Cromwell

It’s January 2023. The GOP has won narrow majorities in both the House and the Senate. The first order of business for the House, of course, is to please the base by voting for a national prohibition on abortion. The bill passes quickly and goes to the Senate.

McConnell is in a difficult spot. He knows he’s going to look like a hypocrite if he acquiesces to the repeal of the filibuster. His overriding priority, however, is to maintain party unity, so he’s willing to go along with the vast majority of his party even if he has to swallow his principles if the bill has a chance to become law. The problem is that the votes simply aren’t there to get the job done. Collins, Murkowski, and Manchin aren’t going to vote to repeal the filibuster, and Romney is on the fence. Furthermore, Biden clearly isn’t going to sign the bill even if it passes. It isn’t going to happen–at least, not now.

McConnell isn’t going to expose himself to allegations of bad faith unless he can actually accomplish something important to the base. Both the bill and filibuster reform consequently die quietly in the Senate. Real action won’t happen until 2025 at the earliest.

If you ask someone who claims to be “pro-life” (we’ll call him Ted) why he opposes gun regulations, he will tell you, in effect, that freedom for law-abiding people is more important than the protection of life. But if you then ask him why he wants to crush the freedom to have an abortion, he will tell you that he believes human life is sacred.

Yeah, right! What he really means is that he believes in a hierarchical society, with God at the top, white Christian men immediately below Him, and everyone else way below that. The purpose of government, in his eyes, is to keep things that way. Scripture and self-interest coincide.

Years ago, I turned “American Woman” into “American Putin” for Trump. Now is the time to use it to give Ron DeSantis his due.

AMERICAN ORBAN

American Orban

Stay away from me.

American Orban

Brother, set me free.

__________

Don’t want you hanging around no more.

Don’t want to see your shadow no more.

Don’t need your anti-woke machine.

Don’t need your ugly Disney scene.

Culture wars can hypnotize.

Go tell someone else your lies.

___________

Now Orban, stay away.

American Orban, listen to what I say.

____________

Parody of “American Woman” by the Guess Who.

Due to its ideological commitment to self-reliance over governmental solutions, and its close ties to fossil fuel interests, the GOP is incapable of proposing and supporting any viable approaches to climate change. As a result, people will die in hurricanes and wildfires at an increasing rate, and the GOP will have nothing to offer them except thoughts and prayers. They are just collateral damage–unfortunate, but a price worth paying.

The situation with guns is exactly the same. Yesterday’s Texas school massacre demonstrated yet again that a good guy with a gun–and there are millions of them in Texas–won’t stop a bad guy with a gun until he has killed plenty of innocent people. What will come of this? Nothing, because the kids are just collateral damage in the eyes of Republican lawmakers. Since guns are right-wing icons, not objects, reactionaries will never give them up, no matter how high the price, unless, of course, the left arms, too, in which case all bets are off.

Once upon a time–and it wasn’t that long ago–the GOP was operated by and for business interests. Its primary concern was to limit the size, intrusiveness, and cost of government. The record will show that, over the last forty years, it was largely successful.

But that was then, and this is now. Today’s GOP is run by reactionaries, whose principal concern is to hijack government to fight and win culture wars. The GOP now believes in arbitrary interventions in the market in order to accomplish that purpose. It is also a force for instability and unscripted constitutional change, which is even worse for business than high taxes and heavy regulations.

If, as seems likely, the GOP wins control of both houses of Congress in November, a terrifying debt ceiling crisis is likely to result, with all of the risks that brings to investors and business interests. Will that prevent PBPs from supporting Republican candidates in November? Probably not, so don’t feel sorry for them if the inevitable occurs thereafter.

Marco Rubio thinks the tariffs should stay, as they give us leverage with the Chinese. Of course he does! He’s the architect of our unsuccessful attempt to depose Maduro with sanctions, and he still believes in the Cuba embargo. Hey, just because it hasn’t toppled the Cuban regime in its first sixty years doesn’t mean it won’t work tomorrow.

The tariffs are stupid. The cost of them is borne by American consumers, not the Chinese. China isn’t even abiding by the managed trade agreement that was the product of the tariffs. Shooting yourself in the foot does not create leverage.

The only reason Biden hasn’t jettisoned the tariffs by now is that he fears the political repercussions of looking soft on China. Well, how about looking soft on inflation? Why not take advantage of the inflation rate and use it as a pretext to ditch the tariffs? If the GOP wants to talk about being weak on China, he can respond by calling them inflation doves.

It’s an opportunity to make lemonade out of lemons. Let’s hope he takes advantage of it.

Opinion polls consistently show that Americans think their personal financial condition is very good, but that the economy as a whole is terrible. Paul Krugman is struggling to make sense of this apparent contradiction. Can we help him out?

The sense of personal well-being is based on savings and asset prices. The value of homes, in particular, has soared, so if you are an owner, your net worth has gone up substantially. The stimulus has helped, too. You never had it so good.

But opinions regarding the economy as a whole are not based on asset prices, or wage increases, or the low unemployment rate, but on the day-to-day experience with inflation. Most Americans have not been through an inflationary period before, and they don’t like it.

Finally, the media, including left-leaning TV networks, have focused exclusively and simple-mindedly on the evils of inflation. You never hear anything about the low unemployment rate, or on the fact that debtors are actually gaining from inflation. Every day, the story is the same–poor Americans can’t make it with rising prices.

Two items of considerable importance today:

1. Biden announced the creation of a watered-down version of the TPP. Since the significance of the TPP always revolved around its geopolitical, not its economic, impacts, that’s a step in the right direction. How big a step it is remains to be seen, given that agreement on trade rules tends to depend on increasing access to American markets, which has not been promised here. Let’s just hope we don’t have to listen to a lot of unjustified whining about it from the protectionist left.
2. Following a practice that most people would consider unfortunate, Biden got ahead of his skis and said, in response to a question, that America would provide military assistance to Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack. The bureaucracy immediately walked that back and announced that American policy on “strategic ambiguity” had not changed. The divergence between Biden and his staff on key foreign policy issues is starting to resemble the one between Trump and his advisers. The difference between the two presidents is that Biden tends to react emotionally and be too honest in response to questions, without really meaning to change American policy, whereas Trump genuinely disagreed with his advisers on many critical issues and said so. So far, the divergence between Biden and his staff does not appear to have done any lasting harm; perhaps it can be used as a form of good cop, bad cop.

There is still no resolution of the Chinese tariff issue, which, in my opinion, has been one of Biden’s greatest failures. More on that tomorrow.

As anyone who has priced the cost of international travel can tell you, airfares for flights to Europe have skyrocketed. There are several reasons for this, none of which have anything to do with the Fed: the failure of the airlines to react in a timely manner to the increased demand following the waning of the pandemic; increased gas prices; and the amount of excess savings generated by pandemic restrictions and the relief bills. What can happen to eliminate the problem?

Nobody borrows money from a bank to finance a vacation. To the extent trips are being financed by balances on credit cards, the interest rates were already so high, any increases will go largely unnoticed. Nothing the Fed can or will do will matter.

The problem will be solved by consumer resistance to the high prices. That’s how we’re handling it.

Ross Douthat argues that the Roe decision divided the country and was a major factor in our current level of polarization. Is he correct?

He has confused cause and effect. Abortion was not a partisan issue when Roe was decided in the 1970s, as evidenced by the fact that the majority consisted primarily of GOP nominees. While opposition to abortion became identified more or less exclusively with the Republican Party in the 1980s, the country was not as polarized then as it is now. It was only when white Christians started to feel threatened– in their own eyes, they were no longer a moral majority–that our politics turned rancid. That was the result of changing attitudes about sex and religion among the young, legal victories for the LGBTQ community, the election of a black president, the evolution of the knowledge economy, to the detriment of white workers, and demographic changes that appeared apocalyptic to a large segment of the white population.

Putin claims that the expansion of NATO drove him to the invasion of Ukraine. Does that even make sense?

Put aside, for the moment, the fact that NATO expansion happened many years ago, without much complaint from the Russian government. The pertinent question is, would it be logical to respond to NATO expansion by invading a country that wasn’t included in the expansion, and had little hope of joining NATO?

Of course not. The invasion had nothing to do with NATO, and everything to do with Putin’s belief that Ukraine is properly part of Russia. He just wanted to be a latter-day Catherine the Great. Alas for him.

Jesus told his followers to turn the other cheek–not to blow their enemies away with assault weapons. The connection between guns and Christianity among American right-wingers is, therefore, more than a little illogical. Why does it persist?

It is a matter of historical accident. White Christian men used guns against the decidedly not Christian Native Americans to win and settle our country. Guns consequently became associated with Jesus, power, and self-reliance. Those are the pillars of today’s GOP.

Viktor Orban has become a conservative icon. Tucker Carlson, among many others, just loves the guy. He’s also Vladimir Putin’s best friend among the heads of state in Europe. He’s currently doing his best to stop the EU from effectively funding Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.

So why shouldn’t the Democrats connect the dots? Hang the Orban albatross around the neck of every Republican candidate who pledges allegiance to illiberal democracy. Make it clear that Orban, Putin, and the GOP are all on the same side in a global battle over the rule of law and democratic norms.

It may be slightly unfair in some cases, but it’s far less outrageous than GOP complaints that the Democrats are weak on Putin, to say nothing of the persistent allegation that George Soros calls the shots all over the world.

Having argued that the expansion of NATO to Eastern Europe made his Ukraine invasion a matter of national life and death, Putin is now faced with the likelihood of Finnish and Swedish membership. A bogus cause has turned into a real effect. But from the American perspective, is expansion a good idea?

In my opinion, the following criteria should control:

1. Is the applicant country democratic and stable enough to be worth protecting?
2. Does it have the resources and will to carry its weight within the alliance?
3. Is it likely to become a tripwire that could lead to World War III?

Sweden meets all of these standards with room to spare. Finland creates issues with #3, but both the Russian Empire and the USSR had limited strategic objectives there, so the likelihood of a Russian invasion would be relatively low. The Ukrainian request for membership, however, comes with few advantages and immense risk to the alliance. The Ukrainians certainly aspire to a liberal democracy, and have shown the willingness to do whatever it takes to maintain their sovereignty against great odds, but does Ukraine meet the first and third standards? I would say not.

Snyder thinks we should be willing to call out Russian fascism for what it is. Is he right?

Yes. Some years ago, I did an analysis of fascism and applied it to Putin’s Russia. At the time, I argued that Russia was in a gray area between an extreme version of illiberal democracy and fascism, given that Putin was still showing some limited respect for elections and the rule of law. As a result of the war, he has moved out of the gray area. He is a fascist, period. We should not be afraid to say so.