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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The moderates plot to strike back [1]

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Date: 2023-01-14

Turned on my gas stove. The pilot light is out. But I’m gonna leave it on all weekend anyway to own the libs. I encourage you to do the same. #PassTheGas

David A Graham/Atlantic:

That’s especially the case because Trumka seems to have been speaking out of turn. The CPSC’s chair issued a statement yesterday saying that although research “indicates that emissions from gas stoves can be hazardous, and the CPSC is looking for ways to reduce related indoor air quality hazards,” he is “not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so.” The White House also said that President Joe Biden does not support banning the stoves.

Cooking styles are deeply personal. As the sort of person who was very precious about my gas stove until I bought a house with an induction one, I am prepared to say that many people are too precious about gas stoves. But these sorts of feelings can lead to the conversation becoming, shall we say, a bit overheated.

The reflex to position gas stoves as the last redoubt of traditional American life, threatened by big government, is just as stereotypical of the contemporary American right as the impulse to instate a ban is of the American left. “If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands,” Representative Ronny Jackson of Texas tweeted , echoing a famous Second Amendment–rights slogan. The sense of persecution is familiar from past freak-outs such as Michele Bachmann’s effort to build a political career around preserving incandescent light bulbs .

Phasing them out, on the other hand, is very much on the stove — er, I mean table. Some communities have done so for future construction.

A coup principle: For every 1 thug we see smashing windows and heads of police, there are 2 thugs in suits and ties or uniforms who made their actions possible. https://t.co/VhCdCns2Aw

Kimberly Wehle/Bulwark:

Never mind that his election was based on a pack of lies—including allegedly even having someone pretend to be McCarthy’s chief of staff to help with fundraising.

Although party officials in New York’s Nassau County, as well as six newly elected House members from that state, have called for Santos to resign, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy doesn’t plan on helping Santos out the door. “The voters of his district have elected him. He is seated. He is part of the Republican Conference,” McCarthy said yesterday.

Investigating and prosecuting the fabulist congressman could take years, by which time voters might have ousted him on their own.

A Brazilian news outlet is reporting that an on-the-record woman says she traveled with George Santos to the United States in 2011, and that he drained her bank account and pawned her jewelry. https://t.co/XIjf8A0yuu

Will Bunch/Philadelphia Inquirer:

Why Ron DeSantis wants to trample the dreams of about 700 college kids on his White House path Sarasota's New College of Florida is a publicly funded oasis of free thought, LGBTQ culture. So Ron DeSantis and the right want to crush it. The looming fight for the soul of this tiny Florida college is important because it speaks volumes about where the battle for America is headed between now and November 2024, when DeSantis hopes to stand as the Republican nominee for president. It’s not just that the war over New College spotlights how higher education — who goes, who pays, and what our young people learn there — has become the front line in the politics of a new American antebellum. Just as important, the dictatorial style with which DeSantis and his allies are imposing a entire board of right-wing ideologues upon New College again reveals the cruelty-is-the-point brand of authoritarianism he would bring to Washington — not caring about the humanity trampled along the way.

x With apologies for self-promotion, this is about academic worker organizing in the UAW, and why so many academic workers are organizing with that union: https://t.co/FNU3FbDIid — Barry Eidlin (@eidlin) January 13, 2023

Foreign Policy:

Biden Is About to Have His Hands Full in the Middle East Iran and Israel may set Washington’s agenda for the next two years. For most of his first two years in office, U.S. President Joe Biden has been extremely fortunate to have avoided sustained entanglement with the Middle East, a place where more often than not, U.S. foreign-policy ideas—good and bad—have gone to die. Biden may have a harder time avoiding the Middle East in 2023 and beyond, though. The administration’s top foreign-policy priorities remain Russia’s war against Ukraine and a rising China. Yet Biden may soon have his hands full with smaller yet determined regional powers eager to advance their own interests and unwilling to play by U.S. rules. With five states—Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and Libya—in various stages of dysfunction, the Arab world will remain a source of instability, with the exception being wealthy Persian Gulf states (Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) that are acting with greater independence from Washington while insisting on U.S. support. But it’s really the two non-Arab powers, Iran and Israel—one, the United States’ foremost regional adversary, the other its closest regional friend—that may set the agenda for the next two years. And the implications of that are not particularly uplifting.

x Weird to see Republicans in Missouri opposing the right to bare arms https://t.co/qXkkau43Qc — Jeff Timmer (@jefftimmer) January 13, 2023

Tara Palmeri/Puck:

Motion to Vacate Roulette News and notes on the chaos under the Dome: hurt feelings in Congress, Ted Cruz’s ‘24 calculation, the Santos sitch, a key DeSantis ally, and more. It turns out that the imperiled Long Island fabulist George Santos might not be the only conference member that Kevin McCarthy risks losing this term. The new House Speaker, who must navigate a razor-thin majority in which he can currently only lose four votes to pass partisan legislation, has another unforeseen problem on his horizon. Multiple members have told me that they are worried that Vern Buchanan, the 71-year-old from Florida, is loose in the saddle and contemplating retirement after losing his chairmanship of the powerful Ways and Means committee this week. Buchanan told McCarthy he was furious that he was passed over for a much younger member, Rep. Jason Smith, who has become a bit of a speaker’s pet. The McCarthy-Buchanan standoff is fascinating and multi-layered. On the one hand, Buchanan doesn’t need to kiss McCarthy’s ring. He’s one of the wealthiest members of congress, with a car dealership fortune worth more than $100 million. He can do whatever he wants, including reciprocating McCarthy’s political surprise with one of his own, which has some speculating that Buchanan could step down within months. Even under the best circumstances, in which Ron DeSantis immediately called a special election, McCarthy would be out a crucial vote for a couple months, maybe more. (Buchanan’s political advisor Max Goodman told me, “Vern has no plans to retire and looks forward to continuing his work on behalf of his district and the American people.”)

x Garland was smart to appoint a special counsel.



You could argue persuasively that it wasn't necessary, but conservatives would never accept that. So instead Garland does exactly what conservatives were demanding and defangs their entire argument. — Randall Eliason (@RDEliason) January 13, 2023

Noah Smith/Substack:

Is the Fed hiking too fast? Your December inflation update. Now, many in the commentariat are worried not about inflation, but about a recession. The worry is that inflation is subsiding on its own, and that the Fed’s rate hikes are an unnecessary measure that will end up hurting employment and growth. There are really two pieces to this argument. First, there’s the idea that the economy is now flashing warning signs for a recession, so it’s time for the Fed to stop hiking. Second, some argue that the Fed’s rate hikes in 2022 haven’t even had time to affect the economy yet, so the fall in inflation can’t possibly be the Fed’s doing, and hence the Fed’s tightening has been (partly or entirely) superfluous. So let’s talk about both of these ideas. Are we headed for a recession? The answer to this question, by the way, is “No one really knows”. Not just now, but always. There are some suggestive indicators that tell us when the probability of a recession is elevated, but the signal is very weak; there’s no macroeconomic model in existence that can know with a high degree of certainty whether a recession is imminent.

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