'Generational error': Analyst warns megabill will 'blow up' key GOP voting bloc

The Republican Party may soon rue the day they passed President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill," Pod Save America's Dan Pfeiffer wrote in a lengthy post to X on Thursday — because it strikes a death blow to the very heart of the coalition they spent years cobbling together to win back power.

"The GOP just passed the most unpopular piece of legislation in history," he wrote. "It could not only cost them the majority, but it might be a generational political error that could blow up the Trump coalition and reshape politics for the foreseeable future."

The bill, narrowly making it out of both chambers this week to go to the president's desk, extends tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, while cutting over $1 trillion from Medicaid, food assistance, and energy subsidies, increasing deportation funding by tens of billions, and adding $2 trillion to the deficit.

"Everyone thinks Trump has remade the GOP in his image, but slashing health care and food stamps to pay for tax cuts for the rich is something Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney would have done a decade ago. But while the policy is the same political context has changed," Pfeiffer continued. "Back in Paul Ryan's day, cuts to Medicaid and SNAP primarily hurt Democratic voters. But the political coalitions have shifted dramatically since then. Now GOP voters — espcially the ones who swung to Trump in 24 — that will bear the brunt of this bill."

One simple statistic demonstrates the change, he noted: "In 2012, Obama won voters who made less than $50k by 28 points. Romney,won voters who made over $100,000 by 10 points. In 2024, Trump won voters who made less than $50,000 by a margin of two, and Harris won voters who made over $100,000 by a margin of four."

"No party has ever launched such a full frontal assualt on their own voters. If Dems can inform voters and establish credibility as a party that fights for working-class people, we can win back some of those working-class voters who fled the party in recent years," Pfeiffer concluded. "By passing a bill that will kick his own voters off their health care and food assistance, raise their costs, and close the hospitals in their communities, Trump and the Republicans made a massive miscalculation."

All that remains to be answered, he said, "is whether we can make them pay for it."