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Sutton was famously quoted as saying he robbed banks because that’s where the money was. Kevin McCarthy, on the other hand, wants to cut the deficit by going where the money isn’t: domestic discretionary spending.

According to an article in the NYT, if all of the GOP’s favorite categories–defense, veterans’ benefits, Social Security, Medicare, etc.– are exempted, the budget caps proposed by the House will require a 51 percent cut for all other discretionary spending over the next decade. Cuts of that magnitude will basically make it impossible for the federal government to carry out most of its essential functions.

Hence, the appeal to MAGA Republicans.

Biden and McCarthy are meeting today to discuss the debt ceiling. I can pretty well guarantee that no meaningful progress will be made. Then what?

Here’s how it will play out:

1. Efforts to detach reasonable Republicans from the rest of the party before the deadline will fail as a result of pressure applied by McCarthy. The country will be on the brink.
2. Biden goes on TV about 24 hours before the projected default day and announces he is relying on the Fourteenth Amendment to pay all of America’s obligations. Payments are made as usual. Markets fall, but do not collapse.
3. McCarthy is, or claims to be, outraged. But what can he do? If he and his GOP henchmen file suit to shoot the escaping hostage, they will pay a big political price for it, and the Supreme Court is likely to say the issue is non-justiciable. If he finds someone else to do his dirty work for him, his plaintiff will almost certainly lack standing. There are apparently no good options here.
4. Nevertheless, someone sues. The case goes to the Supreme Court, which refuses to hear it on the merits.
5. A massive world recession is averted.

Why do I say this will happen? Because all of the principals win under this scenario. Biden looks like a strong leader, unites the party behind him, staves off a disaster, and defangs the debt ceiling forever. McCarthy gets to keep his job, because he can justly say he did everything the MAGA crowd wanted him to do. The Supreme Court enhances its standing in the eyes of the public without actually ruling against the GOP on the merits. Mitch protects the donor class. The moderates who refused to flip protect their wealthy constituents without having to vote against the base. Even Trump and the MAGA base get something they want–more fuel for the outrage machine and another issue for a fundraising letter. Since they’re typically more mouth than action, this result should be right in their wheelhouse.

It’s perfect, unless you’re Putin or Xi.

Years ago, I noted the discrepancy between what Republicans said they wanted and what they actually did and predicted that this would soon come to an end. Red state legislatures, particularly but not exclusively Florida’s, are proving me right. The dam has broken. Reactionaries are using their muscle to get exactly what they want; the PBPs have lost the power and the will to stop them.

But now that the anti- agenda (anti-trans; anti-gay; anti-immigrant; anti-free speech; anti-abortion, etc.) has been put in place, what’s next? Will the reactionaries take their winnings and go home, or will they find some other supposed existential threat to their culture, and ban it?

I honestly don’t know where the frontier is for the reactionaries, but the national experience with guns suggests that there will always be one. There will be a whole new crop of grievances to legislate against next time around.

As I’ve noted before, what business interests want from government–even more than tax cuts and deregulation–is recognition that they are job-creating supermen who make the American economy go. In other words, R-E-S-P-E-C-T, and lots of it.

DeSantis’ war on “woke capital,” and his battle with Disney in particular, flies directly in the face of that priority. DeSantis needs the support of businessmen desperately to win the nomination, but he can’t reasonably expect it if he continues to tell them that they have to shut up and play by his rules. There are, after all, other fish in the sea.

Ron DeSantis should make the virus his running mate, because it made him a right-wing star. Whether you agreed with him or not–and I didn’t–the living thanked him for setting the Florida economy free, and the dead weren’t around to vote against him. He went from an obscure, relatively moderate governor to a reactionary celebrity practically overnight.

But the virus is no longer a big part of our lives. It certainly won’t be by 2024. So why would primary voters give him much credit for dealing with it?

They won’t. That’s the reason he has moved on to the broader issue of wokeness.

The legal battle has barely begun, but Alvin Bragg has already lost the public relations war. He has tried to place the indictment in the broader context of election fraud, but the right’s narrative–that he is a political hack looking to advance his career by taking down a president over a mere paperwork problem–is winning. Even winning the case, at this point, might not be enough to change the public’s perceptions.

The Jean Carroll case is a different matter. Trump’s attorneys are essentially putting on a criminal defense with no witnesses in a civil case with a much lower burden of proof. It is hard for me to see how they can win under those circumstances. If they don’t, Trump will run his campaign labeled by a jury as a rapist, and he won’t be able to blame either the judge or a prosecutor for his problems. Are 2024 swing voters likely to be concerned about that? Will the Never Trumpers and the AATs be emboldened? One would have to think so.

One of the best scenes in the first season of “The Crown” is a flashback to the coronation of George VI. In this scene, the new king is rehearsing for the ceremony with the assistance of little Elizabeth. There are about three ideas running through his head at the same time, and you can see all of them on his face. It’s great acting, and it shouldn’t be missed.

I had some of the same thoughts watching the coronation yesterday morning. On the one hand, any ceremony that reminds us that we are just the latest links in a very long chain is, in my view, a good thing. On the other hand, the fundamental premises behind the ceremony are long gone. Nobody believes in any of it anymore. So what’s the point?

The TV commentators clearly believed it will go on forever. Personally, I’m not so sure. There are advantages to a monarchy, but anachronistic mumbo-jumbo isn’t necessarily one of them.

Chris Christie clearly wants to run for president, but he’s not sure he has a path to the nomination. I think he can win if he does the following:

1. Focus your attention on the mainstream, not the reactionary base. You can’t win them in a primary, anyway. They already belong to Trump, but he can’t prevail just as the leader of the reactionaries unless the 70 percent is split. Right now, no other candidate is competing for those votes, so they are yours for the taking.
2. Position yourself as the heir to Reagan, not Trump.
3. Attack Trump aggressively for his election denialism, his relationship with Putin, his willingness to dismantle NATO, and his criminal problems. Argue forcefully that Trump is a proven loser, and that the party needs to go in a very different direction.
4. If you win the nomination, you will need the votes of the 30 percent in the general election. You can get them if you look like a fighter for them against left-wing values. Given your personality, that shouldn’t be a problem.
5. Emphasize your ability to win in a blue state. None of the other candidates has that in his resume.

Here’s my theory:

1. Since the right is impervious to woke criticism, as a practical matter, its impacts are felt most strongly by members of the center-left, who are in the most danger of being cancelled by other members of the left.
2. Notwithstanding #1, it is the right that is enlisting the assistance of state governments to stifle wokeness.
3. The woke left is starting to realize that it needs the help of the center-left to fight the new anti-wokeness legislation.
4. Therefore, we should be seeing less strident woke criticism, and fewer cancellations, in the foreseeable future.

Convinced?

I’m sure you’re going to hear the argument that the Fourteenth Amendment language about the debt was only intended to deal with a single specific potential problem arising from the Civil War. Since the GOP clearly and completely identifies itself with the Confederacy (I’m looking at a house where both the US and Confederate flags are flying as I write this), that line of reasoning shouldn’t persuade you even if the legislative history supports it, which may or may not be the case.

So how does the debt ceiling crisis end? Let’s look at the priorities of the individuals involved for some clues.

Kevin McCarthy’s objectives are, in order of priority:

1. Keeping his job as Speaker;
2. Winning the 2024 election; and
3. Protecting the interests of the GOP donor class.

Biden’s objectives are, in order:

1. Preventing an economic crisis;
2. Getting re-elected;
3. Putting an end, once and for all, to this kind of hostage taking; and
4. Splitting the GOP.

The average GOP House member from a Biden district–the person most likely to break the deadlock–wants the following:

1. To prevent an economic crisis;
2. To put himself in position to win the general election in 2024;
3. To avoid a primary with a MAGA Republican; and
4. To keep his wealthy donors happy.

When you combine these lists, what do you get? First, Biden can’t make a deal with McCarthy, because the latter’s primary objective is to keep his job, which will be endangered if he concedes anything from his party’s wish list. Second, the GOP member wants to make a deal with Biden, but he won’t just roll over and vote for a clean debt ceiling increase; he has to have something that looks meaningful in return in order to avoid a primary. Biden consequently only has two realistic alternatives: he can either offer a compromise package that will look reasonable to moderate GOP voters without turning off the blue base; or he can use one of the unilateral methods to eliminate the debt ceiling altogether. There are no other plausible options here; expecting the GOP to break under pressure is unrealistic.

If Biden does, in fact, invoke the Fourteenth Amendment and continue to pay our debts, the Republicans will be screaming, and some of them will want to sue. Their initial problem will be finding a plaintiff with standing. What American suffers a concrete injury as a result of the payment of lawful debts?

The big losers from the end of the debt crisis would be Xi and Putin. Maybe Ken Paxton can persuade Putin to move to Amarillo to become a plaintiff in his case.

According to the NYT, Biden is starting to take a hard look at invoking the Fourteenth Amendment if no agreement can be reached on the debt ceiling. I don’t know if he’s serious about this or not, since he dismissed it before, but he is wise to put it out there now as a viable alternative. It sends the message to McCarthy and even the GOP crazoids that, if they demand too much, they won’t get anything.

Republicans aren’t the only people in DC who understand leverage.

If Trump is elected president in 2024, there is every reason to believe he will hand Ukraine over to Putin and destroy NATO as we have known it. A slim majority of Republican leaders will be appalled by this but will do nothing meaningful to stop it; after all, Trump is one of them, and they voted for him. The remainder will celebrate. In their eyes, Putin is their friend in the universal war against wokeness, and a potential ally against China if only he can be appeased.

For reasons I described in earlier posts, this line of reasoning is dangerously wrong. The GOP mainstream needs to assert itself in the campaign and nominate a candidate who won’t undo Biden’s diplomatic successes relative to the Axis of Autocracy. Otherwise, Amerlca will find itself dangerously isolated in its dealings with both revanchist powers.

Adherence to traditional cultural and moral values is an important part of any conservative party’s identity almost by definition. It would be unreasonable, therefore, to expect the GOP to go soft on wokeness. That does not, however, mean that the party’s current stance on culture wars is acceptable.

Today’s Republicans don’t just put their cultural ideas front and center; they demonize anyone who doesn’t agree them. They identify the left as an existential threat that needs to be completely crushed, by illiberal means if necessary. They even embrace ruthless, despotic foreign leaders who despise liberal democracy as long as they position themselves as allies in the supposed universal war on wokeness.

That has to stop. Period.