If Kansans are libertarian, what about GOP socialist policies, Roger Marshall? | Opinion

One thing about Roger Marshall: He sticks to the talking points.

Every once in a very great while, the junior senator from Kansas will depart ever-so-slightly from the GOP company line — like a few days ago, when he acknowledged to a Wichita audience that President Donald Trump’s trade wars are “starting to make it harder” for Kansas businesses to succeed.

He was right.

That message, though, was for a Kansas audience. When Marshall goes before a national audience — something he does frequently, appearing regularly on Fox Business, Newsmax and other right-wing outlets — he sticks to the same old talking points.

Which is what happened Tuesday, when Marshall went on Fox Business to talk about Rep. Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota Democrat, and to decry the hypocrisy of her family’s “skyrocketing net worth” since she took office in 2019.

“Here’s a person who comes to Congress, and in 2019, she has no assets. She actually has a negative net worth,” he told host Elizabeth MacDonald. “Now, here we are, five, six years later, she’s worth up to $30 million.

Maybe that’s fair. Although if Marshall wants to get his dander up about people who get rich in public service, I’d urge him to take a closer look at Trump’s own family, which saw its net worth expand by $5 billion — that’s billion with a b — just in the past few days, thanks to the start of trading in their new digital currency.

Instead of talking about Trump, though, Marshall started riffing about how all those Democrats are such terrible socialists.

“I think we saw under Joe Biden is as the government got more socialistic, that they have a solution to every one of your problems, is the people did worse,” he said. “And what I see, people, the ones that are leaving the Democrat Party, are pretty much libertarians, are just looking for a better life now, and hopefully we’re giving that under the American Dream.”

It’s a tired old GOP slur against Democrats. But if Marshall hates socialism as much as he says, then he really ought to be Trump’s fiercest critic.

Most socialist president in memory?

If we’re relying on the old definition of socialism — you know, the whole “government ownership of the means of production” thing — and not simply using it as a word conservatives use to mean “things I don’t like,” then Trump might be the most socialist president in living memory.

More than Lyndon Johnson, who expanded the welfare state. More than Barack Obama, who overhauled the healthcare system. And maybe even more than Richard Nixon, who instituted wage and price controls.

Shocking, I know.

Under Trump, though, the federal government just became the biggest stockholder of Intel, an iconic but faltering semiconductor company.

Which came after Trump’s White House was granted a “golden share” in U.S. Steel as part of a deal to guarantee approval of the company combining its operations with Nippon Steel.

Which happened around the time Trump pressured chipmakers like Nvidia into giving the federal government a 15% cut of artificial intelligence chip sales to China.

All of which comes as Trump is fighting trade wars around the world in a bid to overhaul the American economy more to his liking.

Under Trump, America’s free markets are less free.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Just ask Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican who is probably the most libertarian member of Congress.

“I worry that the free market movement, the movement that was a big part of the Republican Party, is being diminished over time,” Paul told CNBC this week. Trump’s recent moves, he said, are “a step towards socialism.”

Marshall isn’t really talking about that, though. He’s got Democrats to criticize.

“What happens with socialist communists, when they take power as they have in China or in North Korea or in Venezuela, they turn into rich oligarchs living off the government nickel,” the senator told Fox Business.

He’s right. The problem? Those words also apply to Donald Trump. And Roger Marshall doesn’t seem to know or care about it.