I think this makes a very strong case against the danger of the American 'populist' Right becoming too "promiscuous with its animosities". But I live in a country whose recent history is a salutary warning about what can happen when its conservative political and intellectual class has no fire at all in its belly.
A View From the UK: The UK Conservative Party has been 'in power' for the last 13 years and yet its record in fighting the corner of conservative voters has been beyond dismal. 'Left liberalism with a slight time delay' is the kindest description of its record. There are many reasons for this (maybe even some excuses) but a holding of sound conservative principles but with a complete lack of passion about fighting for them is the - yes tragic - story of the British conservative political and intellectual class.
As a result Britain is much further down the path of a quiescent cultural wokification than the US (notwithstanding the latter's current apocalyptic political media noise). The UK is a warning to other Western countries about the dangers of going too far down the road of conciliatory conservatism-minus-passion. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/mrs-thatcher-and-the-good-life
Immigration & wars are the core issues of the bipartisan elite and the bipartisan elite is willing to put Trump in prison before compromising on either. Trump would've signed any spending bill that Ryan & McConnell put in front of him so I don't see that as the critical issue.
They've already compromised. You get both unlimited (illegal) immigration (so they're compelled to be subjects rather than citizens) and endless war spending.
Both sides win, and they'll get Trump imprisoned just to drive the point home that they can do what they want.
"Paul Ryan, who once made serious proposals for putting entitlement spending on a sustainable path"
Despite periods in which he had a trifecta, Paul Ryan failed to pass any meaningful fiscal reforms.
Wikipedia summarizes how "serious" Paul Ryan was:
---
As of August 2012, Ryan had been the primary sponsor of more than 70 bills or amendments,[65][66] and only two of those bills had become law.[67] One, passed in July 2000, renamed a post office in Ryan's district; the other, passed in December 2008, lowered the excise tax on arrow shafts.[68][69]
---
Paul Ryan's most important legislative vote while in office was his authorization of the Iraq War, which didn't exactly help America's fiscal situation. Ryan continued to support funding for Iraq and Afghanistan well into the 2010s, and was generally a Warhawk.
Paul voted in favor of the Medicare Part D expansion, the largest GOP backed entitlement increase in a generation.
Per your talk about election disputes, Paul Ryan supported an investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election by the FBI. He said many times throughout the Trump presidency that Russia interfered with the election.
His actions during the George Floyd era was nothing to write home about either.
So what we are left with is an establishment Warhawk with a bad social policy track record that wasted decades of GOP political capital on budget legislation that never passed. The largest entitlement increase in a generation, Obamacare, happened and stuck under his watch.
This is not a serious person, and idolizing him is not serious.
Trump stopped wasting political capital on failed attempts to cut SS/Medicare and repudiated the Iraq and Afghanistan fiascos. The Paul Ryan's of the world should learn something.
Paul Ryan also got rid of sequestration, the first slowdown of the growth of the federal government since Clinton. If he's done anything other than talk about SS reform, which is a nonstarter throughout both parties, I haven't heard of it. I would love to have Arnold's explanation for being in the Paul Ryan camp.
Kling's mild case of Trump Derangement Syndrome seems to be getting worse - note the level of complaints against Trump vs Biden. (Bush Derangement Syndrome was first articulated around 2003, but Dem demonization of Reps goes back thru Reagan, thru Nixon, Goldwater, and VP Nixon the anti-communist in 1960.)
Biden and the Dems have been worse on deficits & spending, worse than the terrible Trump - but without noting the mild deregulation of Trump and the early tax cut deficits, plus the emergency Covid cash. Tax cuts create economic growth, since taxpayers all have productive things they'd do with more cash. Unlike gov't spending which first goes to bureaucrats trying to figure out what they should spend the new, free, unearned gov't cash on.
The Dem media constantly harps on how any gov't spending cuts show how selfish & heartless the Reps are.
The USA will not have big debt reduction until (a) out of power Democrats decide the Republicans in power are getting too many benefits from deficit spending, or (b) a huge crisis / war / hyper-inflation which results in vast US immiseration and both working class plus elites calling for more responsible gov't, with lower deficits.
To avoid (b) crisis, I support any and every Republican over any Dem.
Today, I support Trump because of his demonstrated ability to get voters to vote - which DeSantis has in Florida, but hasn't shown ability nationally this year; tho the election isn't until next year.
Funny how "this time they mean it" can be read as a snide insult against Reps, especially GOPe (like Paul Ryan), previously failing to do so. But Trump's willingness to dump prior stuff that doesn't work, like many of his cabinet appointments, seems to justify much more hope that he'll be more serious about draining the swamp this time. In 2016, his "lock her up" slogan was excellent - HR Clinton is a lying, bribe taking, incompetent criminal not punished nor even tried for her illegal server. Instead, protected by the Dem deep state.
Arnold has previously complained about Trump's people - but even after 3 years of terrible Biden performance, there has been no similar complaints by him about the various bozos running the gov't and their lousy decisions. Barr was lousy - Garland is worse. Is there any Biden pick better than the last Trump pick?
Trump tried to work with the deep state in 2016, which is partly why he did NOT try to further prosecute Clinton - he thought DC was about making deals and he's a fine deal maker. But one can't make a deal with those who refuse to deal. From the linked article:
"The planning for a second Trump admin is focusing on purging the bureaucracy, something that it had failed to do the last time around, sinking his presidency:"
YES.
I also very much like the 8 year term limit for Federal bureaucrats.
"...Mr Trump’s shock troops will try to wrest power back from the bureaucracy."
This IS what the USA needs - and nobody alive has been fighting the Feds more than Trump in the last 7 years. I expect Trump to be the Rep nominee.
And be likely to get the most legitimate votes in 2024 - but possibly have the election stolen again in some way; perhaps being illegally kept off of ballots (the illegality only being acknowledged after the election). Soldo says at the beginning: "you cannot deny that he is being legally lynched by the powers-that-be." Huge numbers of Dems and NeverTrumpers,, either explicitly or implicitly, like Kling, do deny that unfair treatment, by excusing it for some reason.
Selective enforcement of vague laws is a violation of "rule of law".
Mencken was right- we are getting the government we deserve good and hard. The only problem is we have become too incompetent as a society to learn from this. My advice to any person under the age of 40 today- get out of the cities and get out of the suburbs. Within a decade or two both will be over-run with criminals stealing everything not locked down, and locking it down probably will only work for a while.
What do you mean, the US public votes for less immigration and less wars? The people the US public voted into office are the ones who have been doing all that.
AK’s post inspires me with the hope that one day...one day the Republicans will gain control of government. Try to imagine a day when the party controls the House, the Senate and the presidency! It will be marvelous! Fiscal, diplomatic and cultural responsibility will rain down on a parched land. One day it will happen, I’m sure. Keep your hopes up.
"One can say that the various sexual liberation movements asked for more than 'love the sinner, hate the sin.' They demand that everyone love the sin."—Arnold Kling at link embedded in blogpost
To the contrary, it misses a rather large point: The moral judgement AK refers to that characterizes certain acts or beliefs as sin or sinful is rejected entirely. AK’s aphorism places him outside the same city, much less the same ballpark, as the movement he notes.
Scott Alexander is willing to run as the Republican candidate. (And Democrat, but they don't need him as much.) He's even willing to compromise over exactly which Trump would be monarch. https://reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/s/PcVjqSBiRQ
In 2017, Paul Ryan was leading Republican health care refrom legislation efforts that had a good chance of passing and becoming law. That was the time for policy pundits to cheerlead Paul Ryan's health care legislation. Kling declined to do so. I remember Avik Roy being the only pundit I could find who had good things to say in public about Paul Ryan's health care efforts.
Kling decided to praise Paul Ryan after his signature issue health care efforts failed, after he stepped down from Republican leadership, and build this distorted version of history where Trump fans were to blame.
When Paul Ryan's American Health Care Act of 2017 was shot down in the senate, where it needed a simple majority, 49 Republicans in favor and 3 voted to kill it. Those three were Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and John McCain, who are all anti-Trump establishment Republicans. John McCain famously ran his Senate campaign on repealing Obamacare, and after he was handed a victory, he threw it away, and voted with the Democrats, broke his campaign pledge, and betrayed his voters and supporters.
There are valid things to blame Trump and Trump's fans for. This isn't one of them. John McCain betrayin his own campaign pledge to shoot down Paul Ryan's health care bill is not Trump's fault.
Kling tells the story like Paul Ryan is the only figure who wanted to cut entitlement spending. Trump and many figures in Trump's camp have made similar arguments. Stephen Moore was a leader on Trump's economic team, he wrote the book Trumponomics, he advocated fiscal responsibility, Kling doesn't rebut Moore or disagree with Moore, he just declines to acknowledge Moore.
Kling could use the headline "This Time They Mean It" to refer to establishment Republican's plans to reduce the debt and improve health care policy. They threw away tons of election victories already with nothing to show for it.
"...promiscuous with its animosities." This week's winner of finest locution. And, it is also true, that today's strategy for every politician of every stripe is to inflame rather than conciliate, tear down rather than build up.
" to hold together a coalition that includes fiscal conservatives, working-class voters, recent immigrants striving for success, and at least some libertarians and establishment figures" If that included fiscal conservatives that wanted higher taxes, they'd be Democrats. :)
The establishment GOP and its praxis should be a case study for (electoral) success in the face of failure on its own (political) terms at Harvard Business School and Wharton.
What's worse is Paul Ryan was elected, he was in a top leadership position in the Republican Party, he had pretty much full support of Trump and the Trump wing of the party on issues like health care. Fiscal conservatives dropped the ball on rhetoric; there was no serious attempt to convince the public that Republicans would do something other than take away health coverage. Fiscal conservative pundits, including Kling, didn't praise Paul Ryan's legislation when it had a chance to be passed. And Paul Ryan failed to build consensus and stop in fighting and get the vote of Senators like John McCain.
I think this makes a very strong case against the danger of the American 'populist' Right becoming too "promiscuous with its animosities". But I live in a country whose recent history is a salutary warning about what can happen when its conservative political and intellectual class has no fire at all in its belly.
A View From the UK: The UK Conservative Party has been 'in power' for the last 13 years and yet its record in fighting the corner of conservative voters has been beyond dismal. 'Left liberalism with a slight time delay' is the kindest description of its record. There are many reasons for this (maybe even some excuses) but a holding of sound conservative principles but with a complete lack of passion about fighting for them is the - yes tragic - story of the British conservative political and intellectual class.
As a result Britain is much further down the path of a quiescent cultural wokification than the US (notwithstanding the latter's current apocalyptic political media noise). The UK is a warning to other Western countries about the dangers of going too far down the road of conciliatory conservatism-minus-passion. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/mrs-thatcher-and-the-good-life
The United States will have a 2 trillion dollar deficit out of a budget of ~6 trillion.
https://www.econlib.org/now-they-see-the-problem/
Meanwhile an aged probable criminal will face an octogenarian with signs of dementia for the presidency.
On the right there is savage infighting. On the left lunacy.
The Western World weeps.
Immigration & wars are the core issues of the bipartisan elite and the bipartisan elite is willing to put Trump in prison before compromising on either. Trump would've signed any spending bill that Ryan & McConnell put in front of him so I don't see that as the critical issue.
They've already compromised. You get both unlimited (illegal) immigration (so they're compelled to be subjects rather than citizens) and endless war spending.
Both sides win, and they'll get Trump imprisoned just to drive the point home that they can do what they want.
That's a good point on illegal immigrants being desirable to those who want subjects rather than citizens (equals). I hadn't thought of that before.
"Paul Ryan, who once made serious proposals for putting entitlement spending on a sustainable path"
Despite periods in which he had a trifecta, Paul Ryan failed to pass any meaningful fiscal reforms.
Wikipedia summarizes how "serious" Paul Ryan was:
---
As of August 2012, Ryan had been the primary sponsor of more than 70 bills or amendments,[65][66] and only two of those bills had become law.[67] One, passed in July 2000, renamed a post office in Ryan's district; the other, passed in December 2008, lowered the excise tax on arrow shafts.[68][69]
---
Paul Ryan's most important legislative vote while in office was his authorization of the Iraq War, which didn't exactly help America's fiscal situation. Ryan continued to support funding for Iraq and Afghanistan well into the 2010s, and was generally a Warhawk.
Paul voted in favor of the Medicare Part D expansion, the largest GOP backed entitlement increase in a generation.
Per your talk about election disputes, Paul Ryan supported an investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election by the FBI. He said many times throughout the Trump presidency that Russia interfered with the election.
His actions during the George Floyd era was nothing to write home about either.
So what we are left with is an establishment Warhawk with a bad social policy track record that wasted decades of GOP political capital on budget legislation that never passed. The largest entitlement increase in a generation, Obamacare, happened and stuck under his watch.
This is not a serious person, and idolizing him is not serious.
Trump stopped wasting political capital on failed attempts to cut SS/Medicare and repudiated the Iraq and Afghanistan fiascos. The Paul Ryan's of the world should learn something.
Paul Ryan also got rid of sequestration, the first slowdown of the growth of the federal government since Clinton. If he's done anything other than talk about SS reform, which is a nonstarter throughout both parties, I haven't heard of it. I would love to have Arnold's explanation for being in the Paul Ryan camp.
Idolizing him may not be serious, but it is so very satisfying. No doubt Paul Ryan himself is very satisfied with his efforts.
LOL at the idea of Richard Hanania adoring working class voters.
Kling's mild case of Trump Derangement Syndrome seems to be getting worse - note the level of complaints against Trump vs Biden. (Bush Derangement Syndrome was first articulated around 2003, but Dem demonization of Reps goes back thru Reagan, thru Nixon, Goldwater, and VP Nixon the anti-communist in 1960.)
Biden and the Dems have been worse on deficits & spending, worse than the terrible Trump - but without noting the mild deregulation of Trump and the early tax cut deficits, plus the emergency Covid cash. Tax cuts create economic growth, since taxpayers all have productive things they'd do with more cash. Unlike gov't spending which first goes to bureaucrats trying to figure out what they should spend the new, free, unearned gov't cash on.
The Dem media constantly harps on how any gov't spending cuts show how selfish & heartless the Reps are.
The USA will not have big debt reduction until (a) out of power Democrats decide the Republicans in power are getting too many benefits from deficit spending, or (b) a huge crisis / war / hyper-inflation which results in vast US immiseration and both working class plus elites calling for more responsible gov't, with lower deficits.
To avoid (b) crisis, I support any and every Republican over any Dem.
Today, I support Trump because of his demonstrated ability to get voters to vote - which DeSantis has in Florida, but hasn't shown ability nationally this year; tho the election isn't until next year.
Funny how "this time they mean it" can be read as a snide insult against Reps, especially GOPe (like Paul Ryan), previously failing to do so. But Trump's willingness to dump prior stuff that doesn't work, like many of his cabinet appointments, seems to justify much more hope that he'll be more serious about draining the swamp this time. In 2016, his "lock her up" slogan was excellent - HR Clinton is a lying, bribe taking, incompetent criminal not punished nor even tried for her illegal server. Instead, protected by the Dem deep state.
Arnold has previously complained about Trump's people - but even after 3 years of terrible Biden performance, there has been no similar complaints by him about the various bozos running the gov't and their lousy decisions. Barr was lousy - Garland is worse. Is there any Biden pick better than the last Trump pick?
Trump tried to work with the deep state in 2016, which is partly why he did NOT try to further prosecute Clinton - he thought DC was about making deals and he's a fine deal maker. But one can't make a deal with those who refuse to deal. From the linked article:
"The planning for a second Trump admin is focusing on purging the bureaucracy, something that it had failed to do the last time around, sinking his presidency:"
YES.
I also very much like the 8 year term limit for Federal bureaucrats.
"...Mr Trump’s shock troops will try to wrest power back from the bureaucracy."
This IS what the USA needs - and nobody alive has been fighting the Feds more than Trump in the last 7 years. I expect Trump to be the Rep nominee.
And be likely to get the most legitimate votes in 2024 - but possibly have the election stolen again in some way; perhaps being illegally kept off of ballots (the illegality only being acknowledged after the election). Soldo says at the beginning: "you cannot deny that he is being legally lynched by the powers-that-be." Huge numbers of Dems and NeverTrumpers,, either explicitly or implicitly, like Kling, do deny that unfair treatment, by excusing it for some reason.
Selective enforcement of vague laws is a violation of "rule of law".
“Mild case of TDS.” The accusation is bad enough, but the modifier is a knife twist. Show some mercy.
Mencken was right- we are getting the government we deserve good and hard. The only problem is we have become too incompetent as a society to learn from this. My advice to any person under the age of 40 today- get out of the cities and get out of the suburbs. Within a decade or two both will be over-run with criminals stealing everything not locked down, and locking it down probably will only work for a while.
The US public votes for less immigration and less wars, and they get the exact opposite. Then it's hard to say the public really deserves to get it.
That phrase rings true when people get what they asked for and the reality isn't like the fantasy they expected.
What do you mean, the US public votes for less immigration and less wars? The people the US public voted into office are the ones who have been doing all that.
Yancey, I would amend Mencken as follows:
A) We get the government that the majority thinks we deserve. Tyranny of the majority.
B) We get the government that influential interest groups think they deserve.
We get a mix of A and B.
AK’s post inspires me with the hope that one day...one day the Republicans will gain control of government. Try to imagine a day when the party controls the House, the Senate and the presidency! It will be marvelous! Fiscal, diplomatic and cultural responsibility will rain down on a parched land. One day it will happen, I’m sure. Keep your hopes up.
A lapidary insight:
"One can say that the various sexual liberation movements asked for more than 'love the sinner, hate the sin.' They demand that everyone love the sin."—Arnold Kling at link embedded in blogpost
To the contrary, it misses a rather large point: The moral judgement AK refers to that characterizes certain acts or beliefs as sin or sinful is rejected entirely. AK’s aphorism places him outside the same city, much less the same ballpark, as the movement he notes.
Scott Alexander is willing to run as the Republican candidate. (And Democrat, but they don't need him as much.) He's even willing to compromise over exactly which Trump would be monarch. https://reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/s/PcVjqSBiRQ
In 2017, Paul Ryan was leading Republican health care refrom legislation efforts that had a good chance of passing and becoming law. That was the time for policy pundits to cheerlead Paul Ryan's health care legislation. Kling declined to do so. I remember Avik Roy being the only pundit I could find who had good things to say in public about Paul Ryan's health care efforts.
Kling decided to praise Paul Ryan after his signature issue health care efforts failed, after he stepped down from Republican leadership, and build this distorted version of history where Trump fans were to blame.
When Paul Ryan's American Health Care Act of 2017 was shot down in the senate, where it needed a simple majority, 49 Republicans in favor and 3 voted to kill it. Those three were Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and John McCain, who are all anti-Trump establishment Republicans. John McCain famously ran his Senate campaign on repealing Obamacare, and after he was handed a victory, he threw it away, and voted with the Democrats, broke his campaign pledge, and betrayed his voters and supporters.
There are valid things to blame Trump and Trump's fans for. This isn't one of them. John McCain betrayin his own campaign pledge to shoot down Paul Ryan's health care bill is not Trump's fault.
Kling tells the story like Paul Ryan is the only figure who wanted to cut entitlement spending. Trump and many figures in Trump's camp have made similar arguments. Stephen Moore was a leader on Trump's economic team, he wrote the book Trumponomics, he advocated fiscal responsibility, Kling doesn't rebut Moore or disagree with Moore, he just declines to acknowledge Moore.
Kling could use the headline "This Time They Mean It" to refer to establishment Republican's plans to reduce the debt and improve health care policy. They threw away tons of election victories already with nothing to show for it.
"...promiscuous with its animosities." This week's winner of finest locution. And, it is also true, that today's strategy for every politician of every stripe is to inflame rather than conciliate, tear down rather than build up.
" to hold together a coalition that includes fiscal conservatives, working-class voters, recent immigrants striving for success, and at least some libertarians and establishment figures" If that included fiscal conservatives that wanted higher taxes, they'd be Democrats. :)
The establishment GOP and its praxis should be a case study for (electoral) success in the face of failure on its own (political) terms at Harvard Business School and Wharton.
What's worse is Paul Ryan was elected, he was in a top leadership position in the Republican Party, he had pretty much full support of Trump and the Trump wing of the party on issues like health care. Fiscal conservatives dropped the ball on rhetoric; there was no serious attempt to convince the public that Republicans would do something other than take away health coverage. Fiscal conservative pundits, including Kling, didn't praise Paul Ryan's legislation when it had a chance to be passed. And Paul Ryan failed to build consensus and stop in fighting and get the vote of Senators like John McCain.
“Repeal and Replace!”