The seeds of resistance

Thom Tillis is siding with Elon Musk over veterans, retirees, and disaster victims.

Back in 1998, I managed a Congressional race based out of Goldsboro, home to Seymore Johnson Air Force base. Congress was controlled by Gingrich Revolutionaries who had ridden an anti-tax wave to power in 1994. Grassroots anti-tax groups sprung up around the country.

The leader of the anti-taxers in Goldsboro was an Air Force veteran. He showed up at some of our events with protest signs. He was sure we were overtaxed and the government was full of waste and fraud. He was fully on-board with the Gingrich agenda. Until he wasn’t.

In an effort to pay for their tax cuts, Republicans were considering cuts to veterans programs. Suddenly, the guy was not so happy with the Republicans. He had been calling the incumbent Republican Congressman from the district, Walter Jones, Jr., and apparently wasn’t getting the response he wanted. He started calling us, furious with Jones and complaining that cutting government shouldn’t mean cutting veterans programs. He became disillusioned and his zeal for the Gingrich Revolution disappeared.

Elon Musk plans to cut 80,000 employees from the Department of Veterans Affairs. North Carolina has more than 650,000 veterans living in our state. The impact of cuts in services will reverberate beyond just the veterans themselves. Their families and local economies in veteran-heavy areas like Cumberland and Moore counties will take a hit.

Thom Tillis is siding with Elon Musk instead of North Carolina’s veterans. He told reporters that what Musk and his henchnerds are doing might be unconstitutional, but “nobody should bellyache about that.” Tell that to the veterans who served honorably and now stand to lose the services they were promised.

Tillis is already in trouble. A PPP poll shows him with a 25% approval rating while 46% disapprove. More than half call him a “weak leader.” Tillis is in a hole and siding with Musk over veterans isn’t going to help him.

And it won’t just be veterans. In the coming months, Musk’s reckless cuts will start to have a real impact. He’s targeting the Social Security Administration. North Carolina doesn’t only have a lot of veterans, we have a lot of retirees as well. Wait until their checks stop showing up, offices close, or they can’t get appointments in reasonable amounts of time. They will blame the party in power. They always do.

These are the seeds of the resistance. Most of us haven’t yet felt the real impact of Musk’s hack job or Trump’s tariffs, though the stock market is registering its disdain for uncertainty. There’s far less waste in government than Republicans want to believe and the cuts are going to hurt hardworking, and regularly voting, Americans.

I suspect we haven’t met the leaders of the resistance or seen the rise of a real opposition yet. What Trump and Musk are doing will unite new coalitions built on anger over economic pain, not discrimination. Veterans will protest the impact of cuts to their services. Retirees will voice opposition to poor responses at the Social Security Administration. When they cut Medicaid, rural communities will rise up over the loss of health care. The people complaining about FEMA now will have real gripes when the agency is stripped of manpower and funds for disaster victims. The list goes on.

The people griping about waste in government are akin to NIMBYs. They’re like the anti-tax activist in Goldsboro who wanted to cut any government service as long as it wasn’t his. The impact of Musk’s remarkably broad cuts will become clear over the next few months. So will the victims.

Government upheaval comes with political costs and Republicans won’t escape them this time. Just like Democrats paid the price for Obamacare for several cycles following its passage, the GOP is going to feel a world of hurt for remaking government, even if, like the ACA, the political impact of their actions becomes less contentious over time. Thom Tillis will have little chance to improve his standing, especially if he’s on the wrong side of veterans, retirees, and disaster victims. And he is.