Month: December 2015

Several commentators have noted recently that the GOP is the only conservative party in a democratic state which denies the science of climate change.  This has occurred since 2008, when John McCain supported cap and trade.  While some of their motivation obviously revolves around the economic importance of fossil fuel industries, conservative parties in other countries with similar economic structures (Australia and Canada are the analogies) have shown more flexibility on the subject.  Why?

I would suggest a number of reasons:

1.  The importance of money in US elections, particularly after Citizens United:  Campaigns are regulated more stringently in other countries.  Contributions are a great way of enforcing the party line on this and other issues.

2.  The role of evangelical right-wingers:  There are climate change deniers in this country who base their views, not on science, but on their understanding that God promised no more great floods in the Bible.  These kinds of opinions are less prevalent in other, less religious countries.

3.  America has more small government DNA due to its history:  Australia and Canada did not fight a war for independence against what was perceived to be an oppressive central government.  Any solution to climate change will inevitably require an increase in the size of the state, which is anathema to the GOP unless it involves the military.

The GOP stalwart Paul Ryan

Let the government run, I ain’t lyin’.

He humored the right

But abandoned their fight

So the blues the Tea Party is cryin’.

The men who deny climate change.

The evidence says they’re deranged.

Big money they get

From the fossil fuel set

So maybe it isn’t so strange.

 

I will discuss the reasons the GOP, unlike conservative parties elsewhere in the world, rejects climate change science tomorrow.

After I had written the post in which I called on the GOP to draft Netanyahu, I provided the list of his credentials to my wife and asked her to identify the person in question.  She guessed it was Putin.  I told her that, unlike Netanyahu, Putin didn’t have the support of the entire GOP, but the fact was that he met all of the other criteria in my list, which should tell you something about the current state of the GOP.

Inevitably, that brings us to Donald Trump.

Trump is portraying himself as a sort of American version of Putin:  a strong man who can get things done.  Not surprisingly, he spoken favorably about Putin in the past, and he supports Russian leadership in Syria.  But just how similar are the man with no shirt and the man on golf cart?

There is less here than meets the eye.  The bottom line with Putin is that he is still a former KGB agent–an icy, cynical bastard who puts on his Mussolini shtick because he thinks it helps him with the Russian public.  Some of Trump’s bombast is probably just opportunism, but I have to think that some of it is exactly who he is.  He would be no match for Putin.

 

Random reactions:

1.  The moderators did a good job of keeping the candidates focused on the issues and exposing their differences.  I just wish they could cut off their microphones or use an air horn when they talk out of turn (here’s looking at you, Ted!)
2.  I don’t think anything that happened last night will have a major impact on the campaign.
3.  Jeb Bush was much more effective last night than he has been in previous debates, but it was way too little, too late.
4.  Trump had some interesting comments about the Iraq War, but mostly he just pounded his chest and talked about how strong he is.  At some point, that act just has to wear out;  it makes the campaign look like one of those commercials for guys with low T.
5.  Apparently Ted Cruz believes in surgical carpet bombing, which is an oxymoron.
6.  Carly Fiorina believes that the best way to persuade the Chinese to work with us on North Korea is to engage in confrontations with them everywhere else.  That sounds like the German idea of expanding their fleet to bully the English into an alliance prior to World War I.  You know how that turned out.
7.  The candidates are genuinely divided on Assad.  The logic of the position taken by Trump, Cruz, and Paul leads to acquiescence in Russian leadership in the war against IS;  the others take the position that we have to fight IS and remove Assad, which is also the Obama Administration’s position.
8.  Did you hear any ideas for dealing with Syria, other than the no-fly zone that is supported by Hillary Clinton, that we are not already trying?  Me, neither.

Ross has yet another post today in which he struggles to identify a third way for American Muslims between wielding the sword of jihad on their countrymen and watering their beliefs down to the thin gruel of secularism.  The solution really isn’t that complicated.

As I indicated in a previous post, the genius of our system is that it permits genuinely pious people of all kinds of faiths to practice their religion without any significant interference so long as they do not attempt to impose their beliefs on others.  Since no American Muslim could reasonably hope to force his practices on a country with predominantly Christian roots, this is a perfectly satisfactory resolution of Douthat’s issue, and it does not mean that Muslims must become purely secular people.

In the final analysis, I think this question, for Ross, is really about abortion.  He does not see how a committed, passionate Catholic can avoid being a political crusader, and he assumes that religious people of all other faiths are similarly committed to remaking society in their own image.  They aren’t.

Imagine for a minute that the Chinese have developed a new weapon that does hundreds of billions of dollars of damage to our country every year.  How would the GOP react?  Do you think they would dismiss the idea of spending huge amounts of public money to respond to this threat?  Of course not.

If the same amount of damage is attributable to climate change, however, it is perfectly OK to dismiss the threat as a plot by left-wingers to increase the size of government.   Growing the state therefore can be acceptable, but only if it involves increases to defense spending, because the GOP is all about kicking butt, not protecting our citizens.

Barry Goldwater ran as a candidate of the far right in 1964, and was slaughtered in the general election.  The great liberal victory made it possible to pass a substantial amount of the Great Society legislation.

If Ted Cruz is the nominee, he will be the most right-wing GOP candidate in a general election since Goldwater.  Would the result be the same?  I am confident he would lose, but the impact on Congress would be more limited, because, due to gerrymandering and natural forms of segregration, there are relatively few GOP House seats that would be vulnerable even in a landslide.

The BRD Chancellor, I hear

Was anointed Person of the Year.

She helped refugees

Who were down on their knees

It will cost her some votes, I do fear.

The New Yorker ran an article about Rubio about two weeks ago in which he was asked questions about climate change.  In a nutshell, his response was that his experts told him that the measures being proposed to limit global warming would not work, and would cause significant economic dislocations.  As a result, the better course of action was to do nothing.

The opinions of Marco’s “experts” are inconsistent with the scientific consensus, which logically leads one to ask who they were.  I am guessing they were either spokesmen for the Koch brothers or the man in the mirror, in which case, notwithstanding the modesty in his previous disclaimers, one would have to conclude that Marco is, in fact, a scientist.

                       Trump World

We’ve all been to Disneyland.

You picture it, I’m sure.

Castles, rides, and princesses.

Things that never were.

 

Consider this:  another world

Where things aren’t quite so fine.

A place that really just exists

In Donald Trump’s sick mind.

 

Mexicans pour through our gates.

Refugees, as well.

We’re powerless to stop the flood.

As far as we can tell.

 

The military’s lost its way.

The bad guys run amok.

The poor white people in our land

Are just ____ out of luck.

 

We make trade deals with friend and foe.

They always screw us over.

Our workers end up on the dole.

Our enemies in clover.

 

To hear this story, you would think

We live in a dystopia.

But everybody else agrees

It’s more like a utopia.

 

Unemployed at five percent.

Dollar’s on the rise.

Crime continues to go down.

Market’s very high.

 

Disneyland and Trump’s new world

Are both a big mirage.

But only Trump’s faux nightmare land

Is full of fake garbage.

A lot of what Bernie Sanders says about climate change is sensible.  His comment at the last debate that global warming is our biggest foreign policy challenge sounded untimely in light of the present circumstances, but in the long run, he may well be right.  His proposal for a carbon tax, and for targeted spending to mitigate its impact, is also perfectly reasonable, and you can make a case for his suggestions about new regulations.

Unfortunately, however, he insists that the root of the climate change problem is the overweening power that fossil fuel industries wield in Washington.  There is no doubt that coal and oil interests are influential, particularly in the Republican establishment, but the responsibility for using their products falls on all of us.  If you could somehow banish all oil lobbyists from Washington, people in this country would still be buying SUVs, and there still would be no economically viable alternative to the use of fossil fuels in a variety of different contexts.

I suppose the next thing he will say is that Big Soda is forcing sugary drinks down my throat.  This is the caricature of the nanny state that pushes people who might otherwise know better to vote GOP.

1. Put the focus on adopting regulations at a state and local level where such legislation has broad popular support.  Since the market for guns operates on a national level, this isn’t an idea approach, but it is politically viable.
2. Continue to press the GOP for federal legislation to keep guns out of the hands of potential terrorists.  It won’t pass, but the issue will resonate in the 2016 campaign.
3. Try to show more public sympathy for rural gun culture.  The Democratic Party is cratering in rural areas that don’t contain national parks and ski resorts–this could help a bit.

1. The country is already awash in guns.  It is questionable whether a few million less or more will make much of a difference.
2. Any attempt to address the existing gun inventory will either be prohibitively expensive or run afoul of gun owners’ reasonable right to privacy (or both).
3. Republicans at the national level are so infatuated with gun ownership that they won’t even support measures to keep guns out of the hands of potential terrorists.

As a result, the field in which gun control advocates can make headway is fairly limited.  This will be discussed tomorrow.

                   Red State Rage

In the winter of our discontent

Obama was the king.

We thought we’d seen the worst of times

But they were just beginning.

 

Now marriage is for perverts, too.

Legalized gay sex.

Man on man and women, too.

Will animals be next?

 

The future lies with sun and wind.

They launched a war on coal.

Now everybody in our state

Depends upon the dole.

 

Terrorists can run amok.

Debt up to our ears.

Is it any wonder that

We’re prisoners of our fears?

 

The GOP will save the day.

Hope eternal springs.

So vote for Ben or Trump or Cruz

They stand for the same thing.