Before lawmakers cast their vote, candidates for GOP leadership ought to identify the specific policy agenda they plan to enact in response to the mandate that the American people gave Congress with the election of President-elect Donald Trump, Brat says.
Brat explained that Speaker Ryan’s “Better Way” agenda is not what “animated this historic insurgent election”.
.. “While I am a fan of much of the ‘Better Way’ agenda, it is not what fueled or animated this historic insurgent election,” Brat added. “’The Better Way’ is a very rational set of policy prescriptions put forward by Speaker Ryan, a policy expert, but our leadership has acknowledged that Trump saw something they missed. The ‘Better Way’ agenda has been in play for a year now– yet Trump saw something new. So what was it?
.. “While I am a fan of much of the ‘Better Way’ agenda, it is not what fueled or animated this historic insurgent election,” Brat added. “’The Better Way’ is a very rational set of policy prescriptions put forward by Speaker Ryan, a policy expert, but our leadership has acknowledged that Trump saw something they missed. The ‘Better Way’ agenda has been in play for a year now– yet Trump saw something new. So what was it?
.. We’re being asked to vote on the Speaker on our first full day back in D.C. And it is absurd to think that we have processed the full meaning and implications of this seismic election in less than a week.”
.. Why the rush? Let’s slow down, think and properly plan this so we get it right. Look at what happened in the last two years when we didn’t make our agenda absolutely clear to the American people. If we rush this Speaker election, the American people will feel manipulated once again. This is no time to undermine morale and do an end-run around them.
.. Conservatives have noted that Ryan’s personal policy agenda was “rejected” on November 8th– particularly his views on immigration, trade and crime. According to polling data, Ryan’s open borders vision on immigration and trade is opposed by roughly 9 in 10 GOP voters.
.. It is unclear whether members of the House Freedom Caucus and conservative lawmakers—including Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, Jeff Duncan, Jim Bridenstine, Brian Babin, Steve King, Matt Salmon, Alex Mooney, Gary Palmer, Barry Loudermilk, John Fleming and others—who voted for Ryan last year, will vote to elect him again as House Speaker on Tuesday.
The Magic of Donald Trump
The Apprentice debuted on NBC in 2004 with 20.7 million viewers, ranking it seventh among all primetime programs.
.. Did tens of millions ever cast their eyes on the junior senators from Florida or Kentucky or Texas, or the governor of Ohio, not to mention the ex-governors of Arkansas or Florida, or the ex-CEO of Hewlett Packard, before they chanced to mount the stage for a debate with Donald J. Trump last August, a television event that drew the unheard-of viewership of 24 million? Those 24 million tuned in to see Trump.
.. In the casually corrupt American political system the candidates serve as bagmen carrying cash from the corporations to the networks.
.. What other candidate is allowed to call in to morning shows or the sacred Sunday shows for television “interviews” whenever he pleases?
.. this in large part relies on the carefully cultivated illusion that it is all off the cuff, that it comes from the heart and that on a given day he might indeed say anything
.. So they have a choice: They can pretend some impossible solution is actually going to happen, or they can listen to the person who has proved that he can solve problems.
.. as the height of monomania. One can find, in any speech or tweet, more concentrated versions, for example this tweet on Easter Sunday: “Another radical Islamic attack, this time in Pakistan, targeting Christian women & children. At least 67 dead, 400 injured. I alone can solve.”
.. Ignorance and narcissism are joined together here, surely, but they are fortified by the very fact of the amazing events of the last ten months.
- He hired no pollster.
- He spent relatively little money, bought few ads.
- He promulgated few policies.
- He merely flew on his own plane from city to city, from arena to arena, talking about himself—about how the country “has big problems” and how only he can solve them
Who is there to contradict his claim that “there’s nobody like me. Nobody”?
.. These “exceptional powers or qualities” include not just the reputed business genius—a mysterious power that makes the promulgation of specific policies redundant—but the ability to tell a story about why “our country is in big trouble” that is simple, convincing, and satisfying.
.. “Our leaders are so incompetent,”
.. turning on its head the entire drift of post–World War II American propaganda that said the country acted to rebuild Europe and protect the free world not out of national self-interest but out of good old exceptional American generosity.
.. As he declared last November about waterboarding terrorists, “You bet your ass I would!… It works…. If it doesn’t work they deserve it anyway for what they’re doing!
..
certain European leaders of the 1930s would have recognized. The sense of threat from the Other—whether it be Mexican rapists swarming over the border or Muslim terrorists posing as refugees or “two young bullies cursing and threatening”; the sense of national decline that this signals (“We don’t win any more…”); the clear path to a restoration of greatness marked by simple, autocratic solutions (imposing tariffs, pulling out of NATO, bringing back torture, “bombing the shit” out of ISIS)—all of it springs from the populist toolbox, if not the fascist one, and the advertisements show that the roots of these positions and attitudes run very deep.
.. “fascinating intersection of celebrity and neo-fascism”
.. Trumpism is partly the child of the 2008 Wall Street collapse and the vast sense of political corruption and self-dealing it brought in its wake: the sense that the country was looted on a vast scale and that the politicians of all stripes made sure the criminals were not punished.
.. anger at and fear of the Other—illegal immigrants, Muslim refugees, an African-American and possibly Muslim president who seems in league with both—that Trump has skillfully cultivated.
.. Again and again when I asked rally-goers why they supported Trump I heard the word “honesty.” “He doesn’t slip and slide like all the others,” a retired accountant in his seventies told me. Or else: “I see strength in him, power. He’s not afraid to say what he thinks….” That he speaks clearly—that he is unafraid of the police of political correctness—itself bespeaks a power to cut through the corruption and the dealmaking, to fight and fight to get things done: to actually end illegal immigration, to actually repeal Obamacare. It suggests he has the sheer fighting power and energy to do what he says.
.. Rorty’s words prophesy not only the strongman’s rise but his blithe refusal to let “political correctness” prevent him making sexist and bigoted remarks, and his fans’ euphoric enjoyment of their hero’s reveling in the pleasures of free speech. He says what he wants: he is rich enough, strong enough, to do what he pleases.
.. So we started, and something happened called Paris. Paris happened, and Paris was a disaster. There’ve been many disasters but it was Paris and then we had a case in Los Angeles, in California
.. That this is a fact, and that Trump recognizes this fact, represents the greatest risk of that future that the political class still stubbornly refuses to take seriously
.. the longtime lobbyist and fixer Paul Manafort, confidentially assured Republican National Committee Members:
When he’s out on the stage,…he’s projecting an image that’s for that purpose…. He gets it. The part that he’s been playing is evolving into the part that now you’ve been expecting…. The negatives will come down. The image is going to change.
.. we are sure to be hearing a lot about “Crooked Hillary.” (“You have to brand people a certain way when they are your enemies,” he proclaimed to us at Boca. “You gotta brand people….”)
.. A President Trump could likely only emerge as a product of our own fears, carefully fostered as they have been ever since the airliners emerged out of that bright September sky one morning in 2001.
When Republicans Take Power
the conservative ideology that pervades much of the party is based on the belief that government is the enemy. What will Republicans do with their newfound power? And how will the exercise of that power change the party?
.. It doesn’t require a huge stretch of the imagination to envision Mr. Trump’s trying to use the power of the presidency to punish his enemies, withdraw from military and diplomatic alliances, start trade wars, and engage in a wide-scale roundup of illegal immigrants that would call to mind Operation Wetback in the 1950s crossed with the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. However, such a divisive policy inevitably would split the country and the Republican Party as well, leading to a crushing loss in the 2018 midterm elections.
.. anti-deportation protections for the children of undocumented immigrants. (Mr. Trump may not pursue those children, but he won’t protect them.)
.. Party strategists are well aware that the G.O.P. has now lost the popular vote in six of the last seven elections. Despite Mr. Trump’s ability to maximize the white vote, and his more surprising ability to bring some minority voters along, it’s still not in the party’s long-term interest to write off the minorities, particularly Hispanics, who are a growing part of the country’s population.
.. The demands of the G.O.P.’s constituents may force a revision on issues such as trade and climate change, particularly if the waters continue to rise in coastal red states like South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.
.. Republicans in Congress have voted more than 60 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but they’ve spent far less time thinking about how to replace it. Would the 20 million Americans who have gained health insurance lose it? Would a Republican version of the law retain its prohibitions against insurance companies’ denying coverage to patients with pre-existing conditions?
Throughout the Obama administration, the G.O.P. has had the mind-set of an opposition party, condemning policies without thinking deeply about how to reform them.
.. Now that the common enemy has been vanquished (at least temporarily), the rival conservatives will be tempted to go to war with one another.
Rogue Republican factions in Congress like the House Freedom Caucus could even use the threat of a government shutdown or debt default against their own administration.
The need to keep order in his ranks may encourage Mr. Trump to become a Richard Nixon-style leader, pursuing an agenda that gives enough to each faction that it remains sullen but not mutinous.
.. The establishment may now be forced, at long last, to stand up to those on the right who are calling for Republicans to repeal the institutions of the New Deal and the Progressive era.
.. Those who anticipate only a two- or four-year window will press for the rapid enactment of a maximalist conservative program, even at the risk of an intense backlash. Others, however, will focus on the long game.
.. Mr. Trump will not be able to bring back the manufacturing jobs he promised, but he could put his supporters to work building roads and bridges instead.
.. Other policies aimed at improving life for working-class Americans could include efforts to combat the epidemic of opioid addiction and improve our mental health system.
.. Mr. Trump could invoke the tradition of national greatness by asking Americans to join him in pursuing a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, which may present the single greatest threat to our physical and fiscal health in the 21st century. Or he could rally our national energies around the construction of the world’s first driverless highway
.. The success of Mr. Trump’s administration ultimately will be determined more by its ability to persuade than compel.
What effect the Trump administration will have on the housing market
At a meeting of the National Association of Home Builders in August, Trump said that “there’s no industry, other than probably the energy industry, that is more overregulated than the housing industry.” However, changing those regulations may be beyond his scope.
.. “He could try to use his power to ease it, but a lot of the problems are at the state and local levels,” Goodman said.
.. Goodman said the two biggest issues the housing market faces are supply constraints and credit availability.
.. But Trump’s stance on immigration could have a detrimental effect on housing supply.
“Immigration plays a big part in the labor force for construction,” Smoke said. “It’s one of the constraints we have in new construction.”
.. Something to watch under Trump could be what happens to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Reform efforts have stalled the past several years. But hedge-fund billionaire John Paulson, who is part of the president-elect’s economic policy team, could push for action. Paulson bought shares of Fannie and Freddie in the hope of cashing in when they regained their independence. Since being placed under government control, the mortgage-backers have sent nearly all their profits to the U.S. Treasury, not investors.
“Paulson cares passionately about this, given his positions,” Goodman said.