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Well, it’s another week that we must bring you yet another sobering meditation on the state of the Grand Old Party. Today, the Wall Street Journal’s Dan Henninger stops by to discuss his recent column Obama’s Greatest Triumph (it’s paywalled, but the gist is that The president is “is now close to destroying his political enemies—the Republican Party, the American conservative movement and the public-policy legacy of Ronald Reagan.”). Then, the Mad Dog himself, Kevin Williamson joins to discuss chaos in the family, and chaos in the state, his Twitter battles, and of course, The Donald and the corrosive effect he is having on the party and politics in general. But it’s not all bad news – Could Tom Cotton be the solution to a contested convention? We sure hope so…
Music from this week’s episode:
The Party’s Over by Nat King Cole
The opening sequence for the Ricochet Podcast was composed and produced by James Lileks.
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…Contd
So the guy that had the presence of mind to use his eyelids to transmit “T-O-R-T-U-R-E” in Morse Code in Vietnam to camera crews couldn’t see a knife in the back coming from his political opponents? I cannot express my level of disappointment to find out that he was so naive. This guy who survived the Hanoi Hilton was taken by his “distinguished colleagues” like a rube at a used car lot.
As the years went by, and I saw Republican after Republican getting shafted while doing the “my good friend across the aisle” bit, I began to agree more and more that, yes, the GOP is indeed the Stupid Party. Fools playing by rules that their enemies don’t follow, while their enemies laugh that anyone would actually believe that they would play by those rules.
The GOP… especially the higher ups… are filled with Jeremiah Dentons.
Indeed.
But if you also write a bit, and train those children or mentees well, you’re laying the groundwork for the building of the next civilization.
This ain’t the zombie apocalypse. There’ll be another civilization, unless Jesus comes back first.
James,
I read the article that you alluded to at Breitbart about Trump supporters. The section where he describes Trump supporters as “natural conservatives” sounds like many of us at Ricochet. I thought it was a good article written by someone who doesn’t support Trump. Was wondering why you referred to it as a bad piece with comment “these aren’t your father’s Nazis”. I might have misunderstood your point.
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/an-establishment-conservatives-guide-to-the-alt-right/
The tariffs were protectionist, but it’s also worth noting that they were essentially the only source of Federal revenue at the time. The whiskey taxes — which were horrifically intrusive and can’t be otherwise defended — were an attempt to get the interior of the country to contribute to the Federal government.
I think the underlying point holds. So long as the only understanding of justice is a flat tax, every American politician will be a national socialist, as the man so ineloquently puts it. Change the source of funding or the means of taxation as you like: You will not find one that does not rest upon a conflict between few & many. There will never be a way of dealing with taxation or the economy that is neutral politically. In other ways–in important ways–schemes of taxation vary: In this one crucial way, they do not nor cannot.
You may offer a good explanation or a bad–but as I remarked in advance, explanations such as yours depend on a view of politics that centers in prudence–this kind of talk that calls the electorate national socialist, however, depends on a view of politics where there is no such thing as prudence, but only a very limited view of justice.
Great summary EJ. I contend that our Constitutional Republic is dead and has been for a long time. The congress and sit there and think they are important but Caesar has taken over with his Supreme Court to rubber stamp all of his “executive orders”. The Congress are just figure heads that help us think that we still have any kind of Republic but we are done. So sad but true. The numbers don’t matter when you have a shadow government of bureaucrats and judges creating regulations that are essentially laws that effect our daily lives with no say in the matter.
Perhaps, candidates should run on the platform of “hey vote for me because I’m just going to sit in congress and do nothing but enrich myself and family with lobbiest jobs, media etc… I’ll make a good effort to look like I want to actually reduce the size of government but because we don’t have the numbers I just won’t do anything”
Perhaps the voters are also ticked off that they were promised things during a campaign and got nothing.
Yes, Amen to this. Cruz was there for exactly that purpose and that was what a lot of the people who gave the Republicans their majorities wanted from them. Which is why this election is a train wreck, you can only lie to your supporters to a point. You know the whole “boy who cried wolf”
Who are “they.” Who are “people.”
What concerns me is that “people” and “they” equate to Republican voter. If that is true then the conclusion is that Republicans have changed somehow. But that’s the wrong conclusion.
OK, here’s a quick snapshot from a Bloomberg poll:
Starting at bottom, about 1/3 of respondents haven’t participated in the past. Going up we see an even D&R split. Going up again it looks like about 1/3 of the 1/3 have or plan to participate.
On the Republican side I think you have to say that’s mostly Trump. He is bringing in a chunk of people who were always there but didn’t participate. If he can bring that chunk in and keep it to himself then he can win the game.
But it can also be true that all of the typical voters are Cruz-Rubio types. And it can also be true that the 2/3 of the 1/3 are also Cruz-Rubio types.
Meaning Trump’s strong support could be only 1/3 of 1/3 of the party and he can win.
Actually, the lesson is that you can only jerk around your co-workers and be utterly uninterested in anything other than your own self to a point. Cruz has created his own problems- utterly unnecessarily.
You can be an iconoclast, you can swim against the tide, yet be a reasonable unhated co-worker. Mike Lee, Tom Cotton, Ben Sasse, and Tom Coburn (and, for that matter, Marco Rubio) have all followed the same Cruz platform, yet realized that you gain more with principled comity character than you do with short term bombast and confrontation. If Ted Cruz had behaved like Coburn with any modicum of class, he would have 40 Senate supporters and at least 100 more delegates right now.
Casey – Any poll that tells me that 13% of those that participated in a party function but have no clue what party it was tells me we’re screwed no matter what the rest of the results are.
Yea, I guess, if your goal is to just quietly chug along in the halls of power for several terms and hopefully slow the growth of government with amendments to legislation that may or may not become law. But if your goal is for the big prize of president where you get to appoint judges, cabinet officials and use the bully pulpit of the presidency to make significant and lasting changes to the country at large then Ted Cruz’s method may have been the better one. He’s not only going over the head of the media but over the head of the party as well. I guess we’ll have to see, how it works out for him.
With respect to the point made in the podcast that Republicans simply haven’t had the votes in the last few years to thwart Obama:
The objection isn’t so much that the Republicans tried and failed to stop Obama, it is that they saw that the fight was difficult and perhaps impossible to win, and so decided not to fight at all. Sometimes a fight is worth having even if you know you are going to lose.
If Bernie is elected with a Republican Congress, you can bet he’s not going to shrug his shoulders and say that he can’t enact any of his campaign promises because of Republican control of Congress. He will work with Democrats in Congress to propose legislation and use every trick in the book, fair and unfair, to get it passed. Even if he fails, he will have changed the conversation and at least prevented the Republicans from playing offense with their own agenda, being too preoccupied with stopping his.
Congressional Republicans should have been sending bill after bill to Obama, forcing him to veto conservative but popular measures, e.g. on border control. Instead, they went supine and allowed Obama to dictate events. Some of us suspect that wasn’t because they didn’t know better, but maybe because their hearts were never really in it to begin with. It’s hard to fight a losing fight when you don’t really believe in it.
Well said J Climacus.
I also wish that for every “don’t those rubes who voted for the GOP know how a bill is passed, can’t they count?” offered by Rob, Henninger and Co. we also got the seemingly requisite “GOP politicians, especially leadership, are lying through their teeth with their campaign promises” during election season.
The GOP couldn’t even return to regular order on budgeting.
They gave away the ONLY fiscal gain they had accomplished (the sequester).
And they completely gave up generating any momentum and excitement by making Democrats cast unpopular votes to shoot down popular bills.
Then there’s the Iran deal.
But they did manage to slip in some things unpopular with the Democrats: re-instating the EX/IM bank and H1B visa expansion. I think we all see which constituents the GOP is really concerned with.