The paranoid style, part infinity

Randy Barnett is a Georgetown University law professor, who is well known for both his libertarian views and his insider status among DC conservatives (he was the academic point man in the battle to interpret the Affordable Care Act out of existence). He is currently one of many people on the right trying to come up with a way to stop Donald Trump. In the course of describing his plan to the National Review’s readership, he had this to say about Marco Rubio:

I have never met Marco Rubio, but shortly after he was elected to the Senate, I was lecturing in Germany to a group of European liberal students. (In Europe, “liberal” means libertarian.) I played for them a YouTube clip of Senator Rubio making a seven-minute floor speech extolling the exceptionalism of the United States as a land of opportunity. I used the clip to make two points. First, the fact that they had never heard of Rubio showed that they live in a left-wing media cocoon. Unless they cultivated reliable online sources, they would never have a complete picture about the American political scene.

It’s of course a central tenet of contemporary conservative faith that the dreaded Mainstream Media is hopelessly biased in its coverage of American politics. Still this is a bit much, given that this is somebody who is supposed to be the epitome of a Thoughtful Conservative, as opposed to say a random caller to a right-wing talk radio show.

Think about who Marco Rubio was “shortly after he was elected to the Senate,” i.e. five years ago. At that point it’s safe to say he wouldn’t have made anybody’s list of the 100 most prominent politicians in America. Heck, he might not have cracked the top 500 then. He was a 40-year-old freshman senator that nobody outside of Florida had ever heard of: I certainly couldn’t have told you who he was at that time (although I suppose I’m helping in my own small way to help spin the very left-wing media cocoon that envelops me, so res ipsa loquitur I guess.).

Nevertheless, the fact that a bunch of German college students hadn’t heard of this guy is supposed to be evidence of the perfidy of the MSM! For comparison’s sake, here’s the complete list of contemporary German politicians I can name:

Angela Merkel
Helmut Kohl

That’s it, and I wouldn’t want to bet that Kohl is actually still alive or anything.

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Would Trump as president be significantly worse than Cruz or Rubio?

I’m leaning toward “yes he would.”

To get a couple things out of the way first, it should go without saying that any of these outcomes would be a serious disaster, so this is roughly analogous to trying to figure out if you’d rather try to live through a major hurricane or a massive earthquake.

Also, nothing in what follows takes into account or is otherwise based on which of these candidates would be more likely to actually win. This is of course a legitimate factor in shaping one’s hopes and fears in regard to the outcome of the GOP nomination process, but I’m excluding it here.

That said, I think a Trump presidency has a significantly greater potential to be a genuine national catastrophe. This is the case even though I agree with Scott that there is likely to be little substantive difference in the sorts of bills that get signed or vetoed in any of the three hypothetical administrations, and with Rob that there’s something more than a little absurd about Max Boot et. al., wringing their hands about the prospect of a bellicose and blustery foreign policy under Trump.

Indeed, at least in regard to domestic policy, there’s certainly an argument to be made that Trump wouldn’t be as bad Cruz or Rubio, since perhaps he would actually do something to advance some elements of the economic populism he’s been touting, and he would probably be less inclined to try to gut what remains of the welfare state (ie Social Security and Medicare), since he understands such a policy is only popular with the GOP money men who fear and despise him, rather than with the people who are voting for him.

Nevertheless, a Trump presidency presents two huge risks:

(1) The social costs incurred by putting someone who campaigns as an open racist in the White House. I don’t know whether or to what extent Trump is “really” racist, but that is basically irrelevant to calculating those costs. Air raid siren racism is worse than dog whistle racism, for the same reason that open corruption is worse than the covert kind. It’s actually an important social advance that, relative to a a couple of three decades ago, covert racists now feel the need to disguise their racism, because when they don’t feel that way racism becomes more socially acceptable, just as when open bribery becomes a feature of public life its very openness makes it more socially acceptable, and therefore more common than it would otherwise be.

(2) Trump is not merely a narcissistic megalomaniac of an extreme kind: he’s a narcissistic megalomaniac who isn’t constrained by any political institutions, as even an “anti-establishment” conventional presidential candidate like Cruz or Sanders would be. He’s a true political outsider, and as such he’s much more unpredictable. Institutional socialization, and the constraints it builds up, are real. Trump presents a non-trivial risk of being the sort of politician who would actually do the sorts of things that conspiracy nuts of the Alex Jones type are always fantasizing normal politicians are about to do: declare martial law, suspend elections, seize major media outlets etc. Trump really might turn into an American version of Vladamir Putin or perhaps Juan Peron.

As dire as a Cruz or Rubio presidency might be, that’s not going to happen under them. Trump, in my view, does actually present a non-trivial existential threat to American democracy.

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The Least Self-Aware Moments in Mitt Romney’s #NEVERTRUMP Speech

It’s hard to understand how Mitt Romney’s intervention into the Republican race could possibly change anything. But that doesn’t mean we should deny ourselves its unintentional entertainment value. Here are some of the things said by Mitt Romney, in implicit defense of nominating either Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz as the Republican candidate for president:

In 1964, days before the presidential election which, incidentally, we lost, Ronald Reagan went on national television and challenged America saying that it was a “Time for Choosing.” He saw two paths for America, one that embraced conservative principles dedicated to lifting people out of poverty and helping create opportunity for all, and the other, an oppressive government that would lead America down a darker, less free path.

Hahaha, yes, in the 1964 race Barry Goldwater was the candidate committed to lifting people out of poverty and creating opportunity for all, by, er, repealing Social Security and the Civil Rights Act. Fortunately, he lost in one of the biggest landslides in America’s history, which is central to Romney’s point.

[Trump’s] tax plan, in combination with his refusal to reform entitlements and to honestly address spending would balloon the deficit and the national debt.

I agree — America should not vote for anyone with a tax plan like Donald Trump’s. So, Clinton or Sanders then.

Now not every policy Donald Trump has floated is bad. He wants to repeal and replace Obamacare. He wants to bring jobs home from China and Japan. But his prescriptions to do these things are flimsy at best.

I agree — Americans should not vote for anyone with a quarter-assed plan to replace Obamacare. So, Clinton or Sanders then.

Let me turn to national security and the safety of our homes and loved ones. Trump’s bombast is already alarming our allies and fueling the enmity of our enemies.

Republicans should demand that a foreign policy centered around alarming bombast be delivered by someone with a better haircut!

Think of Donald Trump’s personal qualities, the bullying, the greed,

Whew, thankfully Mitt Romney has taken it upon himself to attack bullying and greed. Now, fetch one of his Cadillacs from the top floor of the elevator.

the misogyny,

As good Republicans, we want disabilities to be imposed on women solely through statutes, regulations and judicial opinions, not campaign rhetoric!

Watch how he responds to my speech today. Will he talk about our policy differences or will he attack me with every imaginable low road insult?

Watch carefully — will he respond to a speech that is mostly a string of insults by insulting me…but with more VULGARITY?

Mr. Trump has changed his positions not just over the years, but over the course of the campaign

Look how carefully Romney phrases this attack, which as a reminder is Mitt Romney attacking someone for changing his positions.

We will only really know if he is the real deal or a phony if he releases his tax returns and the tape of his interview with the New York Times.

If history has taught is anything, it’s that the Republicans should never nominate a plutocrat who is slow to release his tax returns.

Mr. Trump is directing our anger for less than noble purposes. He creates scapegoats of Muslims and Mexican immigrants

Yes, the Republicans should never nominate anyone who would, make a scapegoat out of Muslims or Mexican immigrants! Their choice in 2012 was terrible.

he calls for the use of torture

I agree — Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz should not be president.

Here’s what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.

Republicans should nominate people who are strongly supported by con artists, not the con artists themselves.

He’s playing the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat.

There are people who should use humor in public speeches. Mitt Romney is not one of them.

And in conclusion:

His domestic policies would lead to recession. His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe. He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president.

As with most of the of the speech, the problem isn’t so much that the criticism is wrong as that it applies equally to all of Trump’s rivals for the nomination. Perhaps this is the real problem.

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How Very Communitarian of You

I was very pleased to see Spotlight win on Sunday. Don’t let the one scene of Sorkinian didacticism they (natch) used as Ruffalo’s clip or the Middlebrow Doorstop taint that the Best Picture statue normally carries disuade you from seeing it if you haven’t — it’s really good.

Speaking of which, here’s a telling detail from an entertaining profile of Marty Baron:

Occasionally I have been asked what I would have liked to see in the movie that was not portrayed. One answer, I confess, is a product of my own anger that the years have yet to extinguish.

I’m referring to a Nov. 4, 2002, speech given by Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard law professor who would later become U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. “All I can say,” she declared before a conference of Catholics, “is that if fairness and accuracy have anything to do with it, awarding the Pulitzer Prize to the Boston Globe would be like giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Osama bin Laden.”

Aesthetically, McCarthy’s choice actually makes sense — if you didn’t know better, you’d assume this “Glendon” character was a little too on-the-nose.

If you missed that brief time when “communitarianism” was a thing…well, first, congratulations, but second Glendon was one of the most prominent public intellectuals associated with that school. Her most famous book, Rights Talk, was essentially one long bait-and-switch. The ostensible thesis was that the nature of rights discourse had changed and for the worse, but when you sifted through the random anecdotes what you saw was that what changed was not rights discourse per se but the identity of the rights claimants — in a nutshell, the less privileged they were, the less Glendon liked them claiming rights. From my perspective, even more annoying was her book about abortion and divorce law, which made sweeping comparisons of American and European abortion policy while scrupulously ignoring how formal statutes actually operated in their particular political contexts. Glendon begat lazy and disingenuous arguments about abortion that plague us to this day. You know the routine: “Even France requires two doctors to formally approve of abortions after 12 weeks! So American pro-chociers should be completely fine with taking this regulation from a context in which 1)there is universal health care and first-trimester abortions are easily obtainable from public hospitals, 2)more than a sixth of the national population lives in a single metro area, and 3)0% of the population lives in jurisdictions where anti-abortion legislators are dedicated to using every arbitrary regulatory obstacle to thwart access to abortion that they can and applying it to the American case, where I’m sure it would function in exactly the same way. What’s that, should we repeal the Hyde Amendment if French abortion policy is so great? Sorry, my earpiece is malfunctioning, and I’m too busy drafting a statute requiring every door at every abortion clinic in the state to be able to accommodate three double-wide trailers.”

Anyway, I would advise not sitting still for any further lectures from this great moral sage.

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A People’s History of the Marvel Universe, Week 6: This Man, Magneto!

Face front, true believers!

When it comes to the intersection of politics and Marvel comics, the X-Men’s “mutant metaphor” is justifiably at the forefront. Up until now, I’ve danced around the topic a little because I lost a detailed set of notes that I had made on the original Lee and Kirby X-Men and Claremont’s entire run and am still in the process of reconstituting my research.

This means that my discussion of the “mutant metaphor” will have to build gradually, which is actually rather appropriate because I intend to argue in several succeeding columns that the “mutant metaphor” was something that took a good bit of time to emerge in the X-universe and as a theme ultimately owes far more to Chris Claremont’s work than to Lee and Kirby.

One example of this is the character of Magneto, the X-Men’s original antagonist who is often held up as the Malcom X to Professor Xavier’s Martin Luther King. There’s a lot of problems with this analogy, as I’ll discuss in future issues, but to the extent that there’s any truth to it, it’s entirely the result of Claremont’s run, because the original Magneto from the Lee and Kirby years is unrecognizable from his appearance in X-Men #114 through #161, and is frankly not that great a villain.

Read more…

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Fox Bails on the Rubiobot

Fox News is ready to write off its most treasured protege of the 2016 presidential cycle:

In his role as the donor class’s darling, Marco Rubio has enjoyed support from the Republicans’ media arm, Fox News. Throughout the primary, Fox provided Rubio with friendly interviews and key bookings, including the first prime-time response to Barack Obama’s Oval Office address on ISIS. Many of the network’s top pundits, including Stephen Hayes and Charles Krauthammer, have been enthusiastic boosters. Bill Sammon, Fox’s Washington managing editor, is the father of Rubio’s communications director, Brooke Sammon.

But this alliance now seems to be over. According to three Fox sources, Fox chief Roger Ailes has told people he’s lost confidence in Rubio’s ability to win. “We’re finished with Rubio,” Ailes recently told a Fox host. “We can’t do the Rubio thing anymore.”

Ailes was already concerned about Rubio’s lackluster performance in GOP primaries and caucuses, winning only one contest among the 15 that have been held. But the more proximate cause for the flip was an embarrassing New York Times article revealing that Rubio and Ailes had a secret dinner meeting in 2013 during which the Florida senator successfully lobbied the Fox News chief to throw his support behind the “Gang of 8” comprehensive immigration-reform bill. “Roger hates seeing his name in print,” a longtime Ailes associate told me. “He was appalled the dinner was reported,” the source said.

Already, there are on-air signs that Fox’s attitude toward Rubio has cooled. This morning, anchor Martha MacCallum grilled Rubio about his poor Super Tuesday performance. “Is that a viable excuse at this point?” she asked, when he tried spinning his second-place finish in Virginia.

One interesting thing we’ve learned from the 2016 Republican primaries is that even with respect to Republican voters the influence of Fox News is apparently overrated. They were egregiously in the tank for Rubio, but it didn’t help a lot. Or maybe the lesson is that propaganda is more effective when it’s a little more subtle.

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The End of the Lincoln Brigade

The last member of the Lincoln Brigade has died.

Delmer Berg, the last known living veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which vainly fought against Fascism’s advance into Spain in the late 1930s, died on Sunday at his home in Columbia, Calif. He was 100.

His death was confirmed by Marina Garde, the executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives in New York, who said Mr. Berg was believed to have been the only survivor left of the nearly 3,000 quixotic young Americans who volunteered for the Spanish Civil War in a bloody prelude to World War II. About 800 of those who volunteered were believed to have been killed.

Mr. Berg, an unreconstructed Communist, was a 21-year-old union-card-carrying hotel dishwasher in 1937 when he spotted a billboard for the brigade and, through the Young Communist League, enlisted. After cobbling together bus fare to New York, he boarded the French luxury liner Champlain for France.

“I was a worker,” Mr. Berg told The Modesto Bee, a California newspaper, in November. “I was a farmer. I was in support of the Spanish working people, and I wanted to go to Spain to help them.”

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Waiting for AMK

My guess after oral argument today is that the Texas abortion case is that Kennedy will prefer remanding the case to the lower courts to deciding, so there probably won’t be five votes for striking down the Texas law (although it’s certainly possible.) At least there was a certain degree of emotional satisfaction to be derived from the merciless beatdown the Texas Solicitor General received from Justice Ginsburg and her colleagues:

Scalia’s absence was felt immediately at oral argument. Texas solicitor general Scott Keller surely wished he had Scalia there to bail him out as he lamely attempted to defend his state’s law. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor in particular mercilessly shredded Keller’s arguments, forcefully exposing Texas’s justifications as a sham.

Justice Ginsburg went right after one of the most obvious contradictions in Texas’s justifications. When Ginsburg asked how many women would be over 100 miles from the nearest abortion clinic, Keller asserted that El Paso did not count because women in that metro area would be less than 100 miles from a clinic in Saint Teresa, New Mexico.

As Ginsburg pointed out, however, this severely undermines the argument that these clinic restrictions are about protecting women’s health, because New Mexico does not impose similar burdens on its abortion clinics. “If that’s all right for the the women in the El Paso area,” asked Ginsburg, “why isn’t it right for the rest of the women in Texas?”

In subsequent exchanges, the Democrat-appointed justices went hard after Keller’s attempt to defend the draconian restrictions as health protections. Why, asked Ginsburg, are women who elect to have pill-induced abortions required to have them in a surgical medical facility? Keller did not have a good answer. Justice Stephen Breyer asked if there was any case before the law was enacted where a woman who suffered medical complications from an abortion could not get admitted to a hospital. Keller did not have one.

The bottom line, as Justice Ginsburg later summarized it, is that the Texas statute puts very substantial burdens on women in exchange for no actual benefits. Early-stage abortions, Ginsburg noted, are “among the most safe, the least risk procedures. So what was what was the problem that the legislature was responding to that it needed to improve the facilities for women’s health?” Texas does not place similar requirements on procedures that are far more dangerous. The reason is that the law is not designed to protect the health of women, but to stop women from getting abortions.

Breyer explicitly referred to Posner’s opinion dismantling a similar Wisconsin law, which definitely warmed my heart.

With Scalia off the Court we won’t get the worst-case scenario of Roe being effectively overruled, but beyond that whether Kennedy has finally seen an abortion regulation he can’t square with Casey remains to be seen. If he votes on the merits I don’t think he would uphold the whole law, but I also think he’s likely to try to avoid the merits for the time being.

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Bedtime for Ben

His “presidential campaign” is over, but I’m sure the larger grifts will live on.

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