Month: July 2018

Steve Bannon justified the Trump/Putin meeting by analogizing it to the alliance between the US and the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany.  That gives rise to the following questions:

1.  Does Bannon realize what happened to the alliance after the war ended?
2.  Who plays the role of the Nazis in this analogy?  The mostly liberal democratic and peace-loving EU?
3.  Is Bannon not aware that his reactionary, white nationalist ideology smells like fascism?
4.  In light of that, isn’t the better World War II analogy the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?

The best case scenario with the meeting is that Trump spent two hours ranting about Mueller, Clinton, and the American deep state to Putin, and that nothing was said about Iran, Syria, or Ukraine.  The worst case is virtually anything else, because it is only too likely that Trump would give away the store in exchange for, well, nothing.

Putin isn’t going to change his position on Ukraine or Syria, Trump doesn’t know enough about nuclear weapons to engage in a serious discussion about arms control, and Russia has nothing else to offer us except, perhaps, a free hand with Iran.  Substantively, the whole idea of the meeting was a waste of time; optically, it was a victory for Putin, and a disaster for everyone else.

It would appear that Mueller’s work will be done in the next few months, and will have a seismic impact on the midterms.  As a result, it is appropriate to review how Trump has reacted to date, and what is likely to occur between now and November:

1.  Denial:  Trump was relatively new to the job when Mueller was appointed, and while he was clearly angered by the decision, he didn’t know how to stop it.  He and his closest advisers also undoubtedly thought he would be exonerated.

2.  Mixed opinions:  While Bannon told him to fight Mueller at every step, most of his lawyers told him to cooperate in the expectation of a quick exoneration.  At this stage, he took their advice.

3.  Going to war:  By the later stages of 2017, Trump was sick of the investigation, saw it in primarily political terms, and no longer believed that a quick exoneration was possible.  He escalated his attacks on Mueller and laid the ground work for firing him.  Out of fear, laziness, or calculation, however, he did not pull the trigger.

4.  End game:  With the midterms just a few months away and the Kavanaugh nomination at risk, Trump is no longer in a position to put an end to the investigation.  Whatever the result, he will just have to grin and bear it.

I predicted months ago that he would fire Mueller.  That was the most likely outcome at the time, but it didn’t happen, and the time for it is gone.  What will Mueller’s work product look like?  That is tomorrow’s topic.

As I’ve noted before, three of the four GOP factions oppose Trump’s hard line on immigration, but he’s determined to fight the midterms on that issue, because he sees it as a winner.  Is he right?

I doubt it.  Yes, it certainly motivates his Reactionary base, but it also triggers a powerful blue backlash, and, in any event, the base represents less than half of GOP voters.   He would be wiser to talk about Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

When I created the model of the GOP with four factions, I was a bit worried that lumping primarily religious and nationalist Reactionaries in the same group was a mistake.  To put the issue in concrete terms, it might be wrong to put Cruz and Trump primary voters in the same faction.

I needn’t have worried.  Recent polls indicate that Cruz voters are actually more supportive of Trump at this point than Trump voters.

Scratch a Reactionary of whatever kind, and he’s still a Reactionary.

Theresa May is a dogged centrist politician with no great gifts or vision.  She continues in office mostly because she has a talent for self-preservation and because her more flamboyant rivals are less trusted by the majority of the Conservative Party.  She is, in a sense, the lowest common denominator.

There are a fair number of British Prime Ministers throughout history who fit this description, but the one who comes to mind first is Stanley Baldwin.

He was never supposed to be king, but when a window of opportunity opened, he grabbed it with both hands.  A cynical practitioner of realpolitik, he strengthened his position by distributing money and power to his friends, and stayed in office through extrajudicial violence, judicial murders, and the use of fake news.

Is it Putin or Richard III?  One thing is for sure–Putin’s Bosworth Field is nowhere in sight.

Chaotic.  Corrupt.  Incompetent.  Capricious.  Incoherent.  These are words that we would use to describe Donald Trump’s presidency, and with very good reason.

The point here is that Reactionaries don’t see things this way.  To them, what we see as chaos is strength, and a welcome willingness to challenge the status quo.  Everyone else who has claimed to represent their interests has sold out, but not him!  He does battle with the much-loathed “respectable” establishment every day.  That’s what they mean by the swamp–it has nothing to do with money or lobbyists.

Their attitudes will change only if they endure a sustained period of time in which their economic interests are substantially impacted.  To be honest, even that might not do the trick.

On the British PM known as May.

She’s meeting with Trump on this day.

He talked to the Sun.

Not much good will was won.

He loves chaos.  What more can you say?

Angela Merkel is a cautious, centrist politician with a genius for identifying and implementing consensus within the German public.  Her long and mostly tranquil reign as Chancellor is largely due to her ability to appropriate popular ideas of the Social Democrats, who have steadily lost ground in the polls as a result of their inability to stake out clear ideological differences with her.  Unfortunately, she has been unable to find an acceptable resolution to the EU’s ongoing difficulties, particularly over immigration, and she is likely to lose power in the near future as a result.

She sounds like her historical twin, Sir Robert Walpole.

So, just in the last week, Trump has made an extremely divisive Supreme Court nomination, threatened to blow up NATO, promised billions of dollars in new and unpopular tariffs, and provoked huge demonstrations in the UK.  His next stop is a meeting with Putin, where the two strongmen will mug for the cameras like old friends and probably agree in private on, well, God knows what.

The Summer of Love, it ain’t.

Trump Summer

Hot summer streets

And the internet’s sizzling.

It’s all around.

Trying to smile

But the air is so heavy with dread.

 

Strange voices are saying

What did he say?

Things no one understands.

It’s too close for comfort.

The b.s. is just out of hand.

 

(Chorus)

It’s a Trump, Trump summer.

Why can’t he leave us alone?

It’s a Trump, Trump summer

‘Till he’s gone.

 

Supreme nominations

A big NATO meeting

And Putin, too.

It’s too much to handle

I wish I could get up and go.

 

It’s a Trump, Trump summer.

Why can’t he leave us alone?

It’s a Trump, Trump summer

‘Till he’s gone.

Hope it’s just two years from now.

(Repeat chorus)

 

Parody of “Cruel Summer” by Bananarama.

1.  Of course the US spends a larger portion of its GDP on defense than the other NATO members.  NATO isn’t responsible for security in the Pacific or the Middle East.
2.  Part of our enormous defense budget is attributable to soaring health care costs, which are less of a problem in Europe.
3.  If Russia isn’t a real threat and NATO is consequently obsolete, as Trump has maintained in the past, what would be the point in the Europeans spending more money on defense?
4.  Simply spending money without a well-defined purpose is stupid.  If Trump can point to particular NATO functions that are dangerously underfunded because of the parsimony of the Europeans, complaining about free riding would make sense, but he doesn’t do that–he only talks about inputs, not outputs.
5.  It would also make more sense for Trump to talk about burden sharing if he wanted to cut the defense budget and reduce costs to American taxpayers, but he doesn’t.  He supported a big increase because it makes him feel more powerful, and he loves military parades.  The Europeans aren’t going to subsidize that.

He was a young man in a hurry.  Cool and cerebral, he won over the establishment and became his country’s leader at an early age.  He then succeeded in weathering an enormous national crisis.

Is it Obama or William Pitt the Younger?  You decide.

Judges are not, strictly speaking, politicians, but it is fairly easy to identify Kavanaugh as a PBP, given his overriding interest in striking down regulations.  Amy Barrett, on the other hand, clearly was a Reactionary.

The core of the current GOP is the deal in which PBPs support social conservative legislation and judges in exchange for regressive tax cuts.  As I’ve noted before, the events of the last several years show that the Reactionaries think they have gotten the short end of the stick.  They want more, and they expect Trump to deliver.

Ross Douthat, who is a mixture of CD and Reactionary (but mostly the latter), thinks there will be hell to pay in the GOP if Kavanaugh is just a vote to nibble at the edges of Roe.  That makes sense, on its face, but is he right?  I think not;  the Reactionaries are so committed to Trump that they would learn to live with a “moderate” justice, just as they have learned to love Putin and Kim.