Fwd: It's not Trump who broke Congress: Norm Ornstein

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Roger Bohn <Rbohn () ucsd edu>
Date: Sat, Dec 2, 2017 at 9:13 PM
Subject: It's not Trump who broke Congress: Norm Ornstein
To: <dave () farber net>


For IP if interested. RB

Startlingly strong words from someone at the American Enterprise Institute
(AEI), a *conservative* think tank. Unfortunately, they are not
exaggerating. They don’t say so, but the mainstream press has also
facilitated the anti-rationality of the Republican Party, by continuing
their horse-race view of politics, and insistence on giving equal attention
to completely bogus analysis, as long as it is made by powerful
politicians.

How the Republicans Broke Congress
By THOMAS E. MANN and NORMAN J. ORNSTEIN DEC. 2, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/02/opinion/sunday/republicans-broke-congress-politics.html

In the past three days, Republican leaders in the Senate scrambled to
corral votes for a tax bill that the Joint Committee on Taxation said would
add $1 trillion to the deficit — without holding any meaningful committee
hearings. Worse, Republican leaders have been blunt about their motivation:
to deliver on their promises to wealthy donors, and down the road, to use
the leverage of huge deficits to cut and privatize Medicare and Social
Security.
…..
Even today, many people like to imagine that the damage has all been
President Trump’s doing — that he took the Republican Party hostage. But
the problem goes much deeper.
…………….

Mr. Trump’s election and behavior during his first 10 months in office
represent not a break with the past but an extreme acceleration of a
process that was long underway in conservative politics. The Republican
Party is now rationalizing and enabling Mr. Trump’s autocratic,
kleptocratic, dangerous and downright embarrassing behavior in hopes of
salvaging key elements of its ideological agenda: cutting taxes for the
wealthy (as part of possibly the worst tax bill in American history),
hobbling the regulatory regime, gutting core government functions and
repealing Obamacare without any reasonable plan to replace it.

…………
Our democracy requires vigorous competition between two serious and
ideologically distinct parties, both of which operate in the realm of
truth, see governing as an essential and ennobling responsibility, and
believe that the acceptance of republican institutions and democratic
values define what it is to be an American. The Republican Party must
reclaim its purpose.

Prof. Roger Bohn, UC San Diego
+1 (858)381-2015 mobile + text



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