I enjoy the self-abasement of Jeff Sessions, who endured private harangues and public humiliation from his boss because the attorney general saw a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to use his office to get tough on illegal immigration.
And then there’s the joy of watching Sean Hannity trying desperately to pin the blame for the president’s border wall betrayal on congressional Republicans. The Fox News host seems to be drawing moral inspiration from Samuel Beckett, who is said to have mused: “When you’re in the sh— up to your neck, there’s nothing left to do but sing.”
.. But now it’s the president who is doing exactly that, making the case for DACA beneficiaries in terms his base most condemns: as “good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military” and who don’t deserve to be thrown out of the country simply because their parents brought them to the United States as children. It’s the kind of thing Nancy Pelosi — or, worse, John McCain — might say.
.. He feels about as much loyalty toward them and their convictions as he’s felt toward his several wives. Remember that, as recently as 2012, he denounced Mitt Romney for an excessively harsh attitude toward immigrants, calling the Massachusetts governor’s policy of self-deportation “crazy” and a turnoff to “everybody who is inspired to come into this country.”
.. at heart he was a destructive opportunist with no core convictions beyond his own immediate advantage.
When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer
George Romney — yes, Mitt’s father — turned down several big annual bonuses. He did so, he told his company’s board, because he believed that no executive should make more than $225,000 a year (which translates into almost $2 million today).
He worried that “the temptations of success” could distract people from more important matters
.. Romney didn’t try to make every dollar he could, or anywhere close to it. The same was true among many of his corporate peers. In the early 1960s, the typical chief executive at a large American company made only 20 times as much as the average worker
.. The old culture of restraint had multiple causes, but one of them was the tax code. When Romney was saying no to bonuses, the top marginal tax rate was 91 percent. Even if he had accepted the bonuses, he would have kept only a sliver of them.
.. As the economist Gabriel Zucman says, “It’s not worth it to try to earn $50 million in income when 90 cents out of an extra dollar goes to the I.R.S.”
.. The tax rates helped create a culture in which Americans found gargantuan incomes to be bizarre.
A few years after Romney turned down his bonuses from the American Motors Corporation, Lyndon B. Johnson signed legislation that lowered the top marginal tax rate to 70 percent. Under Ronald Reagan, it dropped to 50 percent and kept falling. Since 1987, the top rate has hovered between 30 percent and 40 percent.
.. there is no evidence that a modestly higher rate would hurt the economy. The recent president with the strongest economic record, Bill Clinton, increased the rate, while the one with the weakest economic record, George W. Bush, cut it.
‘Trump Is What Happens When a Political Party Abandons Ideas’
As surprising as Trump’s young presidency has been, it’s also the natural outgrowth of 30 years of Republican pandering to the lowest common denominator in American politics.
Republicans took control of Congress in 1994 after nationalizing the election into broad themes and catchphrases. Newt Gingrich, the marshal of these efforts, even released a list of words Republican candidates should use to glorify themselves (common sense, prosperity, empower) and hammer their opponents (liberal, pathetic, traitors); soon, every Republican in Congress spoke the same language, using words carefully run through focus groups by Republican pollster Frank Luntz. Budgets for House committees were cut, bleeding away policy experts, and GOP committee chairs were selected based on loyalty to the party and how much money they could raise.
.. Gone were the days when members were incentivized to speak with nuance, or hone a policy expertise (especially as committee chairs could now serve for only six years).
.. President George W. Bush didn’t realize he was supposed to just be a passive bill-signing machine; he kept insisting that Republicans enact his priorities, which, often, were not very conservative—No Child Left Behind Act, steel tariffs, a tax cut with few supply-side elements. His worst transgression, for me, was the budget-busting Medicare Part D legislation, which massively expanded the welfare state and the national debt, yet was enthusiastically supported by a great many House conservatives, including Congressman Paul Ryan, who had claimed to hold office for the purpose of abolishing entitlement programs.
.. In the 14 years since then, I have watched from the sidelines as Republican policy analysis and research have virtually disappeared altogether, replaced with sound bites and talking points.
.. The Heritage Foundation morphed into Heritage Action for America, ceasing to do any real research and losing all its best policy experts as it transformed from an august center whose focus was the study and development of public policy into one devoted mainly to amplifying political campaign slogans.
.. Talk radio and Fox News, where no idea too complicated for a mind with a sixth-grade education is ever heard, became the tail wagging the conservative dog.
.. Reagan, who granted amnesty to undocumentedimmigrants in 1986
.. no workable concept that adhered to the many promises Republicans had made, like coverage for pre-existing conditions and the assurance that nobody would lose their coverage.
.. their intellectual infrastructure is badly damaged, in need of repair
.. what conservative intellectuals really need for a full-blown revival is a crushing Republican defeat—Goldwater plus Watergate rolled into one. A defeat so massive there can be no doubt about the message it sends that
.. Some conservative thinkers, such as the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin, speculate that Mitt Romney may emerge as the leader of a sane, modern, technocratic wing of an intellectually revitalized GOP
The Scaramucci Show: New Communications Director Unloads Nasty Attack on White House Colleagues to Opposition Party
Move over President Donald Trump. You are yesterday’s news. It seems like this is now The Anthony Scaramucci Show. And Trump better get used to it.
in a rambling rant that was so outrageous and discordant that reporters wondered whether Scaramucci drunk-dialed Lizza, was drunk with power, or, revealing he was unqualified for his communications director job, did not know how to smoothly go on and off the record — like Trump skillfully did recently with three New York Times reporters — so that such inflammatory comments do not reflect badly on his boss.
.. It is also interesting that Scaramucci had nothing bad to say about globalists Jared Kushner, Gary Cohn, and Dina Powell during his rant.
.. His comments about Bannon also sound like someone falsely hating in another person what he secretly may hate about himself.
.. Since accepting the communications director job, Scaramucci has promoted his book from the White House podium. Despite having told students not to brag about Harvard, Scaramucci has name-checked his alma mater nearly every chance he gets, acting like someone who needs to reference “Harvard” to try to prove to others that he is not in over his head and actually belongs. Scaramucci, the ultimate self-promoter and brand-builder, also ran the “SALT” conference, which is a wanna-be Davos-style conference that brings together globalists and members of the permanent political class from the D.C. swamp to hobnob and self-perpetuate.
.. Legacy media reporters have also mocked Scaramucci for vowing to crack down on leakers given that he was reportedly known as the “go-to” leaker for those seeking info from Mitt Romney’s and Jeb Bush’s campaigns.
.. Stephanie Ruhle, one of the savviest anchors around when it comes to Wall Street and someone who obviously knows even more about the financial industry than she publicly reveals, said on Thursday evening that Scaramucci’s comments may make it more difficult for him to sell off his hedge fund firm to Chinese investors, which is a deal he must seal and get approval for in order for Scaramucci to officially work in the White House.
.. Here’s a question-if HNA was buying SkyBridge its pristine reputation&possible WH hook up..what exactly are they thinking now? #nocoverbid
— Stephanie Ruhle (@SRuhle) July 27, 2017
If Scaramucci is tarnishing his brand at the moment when it needs to be the most spotless and pristine, then imagine the disregard he will have for Trump’s brand, which Trump has built up over his lifetime. If Trump thinks that Scaramucci’s outbursts will damage Trump’s brand for the long haul, he may see Scaramucci as a gamble that is not worth taking.