In the words of Elvis Costello, “Clowntime is over/Time to get sober.”
This will change the whole dynamic of UK politics for the foreseeable future. Labour probably thought it could run as the party of responsible government and sound money. Now it will have to run as the opponent of austerity, which could still work.
An article in the NYT suggests that Brexit is responsible for the speedy demise of the Truss government. Is that a reasonable conclusion?
I’m as fierce a critic of Brexit as anyone, but no. The Tin Lady’s Thatcherite persona and economic ideas long predated Brexit. Her lack of interest in expert opinion and the markets was largely inspired by BoJo, whose fall was due to shambolic administration and a failure to comply with rudimentary ethical standards. It is a mistake to over-analyze this; the fall of the Truss government was caused by its overwhelming unpopularity, its lack of credibility with the markets, and her always shaky support within the parliamentary party.
Now BoJo may be back. Brexit made him; it didn’t destroy him. Where does this theory go if he becomes PM again?
There once was a lady named Truss
Whose tax cut created a fuss.
The markets just crashed.
Her hopes then were dashed
When her friends threw her under the bus.
It was April 2025. President Trump and the new GOP Congress had just taken a victory lap by abolishing the filibuster and enacting a new federal abortion ban. Governor Newsom would have none of it, however. He made it clear that California would do nothing to assist with the enforcement of the ban.
Trump seized on the opportunity to invoke the Insurrection Act. He sent troops to remove all of the prominent Democrats in the state from power; California would henceforth be ruled directly from Washington, with the assistance of the military, local collaborators, and some red state carpetbaggers. When Newsom challenged these actions, the Trump Supreme Court found that the Act gave the president the discretion to do just about anything he wanted. The remaining blue states subsequently received the same treatment, and dissent was crushed throughout the country. Liberal democracy had ceased to exist in America.
It was Reconstruction in reverse. If you think this can’t happen, think again.
It has been a matter of faith for the Republican Party for at least 30 years that tax cuts for the rich are the answer to every possible economic problem. While the evidence has never supported this theory, the GOP has never really paid a political price for it. The fate of the Truss government, however, suggests that the times could be changing. Will the GOP learn anything from her example?
Probably not. I think the next two years will be marked more by culture wars and assaults on liberal democracy than battles over tax cuts, but don’t expect the GOP to change its spots that quickly.
Mitch McConnell, to his credit, has been a strong supporter of Ukraine. Kevin McCarthy–not so much. He was recently quoted to the effect that continued aid to Ukraine is not a given if the GOP wins control of the House, as seems likely.
A substantial majority of Republicans, including members of Congress, reject Putin’s imperialism, but a small group of pro-Trump “America First” people has embraced it. McCarthy probably needs both groups to become and remain Speaker. How will he handle this situation? Will the majority rule and justice prevail, or will the extremist tail wag the dog purely to further McCarthy’s ambitions and humor the man on golf cart?
It will be interesting to watch this in the same way that it is interesting to watch car crashes.
In light of the GOP plans to unleash a blizzard of Benghazis on Biden after the election, it is worth noting that there have been no–that’s right, none–scandals of any kind involving the executive branch since 1/20/21. It is also important to point out that the Cabinet has remained intact, and the overall makeup of the government has been amazingly stable since Inauguration Day.
The contrast with the chaos and corruption of the Trump years is difficult to overstate, but nobody is paying attention, because Biden doesn’t get any credit for bad things that don’t happen. It’s the dog that hasn’t barked; only Sherlock Holmes recognized its significance.
Barack Obama gave in to debt ceiling blackmail, partly because he probably thought it was a one-off, and partly because he wanted to use it to bring spending back under control. Biden knows that it wasn’t a one-off, and that it has to be stopped. As a result, as with Afghanistan, I expect him to confront the problem directly instead of kicking the can down the road.
If he doesn’t give in, what should he do? Some commentators have suggested minting a $1 trillion platinum coin and using it to pay the nation’s debts. That’s a possibility, but to me, it’s too gimmicky. I favor using the Fourteenth Amendment language regarding the questioning of the validity of the nation’s debts to address the problem.
If I were Biden, I will announce months in advance that the government will continue to pay all of its debts regardless of what happens with the debt ceiling in order to prepare the markets for what is to come. The Fourteenth Amendment route is legally sound and is supported by case law, so the markets should feel at least reasonably comfortable with that approach. When the crisis comes, the GOP will be put in a position of either lifting the ceiling or going to court to try to stop Biden from paying creditors and Social Security recipients. Does that sound like good politics to you?
I’ve been writing for the better part of a year about the prospects for a debt ceiling crisis if the GOP wins control of either house of Congress. This is a virtual certainty, because it’s what Republicans do, particularly when extremists are effectively running the show. After all, if you want to “burn it down,” why not start with the nation’s credit?
The real question at this point is what the Republicans will demand in exchange for agreeing not to wreck the economy. My first guess was an end to Obamacare, but health care hasn’t figured prominently in the campaign, so I don’t think that will happen. My second guess was a national abortion ban, but the GOP appears to be too divided on that issue to put it at the top of the priority list. So what will it be?
My current prediction is the repeal of the IRA. This would destroy Biden’s most important policy accomplishment in the name of cutting spending and (so they will say) inflation.
How will Biden respond? See my next post.
The latest polls indicate that a majority of American voters are angry about inflation and intend to vote for Republicans to express their frustration. While the sentiment is understandable, the question they should be asking is, what do the Republicans plan to do about inflation? How will frivolous investigations and impeachments, legislating on abortion, and creating a debt ceiling crisis lower the cost of living and improve the economy?
That’s what the Republicans really plan to do. More on that in the next few days.
The great would-be emperor Xi
Likes to trash talk the land of the free.
He claims he’s the core.
He’s just won five years more.
Is he China’s new Stalin? We’ll see.
Evidence of the damage caused by climate change accumulates with each day: catastrophic floods in Pakistan; fires in California and Australia; heat waves and droughts in Europe; and, of course, the deaths and destruction caused by Hurricane Ian. You would think that “conservatives” would see this and try to do something about it. But no!
Ross Douthat is a classic climate change agnostic; he doesn’t deny that it is occurring, but he just doesn’t think it’s a big problem, even after Hurricane Ian. In Sunday’s NYT column, he consequently resorts to straw man arguments to make his case. First, he notes the stupidity of the vandal who threw soup on a Van Gogh in order to make some kind of statement about climate change. Second, he notes that decarbonization is a process that will damage the interests of working people, the exact kind of people the left says it wants to protect. How about them apples!
As to the first example, tarring the climate change movement with the actions of one idiot is about as fair as calling Douthat a hypocrite on abortion because a few “pro-life” nuts shot and killed abortion providers. On the second point, the Democratic Party is well aware of the potential impacts to workers and has done its best to avoid them. As a result, the IRA contained only carrots, and the GND included elaborate proposals for wealth redistribution from wealthy people to workers. There is no incoherence here.
The bottom line is that Douthat is just like all of the other “pro-life” Republicans; he thinks hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, intense misery, and countless deaths caused by climate change are a small price to pay to keep America running on fossil fuels. My gutted house, in his eyes, is just acceptable collateral damage.
Guanxi–the creation and use of networks for economic gain–is a feature of all societies, not just China’s. The Chinese, however, take it to a completely different level; it is an important part of the culture. You could reasonably say it is part of Chinese exceptionalism.
When you combine guanxi with a one-party system which lacks an independent press and judicial system, you have a blueprint for corruption. What does that mean for the periodic campaigns against corruption that are part of life in the PRC?
It means that “corruption” is synonymous with actual or potential disloyalty, or simple mistakes in playing the patronage game. Xi is more interested in rooting out opposition to his rule than in eliminating the unwarranted privileges of his friends. Corruption in the liberal democratic sense of the word is an inherent part of the Chinese system, and will never be eradicated as long as the CCP retains a monopoly on power.
Putin is apparently lobbying hard for Belarus to enter the war on his side. It would be a form of escalation–the creation of a second front, presumably–without running the risk of a NATO attack on Russian forces. Why not try it?
Because Lukashenko may be a tyrant, but he’s not a complete fool. He doesn’t have anything like the control over his country that Putin has over Russia. Entering the war, with no obvious gains for Belarus, would undoubtedly rouse an already unhappy populace and endanger his hold on power. Worse, NATO might feel free to attack his military and even his cities, given that he doesn’t have nuclear weapons. The potential for disaster is obvious; the second front might be in Belarus itself, not Ukraine.
To Xi, and the rest of the leadership of the CCP, Gorbachev is a cautionary tale and an object of contempt. As they see it, Gorbachev simply didn’t have the brains or the balls to keep the lid on; he wanted change, and got a revolution instead. That will never happen in China.
The irony here is that Xi and Gorbachev had the same vision for their supposedly socialist societies–just enough capitalism to permit the country to compete internationally, but no more. The difference is they started from different places. Gorbachev tried to reform a stagnant system, and the results speak for themselves; Xi wants to suck the dynamism out of an economy that was working perfectly well in order to maintain stability, his overriding goal.