Conservative Fantasies, Collide With Reality

Two pathological liars

As often is the case, in a New York Times column, Paul Krugman cuts to the core of the Republican Party's dysfunction: its core base lives in a fantasy world, as do so many of its elected officials.  Thanks to "news" outlets like Fox News, a/k/a Faux News, Breitbart, Drudge Report and a host of similar propaganda mills, the party base remains in a bubble and rails against government even as the morons of the base fail to grasp that their own reliance on Social Security, Medicare and a host of other programs constitutes reliance on government programs and what they condemn as handouts if benefits go to anyone else - especially those with darker skin color. The irony is especially stunning with older white voters who suck up Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid benefits like pigs at a trough.  And don't get me going on welfare benefits that are used by whites more than any other group in red states. The willful ignorance is dumbfounding.  Here are column highlights:

This week the Trump administration put out a budget blueprint — or more accurately, a “budget” blueprint. After all, real budgets detail where the money comes from and where it goes; this proclamation covers only around a third of federal spending, while saying nothing about revenues or projected deficits.

As the fiscal expert Stan Collender put it: “This is not a budget. It’s a Trump campaign press release masquerading as a government document.”

So what’s the point of the document? The administration presumably hopes that it will distract the public and the press from the ongoing debacle over health care. But it probably won’t. And in any case, this pseudo-budget embodies the same combination of meanspiritedness and fiscal fantasy that has turned the Republican effort to replace Obamacare into a train wreck.

In this vision, much if not most government spending is a complete waste, doing nobody any good. The same is true of government regulations. And to the extent to which spending does help anyone, it’s Those People — lazy, undeserving types who just so happen to be a bit, well, darker than Real Americans.

This was the kind of thinking — or, perhaps, “thinking” — that underlay President Trump’s promise to replace Obamacare with something “far less expensive and far better.” . . . . however, Republicans turn out to have no ideas about how to make the program cheaper other than eliminating health insurance for 24 million people (and making coverage worse, with higher out-of-pocket spending, for those who remain).

And basically the same story applies at a broader level. Consider federal spending as a whole: Outside defense it’s dominated by Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — all programs that are crucial to tens of millions of Americans, many of them the white working-class voters who are the core of Trump support.

Given this reality, why are so many people opposed to “big government”?

Many have a distorted view of the numbers. . . . . Many also fail to connect their personal experience with public policy: Large numbers of Social Security and Medicare recipients believe that they make no use of any government social program. . . . politicians can often get away with running on promises of drastic spending cuts: Many, perhaps most voters don’t see how such cuts would affect their lives.

But what will happen if anti-big-government politicians find themselves in a position to put their agenda into practice? Voters will quickly get a lesson in what slashing spending really means — and they won’t be happy.

[T]he reality is that the proposed cuts would have ugly, highly visible effects. Zeroing out the Community Development Block Grant program may sound good if you have no idea what it does (which Mr. Trump surely doesn’t); eliminating Meals on Wheels, an immediate consequence, not so much. Nor would coal country, which voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Trump, like the consequences if he eliminates the Appalachian Regional Commission. 

Wait, there’s more. Effectively disemboweling the Environmental Protection Agency may sound smart if you imagine that it’s just a bunch of meddling bureaucrats. But the public wants stronger, not weaker, environmental protection, and would not be pleased to see a sharp deterioration in air and water quality.

The point is that Mr. Trump’s attempt to change the subject away from his party’s health care quagmire isn’t going to work, and not just because this supposed budget literally isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. At a more fundamental level, it doesn’t even change the subject.

 As a one time Republican activist, the party has sadly become a gathering of ignoramuses, racists, religious extremists and misogynists.  My Republican ancestors would be embarrassed to be affiliated with such people, many of who my southern belle grandmother would have viewed as "white trash.".

The GOP’s Benghazi Summer

With its clown car of candidates and positions on issues that time has proven to be failures and/or that more and more Americans oppose, the sGOP has seemingly decided that the Summer of 2015 will focus on trying to damage Hillary Clinton with Star Chamber like hearings even though past investigations have found that the conspiracies so loved by the rabid dogs of the GOP base are unsubstantiated.  Never let it be said that the GOP lets facts and objective reality get in its way.  One can only hope that during the hearings it is repeated over and over again that the GOP had slashed funding for security at U.S. embassies and consulates across the globe. Here are highlights from The Hill:

Welcome to the GOP's Benghazi summer.

After being hammered for months by Democrats for moving at a “glacial” pace, the GOP-controlled House Select Committee on Benghazi is picking up the pace.

“We are pedal to the metal because we are ready to get this thing done,” said Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (Ga.), one of the panel’s seven Republicans.

This week the panel subpoenaed Sidney Blumenthal, an informal adviser to Hillary Clinton when she helmed the State Department, and who has since agreed to appear before the select committee by the requested June 3 deadline.

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kansas) hinted that Huma Adebin, Clinton’s longtime aide and the vice chairwoman of her 2016 presidential campaign, could be deposed soon, too.

Earlier this month chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) issued an interim report on the panel’s first year of work that said he wants to interview 60 former and current Obama administration officials, including members of Clinton’s inner circle, about the circumstances surrounding the deadly assault that killed four Americans.

While GOP members insist they still need all the relevant documents to the attacks that occurred on Clinton's watch, the recent moves could blunt the criticism that they are slow-rolling the investigation to hinder her White House bid.

“We want to get this thing over with as quick as we can. I’m sure Mrs. Clinton wants to get it over as quick as she can,” according to Westmoreland.

Jordan said members are already in the process of coming up with the “most appropriate and best lines of questioning” for when Clinton appears before the select committee, something she has agreed to do though no formal date has been set.

The acceleration hasn’t been lost on Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), the panel’s top Democrat, though he’s unsure where the sudden motivation has come from.

“I don’t have a clue. All I know is that they waited for a good while before even asking for documents and then they turn around and blame the State Department,” he told The Hill.

He took particular issue with the Blumenthal subpoena, a move that he called “heavy-handed” at the time.

Cummings said the panel’s investigation is “going down a road that leads straightway” for its original purpose — uncovering additional details about the conditions before, during and after the attacks — and is now “basically, get Hillary Clinton by any means necessary.”

I also hope that these heavy handed efforts to beat up Hillary are not lost on women voters.   The hearings may motivate the deranged elements of the GOP base, but should turn off everyone else.