Screen Shot 2018-12-16 at 12.31.37 PM
PM Carpenter, your host. Email: pmcarp at mchsi dot com.
Screenshot 2024-02-20 at 11.46.30 AM
The greatest.

***

  • ***

********


« To Democrats, I would advise patience | Main | Will anyone notice - that Webb is out? »

October 20, 2015

Comments

Peter G

So we had our Canadian election and the Liberal party did extremely well. This is the way a political system is supposed to work. Accrued dissatisfaction with the Conservative party, ten years in power, led to a switch back to the Liberals. Long viewed as Canada's natural governing party they lost their way and a good hunk of their base in Quebec to the separatist Bloc Quebecois. The last election brought a brief dalliance with the NDP in Quebec making them the official opposition but now they've moved back to the Liberals. My question would be why this doesn't occur in the US given the disapproval ratings Congress enjoys. I get that the redistricting process in the US is politicized but if everybody everywhere is unhappy with the performance of the Republicans, including most Republicans, this inertia seems inexplicable to me. Let us all hope you have called this correctly and the coming whacks on the head with Truman's proverbial shovel will cause the electorate to turn around and see who is whacking them. That would be nice.

Anne J

To be honest, I can't figure out the difference between the so-called establishment and the radical fringe. To me as far as the republican primaries are concerned, is the only difference between the establishment and the wombats at the top of the polls, is that the establishment candidates have held or currently hold elected office. As far as rhetoric goes, they are still spewing forth the same right winger conspiracy nut talking points as the wombat wing. Even in congress, regarding the partisan political Benghazi hearings, the establishment had plenty of opportunity to shut down the wombats by saying "No more hearings, they will only make us look partisan after seven other hearings revealed nothing",but of course their lust for power was too overwhelming for rational thought. Then there was the joke of the Planned Parenthood shoutings-not-hearings over thoroughly debunked doctored videos. The fact that it was already public knowledge that the videos were discredited, did not stop the establishment from not stopping the wombats from dragging in Cecile Richards for a public grilling where they only ended up humiliating themselves. Cold comfort, though, to women everywhere in this country who have lost so much access to vital health care needs because of republican political posturing.

shsavage

While it may be true that everybody, everywhere is unhappy with the GOP, Peter, the problem remains that the country is split on why they are angry with the GOP. As the current civil war in their party indicates, a substantial clot of the GOP base is angry to the point of rebellion because the GOP isn't radical and obstructionist enough. In the meantime, the business end of the party realizes it ought to be engaged in at least the semblance of governing. In this they are in agreement with the Democrats, and find themselves in broad agreement at least with the centrist Democrats. (I'm not especially pleased about that, by the way, as I believe that both parties have cozied up to Wall Street to the detriment of the rest of us.) But if the business end of the GOP wants to participate in governance, they might consider that their best option would be to renounce the GOP entirely, leaving it to the mind-farting rump of the Freedom Caucus, and join the Democrats to form a new majority in the House.

Peter G

That's more or less the way I expected and wrote that this will play out. The business interests that support and in fact are the Republican establishment have no use for idiots who don't understand what a debt ceiling is. I think that if the control of the party devolves to the bomb throwers they will bail. Mind you that's only one of a range of scenarios that describe GOP fragmentation but I think it a plausible one.

Bob

Congratulations to Canada. It will be interesting to see how Justin Trudeau, son of Pierre Trudeau, manages. Pierre is probably still the most popular Canadian politician in the US, because he was debonaire and dated some American entertainment stars. Less known is that he was an excellent politician.

On top of redistricting we have the electoral college and the Senate, with two members from each state regardless of population, to stand in the way of democracy. Parliamentary systems do have their advantages.

Peter G

So this is some of the best assigned reading PM has provided for us in a single piece. Good stuff. Brooks is completely wrong as usual. The best lack all conviction my ass. The best of the Republican party, if such Brooks would describe them, invited in the worst and made them right at home. Wehner insists there are places they should not go. Which rather ignores the fact they've been going there for so many years they've got affinity membership cards. Say something particularly nutty and they'll comp you a slot in their presidential primaries.

Bob

One 30,000 ft. view is that Brooks is actually right about something for a change despite his being out in space somewhere among spheres, suns and planets. "Democratic capitalism" was actually seen by a majority of the big political brains as the next logical step in the evolution of American, and world, democracy. Republicans, with their unwavering faith in capitalism and private business, put all their chips on the idea.

As in last week's piece, however, Brooks' ideology leaves him incapable of seeing cause and effect. He blames mass stupidity and greed for leading to a financial collapse that deprived capitalism of its moral swagger. The greed part is defensible, but not the stupidity. Unmeasurable column-inches were devoted to noting that PhD's of science were being drawn to Wall St. with astronomical salaries to invent new derivatives, high-frequency trading and the like. It has simply turned out that the profit motive and invisible hand are not the perfect social gods conservatives had imagined.

In the mean time Republicans were turning over democracy to the private sector. They privatized prisons, the armed forces, legislation, utilities, political campaigns and much else. As it turns out this didn't benefit the average Republican or conservative, and they are now angry. Especially angry are those who believed Republican leadership gave a damn about Christian roots, small business, or individual citizens. There's going to be a lot of confusion for a long time.

Bob

The main difference between the Republican establishment and radical fringe is that the establishment has a lot more money and smarts, though you'd never believe it whenever the establishment candidates open their mouths.

Anne J

Well I have been thinking about your question, Peter and yes you are right about our politicized redistricting process, even though we don't do gerrymandering here in California. If we have a bad republican congressional lifer in a district, it's usually because he/she is elected by people who think the same way. Maybe in other areas of the country, democrats don't feel that they have any chance of winning, so they defeat themselves before entering into the race. Maybe it could start small with democrats getting confident enough to try out their ideas on the citizens, be brave enough to find a voice and maybe some small donors (money,always money!) so they can campaign on their ideas, and then the voters really will feel as though they have a choice on election day. Then maybe with new ideas will come new conversations. New conversations can become new attitudes. New attitudes can become new legislation. New legislation can become new public policy. I never saw Barack Obama, the president I proudly voted for twice as the person to bring change to the country. I saw him as the man with the vision to see the inevitable change that was coming and he was the best man for the job to guide the country through such change. I don't know if he saw it that way, but I am glad he won both times.

Anne J

Money, yes. Smarts, well... enough to win an election anyway and the radical fringe really couldn't win without the establishment's help.

Matt

Most U.S. Congressional districts are highly lopsided in partisan affiliation, in a way that disadvantages Democrats, and has more to do with natural clustering that with the undeniable effects of gerrymandering. It is common for urban Congressional districts to have an 85/15 or 80/20 split toward the Democratic Party. The typical solid red Republican district is more likely to split 70/30 or even 60/40. Thus, Democratic candidates received 1.2 million more votes in the 2012 Congressional election, but won 33 fewer seats. This structural tilt toward a Republican Congress gets amplified in off-year elections, when a high proportion of the Democratic electorate simply doesn't show up. Old white people are reliable voters, and disproportionately Republican.

Peter G

Well sort of. Liked that is. Nixon hated every cell of Trudeau's body. Strom Thurmond was another non fan. At one time Strom expressed outrage and disbelief that he had publicly declared Trudeau to be a communist and that we had then dared to re-elect him.

Peter G

You raise a good point about something else that Brooks does not understand. Nor did anyone that believed capitalism as an economic system was ineluctably linked with any form of democracy or system of government. Capitalism flourishes in dictatorships and kingdoms and oligarchies. It flourishes everywhere it is allowed to flourish. There was some feeling that rising economic wealth would somehow translate into demand for political power. I'm sure it does too for the people that have the accumulated wealth. That anyone would believe such people would seek broader political power for anyone else but themselves always seemed kind of dumb to me. Capitalism does not generate democracy that I can see.

Bob

Probably a majority of Americans would consider having Nixon and Thurmond as enemies a plus.

Bob

If you look at it as dividing the means of production among all the citizens and letting the wisdom of crowds make economic and political decisions it makes a sort of sense. What's impossible for me to see is how anyone ever thought it could work in practice. The people best positioned to take the most advantage always would have. It's not like all the little 401(k)s and day traders are going to counterbalance the managers of a major bank.

Jorge

On behalf of wombats everywhere, I would like to point out that we are in no way related to bats; we're marsupials (really cute ones, actually), and we burrow -- we don't roost. We are certainly not related to moonbats, especially the barking variety of moonbat found in large numbers at Ben Carson campaign events. Also, PM, I think the New Yorker has retired the "Block That Metaphor" feature. But I enjoyed the image of roosting wombats anyway.

Jorge

I'm advised by Wikipedia that "moonbat" is more properly reserved for those of the left that are judged to be out of touch with reality, and that the corresponding term for people on the right is "wingnut." Perhaps "wombat" is a partial merger of "wingnut" and "moonbat?"

The comments to this entry are closed.