As George W. Bush understood, and Vox explains, limited government just isn’t very popular. This is something that Donald Trump also understands:
“Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security, they want to do it on Medicare, they want to do it on Medicaid. And we can’t do that. And it’s not fair to the people that have been paying in for years and now all of the sudden they want to be cut.”
When Republican governors try to adhere to their no-tax pledges without angering the people with corresponding cuts, you get the kind of fuzzy math and budget deficits that are now being reckoned with in Louisiana.
On Monday morning, the first full day of the Louisiana legislative special session, Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne announced more bad news: The current year’s fiscal deficit wasn’t $940 million; it was actually $957 million, due to $17 million in FEMA money from Hurricane Gustav that is still outstanding. A few hours later, the president of the University of Louisiana system said that Nicholls State may have to close temporarily for two weeks during the spring semester, even under a “best case budget scenario.” And at the end of the day, the Plaquemines Parish Public Defenders Office announced it’d be closing its doors on Wednesday. “It’s run out of money,” Julia O’Donoghue of The Times-Picayune reported on Twitter.
We also learned on Monday, in a report by the legislative auditor, that, due to the accounting gimmicks of former Gov. Bobby Jindal and the Bond Commission (which is chaired by Treasurer John Kennedy), Louisiana will incur $71 million in interest from the use of bond premiums and $160 million in interest from the use of a short-term bond defeasance, both of which were completely avoidable.
Of course, Bobby Jindal is out the door and doesn’t have to take responsibility for his accounting gimmicks and the resulting devastation being experienced now in the Bayou State.
But, if limited government was politically palatable, Jindal wouldn’t have borrowed all that money to maintain services.
No, the appeal of George W. Bush was more in his swagger than in his ideology. “Compassionate conservatism” caught in the throats of relatively few conservatives so long as it was succeeding in punishing liberals and making them crazy.
So, too, with the appeal of Donald Trump. Evangelicals like him despite his adultery and womanizing and foul language and lack of piety and decorum. They don’t mind his many heresies against limited government and Conservative Movement orthodoxies.
What they want is someone who will fight liberals.
If they piss off the intellectuals and cultural elites, that’s a huge bonus. Being politically incorrect is a big feature in Trump’s popularity with evangelicals, not a bug.
All Trump has to do is to promise to fight for them. It doesn’t matter to them if he actually shares their values. They’ve had their fill of politicians who claim to share their values and, yet, can’t stop the wave of demographic and cultural change that is going on in this country.
Trump offers them the best of both worlds. He’ll fight and anger liberals, but he’ll stop the influx of foreigners, he’ll give up on the magic benefits of free trade that never materialize in their communities, and he’ll protect the government programs that they rely upon rather than promising to gut them.
This is probably what they’ve always wanted. But it’s just become more clear now that the standard Republican Party is not representing their interests.
The era of limited government is over, and that means a lot of people are without a party.
These trade agreements should be a big issue in the coming election. Neoliberals are totally untrustworthy on that subject and TTIP is the worst they have come up with to date.
You pin it here.
Thank you.
AG
Limited “limited government” is over.
The desire for ‘limited government’ never extended somehow to the personal sphere and personal behavior. There, unlimited government somehow was o.k.
I think Yglesias in that Voxsplainer misses the extent to which the idea–
–is just something the money conservatives made up to get silent-majority anti-hippie votes, which they didn’t expect to seize control of their party.
The parallel between GWB and Trump is very elegant, though, and especially emphasizing the insanely regressive character of Trump’s tax proposals (even as he pretends to be sticking it to the “hedge-fund guys”). That’s what the establishment Republicans will cling to when they’re forced to embrace Trump (if that’s what is really going to happen).
The Tory ideal of “limited government” was always a bit of a McGuffin too, just as much as crazed nationalism is, in any case. Conservatives never invoked limited government when they wanted to regulate unions or control poor people’s sex lives. Reagan didn’t shrink government any more than W did, just relaxed its inhibitory effects on the behavior of rich people. Conservatism is always about government of the lower orders, by and for the upper ones. Everything else is just “how are we going to get the peasants to vote for us?”
Well said, especially your last paragraph. The idea of “limited government” is a fake-out. I don’t think the conservatives I know could really ever even give a good definition of what it means, other than (for my wealthier friends) “less taxes.”
No one has ever really “shrunk” the govt. Much as many citizens like to bitch and moan about “big govt,” nothing much ever changes.
Frankly, our corporate overlords don’t really give a stuff in any case. As you indicate, it’s all about the Benjamins… or really the Woodrow Wilson$. How much can the .0001% fleece the rubes and still get them to vote for their guys ‘n gals??
Conservative citizens complain about “big government” the same reason they complain about deficit spending: they’re repeating what they heard on television.
What I’m absolutely loving about this election cycle is how it’s revealing the complete lack of any thinking in the Republican population…how they were never on board for any of the “ideas” from William F. Buckley on down to the present. All of that was as irrelevant as it was fraudulent; they needn’t have bothered.
Yastreblyansky’s wonderful attacks on David Brooks pinpoint this: how all of those academically rigorous, intelligent conservative voters so concerned with these “pressing issues” put forward by his bretheren are imaginary and probably always were.
It’s fun to think that all this high-falluting suit-and-vest clad high conservative thought was never anything more than an excercise in self-and-other deceit, nothing more than grown men playing at being intellectuals…
Oh, I think that’s exactly what’s happening, and I agree that it’s fun as hell.
There was never any genuine academic rigor to people like Buckley, anyway…they played “the smart guy” the way Trump plays “the business success,” as a role the movement needed filled in order to work right.
It was said of Gingrich, I think: “a stupid man’s idea of a what a smart person looks like”
The ones who have shrunk it are the present Democrats, thanks to the 2010 budget compromise.
The fallacy is that conservatives want to selectively limit the governments’ scope (to just protecting private property, contracts and safety) but that doesn’t mean limiting the governments size or intrusiveness (creating the NSA fits in with this philosophy). So it’s not really about limiting a meddling government as it is about restricting government to those services it provides to the upper classes.
The ’emperor has no clothes’ moment we’re experiencing is due to the fact that GOPers are accepting things from Trump that they immediately reject when it comes from MSM/libs, such as Bush was a dolt.
Trump easily pivots to harshing on all 1%-ers (other than himself, I guess), which will have plenty of appeal to people on our side of the aisle. Are we so sure of our voters that we shouldn’t worry that a lot of folks who aren’t thrilled with HRC would end up going for Trump? (And I say that as a pretty ardent Bernie supporter!)
Trump is privileged by GOP voters to say anything — and at least some of what he’s saying is the same thing we’ve been trying to tell GOPers for decades.
If I have to bet who would be better able to fend off Trump, I’d pick Bernie, though in truth I’m not 100% sure any Dem can beat Trump.
I must confess that this latest phase/turn of phrase of Trump is, uh, um, interesting. That he’s bellowing out the real truth about the W Admin has been fascinating to witness, along with the associated pearl clutching on the fainting couch.
Will putative D-voters “cross the aisle” to vote for Trump should he become the nominee – or run third party? Sure. I really think so bc some of my D-voter friends aren’t particularly tuned in and are pretty much as low-information as any low-info types on the R side.
So I’m sure some D voters will go for Trump if given half a chance. And what is the DLC going to do to counter such defections? I can tell you in one word: NOTHING.
DLC = less than useless. They’ll be lining up to genuflect to Trump behind closed doors and kiss his yuuuuge ring. And Trump will be happy to extend his short fingers and let them slobber at his feet. Count on it.
As our assessment of Trump’s chances at the nomination is refined we really need to consider our options in that event.
I have an idea for just that situation. It’s called the UTP Movement – UNIFY then PRIMARY
2016 UNIFY against GOP
2016 UNIFY for 9th Supreme Court Vote
2020 PRIMARY Clinton
Let the MSM and Hillary and all her corporate sycophants, hangers-ons, and trough drinkers know up front:
OUR VOTE IS NOT FOR CLINTON
IT IS AGAINST THE GOP
SHE CAN EXPECT A SERIOUS PRIMARY CHALLENGE
Anybody think this could take-off if it was a ready-to-go-campaign the day Bernie drops out ? And I pray that day never comes!!! Feel the Bern!!!
The new era has to be one of green keynesianism, of necessity. Massive spending to get out of depression, focused on mitigating the effects of the environmental crisis
This is limited government. LA is now Greece or more to home Puerto Rico. In reality, there is no more government. Taxes have been cut to the point where any revenue raised barely covers interest on the money owed to the banks/hedge funds. The state legislator is reduced to passing religious freedom, abortion, voter fraud, and important restrictions on who and where people can use the bathroom.
Indeed, the states have blown up government and reduced it to wasteland. They don’t have the credit card that the fed govt has.
Residents of the State of Illinois:
TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF VOTING!!!
Not registered to vote?
DOES. NOT.MATTER.
You can register to vote and vote at the same time.
It’s called Grace Period voting.
YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE.
For Registered voters:
EARLY VOTING BEGINS FEBRUARY 29TH!!!!
So, load up the car full of those non-voters and get thee to a Grace Period location.
I agree with you that the era of limited government is over, and so does Thomas Piketty.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2016/feb/16/thomas-piketty-bernie-sanders-us-electi
on-2016
The very thing about limited government and the South is that throughout the history of the South, it was the plantation owners who denied government sponsorship of infrastructure or only infrastructure that served their interests like canals for inland upland cotton plantations. Roads and schools became a project of the industrialists, primarily textile, tobacco, furniture manufacturers, although Birmingham had its steel industry. With the New Deal, rural electrification, and increases in public schools, and public health in eliminating several widespread diseases, the public became interested in what government could do.
…Until the courts struck down Southern de jure segregation. The march from Impeach Earl Warren to “limited government” took 20 years. The destruction of many public schools took another 20 years. And we are 16 years into a mood that might end with the loss of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the Cape Hatteras National Seashore to privatization.
It was wages that declined, progressive taxation eroded, displacement of federal and state taxes to local governments to keep the “modern services” going that fueled the cry for “limited government”. The individual value proposition had been reversed from the days of FDR. And it wasn’t ordinary folks who wound up keeping more of their income.
What politicians are going to make the old Democratic demographic aware of the way they were fleeced by the notion of “limited government”? And distracted by the “culture war”?
The scariest truth revealed during the 2016 Election Season:
George W. Bush was indeed, ‘THE SMART ONE.’
Everytime I think about it, I shiver.
Indeed, and that apparently includes Neil, Marvin, and Dotty as well. At least their “smarts” were matched by their level of ambition.
The limits in the new era have to do with natural resources and human labor, not capital. We are awash in capital, and thus also awash in debt for ridiculous projects, just like the Third World countries of 30 years ago. Global empire (Luce’s American Century) now looks like one of the most ridiculous. Even Dwight Eisenhower’s little noticed Goals for Americans looks a little silly. And the notions of space exploration on an extensive scale now seem to be limited by the energy required to escape earth’s gravitation field. That might explain why we’ve never been visited; the energy budget required and the energy available to be used makes the effort finally impossible over a long period of time.
More broadscale craft labor (in the labor union sense) and coupled intellectual labor are the second aspect of the new era. I knew a college-educated physicists who in the back-to-the-land era of the 1970s became a potter in the NC mountains. There is no way to escape the feeling that his understanding of physics contributed to his practice as a potter and his pottery generated some insights into the physics of materials that might not have been written down because the Boomer generation could only imagine having one career while experiencing in a lifetime five or more.
The third limit is that of a flip back from globalism to parochialism, limited only by how long it takes for government airline and internet policy to make those technologies so secure that they are both too expensive and irritating to use. You might just have to live with your conservative neighbors and they might just have to live with their progressive neighbors or there might be a rearrangement of political philosophies.
This will require a stable devolution of power from Washington and the nexus of global capitals out to more distributed regional forms of political geography for activity. And maybe even more complicated political geography between political activities and activities that, for example, require honoring the physical geography, like watersheds or soil areas or mineral deposits or historic waste disposal areas.
Bringing this forward is pretty complicated. The most likely scenario is that we will never try and that silly cultural trends, trash talking, and superficial team divisions will finally bring us down. The current election dynamics are not a moment for optimism.
Jeb Bush confronted like never before by worried supporters
By Ed O’Keefe February 17 at 4:44 PM
SUMMERVILLE, S.C. — He’s stuck in the polls and just lost a major endorsement. And now voters are in open panic about the fate of Jeb Bush.
The Republican presidential candidate was barraged by conflicting advice from supporters increasingly distressed by the rise of GOP front-runner Donald Trump and that the former Florida governor’s campaign has stalled.
One guy urged him to talk more about his compassion. Another told him to take Trump’s attacks on the chin and stay substantive. A third man urged him to work harder to spread the word nationally.
Never before had Bush faced supporters so annoyed and worried about his fate. They quickly turned a campaign rally on a country club gazebo here into an open campaign strategy session — with dozens of reporters watching.
Adding to the awkwardness, the advice started flying just minutes after South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley announced plans to endorse Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) for the GOP nomination. It was a major blow to Bush, who personally likes Haley, campaigned for her and has helped develop her education policy. Bush was so eager to win her support that he deployed his brother, former president George W. Bush, to meet with Haley on Monday.
OT: Well, DUH!
Like I said…folks thought just because we didn’t speak up everytime they insulted this President that we weren’t noticing. We have a ledger, and we notated ALL.
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Blacks See Bias in Delay on a Scalia Successor
By MAGGIE HABERMAN and JONATHAN MARTIN
FEBRUARY 17, 2016
CHARLESTON, S.C. — As he left Martha Lou’s Kitchen, a soul food institution here on Wednesday, Edward Gadsden expressed irritation about the Republican determination to block President Obama from selecting Justice Antonin Scalia’s replacement on the Supreme Court.
“They’ve been fighting that man since he’s been there,” Mr. Gadsden, who is African-American, said of Mr. Obama, before pointing at his forearm to explain what he said was driving the Republican opposition: “The color of his skin, that’s all, the color of his skin.”
When Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said after Mr. Scalia’s death on Saturday that the next president, rather than Mr. Obama, should select a successor, the senator’s words struck a familiar and painful chord with many black voters.
After years of watching political opponents question the president’s birthplace and his faith, and hearing a member of Congress shout “You lie!” at him from the House floor, some African-Americans saw the move by Senate Republicans as another attempt to deny the legitimacy of the country’s first black president. And they call it increasingly infuriating after Mr. Obama has spent seven years in the White House and won two resounding election victories.
They wanna do this..go ahead..folks are ready and not having this foolishness.
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Political Animal Blog
February 18, 2016 10:00 AM
The Last Stand of the Insurgency
By Nancy LeTourneau
Conservative groups are lining up to get behind Majority Leader McConnell’s stand to obstruct ANY nominee President Obama puts forward to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. Hugh Hewitt echoes the sentiment in a column titled: No hearings. No votes.
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That “divinely ordained way things are supposed to be” includes white supremacy, control of women’s reproductive choices, marriage between one man and one woman, and the elevation of gun rights over every other constitutional right.
But America is changing. And all of those things are threatened. That is what has conservatives so terrified and angry…to the point that people like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz now lead the fight for the next Republican presidential nomination.