Trumpcare: A bullhorn touting scorn for the poor

room.” I’d like to see DeSantis explain that to some out-of-work father whose kid was just diagnosed with leukemia. I’d buy tickets for that.

But then, Republicans have been saying a lot of dumb things about poor people and health care in their zeal to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Rep. Roger Marshall, R-Kan, went biblical to explain why we shouldn’t be overly concerned about making sure the poor have access to doctors. In an interview with Stat, a medical-affairs website, he opined as follows: “Just like Jesus said, ‘The poor will always be with us. There is a group of people that just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves.” Meantime, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said poor people need to get their priorities straight. “Rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and want to go spend hundreds of dollars on that,” he told CNN, “maybe they should invest in their own health care.”

For what it’s worth, Chaffetz and Marshall walked those comments back. Forgive me if I am not impressed. Actions, as they say, speak louder than words and their party’s recent action — a bill to replace the ACA — is a bullhorn touting its scorn for the poor. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the GOP bill would result in 24 million people losing their coverage by 2026. Medicaid would be slashed by $880 billion. Planned Parenthood would be effectively defunded for a year.

While the wealthy get big tax cuts.

One hopes poor people are paying attention. It is infuriating to watch politicians pontificate about the underclass — iPhones? Really? — without the bother of actually understanding what life in the economic margins is like. They never speak to the poor, but only about them — or rather, about some abstract stereotype of them.

The poor can be safely ignored largely because they allow themselves to be split along tribal lines of creed and color and kept at one another’s throats. Things like this will continue until the poor understand themselves as a constituency and organize their votes accordingly. It’s easy to insult people when you don’t have to answer to them. It’ll be different the instant politicians feel compelled to seek poor people’s votes. Let’s hear them say those insulting things at the dark end of a bright and gaudy street.

This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee will question Neil Gorsuch about the judiciary’s role. Herewith some pertinent questions:

■ Lincoln’s greatness began with his recoil from the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, which empowered residents of those territories to decide whether to have slavery. The act’s premise was that “popular sovereignty” — majorities’ rights — is the essence of the American project. Is it, or is liberty?

■ Justice Robert Jackson wrote, “The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to ... place (certain subjects) beyond the reach of majorities.” Was that not also the purpose of the 14th Amendment’s Privileges