Republicans and Democrats haven’t been this aligned on policy since the Eisenhower ’50s.

The consensus that the nation is politically polarized is indisputable only because it is undisputed. Granted, there is cultural polarization about this and that — pronouns, bathrooms, indoctrination masquerading as education, etc. Politically, however — regarding government’s proper scope and actual competence — there is deepening bipartisan agreement. Unfortunately.

Concerning the broad contours of public policy, there is a disturbing convergence. Programmatically, the parties are more aligned than they have been since the 1950s, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower caused Republicans to accept the permanency of the New Deal’s legacy: a transfer-payment state (Social Security, soon to include Medicare and much more) and federal supervision of the economy. The Republicans’ 1964 nominee, Barry Goldwater, expressed a growing exasperation with ideological homogenization, promising “A choice, not an echo.” He initiated an epochal divergence between the parties, which culminated 16 years later.

Today, beneath the frothy partisanship, Republican progressivism echoes the Democrats’. Both parties favor significant expansions of government’s control of economic activity and the distribution of wealth. Both promise to leave unchanged the transfer-payment programs (Social Security, Medicare) that are plunging toward insolvency, and driving unsustainable national indebtedness.

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And both parties favor tax increases: the Democrats on corporations, consumers and the 3 percent of individuals earning more than $400,000 annually; Republicans on consumers.

Substantial portions of the Democrats’ corporate taxes would be paid by employees in foregone compensation, or would be passed on to consumers (including the 97 percent earning less than $400,000) in the prices of products. Donald Trump’s promised 10 percent across-the-board tariff on all imports would be taxes (more than $300 billion annually, according to the Tax Foundation) paid by consumers.

The Peterson Institute for International Economics says: A tariff is “a tax on domestic consumption, since it raises the price buyers pay domestically.” The Center for American Progress Action Fund says: Trump’s tariff would cost a typical household “roughly $1,500 each year.” (The Peterson Institute says $1,700 from a typical middle-income family.) J.D. Vance, tribune of the working class, does not mind.

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Inevitably, protectionism is government, responsive to big economic battalions, picking winners and losers. Organized labor, rent-seeking corporations and today’s Republicans favor it.

Eight........

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