Saturday Open Thread [4.26.14]

Crystal Wright:

“The entire Bundy affair just makes the Republican Party look bad. Are all Republicans racist? Absolutely not. But many overwhelmingly came out in support of this lunatic. I think it’s an awful day for conservatives. I think we need serious reflection because we’re not going to win 2016 with this attitude, keep doing things the same old way. We have old white men saying offensive things to women and minorities, and I’m tired of it.”

These old white men just need to die off over the next two decades, then the Republican Party can win again once they are cleansed of their poison. Unless of course some unwise young white men get infected…

But there is some hope, because here is a conservative old white man, Charles Krauthammer:

“It isn’t enough to say I don’t agree with what he said. This is a despicable statement. It’s not the statement, you have to disassociate yourself entirely from the man. It’s not like the words exist here and the man exists here. And why conservatives, or some conservatives end up in bed with people who, you know, he makes an anti-government statement, he takes an anti-government stand, he wears a nice big hat and he rides a horse, and all of a sudden he is a champion of democracy …

Look, do I have the right to go in to graze sheep in Central Park? I think not. You have to have some respect for the federal government, some respect for our system. And to say you don’t and you don’t recognize it and that makes you a conservative hero, to me, is completely contradictory, and rather appalling. And he has now proved it.”

Maybe most conservatives are just dumb. Not evil, just stupid as f*ck.

Conservative columnist Ross Douthat fears that the GOP will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory:

The best reason to bet on the Democrats doing somewhat better than expected in these races … isn’t current polling (we’re too far out, still), and nor is it merely the general pattern in which savvy incumbent senators eke out re-election in races that the red-blue map suggests that they should lose. Rather, it’s the more specific phenomenon of a Republican Party that, in the age of Obama, has proven remarkably adept at squandering winnable Senate seats and underperforming in Senate races, with all sorts of candidates, in red and purple states alike.

In part, this has happened because of primary fights that have produced freakishly bad nominees, like Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell and Todd Akin. But it’s also happened in slow-motion, under-the-radar ways, sometimes with establishment candidates and sometimes with Tea Partiers, in races that are close and winnable and then just … slipped … away.

Jay Bookman at The Atlanta Journal Constitution on the whole Cliven Bundy traitor mess, and Republican efforts to run away from him after they so quickly embraced him earlier in the week:

The issue, in my mind, is that Williamson, Hannity and others have taken advantage of a man of limited intellect, experience and sophistication to serve their own political agendas. Even while acknowledging that Bundy has no legal case, they’ve pumped him up into their champion, egging him on to engage in armed battle with the federal government, all so that they can enjoy the exhilaration of cordite and bloodshed second hand. It’s porno for “patriots,” and it’s deeply troubling and irresponsible. […]

Not every idiot who yells “freedom” and “down with tyranny” deserves your support. Unless you’re looking for cheap, vicarious thrills, the cause should matter. This isn’t John Brown fighting slavery. Patrick Henry didn’t yell “Give me free grazing rights or give me death” at his fellow delegates at the Virginia Convention. And if you are so starved for examples of government repression that you have to rally behind an idiot whose great, principled cause is free cattle fodder, then maybe, just maybe, government repression isn’t the huge, massive problem that you like to pretend it is.

I don’t plan to write on this topic again, although if the standoff comes to a violent outcome I’ll have no choice. But frankly, it angers me: If Bundy, his sons or his misguided followers become so besotted with their image as martyrs that they go down in a blaze of gunfire, and if they take down a few public servants along the way, Hannity, Fox News, Williamson and others will have a lot more to answer for than groundless charges of racism.

Meanwhile, Rand Paul was insufficiently fervent recently on the issue of abortion:

In a sit-down interview with the likely presidential candidate on Tuesday, Axelrod asked Paul whether he would try to overturn Roe v. Wade and ban abortion outright if he were president. Paul responded that even though he personally believes life begins at conception and that abortion is wrong, the country is too divided on the issue for him to try to ban the procedure entirely.

“I think where the country is, is somewhere in the middle, and we are not changing any of the laws until the country is persuaded otherwise,” Paul said.

Conservatives were not pleased with his answer.

“Maybe it was inarticulate, or maybe these are the senator’s real feelings, but that last comment certainly set off alarm bells for social conservatives,” Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, wrote on Thursday. “Obviously, no president has the power to unilaterally ban abortion, but he does have the power to make the issue a priority — something most Americans assumed Rand Paul would do.”

Your 2016 GOP Nominee will be Ted Cruz.

The Brits are astounded at how we, the United States, have conquered our debt crisis with relative ease without destroying our economy.

Americans are purging their excesses one by one. Spending by the US Federal government has seen the steepest drop as share of national income since demobilisation after the Second World War. Claims that President Barack Obama is bankrupting America with a lurch towards hard-Left statism are for tabloid consumption only [DD: or in other words, Republican lies]. Outlays have fallen from 24.4pc to 20.6pc of GDP in five years. Spending is roughly in line with its 40-year average. This fiscal squeeze has been achieved without driving the economy into recession or a Lost Decade, a remarkable feat.

The US Congressional Budget Office expects the budget deficit to drop to 2.8pc of GDP this year, and 2.6pc next year. This is about the same as the eurozone but with a huge difference. The US economy is expanding fast enough to outgrow its debts. […]

[H]alf of the story is monetary stimulus a l’outrance – quantitative easing – to offset fiscal tightening and prevent a “pro-cyclical” downward spiral, which is what occurred when the European Central Bank jumped the gun and raised rates twice in 2011 before recovery was entrenched, setting off the catalysmic crisis that nearly destroyed EMU in mid-2012.

This policy mix is no novelty. Britain pursued the same strategy with success after leaving the Gold Standard dollar-peg in 1931 and after leaving the ERM fixed system in 1992, and arguably again over the last five years though the jury is still out this time.
America’s public debt has peaked at 72.3pc of GDP (bonds held by the public). The CBO expects the ratio to fall gently for the next three years. Such is the magic of the denominator effect. Economies do not have to cut debt in absolute terms to whittle away debt. The Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu thought otherwise and assiduously paid off Romania’s debts just in time for his own execution in 1989. Those shaping eurozone policy today sometimes seem to be in thrall to this same atavistic belief.

Growth does the job so much faster. US household debt has plummeted from 98pc to 81pc of GDP in four years. The ratio of debt payments to disposable income fell to 9.9pc in March, the lowest since the Federal Reserve’s modern data series began in 1980. Most mortgage debt is locked at fixed interest rates so this will not change fast when the Fed tightens in earnest.