It used to be, when I was a lad, that the Labor Day weekend would mark the end of the slow summer news season and the beginning of fall. Congress would return from its break, the torpor of July and August would shake itself off, and the news cycle would begin afresh.
Nowadays, obviously, the news stops for no one or nothing, not even summertime. However, one Democratic lawmaker wants to bring back two of the biggest, most viral issues of the summer — namely, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act reconciliation spending package and the abortive Cracker Barrel rebrand — and try to make hay out of both of them.
Now, in case you missed it — and it was easy to, because this wouldn’t have even made the front pages in the middle of the dog days of August 25 years ago — the White House wants the GOP to emphasize the “working families tax cut” part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act instead of the bigness and beauty of the package, according to The Hill.
“Working families tax cut, that’s what we’re calling it,” said Texas GOP Rep. Jake Ellzey after a briefing of House Republicans by members of Trump’s team on Wednesday.
“’One big, beautiful bill’ doesn’t really say anything about anything,” he added. “That’s well tested.”
Which is true. At the time, the job was to get the bill passed. Now, the job is selling America on the benefits of the bill — and the one they’ll likely favor the most is the extension of tax cuts.
“I went in a little skeptical, and I walked away going, ‘They’re dadgum right. And they know their jobs,’” Ellzey said of Trump’s team.
This shift might be noticed by a few people on an ordinary week, and perhaps more as the tone of Republicans’ messaging shifts. But cue Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Gwen Moore, who decided that a bit of viral clout-chasing was in order.
Are the Democrats out of ideas?
“Republicans ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’ is so unpopular they’re being instructed by Donald Trump to start calling it the ‘working families tax plan,’” she wrote Wednesday afternoon.
“I thought rebranding is woke?” she added.
Republicans “One Big, Beautiful Bill” is so unpopular they’re being instructed by Donald Trump to start calling it the “working families tax plan.”
I thought rebranding is woke? pic.twitter.com/5xN7EBXmMM
— Rep. Gwen Moore (@RepGwenMoore) September 3, 2025
From the looks of those images, she doesn’t even know how to use Microsoft Paint or ChatGPT.
And, just to be clear, what the GOP is emphasizing here is the substance of the plans, which is what’s important now. What was important back in June and July was that the GOP understood what this delivered on in terms of their legislative priorities — which is why the Democrats were busy attacking the name then:
NEWS: I just got the name struck off this bill with a move on the floor of the Senate.
It is no longer named “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
The bill is a BIG, UGLY BETRAYAL of the American people by the Republicans.
And the American people will remember it. pic.twitter.com/KN7bexIJNa
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) July 1, 2025
Hakeem Jeffries: “Their One Big Ugly Bill, which is now law… It rips away healthcare for millions of Americans. Steals food from the mouths of children. All of this is being done… so they can reward their billionaire donors.”pic.twitter.com/VuKTvOtZb0
— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) August 4, 2025
Now that it’s moved passed that into implementation and selling it not to the party itself but to the American people, I think it’s fair to say what it does. Wokeness attempts to call something what it isn’t. For instance, watch the fervor with which the phrase “trans women are women,” or something like it, is incanted by some, and you’ll get the idea of why sloganeering is so necessary in that department.
This is why the Cracker Barrel rebrand was so divisive. It tried to turn the brand into something it wasn’t, and away from its primarily Southern roots, into just another MegaCorp Inc.™ that served bland food to the masses.
In this case, she’s protesting that Republicans have called it what it is, convinced that they’re running away from what it was. Untrue. The only people trying to disabuse the media of the bigness or beauty of the bill was the Democrats, who found it ugly because it was too small for their liking. Now, they’re trying to sell America on the fact that it shouldn’t like tax cuts because … Cracker Barrel.
If these are all the ideas the Democrats have got for their “What I Learned on my Summer Vacation” paper, they have every reason to be sweating about the 2026 midterms.
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