Reformicons Agonistes: Live from Crows Coffee: September 15, 2014
Every day I get down on my knees and thank The One Who Is that I did not, back in 1982, and thereabouts sign up for the Republican team--as a liberal, technocratic Republican. I could easily have done it: Democrats back were as likely as not to be philosophically opposed to market-based mechanisms. Those of us of a neoliberal bent who back then thought that often market-based mechanisms were the best means of achieving social-democratic ends were not as unwelcome in the Democratic Party as it stood at the end of the 1970s as reality-based technocrats are in today's Republican Party. But it was clear in the early 1980s that the Democratic Party's activist base were not about to start slaughtering the fatted calf for us--let alone the ring, sandals, merriment, and best robe part. Besides, back then the Democratic Party's deformations back then seemed to be something that smart economists could help fix. The Republican Party's deformations back then, not so much.
When I think back, I believe it was that the pieces of the Democratic coalition I disagreed with seem to be well-intentioned, but either just misinformed, or badly-informed, or in some cases simply actively opposed to thinking. By contrast parts of the Republican coalition I disagreed with seemed to me to be callous and mean. They--in some cases--seemed to me to be positively enjoying or at least enjoying fantasizing about kicking people who were down and blowing stuff up just because they could.
Now that's still the case, as I was reminded as it crossed my desk that people were calling Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig uncivil for reacting to Erick Son of Erick's declarations that:
If you’re a thirty-something-year-old person, and you’re making minimum wage, you’ve probably failed at life. It is not that life has dealt you a bad hand. Life does not deal you cards. It is that you’ve failed at life...
The conclusions Erick Son of Erick draws about those he calls "failures at life"? There are four--three are injunctions addressed to those he calls "failures at life" and a fourth is an injunction addressed to his fellow Republicans:
Because you are a failure at life, don't come whining to us about using governmental power to enforce the contracts your employers made with you that they are now breaking--we don't enforce the property rights of people who are failures.
Because you are a failure at life, especially don't come whining to us about using governmental power to regulate contracts and thus strengthen your bargaining power vis-a-vis employers.
Rather than come whining to us, shape up! Stop being a failure--and then, maybe, we will think about you and listen to you and talk to you.
And, addressed to his fellow Republicans: you know how the lawyer asked Jesus: "who is my neighbor?" Our neighbors definitely do not include minimum-wage failures--not until they shape up. Don't get confused and think they do.
Plus racism.
So when I look at the extremely uncomfortable position of Reformicon technocrat-wannabees, I cannot help but think: sed gratia Dei sum illuc ire...
But God! I wish them luck. They need it. We all really need them to succeed in their task...
However, we must also be realistic. So let me turn the pulpit over to Jonathan Chait, who reads the lesson:
Jonathan Chait: Best New GOP Climate Ideas Still Pretty Bad: "Some... just want to watch the world burn...
...[others] don’t want to do much to stop it... [or] want to form political coalitions.... The reformicons are attempting to formulate a coherent line on climate change... new technology.... Jim Manzi... Reihan Salam... Ramesh Ponnuru... James Pethokoukis... Rich Lowry... genuine differentiation from the mindless scientific denialism and reflexive sneering at green energy that is the mainstream Republican position... present[ing] basic energy research as something close to a miracle cure--why spend tens or hundreds of billions of dollars complying with caps on greenhouse-gas emissions when instead we can spend a fraction of the sum on cool science?...
The reformicons seem to have no specific idea about how their proposal would work, or even what current technology policy is.... Manzi proposed to create a new agency.... In 2009, the stimulus created this exact thing.... Maybe the reformicons believe ARPA-E needs to have its funding boosted. But they haven’t actually defined a specific proposal to do so. Indeed, it’s not clear they actually realize the agency exists.... Since its establishment, the Obama administration has been fighting to preserve the agency from House Republicans... [and] the technology-first reformicons have said nothing....
Reform conservatism... proposal[s] must be acceptable to the GOP and unacceptable to Democrats. “Cap and trade” was a popular idea among moderate Republicans before Obama tried to implement it.... Obama's new EPA proposal... perfectly at home within the GOP a half-dozen years ago, but... excommunication today. If and when the reformicons learn that their solution to climate change already exists, and is the subject of fierce opposition by House Republicans, they may lose their enthusiasm...
P.S.: [Crows Coffee is truly excellent.3
