"And Yes, We Now Know, Republican Extremism as We Have Known It Can Become Far Worse"

"So the devil we thought we knew, the man whose saturnine image chilled many a liberal heart during his years in power, pointed at this new devil and suggested new depths of power-hungry mendacity were coming into sight. Perhaps Dick Cheney knowingly lied about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the U.S. invasion in 2003, or perhaps he was self-deluded. And maybe Cheney and George W. Bush swept into office in an election even more disputed than that of 2020. But they relied on the U.S. Supreme Court to consummate their victory, not a mob invading the U.S. Capitol."

Ed Kilgore at New York reacts to the death of Dick Cheney.

"Why Has the Dream That Animated Generations of Ayn Rand–Toting Buckleyites to Join the Cause Been Quietly Forgotten?"

"To give them somewhat more credit, Trump has genuinely changed Republican elites' thinking about what their voters care about. 'One of the things we discovered to our dismay in 2016 is that the electorate—the base of the Republican Party—was really not conservative in any meaningful way,' explains Mona Charen. Charen comes from the party's anti-Trump wing, but pro-Trump Republicans have been saying similar things throughout, lambasting their party's former leaders as heartless plutocrats rightly cast aside by the proletarian base."

Jonathan Chait at New York argues that the "Republicans' Long War to Roll Back the New Deal Is Finally Over."

Anti-Anti-Trump from the Left

"It should go without saying, though I know it does not, that none of this is a defense of these Trump failings or an attempt to mitigate the harms they caused. What this argument is, instead, is a vehement rejection of the grotesque historical revisionism that seeks to erase and whitewash the far worse moral evils, acts of violence and assertions of lawlessness that preceded him, all in order to propagate myths of American Exceptionalism and, worse, to rehabilitate the reputations and careers of the political and media cretins who perpetrated them."

Glenn Greenwald at Substack argues that "No Matter the Liberal Metric Chosen, the Bush/Cheney Administration Was Far Worse Than Trump."

"A Post-Policy Party"

"By any fair measure, the GOP excels at acquiring power and exploiting electoral structures to keep it, often in defiance of the American electorate's will. Republicans may fail in breathtaking fashion when trying to govern, but they have unrivaled expertise in gerrymandering and voter-suppression techniques.
"The shortcoming quickly becomes evident after Election Day, when Republicans roll up their sleeves and clumsily try to use that power in pursuit of their ostensible priorities."

Talking Points Memo runs chapter one of Steve Benen's The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics.

"You Would Be Amazed How Much Time I Spend on Twitter"

"There are so many people who've helped me get here that I'm sure I'll forget some, but I'm gonna try. Thank you to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association: The work you do is very important to me, and I am so proud and grateful to be here tonight. A big shoutout to Richard Arthur Prince, Robert Blake, O.J. Simpson, and John Wilkes Booth. We made it, boys, this is for all of us! Harvey—what can I even say? So much of my work wouldn't have been possible without you. Thank you to everyone at CAA, UTA, WME—hell, talent agents in general!—plus studio heads, producers, and the hardworking people in the marketing department. Moloch, Mammon, you can go to sleep now, I'll be home soon. If I forgot to thank you, rest assured that there'll be plenty of time for me to make it up to you later." 

At Slate, Satan thanks Christian Bale.

Wouldn't Be Prudent

"Bush's tax pledge roused conservatives but it turned out to be notoriously misjudged. Once in office, facing a federal deficit that had quietly ballooned under his predecessor, and a Congress controlled by Democrats, the 41st president was forced to renege on his promise.
"President Bush did leave two significant legislative marks: the Clean Air Act Amendments, signed into law in 1990, and the Americans with Disabilities Act, which Bush made law in the same year."

Paul Lewis at The Guardian reports the death of George Bush.

Jonathan Chait at New York offers appreciations, of sorts.

As does Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo.

Shit Is Fucked Up and Bullshit

"Perhaps the sole upside to the 2008 crash was that it discredited the Establishment of both parties by exposing its decades-long collusion with a kleptocratic economic order. If the corporation that introduced the lightbulb was a sham ripping off its employees, shareholders, and consumers, not to mention America's taxpayers, you had to wonder who at the top was not. The moral abdication of would-be liberal reformers, who failed to police such powerful economic actors, only added to the national disgust with elites. It's that vacuum that created the opening for a master con man. Once in the White House, of course, Trump conducted the biggest spree of grand larceny ever carried out by the wealthiest sliver of the country in the name of 'tax reform.' Everyone knows he is doing it except those among his base who dismiss all unwanted news as 'fake news.' But it’s a measure of how much the country is broken that we just shrug with resignation when the wealthy Democratic Goldman Sachs alum Gary Cohn joins this administration to secure an obscene tax cut, then exits without apology to enjoy his further enrichment at the expense of the safety net for the country's most vulnerable citizens."

Frank Rich at New York writes that "[e]verything in the country is broken." (As part of a special issue on 2008.)

"Too Late to Save His Reputation"

"The critics who flay Ryan as a coward have never understood that his actions are a form of idealism. To Ryan, the greatest danger to liberty lies not in a president who defies the rule of law but in high tax rates and a functioning social safety net. When Ryan speaks with pride about the policy accomplishments he helped carry out with Trump, he is not spinning. In Ryan's worldview, he has struck a powerful blow for liberty against the socialist hordes. Ryan leaves his endangered majority convinced he has done his job well. It is a triumph of his own propaganda that so few people believe he is actually sincere about this."

Jonathan Chait at New York writes a political obituary for Paul Ryan.

And Alex Shepard at The New Republic describes the end of Ryan's speakership as the "Twilight of the Reaganites."

"Policy Makers Shouldn't Listen to Supply-Side Orthodoxy"

"Tax cuts have generally proven to be a big bust during the past few decades. Former President George W. Bush pushed through a series of substantial tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, but growth failed to return to 1990s levels. More recently, experiments with lowering taxes at the state level have showed very disappointing results. The most glaring example is Kansas Governor Sam Brownback's tax-cutting program, begun in 2012. In the years since Brownback slashed taxes, the state's finances have been drowning in red ink. But economic growth didn't pick up, and Kansas has lagged behind its neighbor Nebraska in both labor supply and income per person."

Noah Smith at Bloomberg View reminds readers that "[t]he old recipe of tax cuts, deregulation and fiscal austerity does little for growth."

Ronald Brownstein at The Atlantic writes that, in regard to the Republican tax policy, "[t]he baby boom is being evicted from the penthouse of American politics. And on the way out, it has decided to trash the place."

And in a 2015 article for the Economic Opportunity Institute, Scott Sorscher points out that [o]ur moral, social, political and economic values changed in the mid-70's."

"Donald Trump Outperformed Mitt Romney's 2012 Campaign on Minority Vote Share"

"A big part of the story is that Hillary Clinton did much worse among minorities than Obama did. Not only was her share of the minority vote worse than Obama's, but minorities turned out less for her than they had for him.
"For example, in Michigan, Hillary Clinton received 50,000 fewer votes in Detroit's Wayne County than President Obama had in 2012. Trump's margin of victory in Michigan over Clinton was about 11,000."

In a 2016 Forbes article, Avik Roy looks at changes in the American electorate.

And Omri Ben-Shahar argues that "Trump Won Because Of Lower Democratic Turnout."

"That Humility Has Been Lost"

"It's hard to recapture the horror that earlier generations of Americans felt about preventive war when it was still something that other countries did to the United States and not merely something Americans contemplate doing to others. They viewed it the way some Americans still view torture: as liberation from the moral restraints that human beings require. One of the things that frightened them most about the Nazis was that Hitler had dispensed with the concept of original sin. He had aimed to create a new class of infallible, god-like, humans who need not be encumbered by the fetters that bound lesser races. Totalitarianism, argued Arthur Schlesinger in The Vital Center, aimed 'to liquidate the tragic insights which gave man a sense of its limitations.' For Schlesinger, Reinhold Niebuhr, Walter Lippmann and other intellectuals who shaped America’s foreign policy debate in the early Cold War, acknowledging these limitations was part of what made America different. Because Americans recognized that they were fallible, fallen creatures, they did not grant themselves the illegitimate, corrupting power of preventive war."

Peter Beinart at The Atlantic looks at the American embrace of preventive war.

"If You Thought George W. Bush Was Generally Swell, but too Racially Inclusive, You Are Going to Like Trump's Presidency"

"Donald Trump ran an ethnonationalist cult-of-personality presidential campaign, in which his status as a (real) nonpolitician and (imaginary) business genius would allow him to transcend and solve every policy problem. He has retained the ethnonationalist themes, while abandoning, one by one, almost every other populist element differentiating him from the generic Republican brand."

Jonathan Chait in New York argues that "Trump has become a conventional party man."

"The Truly Paranoid Style in American Politics"

"Conspiracists are by nature anti-heroic—they believe that faceless networks must be far more powerful than ordinary individuals. A marginal figure like Ross could never have built his cocaine empire alone; Oswald could not have killed a president; a few dozen men in Afghan caves could not have brought down the Twin Towers. The romance of the conspiracy hunt lies in the way it transfers vitality from the assassin to the buff, at home alone, searching for the plot’s true source. In this, it matches perfectly the romance of the Internet, which perhaps explains why conspiracy has found such a resolute home there. If Ross, Oswald, and Hani Hanjour are merely pawns, then the story needs a hero, and the ­puzzle-solver himself raises his hand."

In a 2013 New York article, Benjamin Wallace-Wells looks at "50 years of conspiracy theory."

"The Rigged 2000 Florida Recount"

"By the time Bush's aura of competence had dissipated in his second term, the recount had been long forgotten. Well-informed journalists and intellectuals who were too young to follow the episode closely generally have no idea how bad it got. At one point, officials in Dade County who were carrying out a legally mandated automatic recount were forced to stop by an unruly mob of Republican staffers who busted into their building—an actual case of physical intimidation preventing public officials from carrying out their election duties."

Jonathan Chait at New York reminds readers of actions by Republicans in Florida in the wake of the 2000 election.

"Americans' Sense of Security Is Tied to Partisan Identification"

"Part of the GOP's concern about security is definitely linked to their distrust of Obama. Maybe even most of it. But Republican voters are reporting enough discomfort to indicate genuine fear. It's that kind of fear that makes people think crime is going up, even when it's going down, or that immigrants threaten national security, when researchers agree they don't."

Andrew McGill at The Atlantic looks at party politics and fears of terrorism.

"His Real Message Seems to Be Make America Hate Again"

"My friends, this is a moment of reckoning for every Republican dismayed that the party of Lincoln has become the party of Trump. It's a moment of reckoning for all of us who love our country and believe that America is better than this.
"Twenty years ago when Bob Dole accepted the Republican nomination, he pointed to the exits in the convention hall, and told any racist in the party to get out. The week after 9/11 George W. Bush went to a mosque and declared for everyone to hear that Muslims love America just as much as I do.
"In 2008, John McCain told his own supporters that they were wrong about the man he was trying to defeat. Senator McCain made sure they knew Barrack Obama, he said, was an American citizen and a decent person.
"We need that kind of leadership again."

Time magazine publishes a transcript of Hillary Clinton's speech in Reno about Donald Trump's racism.

At Slate, Jamelle Bouie, Isaac Chotiner, Michelle Goldberg, William Saletan, and Josh Voorhees react to the speech.

As does Brian Beutler at The New Republic.

"Taking a Hard Pass"

"Some other recent conventions have had several lawmakers who notably skipped their party's nominating event. In 2008, many vulnerable GOP senators didn't attend in a year where outgoing President George W. Bush's approval rating was abysmal. In 2012, many moderate Democrats also skipped out on President Obama's convention.
"But never before in recent history have so many prominent party officials boycotted the event or found convenient other reasons not to attend because they either didn't approve of or were uncomfortable with their party's presumptive nominee."

Jessica Taylor at NPR reports on Republican no-shows at the party's convention.

"Electorally Speaking, Vice Presidential Candidates Seem to Matter at the Margins"

"If Clinton and Trump are wise, it will be those candidates who populate their shortlists–rather than gimmicks and 'game changers.'"

Mark Z. Barabak in the Los Angeles Times interviews Christopher Devine and Kyle Kopko, authors of The VP Advantage: How Running Mates Influence Home State Voting in Presidential Elections.

"A Party That Will Need to Significantly Change Its Ideological Direction—or One on the Verge of Breaking Apart"

"The white working-class base of the party has been devastated by stagnating wages, globalization and de-industrialization, and various forms of social and cultural breakdown. And through it all the Republican Party has offered little beyond tax cuts for the wealthy and stern, moralistic reprimands ('Stop whining and get a job!'). That's hardly a strategy inclined to generate long-term loyalty and enthusiasm for the party.
"But that's just the beginning."

Damon Linker at The Week looks at Donald Trump and the Republican primary in South Carolina.

And Jonathan Chait at New York reacts to Trump's South Carolina victory.

As does Michael Brendan Dougherty at The Week.

And Robert P. Jones at The Atlantic calls Trump supporters "nostalgia voters," while Ben Mathis-Lilley at Slate issues a warning about what making "America great again" means.

"Crazy Nut Donald Trump Thinks George W. Bush Was President on 9/11"

"In fact, Trump has not claimed that Bush had specific knowledge of the 9/11 attacks. He said, 'George Bush had the chance, also, and he didn't listen to the advice of his CIA.' That is correct. Bush was given numerous, detailed warnings that Al Qaeda planned an attack. But the Bush administration had, from the beginning, dismissed fears about terrorism as a Clinton preoccupation. Its neoconservative ideology drove the administration to fixate on state-supported dangers—which is why it turned its attention so quickly to Iraq. The Bush administration ignored pleas by the outgoing Clinton administration to focus on Al Qaeda in 2000, and ignored warnings by the CIA to prepare for an upcoming domestic attack. The Bush administration did not want the 9/11 attacks to occur; it was simply too ideological and incompetent to take responsible steps to prevent them."

Jonathan Chait at New York responds to conservative reactions to Donald Trump's description of George W. Bush.

And David Frum at The Atlantic wonders if Republicans are members of "a functional political party."