He was Romney’s chief economic/domestic policy advisor and a Bain capital guy. Despite his relatively young age, he IS the old people. He has just made a 180 shift since Trump got elected first time to try to stay relevant in the newly remade GOP. But the only constituency he has are from the people on the right committed to finding an intellectual coherent rationale for the things that were already in motion and pretending there is a well thought out plan with clear objectives driving them that aren’t just making rich people richer and racism. The Ross Douhat and David Brooks types who understand their own party far less well than the unread masses who despise the publications they write for.
This is the cycle of conservative respectability washing. “Ah yes, our movement is fueled by racists who think we’re going to hurt the people they hate, but this time its different. This time we have real ideas. Sure, it’s going to hurt the people the racists want to hurt, but that’s just a side-effect…[a decade later]…so it turns out it was just about the racism.”
So the outcome appears to be that Europe needs to do something significant on defence, asap. I think the old order is going/gone. America is not a reliable ally for Europe. Not in the way it was before.
When Trump came back in I said he would treat allies like enemies and enemies like allies. It’s all jumbled up because everything is transactional.
I hate that the world is going this way, but again, Europe needs an army, well equipped, not bloated, but high tech, new gear, and nuclear armed, asap. It will be a strong deterrent and Russia won’t mess with that.
In such a future scenario, the togetherness of Europe would be severely tested. For example, would people in the UK be willing to die for people in, say, Poland, if Russia had designs on expanding its territory toward Warsaw?
The House draft bill has massive cuts to Medicaid.
For those unfamiliar with the American programs, Medicare covers 65+ and some conditions for younger peoples. Medicaid covers those with limited incomes/wealth, including some care supplementary to Medicare (nursing homes, for example)
It is now quite clear that Europe can no longer consider the US a defence partner. However, that in turn raises real questions about Europe’s relationship with China. If China is a better countervailing influence on Russian aggression, re-orienting European policy towards Beijing has a real logic to it. Not at all clear why Cisco routers that the NSA can tap at will are better for European infrastructure than Huawei routers that the MSS can tap at will that are about half the price.
As for the UK’s interests, pragmatically for some reason the Russians seem more hostile to the UK than any other European country they don’t share a border with.
But it undercuts your assertion that social spending focused on the working class is not on the chopping block. DOGE is already taking an ax to many programs.
The Democrats have an interesting gut check time coming up. If the government is not going to do much at all anyway, letting the Republicans descend into infighting to get their bill passed and risking a full government shutdown is fairly low cost compared to the usual status.
I agree with most of that and it’s basically mainstream opinion here now.
But let’s not pretend that US military spending since the end of the Soviet Union has only been about defending against a Russian threat.
Hence this comment above: European spending was cut back to claim a ‘peace dividend’. The US really did not do that, for reasons that were very hard to justify for decades.
I thought those wars were largely supported by the American public at the time and initially carried out by republician presidents. Maybe rather than blaming others after the fact they should have thought about the real reasons their governments kept entering them into wars rather than just believe the lies they’ve been fed.
The dollar amounts going to Medicaid are dwarfed by Medicare and SS. They are also viewed, rightly or wrongly, differently.
Medicare and SS are seen as entitlements paid in by workers, ie workers funded it themselves. Medicaid is seen as a welfare program, ie funded by other taxpayers, for those who aren’t working.
IOW the first two are for the working class. The latter is for the non-working class.
Yes, you are correct. It’s a big reason why the base turfed them out of leadership. Prior to Trump, Republican leadership in the mid-2010s were polling at 60% disapproval within their own party. Neither George Bush nor Dick Cheney have not attended the last three Republican conventions. They are deeply unpopular in the party.
So congratulations lefties, you were right about Iraq!
The reality is that 64% of Medicaid recipients are working, 44% fulltime. Medicare and social security are overwhelmingly paid purely as benefits, though agreed the recipients see them as an insurance program.
Medicaid is the 3rd largest spending program at 9% of the Federal budget, as against about 14% for Medicare and 22% for Social Security. Smaller to be sure, but not marginal.
Poilievre has not been great on the military, and as recently as this past summer he was refusing to commit to reaching that 2%. Let’s keep in mind that from 2006-2015, the Conservatives were in charge. It never got higher than 1.4% and actually hit a low of 1% in 2014. Canada’s failure to reach that 2% target cannot be laid exclusively at Trudeau’s door.
It’s also a giant government handout to largely American manufacturers.
And a bit of a weird social program on top (get paid, maybe get a degree, might get shot though). This idea that the US has been pissing away their taxpayers money for the sole purpose of defending Europeans is a bit…
