What scares the hell out of me? It ain't Trump. It's more of the same.

Krugman resurveys the GOP's economic thinking of the past six years, which has swirled with portents of rocketing interest rates, prognostications of the dollar's collapse, and of course prophecies of "runaway inflation" and "bankruptcy." His set-up is more comical than the punchline: "But the G.O.P. never acknowledged, after six full years of being wrong about everything, that the bad things it predicted failed to take place, or showed any willingness to rethink the doctrines that led to those bad predictions. Instead, the party’s leading figures kept talking, year after year, as if the disasters they had predicted were actually happening."

The Seventeen Wise Men & Lady persist in the party's economic stand-up routine, which only gets funnier. Scott Walker's solution to recent market turmoil was to "cancel the planned visit to America by Xi Jinping, China’s leader"; Chris Christie's response was, says Krugman, "almost" coherent but quintessentially wrong; and Donald Trump's reaction was classic, reactive Donald Trump: "he simply declared that U.S. markets seem troubled because Mr. Obama has let China 'dictate the agenda.' What does that mean?" asks the Nobel Prize winner whose specialty is international economics. "I haven’t a clue — but neither does he."

Krugman concludes emphatically: "If one of these candidates ends up in the hot seat the next time crisis strikes, we should be very, very afraid." Naturally I would be, but I'd less afraid of their emergency economics than of everything else (especially Supreme Court openings and American firepower being at their disposal).

For the empirical truth is that Republicans become modest Keynesians once they become president; it happened to Eisenhower, it happened to Nixon, it happened to Reagan as well as George H.W. and George W. Bush. All manner of fail-safe mechanisms kick in during times of economic crisis … the business community urges prudence … professional economists in white coats throw a net over the frazzled prez … and political advisers remind him that textbook Republican theory would only produce another depression, which, politically speaking, might tend to look bad.

All that GOP blabbering about Grecian bankruptcy, the dollar in free-fall and so forth? I doubt if any of the party's realistic presidential contenders (that would be two) believe a word of it. But who cares? Neither of them has a realistic shot at the White House anyway. For now, it's merely their job to frighten electoral children with grim stories of gotcha-bogiemen.

No, what makes me "very, very afraid" is a Republican Congress, or half a Republican Congress, or even a Democratic Congress with 41 Republican senators. Because it's not really the job of Republican congressfolk to give a damn about the country at large, as they have thunderously demonstrated over the past six years.

Their job is to pamper the cretinous prejudices of their carmine districts and crimson states and to gut any suggestions of sane legislative policy that might emerge from the Democratic White House. Their job is to inflict every possible pain on the American people so as (or so they believe) to reopen the WH doors for a Jeb! or a Donald or whoever the next kleines wunderkind may be. Their job is to destroy today, so that the worlds of Rhett Butler and Beaver Cleaver can be reborn.

We should be very afraid? I'm already there. But my fear has nothing to do with Donald Trump or Jeb Bush. I'm terrified of Texas' 1st congressional district — times 218.

 

Comments

[Anne J]

That's what I'm afraid of as well. What good is a democrat in the white house if most of the congress is still made up of a bunch of rabid right wingers?

[tamiasmin]

What good? Oh, come on. One word: veto.

[lawrence]

I agree. Imagine if the Kochs come to their senses and dump their boy Walker, and spend all their allotted loot down ticket?

[Peter G]

Only very very afraid? You are made of sterner stuff than I for just thinking about having the policies daily spewed on the campaign trail and in the halls of congress makes me physically nauseous. So I try to think happier thoughts. Like these: for all the awesome stupidity that the GOP regularly inflicts on their own mob their are absolutely reliant on the Democrats and the president to stop them. And their congressional leadership knows it. Yes you have to raise the debt ceiling and no, you can't shut down the entire government.

It is not only the professional political leadership that knows these things, it is also the entire Republican establishment right down to the very last Koch brother. To be honest I think their worst nightmare would be any Republican president but Jeb Bush. Democratic presidents are damned useful, they are the ones you can blame for the frustration of all these Republican dreams. So useful in fact that you can parlay this bullshit into House and Senate majorities. Which they did. But there lies the problem. They got them.

Where, ask the right wing nut jobs of every stripe, are our gutted unicorns and shattered rainbows. The Yahoos have started to notice that they've been suckered. At Redstate is an article of faith that Republicans generally suck. For they are conservatives first and they despise the GOP establishment with a fury that is altogether delightful to read. Now the gist is this. If the yokels were to dominate the Republican party their belief is that the establishment and business interests would be forced to fall into line and swallow the crap they've been feeding the yokels for low these many years. No, They. Won't. Those poeple, like governments , do not have allies, they have interests. When and if the GOP stops being the vehicle to advance those interests they will leave.

[shsavage]

Unfortunately, as long as there is a Democrat or a non-white person left alive on planet Earth (and perhaps for a century or two beyond), the remnants of the GOP will go on blaming said Democrat or non-white person for everything that's wrong.