Donald Trump Goes Full Democrat
Noah Rothman 2015-10-26
For Republicans with even a passing attachment to the principles of conservatism, as opposed to merely the personalities who count themselves among the movement’s members, the fatalistic refrain so often repeated over the course of 2015 has been that “nothing matters.”
The latest Republican of dubious loyalty to be thrown into the stockades by the movement’s purity police is soon-to-be Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. The Wisconsin representative and former GOP vice presidential nominee has done more to advance conservative principles and a Republican agenda in the age of Obama (and has taken innumerable arrows for it) than virtually any other elected official. For the alleged heresies of preventing a financial meltdown in 2008 with his TARP vote and for supporting comprehensive immigration reform, Ryan has been branded a “RINO.” This is unhinged in the most literal sense. It is an opinion divorced from reality and lent legitimacy only by the critical mass of angry Republicans who have also succumbed to this mania.
There is no small irony in the fact that many of those conservatives who are supposedly so committed to principle that Republicans like Ryan, Rick Perry, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio — et cetera, et cetera – have been judged suspect are foursquare behind Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy. It has been demonstrated again and again that Trump is an orthodox liberal with a hawkish stance on immigration, but it matters not to Trump enthusiasts and those conservative media figures that seem to think their influence is enhanced by linking themselves to his movement. As he becomes more assured of the blinkered devotion of his fans, Trump appears to be shedding even a pretense that his candidacy is a conservative one. For most of his career on the fringes of American politics, Trump has demonstrated that his instincts are generally liberal, and he appears to be reverting to form.
To the extent that Donald Trump has a position on reforming America’s ballooning and unsustainable entitlement obligations, it is whatever he thinks the audience in front of him at any given moment wants to hear. More often than not, however, Trump has contended that he does not favor changes to Medicare or Social Security’s present structuring. He would address budgetary shortfalls, he says, by liquidating American military expenditures abroad and maximizing federal revenue collection at home. He has in the past added that changes to entitlements are too politically risky, which is objectively true. That is why Paul Ryan was pilloried by Democrats, accused of “throwing grandma off a cliff,” and what led radio host Mark Levin to call Trump a “clown.”
As Trump has encountered a potent rival in the form of Dr. Ben Carson, he has taken to differentiating himself from the candidate by, among other things like attacking his “energy” level and questioning his faith, contending that Carson would reform entitlements. “Ben Carson wants to abolish Medicare – I want to save it and Social Security,” Trump wrote on his Twitter account on Sunday evening. This was a flip-flop in record time. Not hours ago, Trump appeared on ABC News where he was asked if he would support health savings accounts in order to render Medicare unnecessary. “Well, it’s possible,” he told host George Stephanopoulos. “I think it’s a very good idea, and it’s an idea whose probably time has come.” Apparently that time came and went in the interim between breakfast and dinner on Sunday.
A creature of the media, it is rarely wise to underestimate Trump’s willingness to parrot the dominant narrative in the press. The latest and least well-founded contention among media professionals is that the Benghazi select committee’s questioning of Hillary Clinton was a total bust for Republicans. Given the gravity of the revelations about Clinton’s conduct and the administration’s knowledge of the nature of the attacks while they were ongoing, much of which was revealed at that marathon hearing, this claim is nothing short of a rearguard action to shield Clinton from criticism. Leave it to the Republican Party’s presidential frontrunner to legitimize this media narrative. “It was very partisan, and it looked quite partisan,” Trump averred on CNN on Sunday amid his endless whirlwind media tour. Maybe, but it was also quite productive. Moreover, most Republicans on the panel (and Democrat Tammy Duckworth, to her credit) behaved in a dispassionate and prosecutorial manner. To give succor to the liberal storyline that this was a partisan exercise lends validity to the Democratic contention that Hillary Clinton emerged a “winner” out of a process that should be immune to such parochial characterizations.
And what of the fevered passions with which Trump-backing conservatives decry the apparition of “amnesty” for illegal immigrants, the specter of which haunts their imaginations and crowds out virtually any objective or rational thought. In an interview with Larry King, Trump was asked if his unfeasibly aggressive deportation proposals have any redeeming character in the form of compassion for those families he proposes to break up. “We will do something that will be done with heart,” Trump vowed. He added, however, that he would not be more specific. “I don’t want to comment on that one right now, Larry, because that’s the sort of a question where I just don’t want to answer it right now,” Trump said. He has already claimed that he would reintroduce the “good” illegal residents he deports in some expedited fashion. Perhaps this is the start of Trump’s embrace of a pathway to grant amnesty to this population that avoids the cost and redundancy of his imagined re-importation process.
Trump’s retreat on immigration should not surprise anyone who is acquainted with Donald Trump’s liberal predispositions. Trump has in the not-too-distant past called Jeb Bush a “bright, tough and principled” Republican, scolded Mitt Romney for the callousness of his contention that illegal immigrants should face conditions in America that compel them to “self-deport,” and told a group of DREAMERs (the non-citizen children of illegal immigrants) that they had “convinced” him to support their pursuit of full, unqualified citizenship.
To all of this, we turn again to the pessimistic exhortation that none of it will matter. Not to Donald Trump supporters, at least. The candidate is almost secondary to the emotions he produces in his followers, which are previously unknown influence and satisfaction over the irritation his candidacy is causing the political system’s stakeholders. “I feel, for the first time in my life, that I am not invisible,” a devoted Trump fan told Washington Post reporters this weekend. For the candidate’s most indefatigable supporters, Trump’s policy positions are secondary to how he makes them feel. The candidate’s leftward drift is a window into how he would govern, but it’s a window into which his admirers would rather not peer.
Donald Trump Goes Full Democrat
Must-Reads from Magazine
London Is Closed to Competition
Competition is a scary thing.
Sohrab Ahmari 2017-09-22
Soon after last summer’s U.K. vote to leave the European Union, London Mayor Sadiq Khan launched a publicity campaign to reassure investors that his city would remain a dynamic, global hub after Brexit. “London Is Open” was the slogan, and it was supposed to “show the world that London remains entrepreneurial, international and full of creativity and possibility.”
So much for that. Friday’s decision by the city’s transport regulator not to renew Uber’s license suggests that Khan’s London is closed to competition and in thrall to local special interests.
The regulator, Transport for London, said the decision was based on Uber’s alleged lack of corporate responsibility in a variety of areas, particularly public safety. Yet there is no Uber-driven safety crisis in London. If Uber has made missteps, as any company might, putting 40,000 drivers out of work and inconveniencing 3.5 million London riders is a terrible way to respond.
Public safety is a pretext. The Uber ban comes after years of lobbying–and strikes and bullying–by the city’s black-taxi cartel. Before Uber came along, the industry’s high barriers to entry shielded black taxis from competition. It takes tens of thousands of pounds to buy a black cab and years to acquire “the knowledge”–drivers’ vaunted ability to memorize and instantly recall the best way to any destination.
The advent of GPS and ride-sharing meant that having the knowledge wasn’t all that special. Rather than try to outcompete Uber by offering better prices and service, the black taxis continued to charge outrageously overpriced fares. And they sought to defeat ride-sharing politically. Now they have succeeded. The losers are riders who used ride-sharing for fast, reliable, and accountable service.
The first black taxi I ever took, in 2014, took me from Heathrow Airport to Euston, in central London. It cost nearly £100 (or $170 at the time). That taught me early on to rely on my Uber app, and since then I have taken hundreds of rides. Defenders of the ban point to pre-booked minicab services and the like that often cost less or about the same as Uber. Yet none of those services offer the speed, ease, and pickup accuracy that Uber does. Black taxis don’t routinely serve many low-income neighborhoods, moreover, whereas Uber works wherever people have smartphones.
If you leave a personal item in a black cab and pay cash, there is no way to recover it. With Uber and similar apps, you can immediately track down your driver, and he will usually return the item to you within hours. As for safety and sexual assault: Rachel Cunliffe pointed out in the Spectator that Uber is the far safer option for female riders, who don’t have to trawl the streets looking for taxis. Every ride and every driver is tracked.
The Uber ban is the triumph of protectionism over innovation and clientelism over consumer choice. London is not open.
The Case for Kurdistan
A boon to America, the region, and the world.
Sohrab Ahmari 2017-09-22
The Kurds have been a people without a state for centuries. Monday’s independence referendum in northern Iraq’s Kurdish zone is an important step toward rectifying this historic injustice, and I believe the U.S. is making a grave mistake by opposing the vote.
The Trump administration announced its displeasure in a September 15 statement, noting that the referendum “is distracting from the effort to defeat ISIS and stabilize the liberated areas.” It added: “Holding the referendum in disputed areas is particularly provocative and destabilizing.” The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the White House said, should work out its differences with Baghdad through dialogue.
Not now, go away, in other words. The statement reflected the sort of rigid adherence to Washington dogma that too often prevents America from seizing the opportunities presented by the tectonic shifts in the Middle East. The Trump administration failed even to nod at Kurdish aspirations, or offer an alternative timeline if the current moment is too inconvenient. This was unnecessary slap when there are compelling moral and strategic reasons for creating a Kurdish state in northern Iraq sooner than later.
The Kurds got by far the worst treatment during the decades of Baathist rule in Iraq. Saddam Hussein ethnically cleansed tens of thousands of them in the 1970s. Then, in the closing days of the Iran-Iraq War, he set out to destroy the Kurdish community. The regime fired chemical weapons at Kurdish civilians, summarily executed men and boys, and sent entire villages to concentration camps.
President George H.W. Bush’s decision to impose a no-fly zone in 1991 granted Iraqi Kurds protection against Saddam’s depredations and a measure of autonomy. The Kurds used the opening, and the one provided by the 2003 invasion, to develop institutions of self-government. Iraqi Kurds constitute a coherent nation. They stand out in a region full of non-nation-states in various stages of disintegration. Kurds speak a common language, albeit with regional variations. Most are Sunni Muslims, though there are Christians and even a very few Jews among them, as well. They have deep historical ties to their territory. Their culture sets them apart, visibly, from their neighbors. They have distinct national institutions. And they already enjoy quasi-state recognition in the corridors of power in Europe, the Middle East, and beyond.
Iraqi Kurds, moreover, share what Douglas Feith has described as the key subjective factor in nationhood: a “type of fellow feeling” that is “an extension of the affection people tend to have for their family members.” Whatever their tribal differences—and these are real—Kurds living in Erbil or Dohuk today look upon other Kurds, not Iraqis, as their true compatriots. The bonds of Kurdish sympathy are much stronger and more enduring than those of Iraqi nationalism, if the latter means much at all.
Taken together, these factors mean that Iraqi Kurds are ripe for statehood. The Arabs have 22 states, and the Turks, Iranians, and Jews each have one—so why shouldn’t the Kurds enjoy statehood? There is no good answer to this question.
Then, too, Iraqi Kurdistan is vibrant and free. In Erbil today, within an hour’s drive from what used to be the second capital of the ISIS “caliphate,” you can enjoy a beer, surf a largely unrestricted Internet, and criticize the government without having to fear death squads. You won’t hear chants of “Death to America” or “Death to Israel” on the streets. There is corruption in the Kurdistan Regional Government, to be sure, and a degree of political nepotism that would make Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump blush. But by regional standards, KRG governance is more than acceptable.
An independent Kurdistan, moreover, will bear strategic fruit for the U.S. It could serve as a counterweight, however small, to Iranian hegemony. KRG leaders have taken a moderate, pragmatic line with all of their neighbors. That is wise policy, given the region’s size and strength relative to the likes of Iran and Turkey. Even so, the introduction of a new, fully sovereign Kurdish actor would interrupt Tehran’s so-called Shiite crescent stretching from Sanaa to Beirut. Today Iraq is trapped in the crescent. An independent Kurdistan wouldn’t be. It would irk the mullahs still more if this new state turned out to be a democratic success story. Conversely, by blocking Kurdish aspirations, the U.S. is putting itself in the same camp as Iran.
Most important, friendship should mean something. Iraqi Kurdish forces fought valiantly alongside the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition. When the jihadist army seemed invincible, it was Kurdish fighters who stopped its march across Iraq (and Syria). As Kurdish intelligence chief Masrour Barzani told me in 2015, “In this entire area the Kurds are probably the most pro-American people that you can find. Forever we will be thankful for the U.S. support since the day of toppling Saddam’s regime.”
If Washington keeps neglecting and mistreating friends, America’s credit rating in the region will suffer irreparable harm. Responsible, pro-American populations, like the Iraqi Kurds, deserve American support.
Joe Biden vs. the Post-Labor Left
The liberals strike back.
Noah Rothman 2017-09-20
Given his reputation for favoring even wildly impractical progressive policy objectives, few might have guessed that the first prominent liberal to stand athwart the Democratic Party’s reckless lurch to the left would be Joe Biden. With liberals fawning over progressive firebrands and amid the growing unanimity around the notion that there is no social and economic challenge that cannot be solved by throwing money at it, the former vice president has emerged as a vocal opponent of at least one idea popular among liberal reformers and libertarian technocrats alike: a universal basic income.
“The theory is that automation will result in so many lost jobs that the only plausible answer is some type of guaranteed government check with no strings attached,” Biden wrote in a post for the University of Delaware’s Biden Institute.
“While I appreciate concerns from Silicon Valley executives about what their innovations may do to American incomes, I believe they’re selling American workers short,” he continued. “Our children and grandchildren deserve the promise we’ve had: the skills to get ahead, the chance to earn a paycheck, and a steady job that rewards hard work.”
Now, before we go congratulating Biden’s attack on indolence and his tacit acknowledgment that material incentives to be productive have a better record than their alternatives, it’s important to acknowledge that Biden may, in fact, be endorsing the traditional liberal position.
As far back as 2013, progressive activist and former MSNBC host Krystal Ball advocated the adoption of a “mincome” as a means of eliminating poverty. “The basic concept is simple,” she continued. “Every non-incarcerated adult citizen gets a monthly check from the government,” she said. But there’s a catch: “Other safety net programs are jettisoned to pay, and poverty is eliminated.” Just like that!
The problem with this proposition is the notion that progressive policy advocates would ever consent to the elimination of any anti-poverty program for any reason, particularly in order to pave the way for one that is “universal” (e.g., not directed toward uniquely threatened or preferred constituents).
“I’m not against a guaranteed income because I think that it would make the government too big,” American University professor emerita and liberal economist Barbara Bergmann told PBS. “I think government ought to be much bigger.” She noted, accurately, that the idea government could eliminate poverty and hardship by disbursing, say, $11,000 annually to every citizen is nonsense and doesn’t take into account disparate needs. Given the political inclinations of the present Democratic Party, the notion that any candidate could successfully run on a platform that consists of paring back bloated entitlement programs is delusional.
As Oren Cass wrote for National Review, a “mincome” would soon take its rightful place in the pantheon of sprawling American welfare-state programs alongside Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act’s provisions for individuals and corporations. Further, such a program would alter Americans’ perceptions of their relationship to the state; for the first time in American history, the government would be transformed into every American’s first and most essential source of well-being. And contrary to the protestations of UBI proponents, it would by necessity undermine the value of work and productivity. “Stripped of its essential role as the way to earn a living, work would instead be an activity one engaged in by choice, for enjoyment, or to afford nicer things,” Cass noted.
For the social-justice left, there is one other attractive element to the UBI—one so subversive it is barely spoken above a whisper outside venues that care little for how they are perceived by the respectable sort. “In recent years, a UBI has been embraced in particular by the post-productivist left, which carries a strong feminist and ecological bent and rejects the traditional left’s valorization of labor and the working class,” wrote Jacobin Magazine’s Shannon Ikebe.
She said there were actually two kinds of a UBI—the kind on which you can live comfortably and the kind on which you can’t. She obviously prefers the latter. Her argument soon devolves into neo-Marxist prattle, blathering on about how an empowered working class free from the need to produce would create capital flight and divestment, increasing class divisions and, eventually, compelling us to reengage with “the age-old question of the ownership of the means of production.” That’s only relevant insofar as it provides a window into the thinking of the kind of politics that finds the UBI an attractive proposition.
It’s a funny kind of Marxism that looks down its nose at labor and those who perform it. You can, however, see how that would appeal to Democrats who resent having to appeal to those backwater blue-collar voters who lost faith in the Democratic Party under Barack Obama or—to their eternal disgrace—voted for Trump. That’s precisely the kind of mentality that Joe Biden (who is originally from Scranton, Pennsylvania, if you needed reminding) would dedicate himself to combatting.
The fight over a UBI is a fascinating glimpse at the sub rosa ideological battles being waged within the Democratic coalition. Biden’s jab at the concept is, no doubt, self-interested, but it comes from a place of pride in the traditional American ethos of personal responsibility and industriousness. Unfortunately for him and those who would join him in this internecine fight, they are vastly outmanned.
Is Trump Turning It Around?
John Podhoretz 2017-09-20audio: https://soundcloud.com/commentarymagazine/commentary-podcast-41
With Noah Rothman sadly out of commission for the day, Abe Greenwald and I discuss the president’s speech at the UN (good!), the attacks on it (mostly bad!), why his polls have seen an uptick (less Trump!), who’s crazier about health care (liberals!) and the evils of honey (yes, honey). Give a listen.
Don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes.
Aung San Suu Kyi Fooled Us All
Was it all an act?
Noah Rothman 2017-09-20
When Myanmar’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, took to the lectern on Tuesday, she was speaking to us. Suu Kyi’s silence as hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims are driven from their homes amid a campaign of state-sponsored pogroms had been deafening. When Suu Kyi finally addressed the issue, she spoke in perfect English to the international community, but she was not being entirely honest.
Over the space of just weeks, at least 420,000 Rohingya civilians have fled their Rakhine State villages amid cycles of violence and counter-violence. Thousands more are trapped, besieged and surrounded by hostile Rakhine Buddhists and the government has denied their petitions for safe passage out of the area despite claims that supplies of food have dwindled to starvation levels. Hundreds have died either in transit or conflict, and the humanitarian conditions threaten to deteriorate further.
Suu Kyi insisted that it was not the intention of her government “to apportion blame or to abnegate responsibility.” She observed that her regime has not yet been in power for a full 18 months and still has limited control over junta-led ministries like defense and border affairs. “After several months of seemingly quiet and peace, on 25 August, 30 police outposts . . . were attacked by armed groups,” Suu Kyi added, apportioning blame. She bristled with indignation at international monitoring bodies that have focused only on the plight of local Muslims and not smaller minority groups that have also been made refugees and “of whose presence most of the world is totally unaware.”
“Since 5 September, there have been no armed clashes, and there have been no clearance operations,” she insisted, which is an outright lie, according to Suu Kyi’s own information committee. She claimed the Rakhine Muslims have access to all essential and non-essential state services, but they do not. The Rohingya are denied citizenship and are clustered in camps when they are not fleeing to Bangladesh for their lives. “Myanmar does not fear international scrutiny,” Suu Kyi insisted. While a handful of journalists have been allowed access, organizations like Doctors Without Borders say they have not had access to Rakhine State since August. Indeed, NGO staffers are afraid to travel to the region because Myanmar officials have accused humanitarian organizations of colluding with local militant groups.
Suu Kyi’s prickliness amid allegations of brutality, prejudice, and ethnic cleansing is a bitter pill to swallow. Burma’s democratization, culminating in Suu Kyi’s release from house arrest and, eventually, her free election to serve as the head of a quasi-civilian government seemed like a genuine move toward liberalism.
That country’s thaw appeared such a bright spot that Hillary Clinton cited her successful efforts to open Naypyidaw frequently in her quest for the Democratic nomination. “While the Arab Spring was losing its luster in the Middle East, Burma was giving the world new hope that it is indeed possible to transition peacefully from dictatorship to democracy,” Clinton wrote in the chapter she dedicated to Myanmar’s transition in her 2014 book, Hard Choices.
In 2011, Clinton traveled to Burma where she appeared beside Suu Kyi. “It was incredibly emotional and gratifying to see her free from the many years of house arrest,” she said. For her part, Suu Kyi played the part of non-violent democratic resistance figure and pledged that “there will be no turning back from the road to democracy.” Following a landslide victory for Suu Kyi and her democratic opposition in 2015, Clinton took her share of credit. “It was also an affirmation of the indispensable role the United States can and should play in the world as a champion of peace and progress,” she said in a statement.
Clinton was in very good company in praising Suu Kyi as a leading light for the cause of freedom. “This is a fitting tribute to a courageous woman who speaks for freedom for all the people of Burma, and who speaks in such a way that she’s a powerful voice in contrast to the junta that currently rules the country,” President George W. Bush said signing a bipartisan bill awarding Suu Kyi the Congressional Gold Medal in 2008.
In 1991, she won the Nobel Peace Prize “for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights.” Following her release from house arrest, she traveled the world lecturing as a Nobel laureate on the primacy of the rule of law and the necessity of democracy “for the guarantee of human rights.” Today, she presides over what a Yale University Law School study claims amounts to genocide.
Maybe the pressures and political realities of running a democratizing state alongside a tenacious junta have been underappreciated, both by Suu Kyi and her detractors. Perhaps the facts on the ground tie her hands, and she must meekly defend the actions of her military as it commits atrocities against oppressed minorities. Either way, Aung San Suu Kyi is a crushing disappointment.