Cromwell

The woman who calls herself Stormy

Said “Religious folks tend to deplore me.

I’m only once-born;

Make my life selling porn;

But the Democrats came to adore me.”

The bottom line is that this is a credibility contest between a man who lies so often, even the fact checkers have trouble keeping count, and someone who styles himself as a grown up Eagle Scout.  Realistically speaking, who is going to win that one?

Assume, for purposes of argument, that the GOP suffers a crushing defeat in 2020.  Where does it go from there?  Here are the possibilities:

1.  Shoot the messenger, not the message (Reagan Coalition:  Reactionaries/PBPs):  Sure, we apologize for supporting someone who was divisive, incompetent, and corrupt.  That doesn’t mean there was anything wrong with the mixture of tax cuts, deregulation, and conservative social policy;  we just need a more suitable vessel for that policy.  Someone who looks and talks like Reagan.

2.  The Tea Party, Part Deux (Goldwater Coalition:  CLs/Reactionaries):  We admit that we made promises about balanced budgets after 2008, and then violated them when in office.  This time we really, really mean it.  Trust us.

3.  Real populism, not the faux kind (Douthat Coalition:  CDs/Reactionaries):  Down with Wall Street economics, and up with the white American worker!  Wall Street will follow, because it has nowhere else to go.

4.  The return of compassionate conservatism (Romney Coalition:  CDs/PBPs):  Hey, it got George W. Bush elected twice.  After Trump, he doesn’t look so bad.

#2 and #3 won’t win general elections; #2 repels the center, while #3 turns off the donor class, without which the GOP has no future.  The ultimate answer will be one of the other two.

To my knowledge, there are three plausible explanations for Trump’s strange enthusiasm for Vladimir Putin:

1.  He views Putin coldly as an ideological ally in the battles against limp-wristed liberals and Islamic extremists.
2.  He simply admires Putin, because, like himself, he is an unpredictable strong man who bulldozes his opponents and gets things done.
3.  Putin is blackmailing him.

#1 was a reasonable explanation as long as Bannon, who clearly did believe it, was at Trump’s side.  He’s gone, and the fixation remains, which leaves us with the other two explanations.

If it’s #3, Trump will never change.  If it’s #2, he might, as Putin continues to get in his way.  We’ll see.

It seems that every pundit has a slightly different take on Ryan and his legacy. The latest is Ross Douthat, who calls Ryan a “party man” and insists that anyone who thinks he is an Ayn Rand acolyte in practice is “daft.”

Well, color me daft, because I think Douthat’s analysis, as usual, is incomplete.  Here’s why:

1.  It is true that Ryan has shown a degree of tactical flexibility.  When his “makers and takers” shtick didn’t go over well in 2012, he changed the message to “tough love” for the poor.  He never tried to shut down the government.  He gave up on BAT.  He always did whatever was necessary to keep the GOP in power and provide big tax cuts for rich people.
2.  But to what end?  Even today, he’s talking about pivoting to entitlement cuts in light of the explosion in the deficit that was caused by his tax cut. The difference between “makers and takers” and “tough love” rhetoric is in spin, not the actual measures he is proposing. For him, it’s all about afflicting people he views as being unproductive and giving money to the rich, because rich people are responsible for all of the good in the world, and the rest of us are just moochers. Keeping the GOP in power is the only plausible way of getting from Point A to Point B.  Hence, the tactical flexibility.

Notwithstanding Douthat, supporting entitlement cuts after 2010 wasn’t just the zeitgeist;  it was a choice made by the GOP at Ryan’s insistence.  That conversion, even if it has come to little in practice so far because the base doesn’t like it, will be his most enduring “accomplishment.”

If the mission was to prove that Trump is tougher than Obama without making any meaningful changes on the ground or provoking a military reaction from the Russians, yes.   Otherwise, no;  it was a useless gesture that made the man on golf cart look impotent.

The irony, of course, is that Trump is proving Obama’s point;  simply launching a limited air strike on chemical weapons facilities doesn’t change the political or military equation in Syria, so you have to be prepared to escalate if you want to satisfy the hawks, and where does that end?  That is why I have said consistently that Obama’s mistake was to create the red line–not to refuse to enforce it.

Mediocre world history textbooks frequently make reference to an “age of enlightened despotism” in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.   As the story goes, it was a time in which rulers were shaking off the shackles of religion and dragging their subjects, mostly kicking and screaming, into the modern secular world.  This typically involved the use of force.  Peter the Great and Frederick the Great are viewed as outstanding examples of enlightened despotism.

The fact is that most would-be “enlightened despots” fail.  If you’re going to succeed, you had better be clever enough to be called “The Great” when your reign is over.   Does MBS meet that standard?  Based on his record to date, it seems doubtful.

I read two interesting articles on Vox.com yesterday morning.  The first one, from the invaluable Sarah Kliff, was about an attempt in California to impose uniform unit prices on all private health insurance companies through legislation.  It is clearly a move towards single-payer, but without much of the baggage.  It bears watching in the future.

The second was an article by Dylan Matthews about how Ryanism allegedly paved the way for Trumpism.  I was taken by this article largely because he talked about a “Christian Democratic” alternative for the GOP, which obviously uses my terminology for one of the GOP factions.  Nevertheless, I think he missed some of the nuances of the real story, as follows:

1.  Yes, the GOP clearly could have moved to the center after the debacle of the 2008 election.  Its decision not to had momentous consequences.  However, the seeds of the move towards the CLs and Reactionaries were planted in the domestic and overseas failures of the Bush administration, and became visible during the 2008 campaign, when the crowds were crying for Palin, not McCain.  It’s hard to imagine, even in retrospect, the GOP doubling down on “compassionate conservatism” after the Bush years; the country would have been much better off, but the principal beneficiary would have been Obama, not Mitch McConnell.
2.  Ryanism didn’t pave the way for Trumpism.  For one thing, “Trumpism” isn’t simply a code word for Reactionary ideology;  it just means faith in Donald Trump, whatever crazy thing he might decide to do today.  For another, the GOP gained control of Congress and many state governments between 2008 and 2016. This was hardly a disastrous era for the party.  Finally, Ryan won some victories during the Obama years; the size of government was cut significantly, but he didn’t get any credit for it from his own side.

Reality is more complicated.  With no ideology of his own except self-love, Trump was perfectly happy to outsource most of his program to Ryan after he took office; in other words, “Trumpism” and “Ryanism” have largely been one in practice.  The many failures of the program are due to the divisions within the GOP, and the discrepancy between the promises made to the public and the actual measures proposed in the program, not any split between the two GOP titans.

Pompeo spent most of yesterday trying unsuccessfully to distance himself from the extreme right positions he has taken in the past.  Nobody really believed him, and nobody should.  He’ll be a terrible Secretary of State.

But what’s the alternative?  Working for a boss whose Twitter eruptions are the very negation of diplomacy is a complete nightmare.  James Baker’s not walking through the door.   We have to take what we can get.

At the end of the day, he’ll be confirmed, because we need a Secretary of State during these troubled times, and he at least sees the value of repairing his crippled department. Better a minimally competent Trumpist than a vacuum and a daily blizzard of contradictions.

And if we need someone to play the bad cop more convincingly, Bolton’s already on the job.

Ryan, like all Ayn Rand acolytes, is a CL at heart.  His passion in life has always been to shrink the size of government for the benefit of the wealthy and to the detriment of the poor.  He succeeded in making his views the orthodoxy of the GOP in spite of their unpopularity with actual voters.   I suppose you could call that an “accomplishment,” although it meant that the GOP had to lie about its platform every election, and actually governing against the economic interests of its constituents proved very difficult in practice.

Ryan became Speaker with a large reservoir of goodwill within the party.  Was he a success?   Well, he failed miserably in uniting the factions, although that task may be beyond the ability of any mere mortal.  He failed in his attempts to remake the welfare state.  He could have treated Trump as a third-party president, not a real Republican, but he chose to embrace and enable him, instead.  His one creative idea on taxes, the BAT, went down early.  His only real success was with the mindless tax cut that was passed last year.  It will be modified over time, because it isn’t really working at any level.

I won’t miss him.  Will you?

Steve Bannon is wrong about just about everything, but not this:  America and China are heading for a showdown in the foreseeable future.  It doesn’t necessarily have to involve military force, and it may not be imminent, but it’s going to happen in my lifetime.

In a sense, China is the successor to the USSR as our greatest geopolitical rival, so how do the two stack up?  Here’s my analysis:

1.  Military:  Fortunately, China is not a militaristic society.   The USSR was a greater threat here.  However, China’s superior economy will permit substantial improvements in the country’s military capabilities, if the government, as seems likely, chooses to pursue them.  The gap will probably close fairly quickly.
2.  Ideology:  Soviet communism was a universal ideology with considerable appeal to anyone who was willing to close his eyes to how the system actually worked in practice.  Chinese “communism” is actually a form of Chinese exceptionalism, which doesn’t have any obvious attractions to the rest of the world.  Heavy-handed government actions towards dissidents don’t help, either.  The USSR had the edge here.
3.  Economy:  This one isn’t even close;  the Soviets didn’t make anything anyone wanted to buy except weapons, while China is clearly destined to become the largest economy in the world.

The bottom line is that China represents a very different challenge than the USSR. Its economic model has serious flaws in the long run, but it is doubtful that the system will just implode, as the USSR did.

There are actually three separate conflicts with China, involving industries of the past, present, and future.  Here is where they stand:

1.  The steel and aluminum tariff made no sense whatsoever.  It was an attempt to protect an industry that is, to put it mildly, already mature on specious national security grounds.  It will undoubtedly cost more jobs than it saves.  Finally, very few of our steel and aluminum imports come from China.  What’s not to like?
2.  Protecting intellectual property is a legitimate ongoing issue.  It is doubtful that tariffs, which only invite retaliation, are the best way to accomplish the objective. Working with our allies within the WTO framework is a more logical approach.
3.  Responding to “Made in China 2025” with regard to cutting edge industries of the future is perfectly sensible, given the national security implications of these technologies.  Again, however, imposing tariffs unilaterally is hardly the solution to the problem;  mobilizing the rest of the world to change Chinese behavior is.

Donald Trump demands three qualities of his lawyers:  (a) absolute loyalty; (b) a hyperaggressive approach to litigation; and (c) the ability to spin failures into successes in the media.  Notably absent from this list is the ability to provide dispassionate, sensible legal advice, because he won’t listen to it.  That’s why many prominent lawyers have refused to take him on as a client.

Roy Cohn famously was Trump’s idea of the perfect attorney:  a man who would give no quarter, and would stop at nothing to get what his client wanted.  As it turns out, however, Trump already has his own Cohn, and they are separated only by a “e.”

If Cohen’s story is to be believed, he paid $130,000 of his own money to Stormy Daniels without even consulting Trump, much less with any hope of repayment. What a guy!  If you want absolute loyalty, what better evidence could you have of it?

Of course, no one actually believes this, which is undoubtedly why the search warrant was issued, and why Stormy may ultimately prove to be more dangerous to Trump than Mueller.

                  Caravan

And the caravan is on the way.

I can hear the Fox News people say

Donald Donald stop them short of the border.

Use the Guard if you must to keep order.

La, la, la, la, la.

 

And the caravan hates Fox and Friends.

Their diatribes, it seems, will never end.

We’re just terrorists, in their view.

Think we should just wait in an endless queue.

La, la, la, la, la.

 

Turn off your TV

And let us tell our tale.

Switch off the mindless right.

Then we can get down to what is really wrong.

Crime and corruption and the gangs that kill.

To them, we’re only grist in an evil mill.

 

Turn it off.

Turn it off.

Turn it off.

Fox and Friends.

 

Turn it off.

Turn it off.

Turn it off.

Fox and Friends.

 

Parody of “Caravan” by Van Morrison.

It is an article of faith among CLs that a dollar taken from the private sector and given to the government is a dollar, not merely wasted, but used to curtail your freedom.  And so, in many red states, you have seen a concerted effort to cut taxes and substantially reduce spending on vital public services.  PBPs have tolerated this because, after all, they have been the primary beneficiaries of the tax cuts.

But tax cuts and deregulation can only take business so far.  The Third World plantation model of economic growth doesn’t create educated workers or wealthy consumers; as I’ve noted before, there is no “Mississippi Miracle.”  In addition, at some point, the voters tend to rise up in defense of teachers, decent roads, and providers of public safety.  As a result, we are starting to see some backlash, and the PBPs are starting to split from the CLs in some red states.