democrats paint our side as being on the side of Wall Street."
According to Scarborough, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) was losing because he still believed in conservatism as it was "defined by the donor class, as defined by the wealthiest Republicans."
"The Republicans said, listen, we're going to have all of these trade deals and tax cuts that benefit our wealthiest donor class, but we'll give them the social issues," Scarborough said of the last 30 years. "We'll give them abortion, we'll give them gay marriage, we'll give them guns and they'll vote for us."
"What we're finding this year is, they'll even support a guy who says Planned Parenthood is good if he comes with an economic approach that they feels that could actually help them more in the future."
