More Proof Conservatives are to Blame for Everything

Via Ezra Klein, a very interesting academic paper by J. Lawrence Broz, political science professor at the University of California, San Diego. Professor Broz finds some striking correlations between financial collapses and the politics of the governments that bring them. Fancy that? And conservatives have been telling us for decades that it's just a natural cycle. Cycle? Yes. Natural? Not so much.

Financial cycles of boom and bust are as old as finance itself -- a fact that has led some observers to infer that human nature may be a fundamental cause of financial cycles. But “politics” also influences financial cycles by way of government policies and regulations. I argue that policies and regulations vary predictably with the partisan character of the government, creating a partisan-policy financial cycle in which conservative, pro-market governments preside over financial booms while left-wing governments are elected to office after crashes.

This is something I think most people who have been around awhile feel instinctively, so it's nice to see research backing it up.

One of These Things is Not Like the Other

Kim Strassel managed to get under my skin Sunday morning. Somehow she landed on the This Week roundtable and tossed a smoke grenade on the topic of violent, anti-government rhetoric on the Right.

(http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/video/roundtable-financial-regulation-10406844 about 1 minute, 30 seconds in.)

The question was raised following former President Clinton’s remarks about how all of this reminded him eerily of the anti-government rhetoric of the ‘90s (which of course led to the Mura Federal Building bombing). Strassel’s ‘argument’ was that liberals seemed to think it was fine when Code Pink interrupted congressional meetings and back then it was just “public discourse” and “considered good.”

Just a small pet peeve. If one of the central arguments you dust off whenever someone argues a principled point with you is, ‘well the other side was bad once too,’ then you represent a not so serious political perspective. And if your points of comparison are substantially dissimilar, then don’t expect anyone to consider your perspective serious at all.

Look, I’m not arguing liberals are inherently morally superior when it comes to overheated rhetoric versus people on the Right. America has seen violent, anti-government rhetoric from the Left in the past, but now, as in the ‘90s, it’s primarily from the Right and the troubling thing is that conservative politicians are embracing these folks rather than distancing themselves. When Congressman Steve King sympathizes with the nut who flew his plane into the IRS building or suggests the Tea Party come to DC and take over the place and prevent the elected government from functioning, he should be ostracized by others on the Right. They should be coming forward to say this is unacceptable. Instead we hear crickets.

PS-I have yet to find a liberal that has a positive thing to say about the antics of Code Pink. No congressperson I know of thought their interruptions of hearings were a good thing. And as annoying as Code Pink was/is, I don’t recall them ever calling for a violent revolution.

Grave Robbers

This week, if you were to meet a Republican time traveler from the 1860s or 1980s, you would discover them more shocked than usual. They would stumble on notables of their party, officially celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Confederacy in the state of Virginia. A governor of the Grand Old Party saying, before finally relenting after a chorus of criticism, that mentioning the role of slavery in the conflict was “not significant” enough to be included in the original proclamation.

They might be confused to find a black Democratic president who considers himself an inheritor of their legacy, and who began his long path to the White House from the same old granite steps in Springfield that gave rise to President Lincoln’s career, being pilloried by members of Lincoln’s own party with terms of “secession”, “interposition” and “nullification.”

In fairness, they would also find a comically out of his depth leader of their party who was also black and while not knowing the details of how he came to that post and how he remains there, they may reassure themselves for a moment that their party has made some racial progress.

The 1980s time traveling Republican would be delighted to arrive the week of the largest nuclear arms control agreement since the 1980s, but to the startling awareness that such agreements are no longer proudly bipartisan consensus. Rather they would learn that the leading lights of their party are now against the very idea of nuclear arms reductions and consider those who are, dangerously weak and naive (all while continuing to fetishize the Reagan name, if not his actual foreign policy principles). Reagan would be more confused than usual as to why we hadn’t reduced these unusable weapons even further, given the absence of the Soviet Union the last 20 years.

What are they and we to make of this? Nixon’s grand project is now complete. Congratulations GOP, you are now proud owners of the legacy of the Confederacy. Enjoy that. Continue to court the intemperate, red-faced crowds with their misspelled signs and see how history will judge you.

You have also this week betrayed your beloved Ronnie. And as divisive a figure as he remains, you‘ve managed to abandon his one issue that previously all sides had agreed upon. You are now the party of Bolton and Cheney, Fox News and Palin. I guess you can now stop trying to put Reagan on the $50 bill (although I’m sure you would still love to stick it to that Union general).

You’ve managed to scare off the icons you worship. They’ve gone back through that wormhole, glad to be rid of you.

Jake Tapper is a Douche

I'm proud to announce a new blog. You will find here the sort of thoughtful, insightful cultural and political analysis that one only finds rarely these days. With that, and with the warmest Easter greetings, I would like to say, without delay, that Jake Tapper is a douche.

The name of this blog and the nom de guerre I've purloined are of course from P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves & Wooster stories. Psmith (the P is silent, an affectation Rupert adopted to distinguish his surname) was one of Wodehouse's favorite characters. He was rare in the Wodehouse universe for his sly intelligence and socialistic leanings. From wikipedia:

Psmith is a somewhat selfish young man; however, he is generous towards those he likes. In a typical example from Leave it to Psmith, he perceives Eve, trapped by the rain under an awning, and decides, chivalrous gentleman that he is, to get her an umbrella. Unfortunately for Psmith, he does not, in point of fact, possess an umbrella. He solves this problem by appropriating another man's umbrella; when confronted by the umbrella's owner, Psmith attempts to comfort him by saying it is for a good cause, and, later, when relating the story, says, "Merely practical Socialism. Other people are content to talk about the Redistribution of Property. I go out and do it." (Another of Psmith's quirks is his penchant for nominal socialism, observed mostly in his casual use of "Comrade" as a substitute for "Mister.").

Welcome, Comrade! Let the games begin!