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The NY Times Editorial Board isn't 'both-siding' it: Trumpism Is Running the House - Also, Krugman! [1]
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Date: 2023-10-26
The three-week battle to choose a House speaker may be over, yet the fallout for the United States and its reputation as a sound government and a beacon of democracy will be long-lasting and profound. The Republicans in the House unanimously voted for a man who made it his mission to try to overturn the 2020 presidential election, who put the political whims and needs of former President Donald Trump ahead of the interests and will of the American people. A party that once cared deeply about America as the leader of the free world, and believed in the strength, dependability and bipartisan consensus that such a role required, has largely given way to a party now devoted to an extremism that is an active threat to liberal values and American stability. Americans and the world are starting to get to know Mike Johnson, now the second in line to the presidency, and it’s a troubling introduction. Donald Trump may not be in the White House, but Trumpism as an institution has transcended the man and provided the operating principles for the House of Representatives and much of the Republican Party. Those operating principles include allowing Mr. Trump to all but select the speaker, and elevating, in Mr. Johnson, one of the party’s most prominent election deniers. It has been disturbing to watch the slide from Republican speakers like Paul Ryan and John Boehner, who denounced attempts to challenge the election results, to the hemming-and-hawing of Kevin McCarthy, to the full-blown anti-democratic stands of Mr. Johnson. And it has certainly been a long slide from the party of Ronald Reagan — whose 11th Commandment was not speaking ill of other Republicans and who envisioned the party as a big tent — to the extremism, purity tests and chaos of the House Republican conference this year.
The fact that The NY Times can still laud frauds like Paul Ryan and John Boehner shows how far the paper of record still has to go. As for continued worship of Ronald Reagan, where do they think the GOP war on government began?
The Times has taken a look at Johnson’s record, and it apparently terrifies them — as it should. So where exactly have they been since 2016 — or the past few decades?
Have we reached the point where we can finally say “I told you so!” and have them admit it?
Read the whole thing. They haven’t quite fully grasped all the implications yet, but they’re getting there.
For now.
I wonder if they’ll stop worrying about Biden’s age now? That old adage about “knowing you’ll be hanged in the morning really concentrates your thinking” seems to have hit the Times..
And if you want more, Paul Krugman is right on target as usual:
There are no moderate Republicans in the House of Representatives. Oh, no doubt some members are privately appalled by the views of Mike Johnson, the new speaker. But what they think in the privacy of their own minds isn’t important. What matters is what they do — and every single one of them went along with the selection of a radical extremist.
Krugman goes into the economic consequences of Johnson’s economic beliefs. It’s not pretty. And there’s this question:
Actually, I’d like to see some focus groups asking what Americans think of Johnson’s policy positions. Here’s my guess, based on previous experience: Many voters will simply refuse to believe that prominent Republicans, let alone the speaker of the House, are really advocating such terrible things. But they are and he is. The G.O.P. has gone full-on extremist, on economic as well as social issues. The question now is whether the American public will notice.
If ever there was a time for the mainstream media to redeem itself, now is the time.
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