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Wednesday, February 24, 2016

The Trump moment (updated)

I find the Trump developments rather grotesque and horrible, and this feeling is not alleviated by my having argued last August that his winning the nomination, and for that matter the presidency, was not all that implausible:
Do I think Trump has any chance of winning the GOP nomination? Yes, though I would certainly bet against it. Do I think he has any chance of winning the presidency? A slim one, but not negligible. If he won the nomination, his credibility by that point would be considerable; and it's not as if the Democrats have a frontrunner currently whose viability looks to be assured going forward. But the likelihood that Trump would lose in a general election has sparked some genuine agonizing on the right, and it's kind of funny to watch conservative pundits suddenly embrace the pragmatic electability criteria they spent the past couple of cycles disparaging.
Going forward: mark me down with Ezra Klein in regarding Trump as a genuine threat to American democracy

Mark me down also as disagreeing strenuously with those (including some I respect highly such as Virginia Postrel) who argue that John Kasich should drop out of the race on the putative grounds that this would make a Trump victory less likely. The way to stop Trump is not by rallying behind someone else who offers a diluted version of his terrible attributes, as Rubio does in his ideological shape-shifting and implicit promise to torture terrorism suspects to "find out everything they know."

Moreover, my concern about Trump is not that he'll go on to be the losing nominee but that, if he is the nominee, there is a chance that he might win the presidency. I would prefer a Kasich presidency over a Clinton presidency, but anybody now running --including Sanders and Cruz -- is manifestly preferable to the authoritarian potential of a Trump presidency.

Finally, I should add that I do share one thing with Trump and his supporters, which is that I now care little about the future of the Republican Party (of which I've been a member since 1983). A party that could get itself into this predicament is far from an indispensable bastion of anything worth preserving. The country does need alternatives to the Democrats, but right now the GOP mainly serves the purpose of making the Democrats look more attractive than they deserve.

UPDATED 2/26: I still would like Kasich to be the nominee, but I have to admit my opinion of Rubio has gone way up in the past 24 hours.

UPDATE: But not as much as my estimation of Chris Christie has gone down.

Monday, February 22, 2016

Who wrecked the GOP?

For the record, I agree with this post by Kevin Drum.

UPDATE: Also, I see a glimmer of hope, but it's narrow at the moment.

UPDATE 2: The glimmer of hope gets slightly brighter. Would Vox and the Daily Beast be going after a candidate over nothing if they didn't think he had some chance to win?

Thursday, February 18, 2016

Shultz, climate and why Breitbart.com can't handle the truth

George Shultz has been a voice of reason within the Republican Party on climate policy. The following two paragraphs, from a Washington Post op-ed of his last year, "A Reagan Approach to Climate Change," sum up his approach (click to enlarge):


This is just one of many places in which Shultz advocated a carbon tax, with the caveat that the money should be returned to taxpayers. Now, one reaction on the right to this kind of thinking has been the "everyone makes a mistake once in a while, even George Shultz"-type dismissal given by (now thankfully former) presidential candidate Chris Christie a few months ago. Another reaction is to simply deny that Shultz has said what he's said. That's the tack taken at Breitbart.com today, in a piece by Chriss W. Street titled "Jerry Brown Tries to Flog a New Carbon Tax." Excerpt:

Notice that there's a link to something or another Laffer said, but nothing substantiating the statement that Shultz has "never backed a new carbon tax." That's because it's demonstrably false.

There's a lot wrong on the right these days, and I would put climate science denialism high on that list. But an unwillingness even to face readily evident facts about who disagrees with you is a sure sign your position is in serious intellectual trouble.

UPDATE: Aaron Huertas points out that Breitbart.com's Laffer link leads to something not by Laffer.