Cromwell

Ross Douthat rejects the notion that the GOP has moved further from the center than the Democrats; in his view, the right is only responding forcefully to repeated provocations from the left. Is he right?

The truth is much more complicated than that, as follows:

1. On issues of race, the Democrats only provoked the right by having the temerity to nominate a black candidate for president. The reactionary wing of the GOP became the dominant force in the party as a result, and the rest is history.
2. On LGBTQ issues, the decisive blow was struck, not by left-wing politicians, but by a Supreme Court with a majority of justices appointed by Republican presidents.
3. On economic and fiscal issues, the Democrats nominated centrists, not Bernie Sanders. The ambitious Democratic agenda in 2020 was largely the product of the pandemic and the failures of Trumpism. In any event, the extreme right doesn’t care about fiscal issues; its thing is culture wars.
4. On cancel culture, admittedly a relatively new development arising from the left, the provocations have not come from Democratic politicians with any kind of national profile. In reality, cancel culture impacts the center-left, not the extreme right, which has its own protected media and internet safe spaces. The right has responded recently by approving legislation at the state level which attempts to silence the left on the internet.

This call-and-response analysis misses the essence of the problem, however. Analysts like Douthat almost universally attribute the ideas of a few social media activists to the entire Democratic Party. In reality, the Twitter left has a very limited following, and could not nominate its preferred candidates, none of whom was a dedicated culture warrior, in 2020. To the extent that Douthat is correct, he is asserting that reactionaries have the right to blow up our liberal democratic system in order to retain a monopoly on political power and shut up a few noisy activists instead of trying to win the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people. For the leadership of the GOP to support an illiberal agenda is not on the same plane as for a few left-wing loudmouths to say outrageous things on Twitter.

Thomas Friedman says he always opposed NATO expansion, and that the focus of American policy 20-25 years ago should have been on building a liberal democratic Russia–not on containing it and giving it an excuse to be a revisionist power. Is he right?

Only in part. I thought from the start that NATO expansion was a mistake, but not because building democracy in Russia was a more plausible alternative; if we couldn’t do it in Afghanistan, how could we possibly succeed in Russia? Friedman assumes that we had far more power and insight than we actually did. No, NATO expansion was a mistake because it was a bad bargain. The former USSR republics and Warsaw Pact countries added little military capability to the alliance, while expanding our security commitments exponentially. That is as true today as it was then, but it is what it is, and we have to live with the results, even if they aren’t in our short-term interests.

Left-leaning pundits often accuse the right of having no policy ideas–all they wanna do is own the libs. Is that a fair complaint?

As of today, yes; the best evidence of it is the 2020 GOP platform, which was a xerox of the one from 2016. That was the result of two things: the right’s overwhelming interest in the culture wars and a failure of imagination. But things are changing; the right is starting to legislate on culture war issues instead of just harping on them endlessly for electoral gain. At some point in the foreseeable future, censorship and open support for religion are going to be the subjects of reactionary policy–not just business tax cuts and deregulation.

That’s when it’s really going to hit the fan, because the right’s position on the culture wars cannot be made law under the prevailing interpretations of the Constitution.

After the riot, Mitch McConnell had a choice: completely distance the Republicans from Trump and the rioters, at the cost of party unity; or maintain party unity at the cost of the country. Being the patriotic sort, he naturally chose the former. He swiftly managed to round up enough votes to convict Trump at the second impeachment trial. Trump was therefore finished as a political force, and the GOP became, once again, a “normal” reactionary party that respected liberal democracy.

The extreme right howled, of course, but where else were the counterrevolutionaries to go? The GOP didn’t actually lose any votes on the right, since the party’s leaders continued to own the libs, but it became respectable again with centrists. As a result, somewhat to McConnell’s surprise, the divisions within the party were papered over fairly quickly, and the GOP rebounded strongly in 2022, with strong new presidential candidates looking to make a splash without meaningful interference from Trump in 2024.

The point of this, of course, is to show that the current threats to the system were not inevitable. They were the product of deliberate–and bad–choices putting the interests of the GOP ahead of the country. But why would we be surprised? Mitch openly said that his job was to retake power, not to help Americans defeat the Great Recession, in 2009.

Ron DeSantis has taken his enthusiasm for the anti-vaxxer cause to a new level. He is now refusing to answer questions about whether he has taken the booster. His silence has generated negative comments from no less than Donald Trump. Given that Trump supports the vaccine and that anti-vaxxers are unpopular with the general public, what in the world is DeSantis up to?

Three things. First of all, as I have noted before, he is all in with the notion that elections are about base mobilization, not attracting votes from swing voters. This approach probably makes sense in 2022–not necessarily in 2024, if he runs for president. Second, extreme right-wing ideas can become the orthodox positions of the GOP with frightening speed. Third, DeSantis is positioning himself to run from the right against Trump if the circumstances call for it. I doubt he would do it, but the election is years away, and you never know . . .

During the Rick Scott era, the focus of the Florida GOP was on tax cuts for business and reducing the cost of state government. Today, with Scott long gone, DeSantis and the Florida Legislature are more interested in increasing spending on popular programs and cutting gas taxes. It is an approach that is more directed at the needs of the base than business.

Is this the beginning of a shift within the GOP to a new populist economic program on a national level? I have serious doubts about that–after all, Mitch and the WSJ haven’t gone anywhere–but it bears watching.

Anticipating, as well they might, the demise of Roe, GOP leaders in Florida have decided to support new abortion restrictions which mirror those in the new Mississippi law. There will be no exceptions for rape and incest. Once these new regulations become effective, they will be challenged under Florida’s constitutional right to privacy, but DeSantis has largely remade the state judiciary in his own image, so there is little reason to believe they will be struck down. As a result, in the next year or two, there will be an upsurge in the number of unwanted children born in Florida.

Due to the booming economy and the Biden pandemic relief bill, Florida is awash in money right now. If, like Ross Douthat, you take the claims of women seriously, you would be supporting a large increase in funding for social services and health care to deal with all of the new unwanted children. Is any such thing happening? Of course not! Remember: Reactionaries, not CDs, are in charge here, and misery is the point.

My fellow real Americans:

You know what I really hate, besides liberals? Losers! America is about winners! I’m a winner! I’ve always been a winner! That’s how you really know that the election was rigged. Joe Biden is a loser! Look at him and listen to him! I can’t possibly have lost to someone like that! And I didn’t. The election was stolen from me. You know it, and I know it.

MLK was a winner, too. He said he would overcome, and he did! I respect that, just like I respect people like Herschel Walker and Tiger Woods. They’re winners, too. They came from nothing, but they beat the system–just like me! They’re my kind of people.

The problem is that the minorities didn’t accept that they won after the sixties. They didn’t accept that they had the same rights and opportunities that you and I have. They’re losers–most of them. They want special privileges, not equality. When they don’t get them, they scream about racism and “white privilege.” What they really want is to be treated like winners when they lose.

We can’t have that. That’s not what America is about. America is the land of the winners, like me and MLK. That’s why you honor his legacy when you give money to my campaign and buy my merchandise.

As I’ve noted several times before, I don’t think Putin will invade, because Ukraine is too valuable to him as a wedge issue for NATO and the EU and a source of political support at home. But what if I’m wrong? With one exception, the Republican Party will be falling all over itself offering support for Ukraine and bashing Biden for being soft on Putin.

The exception, of course, will be the leader of the party–Donald Trump. So how will all of the other GOP leaders handle that piece of dissonance? By living in an alternate universe and pretending it doesn’t exist, of course. That’s what they did between 2016 and 2020. Why would things be any different in 2022?

Once upon a time–well, in 2019–there was a fundamental division within the Democratic Party regarding the feasibility of moving away from the dollar store economy. The progressive candidates supported major increases in the size of the welfare state, to be funded by tax increases on the wealthy, while the moderates questioned the wisdom and feasibility of such a radical program, and emphasized the need for unity to get rid of Trump. As we know, Biden won the primaries, so the left appeared to have lost.

The pandemic and the Georgia Senate races changed everyone’s expectations. Moderates and progressives alike united behind extremely ambitious plans to help workers at the expense of business. Biden was going to be FDR for the 21st century. And things started well; even Manchin and Sinema voted for the enormous pandemic package. The war on the dollar store had begun in earnest.

Today, it is dead. The BBB won’t pass in anything like its original form. The best we can hope for is a modest package focusing on climate change. There will be no large tax increases on the wealthy, and no dramatic expansion of the welfare state. The dollar store will continue, to the great relief of businessmen and retirees.

In retrospect, the left’s expectations were way too high. We are back where everyone expected to be when Biden got the nomination. Be grateful for the pandemic relief package and the infrastructure bill instead of complaining about the program that didn’t pass.

It was clear after the oral arguments–realistically, it was always clear, based on the politics and the composition of the Supreme Court–that the large employer mandate was going to be invalidated. The only real question involved the choice of rationale. The untold story of this case is that it could have been much worse.

The large employer decision is based on something called the “Major Questions Doctrine,” a piece of judge-made law that has no basis in the text of the Constitution. It consequently should be, but isn’t, a source of embarrassment for the originalists on the Court. The gist of the doctrine is that administrative rules with great impact on society require clearer justifications within the authorizing statute. By definition, it only applies to really important cases.

The three justices–Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch–who really want to shut down what they consider to be a grasping, alien administrative state run by arrogant left-wing bureaucrats wanted to base the decision on the doctrine of “nondelegation.” This is a far more sweeping rationale which can potentially apply to any regulation. They didn’t have the votes, however, so they wrote a concurring opinion extolling the virtues of nondelegation and pretending that it has the same meaning as “Major Questions,” presumably with the next administrative law case in mind.

The choice of “Major Questions,” and the decision in the health care worker mandate case, are triumphs for the Chief Justice. As usual, he got most of what he wanted without making the Court look like a home for political hacks. As a result, there is hope for at least some of the Biden administrative agenda over the next three years.

As I advised my wife about a week ago, true crime stories and Hallmark movies appear to be polar opposites, but in reality, they are very similar. Both are very predictable narratives with clear rules in which order triumphs over disorder and justice is ultimately done. The viewer is left with the impression that everything will always work out in the end. Hence, the popularity of such programs.

Theme parks are a lot like that, too. A proper theme park is a closed, artificial universe in which all of the pieces fit and disorderly narratives are banished, at least temporarily. Again, that is why they are so popular.

With that in mind, imagine designing a theme park which reflects the mindset of an American reactionary–for obvious reasons, we will call it Trumpworld. How would it work?

Trumpworld would have three separate areas: Real America; Liberal America; and Aliens. Real America would contain rides and characters depicting pious white Christians living in rural settings. Here, crime and disorder are unknown. Liberal America, on the other hand, is populated by perverts, violent criminals, drug addicts, and lazy minorities demanding government handouts. Aliens, of course, are even worse; they don’t even have time for Liberal America. They just want to put us in concentration camps, steal our money, and blow us up.

At the end of each day, a great wall rises to protect Real America from the other two. The crowds cry and scream with joy as justice is done. Fireworks go off. Everyone goes home happy. They’ll do it again tomorrow.

I was scrolling through some old posts a few days ago when I came across one from 2019 which contained predictions for the 2020 election. I guessed that Trump would lose the election and would respond by filing a blizzard of frivolous lawsuits and calling his supporters out into the streets. I further predicted that the turnout on his behalf would be relatively meager, and that the system would hold–this time. How did that turn out?

I was mostly right, of course, but I was wrong about one important thing: the violence took place, not at the local level, but in Washington. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that Trump thought he could prevail by persuading a motley group of protesters to storm the Capitol. That didn’t even compute.

He would have been better off if he had taken my advice. He won’t make the same mistake twice. In 2024, the battlegrounds will be local elections offices and state legislatures, not the Capitol.

Let’s return to a question raised by a previous post. Does Putin’s vision for Russia more closely resemble the Russian Empire or the USSR?

Here is my analysis:

1. Putin is an arbitrary ruler, constrained by no particular doctrine: You can argue that this is a good description of Stalin, but even he had to make some pretense of being a communist, and his successors were more oligarchs and bureaucrats than dictators. Advantage: Empire.
2. Putin has no obvious successor, which will lead to instability when he is gone: Succession was not a problem for the autocracy, but it was at times for the USSR. Advantage: USSR.
3. Putin’s repression is limited to actual opponents of his regime, not entire economic classes: Advantage, Empire, which featured a smaller secret police and prison camp system than the USSR.
4. Putin personally controls and disposes of most of the wealth in Russia: His kleptocracy resembles a feudal state more than anything in the 21st Century. Advantage: Empire.
5. One of Putin’s apparent objectives is to reunite the former Soviet republics under the leadership of Russia. That was the way the USSR was run, but those republics were part of the Empire, too. Advantage: Even.
6. Putin supports the Russian Orthodox Church and at least claims to stand for traditional Russian values: Advantage, Empire. The Communists tore down churches.

And so, in spite of the fact that Putin served in the USSR, he is more tsar than dictator. The real question is whether his ambitions extend outside the USSR’s boundaries to include portions of the Warsaw Pact. That would be a tiebreaker; it is TBD.

Ross Douthat doesn’t exactly downplay January 6, but he certainly doesn’t want us to overreact. To him, the riot was just a typical half-baked man on golf cart action that had little public support and was easily thwarted by responsible officials from both parties. If push comes to shove in 2024, they will be responsible again. Trust us, and have faith in the system.

Douthat sounds a bit like the Wizard of Oz at times. Forget the fact that Trump still has the strong support of GOP legislators and voters even after the riot. Ignore the purges of anyone who dares to speak against him in public. Disregard the polls that show that GOP voters overwhelmingly view Biden as an illegitimate president, and think the system needs to be blown up to save “Real America.” Pay no attention to the right-wing pundits who openly regard Biden voters as something other than real Americans. Don’t look at all of the right-wing nuts with guns, and forget January 6 and all of the vote suppression legislation that is being rammed through GOP legislatures. All that is a distraction. Believe me when I tell you that the GOP isn’t really a counterrevolutionary party, in spite of all of the noise, and that everything will be fine as long as the left doesn’t do anything to provoke reactionaries even further.

The fact is that conditions have changed for the worse since January 6. Before then, there was no orthodox position within the GOP opposing the legitimacy of the election; today, there is. Every GOP officeholder with authority over elections is going to be subjected to enormous pressure to take any steps necessary to prevent a Democratic victory in 2024. Under those circumstances, it is reasonable to assume they will suck it up and do their duty regardless of their self-interest? I think not.