Cromwell

Five years ago, I did a post in which I mused about the impacts of a hypothetical Mitt Romney victory over Obama in 2012. There would have been some short-term pain, to be sure, but that had to be balanced against having Romney as president instead of Trump between 2017 and 2020. At the time, it was a fairly close question for me. What about today?

Today, there can be no doubt; the nation would have been far better off with Romney as president through 2020. The GOP would have remained sane. The reactionaries would have been under control. There would have been no January 6, no threats of authoritarian rule, and no columns about the imminent death of liberal democracy in America.

You would take that in a minute, wouldn’t you?

Like most authoritarians, Putin offered a deal to the Russian people: reasonably strong, competent, stable government in exchange for the right to rule arbitrarily. After the chaos of the Yeltsin years, you could make a plausible argument that the Russian people got a decent bargain for about a decade. The economy improved; there were no huge international crises; and the forms of liberal democracy, if not the substance, remained in place. If that was due mostly to an increase in the price of oil, for which Putin deserved little credit, so what?

But what about now? The economy has stalled since the Crimean invasion. Worse, Putin has engaged in a vanity project war that threatens the lives of Russians and hurts their pocketbooks without offering anything to them in return. Tens of thousands of Russian soldiers are dead, for no good reason other than Putin’s desire to recreate the Russian Empire. All forms of dissent have been crushed. The country is now a pure dictatorship, operated and controlled by force–not consent.

It’s time to renegotiate, don’t you think?

I was eager to read the NYT Monday morning, because I figured that Bret Stephens would tell me if the GOP had learned anything from the Truss debacle. He did not disappoint. Stephens takes the position that the Truss tax cut program was correct; its failure was due to a lack of nerve and the inertia created by more than a decade of Tory big government rule.

Really? The Cameron/Osborne years can be described as a big government era? What planet does Stephens live on?

If Stephens still thinks tax cuts for the wealthy are a great idea in a time of yawning deficits, increased inequality, and rampant inflation, chances are that the rest of the GOP agrees, regardless of what the markets say.

Biden apparently called disregarding the debt ceiling “irresponsible” and said he wouldn’t cut entitlements as part of a quid pro quo, which of course suggests that other kinds of cuts could be on the table. Was this wise?

You can take it for granted that a GOP-controlled House, effectively run by the “burn it down” caucus, is going to make extreme demands and won’t back down. That will give Biden the following choices:

1. Give in to the blackmail, thus repudiating his presidency, demoralizing his supporters, and encouraging more ransom demands in the future;
2. Refuse to give in, but accept the validity of the debt ceiling, thereby causing chaos and widespread misery; or
3. Use the Fourteenth Amendment or the platinum coin gambit to continue to pay the bills, and dare the GOP to sue him.

One can hope that Biden is simply posturing for electoral purposes at this point, but this comment is going to come back and haunt him if he chooses #3 at crunch time. The other two alternatives are too awful to contemplate.

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.