Of all the bad answers Republicans have given to questions about what they’d do to make life under Trump more affordable, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi may get the prize for the worst one. As her Democratic challenger Scott Colom reminded everyone in a comical ad this week, when a reporter asked Hyde-Smith in February about families struggling to afford the higher price of beef, she said shoppers “have so many proteins to choose from.”
Let them eat pinto beans, it’s safe to say, is not the message voters want to hear from the ruling party. Republicans, as a general rule, have trumpeted conspicuous, even wasteful and unhealthy, consumption: Buy that gas-guzzling truck, fry your fries in beef fat, don’t give a flip about taking up less space or using less energy or heeding guidelines related to food safety or cholesterol. This year, the cost of a pound of ground beef passed the amount of money you get for an hour’s work at the federal minimum wage.
Republicans, as a general rule, have trumpeted conspicuous, even wasteful and unhealthy, consumption: Buy that gas-guzzling truck, fry your fries in beef fat, don’t give a flip about taking up less space or using less energy or heeding guidelines related to food safety or cholesterol.
Hyde-Smith, a cattle rancher with an estimated net worth of more than $900,000, advising her constituents to accept that they’re just not in the meatloaf income bracket would be bad in any context. But it’s especially jarring coming from a member of the party that looks the other way as the president and his family grow wealthier by the day.
“Them belly full but we hungry,” Bob Marley and The Wailers famously sang. We’ll learn soon if the next line — “A hungry mob is an angry mob” — predicts what Republicans can expect at the ballot box next month. But the party doesn’t appear to appreciate the intensity of the public’s anger. When they’re not downplaying the higher prices, characterizing those higher prices as an acceptable sacrifice for Trump’s heedless invasion of Iran or making the preposterous claim that somehow, even now, everything is Joe Biden’s fault, they’re arguing that ground beef is the rich man’s food.
Hyde-Smith made her protein comment weeks after Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins suggested that, for as little as $3, Americans could make a dinner out of a piece of chicken, a “piece” of broccoli, a corn tortilla and “one other thing.” Rollins, whose net worth has been estimated at $15 million, was rightly roasted for that, which made Hyde-Smith’s repetition of that sentiment even more politically inept.
According to the results of a Pew Research Center survey conducted this fall and published Wednesday, 73% of U.S. adults say they are “very concerned” about the cost of food and consumer goods and 74% are similarly concerned about the price of gasoline and energy. That’s not new. In fact, those concerns helped end the Democrats’ chances of winning the White House in 2024. But earlier this year, the Pew Research Center reported that 44% of Americans say they’ve had trouble paying for either medical care, daily transportation, rent or mortgage or food over the past year. Twenty percent say they got food from a food bank or pantry.
It seems, then, that many Americans are already choosing “other proteins,” if they’re not skipping meals altogether. People don’t want to hear that they should cut back. They want to hear that their elected officials have a plan so they won’t have to.
Most surveys about the state of the economy reflect stark partisan difference. The people who support the party in power tend to be more sanguine about things than people who don’t. That remains the case, according to the Pew Research Center’s recent survey: 36% of Republicans say the economy is excellent or good, compared to 21% of independents and 9% of Democrats. But, the Pew Research Center reports, in July, 41% of Republicans thought the economy was excellent or good, and “about a quarter of Republicans (23%) now say conditions are poor, up from 19% in July.”
“Pick another protein?” one person in Colom’s ad scoffs before muttering a profanity and saying, “I’d rather pick another senator instead.”
As a native Mississippian who watched the state flip from Democratic to Republican control in my teens and 20s and observed the GOP’s tightening grip on the state, I am doubtful Colom can defeat Hyde-Smith. Democrats in more competitive races, though, would be wise to consider running some version of his ad.
Because although Hyde-Smith is only on the ballot in Mississippi, her answer about choosing other proteins is emblematic of the Republican establishment’s flippant attitude toward Americans’ genuine struggles. During the Pew Research Center’s summer poll, 60% of Americans reported not having enough income to lead the kind of life they want. Colom’s ad works because it acknowledges that not everybody wants a whole lot. Some just want enough to shop the meat department at their local grocery store, and in Trump’s America, they’re not high enough on the hog to do it.
The post The GOP’s response to high beef prices is advice that you eat something cheaper appeared first on MS NOW.
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