Tuesday, March 15, 2016
Leftist projection and inability to learn
The concept of "authoritarianism" as an explanation for conservatism has been like catnip to Leftist psychologists. They cannot leave it alone. It first arose among a group of Jewish Marxists in the late 1940s and was published in a 1950 book called "The authoritaian personality" under the lead authorship of a prominent Marxist theoretician, Theodor Wiesengrund, who usually used as his surname the stage name of his Spanish dancer mother -- Adorno.
The theory underlying it failed in all sorts of ways so it fell out of favour after the '60s, though it still got an occasional mention. For more on the Adorno work see here
In the first half of his first book in 1981, "Bob" Altemeyer gave a comprehensive summary of the problems with the Adorno theory and submitted that it had to be discarded. He then went on to put forward a slightly different theory and measuring instrument of his own that rebooted the concept of authoritarianism as an explanation of conservative thinking.
That theory and its accompanying measuring instrument (the RWA scale) also soon ran aground, however. Altemeyer himself admitted that scores on the RWA scale were just about as high among Leftist voters as Rightist voters -- which rather ruined it as an explanation of conservatism. The death knell came when it was revealed that the highest scorers on the RWA scale were in fact former Russian Communists! Right wing Communists?? For more on Altemeyer's confusions see here. Or more concisely here
So the RWA scale lost most of its interest after that, though it is still cautiously used on some occasions -- e.g here.
But, as I mentioned yesterday, Leftist psychologists did not give up. A group of them including Karen Stenner, Stanley Feldman, Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler revived the old ideas and invented a new questionnaire to measure the concept. And reading their "new" theory is like a trip back into the 1940's. Conservatives are still said to be sad souls who live in a state of constant and unreasonable fear.
The amusing thing is that there is some reality behind their theory. The key word is "unreasonable". How much fear is "unreasonable"? Is all fear "unreasonable"? Obviously not. Fear is an important survival mechanism. We would all be eaten by lions etc. without it. And conservatives do fear the probable results of the hare-brained schemes put forward by Leftists. Conservatives are nothing if not cautious but to the superficial thinkers of the Left, that caution seems like fear. So from a conservative viewpoint Leftists are not fearful enough. They do not fear the "unforeseen" and adverse side effects that invariably accompany any implementation of their schemes.
So, despite the laughable psychometric characteristics of their new measuring instrument, which I set out yesterday, they have in fact achieved some grasp of reality. They have just not grasped that caution can be a good thing and have not thought deeply enough about the distinction, if any, between caution and fear. So all their writings amount to little more than an adverse value judgment of things that are in fact probably desirable.
So why all the mental muddle from them? Why does the old "authoritarianism" catnip keep them coming back to that dubious concept? Why have they not learnt from its past failures? Easy: It's all Freudian projection. They see their own faults in conservatives. The people who REALLY ARE authoritarian are Leftists themselves. Communist regimes are ALWAYS authoritarian and in democracies the constant advocates of more and more government control over everything are the Left. The Left are the big government advocates, not conservatives. What could be more authoritarian than Obama's aim to "fundamentally transform" America? It is the Left who trust in big brother while conservatives just want to be left alone.
But somehow Leftist psychologists are blind to all that. They appear to know nothing about the currents of day-to-day politics. They are the sad souls who are so out of touch with reality as to be pitiable.
UPDATE: Much fun. I sent a heads-up email to the four recent writers I mentioned above (Karen Stenner, Stanley Feldman, Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler) -- and I was copied in to the resultant emails between them. And two of them said the same thing: How amusing it was to be described as Jewish Marxists. I of course said no such thing. I referred only to Adorno and his associates as Jewish Marxists -- since Adorno was a prominent Marxist theoretician and his book was sponsored by the American Jewish Committee. The AJC in fact hold the copyright to the book. So I had an encounter with typical Leftist dishonesty
So what we have is a classic example of Freudian avoidance/denial. The authors above could not handle anything actually in the article so invented something not in the article to comment about. It is such a classical example of a defence mechanism that it could well be used as a classroom example in a clinical course.
The same defence is behind the constant Leftist attempts to shut conservatives up. Leftists just cannot handle the facts that conservatives constantly put to them so need to shut them out. Leftists really are a sad lot. It must be very uncomfortable to be so needy.
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Obama Administration and UN Announce Global Police Force to Fight ‘Extremism’ In U.S.
A Fascist takeover? A new group of Brownshirts? So far it is just some sort of communication network with no police powers of its own. But the cities in the network DO have police powers so armed enforcement of its policies is still a lively possibility
On Wednesday, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced at the United Nations that her office would be working in several American cities to form what she called the Strong Cities Network (SCN), a law enforcement initiative that would encompass the globe.
This amounts to nothing less than the overriding of American laws, up to and including the United States Constitution, in favor of United Nations laws that would henceforth be implemented in the United States itself – without any consultation of Congress at all.
The United Nations is a sharia-compliant world body, and Obama, speaking there just days ago, insisted that “violent extremism” is not exclusive to Islam (which it is). Obama is redefining jihad terror to include everyone but the jihadists. So will the UN, driven largely by the sharia-enforcing Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the pro-Islamic post-American President Obama, use a “global police force” to crush counter-jihad forces?
After all, with Obama knowingly aiding al-Qaeda forces in Syria, how likely is it that he will use his “global police force” against actual Islamic jihadists? I suspect that instead, this global police force will be used to impose the blasphemy laws under the sharia (Islamic law), and to silence all criticism of Islam for the President who proclaimed that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”
So if the local and municipal effort to counter the euphemistic and disingenuous “violent extremism” is inadequate and hasn’t developed “systematic efforts are in place to share experiences, pool resources and build a community of cities to inspire local action on a global scale,” the feds – and the UN – have to step in. Thus the groundwork is being laid for federal and international interference down to the local level. “The Strong Cities Network,” Lynch declared, “will serve as a vital tool to strengthen capacity-building and improve collaboration” – i.e., local dependence on federal and international authorities.
Remember, the DoJ presser says that the SCN will “address violent extremism in all its forms.” It also says that it will aid initiatives that are working toward “building social cohesion and resilience to violent extremism.” “Building social cohesion” is a euphemism for keeping peace between non-Muslim and Muslim communities – mostly by making sure that non-Muslims don’t complain too loudly about, much less work against, rapidly expanding Muslim populations and the Islamization of their communities.
SOURCE
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To dismiss Trump as a bigoted buffoon is a 'YUGE' mistake... he's an elite-bashing hit with the workers
A view of Trump below from a British political guru, Steve Hilton
In all the years I worked for David Cameron, through all the party conferences, press briefings and campaign events, I don’t recall him asking me to put raw steaks on stage, accompanied by bottles of wine branded with his name.
But that bizarre spectacle took place this week in the US Presidential race, as Donald Trump hit back in the most direct possible way at those who had described some of his businesses as flops. With the great showman centre stage, talking about (and pointing to) his Trump Steaks, Trump Wine, Trump Water, Trump Magazine… it was like watching a shopping channel rather than a bid for the most powerful job in the world.
With performances like this you can see why so many people belittle Trump as a ‘joke’, a ‘buffoon’, or a ‘clown’. He’s an easy target for mockery: just watch some of the brilliant YouTube videos of Trump with a posh accent, or a cockney accent, made by the actor and voice artist Peter Serafinowicz.
But simply to dismiss Trump as a reality show entertainer with nothing of consequence to say would be to make a big mistake – sorry, a ‘YUGE’ mistake, as ‘the Donald’ himself would put it.
There were disturbing scenes of violence between Trump supporters and opponents in Chicago on Friday, causing the cancellation of a Trump rally; there’s no doubting he is a divisive figure. But he is also one who makes a real connection.
He is a much more serious, interesting and historically important political figure than his detractors allow. Trump is challenging not just some of the basic tenets of Republican ideas, but those of the Democrats too. The truth is, we live in a world that is run by bankers, bureaucrats and accountants. For decades, they have pushed a technocratic agenda that has been implemented by politicians of both Left and Right.
This agenda favours big business over small, fetishises globalisation, and is relaxed about immigration – regardless of the consequences for working people. As factories close, jobs disappear and wages fall, the response from the elite has been callous and inhuman: ‘This is the world we live in: suck it up and get with the programme.’
Well, people have had enough of being dismissed and patronised by the elite – who, by the way, do very nicely out of this technocratic agenda. Big businesses use their market dominance and unfair access to the levers of power to rip off consumers, exploit workers, and keep entrepreneurial competitors from challenging them. Globalisation is undoubtedly a force for good and has helped poor people in poor countries get richer. But the biggest rewards have gone to the already rich in the wealthiest parts of the world. And uncontrolled immigration gives them cheap labour for their businesses – not to mention an endless supply of nannies, housekeepers and gardeners.
Until Trump, no mainstream US politician had spoken up for working people in these terms. No one had challenged the technocratic agenda of the bankers, the bureaucrats and the accountants. That’s why so many people support Trump; and why he is politically important.
Of course, I understand that Trump’s rhetoric sometimes causes real offence. But he’s not a bigot or a racist or a madman: he’s just a political amateur who says the first thing that comes into his head. After years of slick, calculating, machine politicians, Trump’s rough and ready authenticity has real appeal.
This is not to say that I think he would make a good President, or that I’m supporting him – I’m not. But he has shone a spotlight on some of the biggest defects of American democracy, and his role in bringing about much-needed change could be more significant than that of his patronising and increasingly hysterical critics. That includes the most pernicious issue: money in politics. Britain has no reason to be complacent about corruption, whether it’s the revolving door between Westminster and Whitehall and the boardrooms of big businesses and their shadowy advisory firms; or the way trade union money on the Left or the financial sector on the Right dominate party fundraising.
But what goes on in America makes British corruption look like a picnic. In the US, wealthy individuals and corporations literally buy the political outcomes they want. A recent analysis showed that in a new law designed to regulate the banks, 70 lines out of 85 were actually written by banking giant Citigroup.
The measure was introduced by Congressman Kevin Yoder, who receives more money in campaign donations from the financial sector than any other member of Congress. The United States today is not in any meaningful sense of the word a democracy; it is a donocracy.
Traditionally, it has been Left-wing activists who decry the role of money in politics – although that hasn’t stopped Left-wing candidates such as Hillary Clinton from hoovering up corporate cash. But it’s refreshing – and significant – to see a Republican presidential candidate sound the alarm on America’s corrupt campaign financing system.
From the start of his run for president, Trump has attacked the devastating real world impact of dodgy donations. Why are drug prices so high, costing the American taxpayer billions in subsidies? Because, as Trump points out, the pharmaceutical companies ‘take care of’ the politicians who set the rules.
Why is there so much waste in defence procurement, with billions spent on equipment that military leaders don’t want and can’t use? Because the massive defence contractors, in Trump’s vivid phrase, are ‘bloodsuckers’ on government – along with the oil companies, the health insurance companies and other moneyed interests with an inside track.
When Trump describes traditional, establishment politicians such as Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton as ‘puppets’ who are completely controlled by their donors, it strikes a chord – and, coming from a Republican, could just hasten the end of (or at least the moderation of) this corruption more than any number of worthy pamphlets from left-of-centre pressure groups.
In the end, Trump may not get to put his name on the White House as easily as he has on his buildings around the world – or his steaks, wine and private jet. But he has already made a powerful contribution to the political debate, and we should all be grateful to him for that.
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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Monday, March 14, 2016
Trump’s voters aren’t authoritarians, new research says. So what are they?
By Eric Oliver (professor of political science at the University of Chicago) and Wendy Rahn (professor of political science at the University of Minnesota)
I have commented recently on some pseudo-scientific research that claimed that Trump supporters are "authoritarian". The research relied on a measure of authoritarianism mostly attributed to Karen Stenner. I think I showed satisfactorily that the research concerned was absolute rubbish on several grounds -- but it has nonetheless got some press.
I am pleased to say therefore that I am not the only one to see that research as flawed. The methodologically more cautious research below comes to very different conclusions. Using a "Populism" questionnaire, they show that Trump supporters are the OPPOSITE of what the previous writers claim. Far from being pro-authority, they are ANTI-authority. They are incipient libertarians.
I pointed out in my previous comments that this could happen. The previous researchers used "forced choice" questions in their research and I have previously shown that doing that can lead to clearly wrong results -- results that are opposite to what more straightforward research reveals. So that has now been confirmed as applicable in Trump research.
Perhaps because the latest researchers are political scientists, not psychologists, they accept at face value the Stenner scale of alleged authoritarianism and use it in addition to their own "Populism" scale. But they miss one important point: The alleged scale of authoritarianism by Stenner probably isn't. For a start, its internal reliability is disastrously low. Where a coefficient alpha of .70 is normally required in a research instrument, the Stenner scale has shown alphas of less than .30. In normal psychometric practice, that indicates that a scale does not measure ANYTHING.
I published long ago a perfectly straightforward scale of attitude to authority that WAS internally consistent and valid so there is no good reason to rely on the badly flawed Stenner insrument. And there is also of course the Rigby & Rump (1979) instrument.
The Stenner scale is an inventory of child-rearing attitudes. Whether such attitudes offer any substantial prediction of pro-authority attitudes is unknown. I have been able to find no such evidence. Leftists (Adorno, Lakoff etc.) have been asserting since the 1940s that certain child-rearing practices lead to authoritarianism but the evidence has not been kind to that claim. For instance:
1). Rigby & Rump (1981) found that respect for one's parents generalized to respect for other authorities only in early adolescence. By late adolescence, the relationship had vanished entirely. Since it is a central claim of both Lakoff and Adorno et al (1950) that a generally pro-authority attitude is the outcome of parents insisting on respect for their own authority via heavy discipline, this seems rather an important disconfirmatory finding, does it not?
2). Elms & Milgram (1966. See their "Results" section) found that it was rebellious rather than submissive children who came from strict parenting;
3). Baumrind (1983) found that children who had experienced firm parental control developed with better competencies than did children who had experienced less parental control;
4). Di Maria & Di Nuovo (1986) found that authoritative training and parental behaviour had very little influence in determining the dogmatic attitudes of children;
5). Braungart & Braungart (1979) found that attitudes were most regimented in far-Left political groups;
6). Eisenberg-Berg & Mussen (1980) found that it was Leftists rather than conservatives who reported more conflict with their parents
7). Sidanius, Ekehammar & Brewer (1986) found that racism was unrelated to type of upbringing.
8). Johnson, Hogan, Londerman, Callens and Rogolsky (1981), in a study of college students, found that ratings of "father" and "mother" loaded on a factor different from that loading "police" and "government".
9). Lapsley, Harwell, Olson, Flannery and Quintana (1984) reported some correlation between ratings of "father" and ratings of "police" and "government" but no prediction at all from ratings of "mother".
10). Rigby et al (1987) were in the Lakoff camp in that they wanted to believe that attitude to authority generalized from parents to the world at large but from their Table 5 we can calculate that the average correlation between rebellion/submission to parents and attitudes to the Police and the law was less than .20. That is negligible.
11). The twin studies (Martin & Jardine, 1986; Eaves, Martin, Heath, Schieken, Silberg & Corey, 1977; Eaves, Martin, Meyer & Corey, 1999; Bouchard, Segal, Tellegen, McGue, Keyes, & Krueger, 2003), show that the attitudes and personality of children are formed almost entirely by genetics, not by their childhood treatment. Your Left/Right orientation is strongly genetically determined but little influenced by your family environment. The most striking of these findings is the one by Eaves et al (1999) showing that conservatism/Leftism is even more strongly genetically inherited than how tall you are. But hard science like that will no doubt be totally lost on Leftists
12). Ray (1983) points out that the most widely used measure of authoritarian attitudes is just as prone to generating high scores among Leftist voters as Rightist voters.
13). Ray & Lovejoy (1990) and Lindgren (2003) have reported survey results showing that there is no such thing as a generalized attitude to authority anyway. Conservatives might respect some authoritative institutions (such as the Army) but just try asking most U.S. conservatives at the moment what they think of the U.S. Supreme Court!
14). Ray & Najman (1987) showed in a general population survey that there was no overall relationhip between psychological disturbance and political orientation.
15. Krout (1937) showed that young Leftists saw their parents -- including mothers --as not favouring them and as having often nagged and ridiculed them. And in consequence they did not want to be like their parents and seemed to have had very unhappy childhoods in general.
16. Peterson (1990) also found that it is conservatives who report the happiest childhoods.
Detailed citations for the above references are given here
So I would be most surprised if the childrearing attitude questions used in the Trump research did in fact have much to do with attitude to authority.
If the questions concerned tell us anything, they would appear to index old-fashioned values so the high scores on "authoritarianism" among Cruz supporters probably signify at most that Cruz supporters have more old-fashioned views about child-rearing. That could be due in part to the Hispanic element in support for Cruz. Some polls have shown him getting around a third of the Latino vote
Reference:
Rigby, K. & Rump, E.E. (1979) The generality of attitude to authority Human Relations 32, 469-487.
Watch out, the authoritarians are coming!
That’s been the alarm, after recent reports that scoring high in authoritarianism was the strongest predictor that someone would support Donald Trump. “Authoritarian” has some strongly negative connotations. So it’s no wonder that anti-Trump pundits from Nicholas Frankovich to David Brooks have been quick to repeat this finding. What better way to equate Trump with Hitler?
But in our research, we find no evidence that Trump supporters are any more “authoritarian” (at least by common measures) than those who like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) or even Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).
What’s the difference between authoritarians and populists?
Authoritarianism and populism are easy to conflate, but they actually refer to very distinct tendencies.
Authoritarianism, as understood by political psychologists, refers to a set of personality traits that seek order, clarity and stability. Authoritarians have little tolerance for deviance. They’re highly obedient to strong leaders. They scapegoat outsiders and demand conformity to traditional norms.
Populism, on the other hand, is a type of political rhetoric that casts a virtuous “people” against nefarious elites and strident outsiders. Scholars measure populism in a variety of ways, but we focus on three central elements:
Belief that a few elites have absconded with the rightful sovereignty of the people;
Deep mistrust of any group that claims expertise;
Strong nationalist identity
Of course, authoritarians and populists can overlap and share dark tendencies toward nativism, racism and conspiracism. But they do have profoundly different perceptions of authority. Populists see themselves in opposition to elites of all kinds. Authoritarians see themselves as aligned with those in charge. This difference sets the candidates’ supporters apart.
This is evident in a national online survey of 1,044 adult citizens we conducted in the Friday through Thursday spanning Super Tuesday. For this analysis, we utilize four scales.
* Authoritarianism. As others have, we gauge this with a battery of items measuring preferences on child-rearing (such as whether it is better for children to have independence or respect for elders, curiosity or good manners, obedience or self-reliance).
* Anti-elitism. What separates populists from authoritarians is their alienation from political elites. We measure this with statements like “It doesn’t really matter who you vote for because the rich control both political parties,” “Politics usually boils down to a struggle between the people and the powerful” and “The system is stacked against people like me.”
* Mistrust of experts. Populists often fear not just political elites and billionaires, but anyone who claims expertise. We measure this with questions like “I’d rather put my trust in the wisdom of ordinary people than the opinions of experts and intellectuals” or “Ordinary people are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves what’s true and what’s not.”
* American identity. Populists identify themselves as part of “the people,” a noble group that needs protecting. We measure this with questions like “I consider myself to be different than ordinary Americans” or “How important is being an American to your sense of self?”
In the figure, we depict the average factor scores for each of these scales by the candidate respondents chose. The scales are constructed to be similar in range with the average score set to zero.
Two big points immediately leap out.
1. Trump voters are no more authoritarian than supporters of Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio.
In fact, they score slightly lower on these scales than Cruz’s voters. Why? Partly, this is because scales measuring child-rearing correlate very highly with fundamentalist Christian beliefs. By these measures, most Republicans look like “authoritarians” because so many are conservative Christians who advocate strict child-rearing practices. This is also why Bernie Sanders’s supporters are so much less authoritarian than Hillary Clinton’s — “Berners” are much less religious than other Democrats.
2. What really differentiates Trump’s voters from the other Republicans is the populism.
Trump voters are the only ones to score consistently high on all three populist dimensions. Cruz and Rubio’s supporters, for example, don’t express high feelings of anti-elitism. In fact, on this scale, they are strongly anti-populist, identifying with authority rather than rejecting it.
Trump supporters share anti-elitism with only one other group: Sanders’s voters.
But where Trump is a populist, we would argue that Sanders is not. Despite the fact that Sanders often gets called a populist, his voters do not conform to the populist stereotype. They generally trust experts and do not identify strongly as Americans. A better way to describe them would be cosmopolitan socialists. They see the system as corrupted by economic elites. But they don’t trust ordinary Americans and show only light attachment to Americanism as an identity.
What does all this mean?
Granted, we don’t have a lot of other measures of authoritarianism, such as an attraction to strong leaders or intolerance of ambiguity. It may be that Trump’s supporters are more swayed by these traits than other Republicans.
But by the most commonly accepted measures, the voters who look most authoritarian are not those following Trump but those following Cruz. Not only do they score highest on the authoritarian scales, they also have that combination of populist elements correlated most strongly with authoritarianism. They are mistrustful of intellectuals and experts, highly nationalistic, yet strongly aligned with political and economic elites.
In other words, if the establishment is really afraid of authoritarianism, they should worry more about Cruz than Trump.
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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Sunday, March 13, 2016
Has radicalism become fashionable?
The Australian Leftist writer, John Preston, below says that centrism is no longer the way to win elections. He makes a reasonable case for radicalism instead -- but I think he is wrong. I will say why at the foot of the article
The popularity of Corbyn and Sanders in the UK and US and the elections of Trudeau in Canada and Alexis Tsipras’ Syriza Party in Greece, and even the success of the Scottish National Party in the recent UK, would appear to offer an alternative theory.
What appealed to UK Labor and the progressives amongst Canada’s voters, and is appealing to Democrats in the US, is strong leadership coupled with high idealism backed up with deliberately progressive rhetoric, if not actual policy.
The diminutive member for Islington North, Jeremy Bernard Corbyn, was universally written off by the UK Tories, the centrist Labour movement and the British press as being much too strongly rooted in his social-democratic roots to become a credible leader of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom.
Corbyn’s philosophy is firmly based around poverty and social inequality. He advocates the re-nationalization of the railways and public utilities and has championed unilateral nuclear disarmament, free university tuition and an unashamedly green agenda of significantly increased renewable energy targets and the phasing out of the UK’s reliance on fossil fuels.
An unabashed “socialist” in the traditional sense, Corbyn barely gained sufficient nominations from Labour MPs to secure a spot on the leadership ballot, but then rapidly rose to lead the polling for the leadership of the Party for the duration of the campaign and went on to achieve a resounding – some would say ‘landslide’ – victory securing nearly 60 per cent of first round voting.
After announcing his candidacy for the Democratic Presidential Nomination in April 2015, Bernie Sanders has made consistent and occasionally remarkable in-roads into an apparently unassailable lead by US political royal and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
While at least as unlikely a candidate as his UK counterpart, the rise and rise of this self-confessed socialist, peace campaigner, former conscientious objector and avid critic of the moneyed classes in a notoriously pro-capitalist and conservative United States is remarkable.
In a February 2016 Huffington Post poll, Sanders’ is polling at 36.8 per cent in an aggregated poll of 29 polling organisations monitoring the 2016 National Democratic Primary. To be polling at nearly 37 per cent against an establishment candidate like Clinton (who is, admittedly, at 50.2 per cent) is nothing short of astonishing.
The net effect for Clinton has been a refocusing of her social justice rhetoric, with an increased emphasis on the very same policy positions that Sanders has been espousing. Following the struck match result in Iowa and the apparent 60 per cent to 40 per cent victory to Sanders in the New Hampshire Primary, income inequality and the minimum wage will inevitably feature in Clinton’s stump speeches in the lead up to the South Carolina primary, notwithstanding that she currently holds a pretty comfortable 63.2 per cent to 33.3 per cent lead according to the polls.
Justin Trudeau’s recent victory in Canada’s general elections delivered the largest-ever numerical increase in seats recorded for the Canadian Parliament. Trudeau took the Liberal Party of Canada from a lack-lustre third-position with 36 seats to a victory that saw the party secure nearly 40 per cent of the popular vote and 184 seats in a commanding mandate to form a comfortable majority government.
In the aftermath of the Paris tragedies of November 2015, Trudeau’s commentary was scrupulously measured and cautious, in stark contrast to comments by Hollande in France, Cameron in the UK or the more aggressive protagonists among Australia’s conservative political and media.
The 50/50 split by gender, reinforced by a multi-ethnic and multi-faith cabinet has led the 29th Canadian ministry to be dubbed one of the most diverse of any western democracy. Right out of the blocks, Trudeau’s ministry has begun work on shifting the taxation burden away from the middle class towards the rich, and significantly increasing the Syrian refugee intake to 25,000.
When questioned on the make-up of his cabinet, and in particular why there were 50 per cent women, Trudeau’s now famous reply was “because it’s 2015” – a statement clearly tilting at his progressive agenda.
While arguably more center-left than his UK and US brethren, Trudeau is a self-declared feminist, is resolutely pro-choice on abortion, supports the legalization of marijuana and is a champion of religious freedom.
Perhaps more pointedly, Trudeau’s foreign policy agenda revolves around peacekeeping, humanitarian aid and the reduction of Canadian troops in foreign (particularly Middle-Eastern) conflicts.
Trudeau is, by any measure, a long way from the hardline conservatism of his predecessor, Stephen Harper, and has been pejoratively labeled as: shaggy-haired; gaffe-prone; subject to depthless impetuosity; and, above all, a democratic-socialist in the bleeding-heart liberal mold.
The outstanding success of the Scottish National Party in the recent UK general elections (notwithstanding the re-election of a conservative government) has made the SNP the third-largest political party by membership and overall representation in the UK House of Commons.
The party’s success as a social democratic party is built on much the same basis as Trudeau’s Liberals in Canada and Corbyn’s platform with UK Labour – the environment, social justice, progressive taxation, affordable social housing and an intriguing anti-nuclear stance (Scotland has four nuclear power stations and two nuclear-capable military bases (Clyde and Neptune) which provide significant employment opportunities for Scottish workers).
A potential (although not predicted) coalition of SNP and UK Labour would cause significant headaches for the UK’s Tories at the next UK general elections in May 2020.
In Greece, Tsipras’ Syriza party has had a more checkered but nonetheless revealing history. In reaction to crippling austerity measurements that Syriza claim were being imposed by Germany, Tsipras came to power with a modest 36 per cent of the vote.
In the snap election of September 2015, Syriza was returned on much the same margin despite the failure of Tsipras’ coalition government to achieve the progressive policy outcomes that it had originally sought a mandate for.
On the other side of the political divide, the inexplicable rise of real estate tycoon and reality television personality, Donald Trump, as the front-runner for the Republican (GOP) Presidential Nominations also challenges the centrism theory.
Trump (on 35.5 per cent) is comfortably ahead of his nearest rival, Ted Cruz (18.5 per cent), and is well ahead of the rest of the most ultra-conservative cadre of GOP candidates in United States history.
The increasing momentum of social-democratic movements and their counter-weights around the world makes a considered study of mass-appeal politics and policy in the Australian context a worthwhile exercise.
The rise and rise of Corbyn and Sanders from the left and Trump et al. from the right, suggests that more extreme policy, coupled with decisive leadership and populist policy is at least as likely a recipe for electoral success as the centrist line.
For the Australian Labor Party, rather than shying away from a progressive social democratic platform and strong, idealistic leadership, the strategists at Labor’s National Secretariat may need to offer an alternative to Dyrenfurth’s ‘more vanilla’ centrist mantra and give the electorate a real alternative to garner success at the ballot box in 2016.
SOURCE
As perhaps befits a conservative, I am more cynical than the writer above. I believe that policy plays a secondary role in any election. People elect a person, not a platform. An attractive personality, like the Gipper, will win every time. And Tsipras (Greece) and Trudeau (Canada) are clearly attractive personalities. Even Sanders is, in his way. He at least conveys sincerity. British Leftist, Jeremy Corbyn, by contrast, is not an attractive personality and his popularity ratings are making the Conservative party very happy
And Trump most definitely fits the mould of a popular personality. He has very little in the way of firm policies at all. But what he says and the way he says it sounds good and cheering to a lot of people. People do like a strong leader and Trump oozes strength and confidence. Tsipras and Trudeau also convey great confidence and self-assurance. And what did Mitt Romney convey? Nothing.
And the rising star in Britain's Conservative party -- Boris Johnson, said in some polls to be the most popular man in England -- is nothing if not self-confident and is an attractive and cheerful personality generally. So if Britain votes to leave the EU, he will most likely become Prime Minister overnight. Johnson is heading the "leave" vote while the present PM wants Britain to stay in the EU.
The House of Commons has the power to change Prime Ministers at any time. I am betting that a lot of Americans wish that Congress could toss Obama out. In Britain, Parliament can do exactly that sort of thing. The supremacy of Parliament is a pretty good idea. Britons fought a civil war to enshrine it.
Policies do matter but they are secondary in winning elections
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No, BO, You Caused the Rise of Trump
Barack Obama held a press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Thursday where, standing in front of a Canadian flag, he denied that he caused the rise of Donald Trump. “What I’m not going to do is to validate some notion that the Republican crack-up that’s been taking place is a consequence of actions that I’ve taken,” Obama said. “And what’s interesting … there are thoughtful conservatives who are troubled by this, who are troubled by the direction of their party. I think it is very important for them to reflect on what it is about the politics they’ve engaged in that allows the circus we’ve been seeing to transpire, and to do some introspection. Because, ultimately, I want an effective Republican Party.”
Sure he does.
As I wrote just two weeks ago in The Trump Freight Train, despite his decidedly liberal “New York values” and the fact that his brilliantly timed and superbly calculated rhetoric is mostly fragrance and not substance, Trump’s appeal is sustained because that rhetoric affirms a broad spectrum of anger — anger that has been seeded by Obama’s unprecedented executive arrogance, and the failure of Republicans to counter his populist policies. So confused are some Republicans that they no longer can distinguish between “conservative” and “establishment” candidates.
Seven years of Obama’s repressive regime has fomented despair, delusion and division among the ranks of Republican voters – so much so that some are willing to take leave of their senses and join a cultish movement with a self-promoting charlatan as its head. History is replete with examples of such movements, and the tragic result – the suppression of Liberty. Most conservatives, many moderates and even some centrist Democrats are exhausted, and consequently, some will settle for anything other than what they perceive to be “status quo.”
The Obama effect was plain in 2010, giving rise to the most authentic grassroots movement in generations – the Tea Party. As a result, Republicans gained 63 seats in the House, retaking control in the biggest shift since 1948. They gained six seats in the Senate and the gains were wide and deep nationwide, as Republicans picked up 680 seats in state legislative races, an all-time record. That gave Republicans control of a majority of state legislatures and 29 governorships. But, regrettably, establishment Republican leaders in the House excluded the new conservatives from leadership positions.
The fact is, Obama caused Donald Trump, and Obama, ever the political strategist, is using this opportunity to embarrass the Republican Party, hoping to shore up the general election for Hillary Clinton.
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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Friday, March 11, 2016
Poll: Why Voters Flock to Donald Trump
It is perfectly reasonable that a successful businessman should be seen as best able to deal with jobs and the economy but that may be only the politically correct answer that Trump voters give to pollsters rather than the most basic reason. Mitt Romney was a rich businessman too -- but he enthused just about nobody
A new poll shows conservatives and independent voters believe Donald Trump is the best-suited Republican candidate to deal with jobs and the economy, and that this factor is a big reason for Trump's wide support.
A net 64 percent of respondents in a national poll said Trump would be best on jobs and economy, according to a Gallup poll conducted Feb. 26-28. Trump received nearly four times more support than runner-up Sen. Marco Rubio, who scored 17 percent on the same issue.
Trump, who is ranked first in the Washington Examiner's presidential power rankings, swept the six-category poll, and took first place by a landslide on five of the issues. The GOP front-runner had 61 percent of voters' support on handling the federal budget deficit, nearly four times Rubio's 16 percent second place finish.
"These strengths appear to be at the core of his support, tying in with the persistent economic anxiety Republicans express on a host of Gallup measures, such as confidence in the economy and their own economic progress," Gallup poll experts Frank Newport and Lydia Saad concluded.
SOURCE
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What This Washington Post Columnist Got Wrong in Analysis of Conservatives
Beware of friendly progressives like E. J. Dionne, Jr., who come bearing beguiling gifts like how conservatism can get back on the right track.
In his new book, “Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond,” Dionne, a featured columnist of the always helpful Washington Post, argues that because elected conservatives broke their promises to voters to slash federal spending, spark an economic boom, put social issues at the top of the agenda, and restore tattered American prestige around the world, the American public has gone looking for political alternatives and found them in outspoken outliers.
The solution, suggests Dionne, is for conservatives to stop making promises they cannot keep—like shrinking government to its pre-New Deal size—and reclaim the “moderate” conservatism of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. That is the only sensible solution, says Dionne, because after nearly 80 years of the New Deal and its successors, the voters have come to accept and expect a government that gives them Social Security, health care, food stamps, housing allowances, and all the other accoutrements of the modern welfare state. To hew to a rigid Bill Buckley/Barry Goldwater ideology, he argues, is to consign your political movement to defeat and oblivion.
Dionne’s political diagnosis is accurate—conservative leaders in Washington have constantly let the voters down and hard—but his recommended cure would be disastrous for it would require conservatives to abandon the unquestioned political success of President Ronald Reagan and to a lesser extent that of Speaker Newt Gingrich. Let’s not forget the historic welfare reform of 1996, passed twice over President Bill Clinton’s veto.
It would require conservatives to agree with progressives that the eight years of the Reagan presidency were a decade of greed rather than an unprecedented period of economic prosperity that benefitted all Americans, including African-Americans. It is a little-known fact that during the Eighties, black unemployment dropped 9 percentage points, black household income went up 84 percent, and the number of black-owned businesses increased 40 percent.
Dionne warns that the Republicans “must do more than offer a few tax credits and speak warmly about civil society.” It is obvious he has not read House Speaker Paul Ryan’s pro-growth agenda based on free enterprise and government by consent. Nor has he consulted the Heritage Foundation’s Solutions 2016, with its 111 recommendations on everything from Obamacare (repeal it), education (exit the Common Core standards and tests) and energy (reform the process for new nuclear reactor plants) to jobs (repeal the Davis-Bacon Act).
He accuses Reagan of legerdemain and rhetorical tricks to change the political debate without changing the structure of American government. But that is precisely the point. Reagan did not want to change our form of government, he wanted to restore our government to its original form in which “we the people” govern and the checks and balances carefully constructed by the Founders prevent any one branch of government from gaining too much power.
Contrary to Dionne’s advice, conservatives understand that the way to win the electoral debate is to take a strong forward position and stick with it just as Reagan did with his 1981 tax cuts that triggered 90 months of economic growth and his Strategic Defense Initiative which forced the Soviets to abandon the arms race and agree to end the cold war at the bargaining table and not on the battlefield.
Dionne is correct that President Eisenhower presided over a period of comparative peace and prosperity in the 1950s, but his “modern” Republicanism was rejected as “a dime store New Deal” by Barry Goldwater, a prime maker of the conservative movement. What Reagan said in his first inaugural address still applies: “In this crisis, government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.”
Contrary to Dionne’s counsel, American conservatism does not need warmed-over Republicanism from the Fifties to get back on track but principled leadership committed to real health care solutions, meaningful spending cuts, tax reform that spurs economic growth and creates jobs, a strong national defense, energy independence, commonsense immigration reform, protection of human life from conception to natural death, and preservation of the traditional family.
That is a sure cure for conservatism’s ills and for an America anchored in family, faith, work and community.
SOURCE
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Wisconsin is Proof Positive That Conservative Solutions Work
Scott Walker may have washed out of the presidential election early, but his conservative agenda is saving the state of Wisconsin billions. As Townhall notes:
"Republican Gov. Scott Walker found himself fighting for his political life when he proposed necessary reforms to Wisconsin’s labor unions in 2011. It prompted liberal forces in his state to mount a recall effort to remove him from office; they failed. Then, they failed to boot him during his 2014 re-election bid. Act 10 is, for all intents and purposes, here to stay–and it’s saved the taxpayers billions of dollars (via Watchdog):
…[D]espite all the dire predictions, Act 10 has proved a smashing success for Wisconsin taxpayers, according to a new analysis by the MacIver Institute.
The Madison-based free-market think tank’s report estimates taxpayers have saved $5.24 billion over the past five years, thanks to the law.
The analysis found that the state has saved $3.36 billion by requiring government employees to contribute to their government-backed pensions, and another $404.8 million by opening up employees’ health insurance to competitive bidding, among other cost controls. The savings have been widespread, across state and local governments.
Milwaukee Public Schools, for instance, saved a whopping $1.3 billion in long-term pension liabilities, according to the MacIver report. The University of Wisconsin System saved $527 million in retirement costs, the study found. And Medford School District recently realized an 11 percent decrease in the cost of its health insurance plan by opening it to competitive bidding.
The savings due to Act 10 breaks down to $2,291 for every household in Wisconsin, according to the analysis"
Reforms like Walker's aren't easy, and as the piece notes, they nearly cost them his job. But they provide a template for any committed conservative who's ready to set to the task of taking on the public sector unions that are bankrupting this country.
SOURCE
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Minimum Wage Hikes Hose Canadians, Too, Eh?
It’s not just American economists who are waving red flags when it comes to raising the minimum wage. The Canadian-based Fraser Institute recently published a study — “Raising the Minimum Wage: Misguided Policy, Unintended Consequences” — that analyzes the negative regulatory effect of minimum wage increases for Canadians. The executive summary states:
There is an enormous body of empirical research examining the effects of the minimum wage. Canadian studies are considered of higher quality than US studies because (among other reasons) there is a wider variability in the provincial Canadian minimum-wage variable. The Canadian literature generally finds that a 10% increase in the minimum wage reduces employment among teens and young adults (ages 15 to 24) by 3% to 6%. By making it harder for low-skilled workers to obtain an entry-level position, the minimum wage may perversely hinder the development of human capital and harm the long-term career prospects of the very people it ostensibly helps. Indeed, Canadian researchers have found that hiking the minimum wage has no statistically significant impact on poverty and in some cases can increase it.
Democrats often say that America needs to more emulate other countries, particularly Canada, Australia and Great Britain, because their Big Government boondoggles work. But no matter which country you analyze, the end result — whether we’re talking about government-run health care, generous benefits and entitlements or gun registration — is always the same: failure. Moreover, Democrats never mention the numerous studies like the Fraser Institute’s that completely refute their Socialist make-believe. It seems the only thing to them worth emulating is the rhetoric — not the evidence.
SOURCE
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Broken ObamaCare Co-Ops Cheat the System
During his weekly address on June 27, 2015, Barack Obama responded to a favorable Supreme Court ruling from two days earlier on the legality of ObamaCare subsidies by boasting, “This law is working exactly as it’s supposed to — and in some ways, better than we expected it to. … [I]t is time to stop refighting battles that have been settled again and again. It’s time to move on.” If only we could. The reason we can’t (aside from the Supreme Court getting it wrong twice) is because the law is not working, no matter how you spin it. Not only is enrollment tanking, but a new poll shows that very few people are seeing any benefits, and already 12 of the nearly two dozen ObamaCare co-ops have imploded. As for the rest? They, too, are on shaky ground.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services unloaded a bombshell on Congress last week by revealing that eight more co-ops may soon be headed for closure. According to The Washington Free Beacon, “The agency’s chief operating officer, Dr. Mandy Cohen, told the House Oversight and Government Reform committee that the 11 co-ops that remain are ‘being monitored closely,’ and that eight have a corrective action plan in place and are under enhanced oversight. Cohen explained that a co-op is put on a corrective action plan when the agency identifies issues with its finances, operations, compliance, or management processes.” If history is any indication, they won’t last long.
The news gets worse. A separate Free Beacon story published Tuesday says, “Co-ops created under Obamacare reported net assets despite losing millions because they used an accounting trick approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. … In July 2015, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services amended its agreement with co-ops, allowing them to list $2.4 billion in loans they received from taxpayers as assets.” So not only are co-ops closing left and right, but the federal government allowed them to cheat the system, all while CEOs pulled in hundreds of thousands of dollars. If this was happening in the private sector, would Obama claim the system “is working exactly as it’s supposed to — and in some ways, better than we expected it to”?
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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Thursday, March 10, 2016
Coat-tails
Trump seems to have generated at least as much criticism from Republicans as Democrats, so there is a feeling that a newly-elected Congress will be as obstructive to Trump as they were to Obama. I don't believe it. I think Trump will win big and have significant coat-tails -- i.e a lot of Congressmen will have wins as a result of the Trump GOP brand. Some will win who would not have won without Trump. And that will percolate. GOP congressmen will see Trump as being owed. He will of course have to compromise with Congress, as all Presidents do, but that should work well to lead to well-considered legislation.
Donald Trump ‘near certain’ to defeat either Democrat in November, says forecaster
THE science is settled: Trump can’t be stumped. The controversial billionaire has an 87 per cent chance of defeating Hillary Clinton in November, and a 99 per cent chance of defeating Bernie Sanders.
That’s according to the Primary Model, a statistical analysis model developed by Stony Brook University political science professor Helmut Norpoth, which has correctly predicted the last five US elections since it was introduced in 1996.
It comes as voters in Hawaii, Idaho, Michigan and Mississippi have their say in the US presidential nominating race, with Trump picking up the latter two states.
The Primary Model relies on the presidential primaries and the election cycle as predictors of the vote in the general election, and Professor Norpoth says early primaries are a leading indicator of electoral victory.
Trump won the Republican primaries in both New Hampshire and South Carolina, while Clinton and Sanders split the Democratic primaries in those states.
“What favours the GOP in 2016 as well, no matter if Trump is the nominee or any other Republican, is a cycle of presidential elections,” he wrote on The Huffington Post.
“After two terms of Democrat Barack Obama in the White House the electoral pendulum is poised to swing to the GOP this year. This cycle, which is illustrated with elections since 1960, goes back a long way to 1828.”
Professor Norpoth says in a match-up between Trump and either Democratic contender, the Primary Model predicts Trump would defeat Clinton by 52.5 per cent to 47.5 per cent of the two-party vote. Against Sanders, Trump would take 57.7 per cent versus 42.3 per cent.
Importantly, Professor Norpoth says that result even factors in Trump’s outrageous comments.
“Winning early primaries is a sign that a candidate has a favourable image,” he wrote in a recent question-and-answer session on reddit. “Whatever past gaffes or scandals might affect a candidate have been absorbed into that image by then.”
Trump was accused of dragging the presidential race into the gutter last week with a reference to his penis size, after rival candidate Marco Rubio made a suggestive comment about Trump having “small hands” at a rally.
“Trump has held pretty steady in the 30s,” Professor Norpoth says. “He does not seem to slip in approval for any stupid, silly, outrageous and offensive remarks. That alone is a new thing.”
This all assumes Trump, who has been hit with an onslaught of attacks from both rivals and the Republican establishment, wins the nomination.
Over the weekend, a secretive meeting of billionaires, tech CEOs and high-ranking Republicans — which included Apple’s Tim Cook, Google co-founder Larry Page and Tesla’s Elon Musk — put their heads together to work out a plan to defeat the real estate mogul.
And in an unprecedented attack last week, former Republican candidate Mitt Romney blasted Trump as a “fraud”. However, a new poll suggests that attack may have actually helped Trump, finding 31 per cent of Republican voters are more likely to vote for him because of Romney’s speech.
Professor Norpoth says he can’t predict the outcome of nomination contest. “But ask yourself, who has not got the nomination in at least the last 60 years who racked as many wins in the primaries as Trump? I can’t think of any,” he said.
In January 2012, Professor Norpoth predicted Barack Obama would defeat Mitt Romney with 88 per cent certainty, and around the same time in 2004 that George W. Bush would be re-elected with more than 95 per cent certainty.
The model pulls in data from every presidential election going back until 1912 — the year the primary system was introduced — to estimate the weight of primary performance.
“That year the candidate who won his party’s primary vote, Woodrow Wilson, went on to defeat the candidate who lost his party’s primary vote, William Howard Taft,” Professor Norpoth writes.
“As a rule, the candidate with the better primary performance, as compared to his or her strongest rival, beats the candidate with the weaker primary performance.”
Applied retroactively, the Primary Model has correctly picked the winner in every presidential election going back to 1912 except for 1960, when John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon.
Professor Norpoth remains cautious, however. “I agree with Mark Twain,” he wrote. “Prophecy is good business, but it is full of risks.”
SOURCE
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Michael Needham was stoking fear in Republicans long before Donald Trump
Before Donald Trump began terrorizing the Republican establishment, there was Michael Needham.
The 35-year-old conservative prodigy has spent six years instilling panic in Washington Republicans as head of Heritage Action for America. But instead of pitching himself as the solution to D.C.’s problems, Needham conducts his own slash-and-burn campaign to rid Congress of policies and players he sees as insufficiently conservative — many of them fellow Republicans.
His strategy at Heritage Action is deceptively simple: identify votes that should be important to the conservative base, then grade lawmakers on where they stand. The result has been chaos and gridlock on Capitol Hill, as Republicans rush to side with Heritage Action and avoid the friendly fire of the 1.9 million grassroots conservatives in its network.
Needham, a native New Yorker who has never worked on Capitol Hill, is unapologetic about leading one of Washington’s most feared advocacy groups.
“The anger [from voters] comes from a place that is profoundly right,” Needham said in an interview, referring to Trump’s political success. “I think we [Heritage Action] have landed exactly where the mood of the electorate is. I think that is why politicians are channeling our message. A Trump election or nomination is a complete vindication that Washington needs to change.”
Washington Republicans might panic at the thought of a Trump presidency, but Needham says he does not. He believes that underneath the bluster, the businessman is malleable on specifics — specifics that Needham and his team could provide.
“A President Trump who tries to find policies that address the themes he’s been addressing would be a fantastic opportunity for us to shape the policy agenda,” he said.
Needham has been channeling Trump-style anger at the nation’s capital and his own party since 2010, when he founded Heritage Action, an independent sister organization of the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation. His group isn’t endorsing in the presidential race, but it is known for its close ties to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who shows a similar dedication to breaking Washington from the inside.
Though Heritage Action has failed to achieve some of its larger goals, such as stopping ObamaCare, Needham’s work has had a profound impact on how business is conducted in Washington. The fact that legislative brinkmanship is now routine is no accident: the near-misses on funding the government, raising the debt ceiling and approving must-pass bills are all but ordained in the Heritage Action playbook as ways of extracting policy concessions.
At the moment, Heritage Action is pressuring Senate Republicans to block President Obama’s eventual Supreme Court nominee and House Republicans to lower federal spending targets in their next budget. Both battles will help determine the group’s influence in the final year of Obama’s presidency, and set the temperature of Heritage Action’s relationship with new House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).
More HERE
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The Seen and Unseen
By Walter E. Williams
Claude Frederic Bastiat (1801-50) -- a French classical liberal theorist, political economist and member of the French National Assembly -- wrote an influential essay titled "That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen." Bastiat argued that when making laws or economic decisions, it is imperative that we examine not only what is seen but what is unseen. In other words, examine the whole picture.
Americans who support tariffs on foreign goods could benefit immensely from Bastiat's admonition. A concrete example was the Bush administration's 8 to 30 percent tariffs in 2002 on several types of imported steel. They were levied in an effort to protect jobs in the ailing U.S. steel industry.
Those tariffs caused the domestic price for some steel products, such as hot-rolled steel, to rise by as much as 40 percent. The clear beneficiaries of the steel tariffs were steel industry executives and stockholders and the 1,700 or so steelworkers whose jobs were saved. But there is no such thing as a free lunch or a something-for-nothing machine. Whenever there is a benefit of doing something, there is a guaranteed cost.
A study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, predicted that saving those 1,700 jobs in the steel industry would cost American consumers $800,000 per job, in the form of higher prices. That's just the monetary side of the picture. According to a study commissioned by the Consuming Industries Trade Action Coalition, steel-using industries -- such as the U.S. auto industry, its suppliers, heavy construction equipment manufacturers and others -- were harmed by higher steel prices.
It is estimated that the steel tariffs caused at least 4,500 job losses in no fewer than 16 states, with over 19,000 jobs lost in California, 16,000 in Texas and about 10,000 each in Ohio, Michigan and Illinois. In other words, industries that use steel were forced to pay higher prices, causing them to have to raise prices on what they produced. As a result, they became less competitive in both domestic and international markets and thus had to lay off workers.
Tariff policy beneficiaries are always seen, but its victims are mostly unseen. Politicians love this. The reason is simple. The beneficiaries know for whom to cast their ballots and to whom to give campaign contributions. Most often, the victims do not know whom to blame for their calamity.
Here's my question to those who want to use tariffs to fight cheap imports in the name of saving jobs: Seeing as back in 2002, the typical hourly wage of a steelworker ranged between $15 and $20, in addition to fringe benefits -- so we might be talking about an annual wage package averaging $50,000 to $55,000 -- how much sense did it make for American consumers to have to pay $800,000 in higher prices, not to mention lost employment in steel-using industries, to save each job?
It would have been cheaper to tax ourselves and give each of those 1,700 steelworkers a $100,000 annual check. Doing so would have been far less costly to Americans than the steel tariffs, but it would have been politically impossible. Why? The cost of protecting those steel jobs would have been apparent and hence repulsive to most Americans. Tariffs conceal such costs.
When Congress creates a special privilege for some Americans, it must of necessity come at the expense of other Americans. Then Americans who are harmed, such as the steel-using auto industry, descend on Congress asking for some kind of relief for themselves. It all reminds me of a passage in a Negro spiritual play written by Marcus Cook Connelly, titled "The Green Pastures," wherein God laments to the angel Gabriel, "Every time Ah passes a miracle, Ah has to pass fo' or five mo' to ketch up wid it."
"I think Congress ought to get out of the miracle business and leave miracle-making up to God.
SOURCE
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Socialism in action
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
*********************************
THE science is settled: Trump can’t be stumped. The controversial billionaire has an 87 per cent chance of defeating Hillary Clinton in November, and a 99 per cent chance of defeating Bernie Sanders.
That’s according to the Primary Model, a statistical analysis model developed by Stony Brook University political science professor Helmut Norpoth, which has correctly predicted the last five US elections since it was introduced in 1996.
It comes as voters in Hawaii, Idaho, Michigan and Mississippi have their say in the US presidential nominating race, with Trump picking up the latter two states.
The Primary Model relies on the presidential primaries and the election cycle as predictors of the vote in the general election, and Professor Norpoth says early primaries are a leading indicator of electoral victory.
Trump won the Republican primaries in both New Hampshire and South Carolina, while Clinton and Sanders split the Democratic primaries in those states.
“What favours the GOP in 2016 as well, no matter if Trump is the nominee or any other Republican, is a cycle of presidential elections,” he wrote on The Huffington Post.
“After two terms of Democrat Barack Obama in the White House the electoral pendulum is poised to swing to the GOP this year. This cycle, which is illustrated with elections since 1960, goes back a long way to 1828.”
Professor Norpoth says in a match-up between Trump and either Democratic contender, the Primary Model predicts Trump would defeat Clinton by 52.5 per cent to 47.5 per cent of the two-party vote. Against Sanders, Trump would take 57.7 per cent versus 42.3 per cent.
Importantly, Professor Norpoth says that result even factors in Trump’s outrageous comments.
“Winning early primaries is a sign that a candidate has a favourable image,” he wrote in a recent question-and-answer session on reddit. “Whatever past gaffes or scandals might affect a candidate have been absorbed into that image by then.”
Trump was accused of dragging the presidential race into the gutter last week with a reference to his penis size, after rival candidate Marco Rubio made a suggestive comment about Trump having “small hands” at a rally.
“Trump has held pretty steady in the 30s,” Professor Norpoth says. “He does not seem to slip in approval for any stupid, silly, outrageous and offensive remarks. That alone is a new thing.”
This all assumes Trump, who has been hit with an onslaught of attacks from both rivals and the Republican establishment, wins the nomination.
Over the weekend, a secretive meeting of billionaires, tech CEOs and high-ranking Republicans — which included Apple’s Tim Cook, Google co-founder Larry Page and Tesla’s Elon Musk — put their heads together to work out a plan to defeat the real estate mogul.
And in an unprecedented attack last week, former Republican candidate Mitt Romney blasted Trump as a “fraud”. However, a new poll suggests that attack may have actually helped Trump, finding 31 per cent of Republican voters are more likely to vote for him because of Romney’s speech.
Professor Norpoth says he can’t predict the outcome of nomination contest. “But ask yourself, who has not got the nomination in at least the last 60 years who racked as many wins in the primaries as Trump? I can’t think of any,” he said.
In January 2012, Professor Norpoth predicted Barack Obama would defeat Mitt Romney with 88 per cent certainty, and around the same time in 2004 that George W. Bush would be re-elected with more than 95 per cent certainty.
The model pulls in data from every presidential election going back until 1912 — the year the primary system was introduced — to estimate the weight of primary performance.
“That year the candidate who won his party’s primary vote, Woodrow Wilson, went on to defeat the candidate who lost his party’s primary vote, William Howard Taft,” Professor Norpoth writes.
“As a rule, the candidate with the better primary performance, as compared to his or her strongest rival, beats the candidate with the weaker primary performance.”
Applied retroactively, the Primary Model has correctly picked the winner in every presidential election going back to 1912 except for 1960, when John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon.
Professor Norpoth remains cautious, however. “I agree with Mark Twain,” he wrote. “Prophecy is good business, but it is full of risks.”
SOURCE
***************************
Michael Needham was stoking fear in Republicans long before Donald Trump
Before Donald Trump began terrorizing the Republican establishment, there was Michael Needham.
The 35-year-old conservative prodigy has spent six years instilling panic in Washington Republicans as head of Heritage Action for America. But instead of pitching himself as the solution to D.C.’s problems, Needham conducts his own slash-and-burn campaign to rid Congress of policies and players he sees as insufficiently conservative — many of them fellow Republicans.
His strategy at Heritage Action is deceptively simple: identify votes that should be important to the conservative base, then grade lawmakers on where they stand. The result has been chaos and gridlock on Capitol Hill, as Republicans rush to side with Heritage Action and avoid the friendly fire of the 1.9 million grassroots conservatives in its network.
Needham, a native New Yorker who has never worked on Capitol Hill, is unapologetic about leading one of Washington’s most feared advocacy groups.
“The anger [from voters] comes from a place that is profoundly right,” Needham said in an interview, referring to Trump’s political success. “I think we [Heritage Action] have landed exactly where the mood of the electorate is. I think that is why politicians are channeling our message. A Trump election or nomination is a complete vindication that Washington needs to change.”
Washington Republicans might panic at the thought of a Trump presidency, but Needham says he does not. He believes that underneath the bluster, the businessman is malleable on specifics — specifics that Needham and his team could provide.
“A President Trump who tries to find policies that address the themes he’s been addressing would be a fantastic opportunity for us to shape the policy agenda,” he said.
Needham has been channeling Trump-style anger at the nation’s capital and his own party since 2010, when he founded Heritage Action, an independent sister organization of the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation. His group isn’t endorsing in the presidential race, but it is known for its close ties to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who shows a similar dedication to breaking Washington from the inside.
Though Heritage Action has failed to achieve some of its larger goals, such as stopping ObamaCare, Needham’s work has had a profound impact on how business is conducted in Washington. The fact that legislative brinkmanship is now routine is no accident: the near-misses on funding the government, raising the debt ceiling and approving must-pass bills are all but ordained in the Heritage Action playbook as ways of extracting policy concessions.
At the moment, Heritage Action is pressuring Senate Republicans to block President Obama’s eventual Supreme Court nominee and House Republicans to lower federal spending targets in their next budget. Both battles will help determine the group’s influence in the final year of Obama’s presidency, and set the temperature of Heritage Action’s relationship with new House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).
More HERE
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The Seen and Unseen
By Walter E. Williams
Claude Frederic Bastiat (1801-50) -- a French classical liberal theorist, political economist and member of the French National Assembly -- wrote an influential essay titled "That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen." Bastiat argued that when making laws or economic decisions, it is imperative that we examine not only what is seen but what is unseen. In other words, examine the whole picture.
Americans who support tariffs on foreign goods could benefit immensely from Bastiat's admonition. A concrete example was the Bush administration's 8 to 30 percent tariffs in 2002 on several types of imported steel. They were levied in an effort to protect jobs in the ailing U.S. steel industry.
Those tariffs caused the domestic price for some steel products, such as hot-rolled steel, to rise by as much as 40 percent. The clear beneficiaries of the steel tariffs were steel industry executives and stockholders and the 1,700 or so steelworkers whose jobs were saved. But there is no such thing as a free lunch or a something-for-nothing machine. Whenever there is a benefit of doing something, there is a guaranteed cost.
A study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, predicted that saving those 1,700 jobs in the steel industry would cost American consumers $800,000 per job, in the form of higher prices. That's just the monetary side of the picture. According to a study commissioned by the Consuming Industries Trade Action Coalition, steel-using industries -- such as the U.S. auto industry, its suppliers, heavy construction equipment manufacturers and others -- were harmed by higher steel prices.
It is estimated that the steel tariffs caused at least 4,500 job losses in no fewer than 16 states, with over 19,000 jobs lost in California, 16,000 in Texas and about 10,000 each in Ohio, Michigan and Illinois. In other words, industries that use steel were forced to pay higher prices, causing them to have to raise prices on what they produced. As a result, they became less competitive in both domestic and international markets and thus had to lay off workers.
Tariff policy beneficiaries are always seen, but its victims are mostly unseen. Politicians love this. The reason is simple. The beneficiaries know for whom to cast their ballots and to whom to give campaign contributions. Most often, the victims do not know whom to blame for their calamity.
Here's my question to those who want to use tariffs to fight cheap imports in the name of saving jobs: Seeing as back in 2002, the typical hourly wage of a steelworker ranged between $15 and $20, in addition to fringe benefits -- so we might be talking about an annual wage package averaging $50,000 to $55,000 -- how much sense did it make for American consumers to have to pay $800,000 in higher prices, not to mention lost employment in steel-using industries, to save each job?
It would have been cheaper to tax ourselves and give each of those 1,700 steelworkers a $100,000 annual check. Doing so would have been far less costly to Americans than the steel tariffs, but it would have been politically impossible. Why? The cost of protecting those steel jobs would have been apparent and hence repulsive to most Americans. Tariffs conceal such costs.
When Congress creates a special privilege for some Americans, it must of necessity come at the expense of other Americans. Then Americans who are harmed, such as the steel-using auto industry, descend on Congress asking for some kind of relief for themselves. It all reminds me of a passage in a Negro spiritual play written by Marcus Cook Connelly, titled "The Green Pastures," wherein God laments to the angel Gabriel, "Every time Ah passes a miracle, Ah has to pass fo' or five mo' to ketch up wid it."
"I think Congress ought to get out of the miracle business and leave miracle-making up to God.
SOURCE
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Socialism in action
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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Wednesday, March 09, 2016
Hatred of Truth as Freudian denial
The following essay is by psychohistorian Richard Koeingsberg. Psychohistorians are particularly interested in the Hitler episode and rightly see Nazism as a pursuit of the old Leftist dream of an ideal, Edenic society. Greenies are the chief modern-day exponents of that. What Koenigsberg says below is very relevant to the furious hatred that conservatives often encounter from Leftists these days
At the 1997 Annual Holocaust Conference, I attended a lecture by Dr. John Weiss on “The Ideology of Death” (he had just published Ideology of Death: Why the Holocaust Happened in Germany).
In the course of the discussion, he mentioned “the hated Goldhagen.” Apparently, the audience understood what he meant—because a substantial conversation ensued about “the hated Goldhagen.”
I wondered what this was about. I’d attended over 100 conferences by then and many presentations—and had never heard academics speak like this. Indeed, the reigning ideology of the time was “Everyone is entitled to his (or her) own discourse.”
Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners was published in 1996. Apparently, the book generated enormous controversy among academics in the United States as well as Germany. The book became a best-seller.
What was all the fuss about?
I read the book—all 656 pages. It’s the richest, most dynamic book I’ve ever read on the Holocaust—and I’ve read quite a few.
Apparently, people took issue with Goldhagen’s claim that there was a uniquely German anti-Semitism, and that many Germans killed willfully—responding to their hatred of Jews.
I won’t address the substance of Goldhagen’s arguments here. Rather, I’d like to discuss the issue of hatred—why someone might be “hated” for putting forth certain propositions or theories.
Of course, we’ve seen this occur many times. Freud was hated and condemned for his theory of sexuality: his discovery that sexual desire plays a profound role in shaping our lives.
Similarly, people did not take kindly to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution—showing how human beings have descended from “lower” forms of animal life. Darwin’s ideas, like those of Freud, generated disagreement that took the form of anger, even rage.
It’s not difficult to understand that the theories of Freud and Darwin generated hostility because many people found their ideas disturbing, or painful. People become angry when confronted with truths they find unpleasant. Anger or hatred serves in the name of pushing away—disavowing—certain ideas. Hatred is a form of denial.
This dynamic of hatred as denial is no less operative today than it was a century ago. Each culture (including each academic culture) embraces certain beliefs as if they are absolutes—and reacts violently to ideas that contradict their world view.
Can everyone be wrong? Can entire cultures embrace ideas that have no foundation in reality? Can many ideas that society puts forth turn out to be nonsense? I have found this to be the case.
I often ask people: “How many Jews do you think were in Germany in 1933—out of a population of 65 million?” I get answers of 5 million, 10 million, even 20 or 30 million. The correct answer is: there were approximately 500,000 Jews in Germany in 1933, half of 1%.
I no longer find it fruitful to debate the point that Jews were killed for no reason at all. People have difficulty with this idea. They insist there must have been some reason that the Nazis acted as they did.
There weren’t any reasons. Hitler and the many Germans were embroiled in a shared fantasy. Entire societies can be wrong. Many cultural ideas—that people fervently believe are true—turn out to have no foundation in reality.
On the surface, people challenged Goldhagen because they believed his theories were “wrong;” not supported by the evidence; or because they felt his scholarship was suspect. But why would someone be “hated” for a theory that was incorrect?
At the Holocaust conference, Goldhagen was invited to give the keynote address, “The Holocaust in the Context of the 20th Century.” I arrived early to set up the Library of Social Science Book Exhibit. Enjoying the sights of the Millersville campus, I spotted conference director Jack Fischel walking with someone at a distance. Perhaps he was taking Goldhagen out to lunch?
Ah, I reflected, that couldn’t. The person walking with Jack was a slight, unimposing young man. Could this be “the hated Goldhagen?” Based on the way people spoke about him, I imagined Goldhagen as having a commanding, threatening presence.
Daniel Goldhagen
The young man walking with Jack Fischel indeed was Daniel Goldhagen. I met him later when he came to check out the books in the exhibit room. He was a warm, gentle person. Nothing whatsoever to “hate.”
We began rapping. I explained to him why I thought many people were disturbed by his theories. I gave him a copy of Hitler’s Ideology (no charge). We were having a great conversation.
But then Jack Fischel was at the door. The lecture was about to begin (down the hall from the exhibit room). Goldhagen couldn’t tear himself away. Fischel called his name several times; finally, he departed. Time to go back to work, do his job, earn his fee.
SOURCE
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Lakoff rides again
Some Leftists have wheeled George Lakoff out to explain the rise of The Donald. An excerpt from his latest essay below. All his theories are just conventional Leftist pap, with no correspondence to reality. But I have dealt with his theories pretty thoroughly long ago so am disinclined to re-run any of that. There is also an amusing takedown of Lakoff here
In a world governed by personal responsibility and discipline, those who win deserve to win. Why does Donald Trump publicly insult other candidates and political leaders mercilessly? Quite simply, because he knows he can win an onstage TV insult game. In strict conservative eyes, that makes him a formidable winning candidate who deserves to be a winning candidate. Electoral competition is seen as a battle. Insults that stick are seen as victories — deserved victories.
Consider Trump’s statement that John McCain is not a war hero. The reasoning: McCain got shot down. Heroes are winners. They defeat big bad guys. They don’t get shot down. People who get shot down, beaten up, and stuck in a cage are losers, not winners.
The strict father logic extends further. The basic idea is that authority is justified by morality (the strict father version), and that, in a well-ordered world, there should be (and traditionally has been) a moral hierarchy in which those who have traditionally dominated should dominate. The hierarchy is: God above Man, Man above Nature, The Disciplined (Strong) above the Undisciplined (Weak), The Rich above the Poor, Employers above Employees, Adults above Children, Western culture above other cultures, Our Country above other countries. The hierarchy extends to: Men above women, Whites above Nonwhites, Christians above nonChristians, Straights above Gays.
We see these tendencies in most of the Republican presidential candidates, as well as in Trump, and on the whole, conservative policies flow from the strict father worldview and this hierarchy
Family-based moral worldviews run deep. Since people want to see themselves as doing right not wrong, moral worldviews tend to be part of self-definition — who you most deeply are. And thus your moral worldview defines for you what the world should be like. When it isn’t that way, one can become frustrated and angry.
There is a certain amount of wiggle room in the strict father worldview and there are important variations. A major split is among (1) white Evangelical Christians, (2) laissez-fair free market conservatives, and (3) pragmatic conservatives who are not bound by evangelical beliefs.
Those whites who have a strict father personal worldview and who are religious tend toward Evangelical Christianity, since God, in Evangelical Christianity, is the Ultimate Strict Father: You follow His commandments and you go to heaven; you defy His commandments and you burn in hell for all eternity. If you are a sinner and want to go to heaven, you can be ‘born again” by declaring your fealty by choosing His son, Jesus Christ, as your personal Savior.
Such a version of religion is natural for those with strict father morality. Evangelical Christians join the church because they are conservative; they are not conservative because they happen to be in an evangelical church, though they may grow up with both together.
Evangelical Christianity is centered around family life. Hence, there are organizations like Focus on the Family and constant reference to “family values,” which are to take to be evangelical strict father values. In strict father morality, it is the father who controls sexuality and reproduction. Where the church has political control, there are laws that require parental and spousal notification in the case of proposed abortions.
Evangelicals are highly organized politically and exert control over a great many local political races. Thus Republican candidates mostly have to go along with the evangelicals if they want to be nominated and win local elections.
SOURCE
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Trump and the workers
Democrats are terrified of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump- and with good reason. Some polls suggest that he may peel off 20 percent of likely Democratic voters. Now, it appears that they're starting to take the threat seriously. As Newsmax notes:
Democrats are getting nervous a general election battle with Donald Trump] at the top of the GOP ticket won't be so easy – worried that his populist appeal could chip away support from the party's stalwart base of working-class voters.
"For us to take him lightly would be the worst mistake in the world," Connecticut Rep. John Larson, a former head of the House Democratic Caucus, tells The Hill.
"I've been saying for months that we should never take Trump lightly and that I do think he has appeal, to independents and blue-collar Democrats especially… He comes along and says, 'I'm a deal maker, I'm about getting the deal done.' And they're so fed up of seeing nothing getting done and want to see him [act] on the issues that strike to the core of their feelings."
It's a far different perspective than has was voiced just weeks ago by Democrats including Vice President Joe Biden, who said in January either Trump or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on the November ballot would be "a gift from the Lord."
Democrats are right to be afraid. If Hillary Clinton is the nominee, working class voters will have to choose between Donald Trump, a candidate committed to bringing back American jobs, and Hillary Clinton, a candidate who gives six figure speeches at Goldman Sachs. As Bernie Sanders continues to highlight Hillary's high roller hypocrisy, this choice becomes easier and easier.
SOURCE
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Numbskull Sanders: White people ‘don’t know what it’s like to be poor’
No poor whites in his privileged Jewish bubble, I suppose
What’s a Democratic debate without a healthy dose of pandering? During Sunday night’s debate in Michigan, moderator Don Lemon asked the candidates about their “racial blindspots,” and socialist Bernie Sanders promptly declared that white people “don’t know what it’s like to be poor”:
“When you’re white you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto. You don’t know what it’s like to be poor.
“You don’t know what it’s like to be hassled when you walk down the street, or dragged out of a car.”
On the contrary, I think a fair amount of women of all colors know exactly what it’s like to be hassled when you walk down the street. Furthermore, the 19 million white Americans living at or below the poverty line would definitely disagree with Sanders’ assessment.
SOURCE
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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Tuesday, March 08, 2016
Is Trump like Hitler?
People such as comedian Louis C.K. and Glenn Beck have asserted that Trump is like Hitler but have offered only an emotional rave in support of that opinion -- with no detailed analysis.
But hysterical claims that Trump=Hitler should remind us all that Leftists also repeatedly said Bush=Hitler. He wasn't, was he? I have made a particular study of the Nazi period so I have been looking for a reasoned rather than rage-filled account of the comparison. I have finally found one: An essay by Professor Noah Riseman, a far-Left American Jew who doesn't know the difference between "rein" and "reign". See his essay below.
In looking at the essay I will first mention something Noah has got right. Weimar (pre-Hitler) Germany was a very decadent time with perversions of all sorts rife and a general loss of behaviour standards. In Noah's words it was "progressive". America today, with its glorification of homosexuality etc. does seem very reminiscent of Weimar Germany. Noah and I agree on that. So it is reasonable to ask if America too will create a Hitler for itself.
And it is understandable that a Jew should be nervous at any semblance of Nazism. But Noah has very selective vision, in the best Leftist style. For a start, he realizes that there is a big hole in his story but makes only a rambling attempt to cover it: The different electoral systems.
Germany had, and still has, an electoral system (proportional representation) that facilitates the rise of minor parties. And Hitler used that to bypass the traditional parties of the Left and Right. The American system is the opposite of that. It effectively keeps power in the hands of the two major parties -- the center-Left Democrats and the center-right Republicans. Under the American system it is most unlikely that Hitler would have risen to power. So there is a clear structural reason not to compare the present USA with prewar Germany.
With no apparent knowledge of history, Noah also says that "Republican control of the House of Representatives seems all but assured for the foreseeable future". Up until very recently the Democrats controlled both houses so what has changed? Noah does not say. If my electoral history is correct, Democrats have been in control of Congress more often than the Republicans over the last 100 years. But be that as it may, the American system is clearly good at rotating control of Congress. Noah is making bricks without straw.
Noah's ignorance also shows in his comments about a Sanders presidency. He seems to think that Sanders could put his ideas into practice. To do so would however require a compliant Congress and that would be most unlikely. A President's job is to enforce the law, not create it. Obama forgot that and found Obamacare to be the only thing he could actually get through. His wishes about immigration and global warming were blocked by Congress. He had to skirt the law via EPA regulations and by refusing to enforce immigration law to get his way to some extent. Sanders' ambitions are much larger however so he too would be left scratching at the margins of the system.
The only substantial points in the screed below are the ones I have highlighted. Let's look at the points involved:
* Torture: It seems reasonably clear that most, if not all, administrations have used some form of it on particularly dangerous captives and Trump has said that he will stay within the law in the matter.
* Free speech: All that Trump has proposed is to widen libel law to encompass political lies. It should have been done long ago.
* International relations: It seems likely that Trump will indeed be more assertive with other countries, Iran in particular. Obama's spinelessness with the mullahs is very dangerous to America's safety. Iranians have been chanting "Death to America" for decades. If they get nukes they may well try it on. For their own safety, Americans should vote for The Donald.
* Muslims: Trump has NOT "demonized", Muslims despite undoubted temptations to do so. He has simply proposed a temporary halt to Muslim immigration.
* Latinos: Trump has NOT "demonized" Latinos. He has undertaken to stop illegal immigration. Given the high rate of crime among illegals and their offspring, that would be highly desirable.
Now for the things that Noah leaves out:
Trump's speeches are essentially rambles. There is very little of the policy wonk in him. Hitler, by contrast kept on message. He had three major themes: The wickedness of the Jews, a promise of equal rights and the promise that he would be a candidate of peace.
In his electoral promises Hitler was a peacenik. That he did not fulfil that is of course another matter. But promises of peace helped get him into power. Trump is no peacenik and is a demonstrable friend of Jews. See here.
And Hitler's promise of equality is mainstream Leftism. Trump has made no such promises. Below is one of Hitler's election posters from the 1930s in which he offers himself as standing for peace and equal rights.
And finally, there is the matter of style. Trump's rallies are undoubtedly rambunctious but American political rallies have always been high spirited and lively. Hitler's rallies and speeches were very different. As anybody who has seen Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" knows, the rallies were very disciplined, most unlike the rambunctious American performances. And Hitler's speeches were unique too. He would start out very quietly and calmly and would gradually accelerate to impassioned shouting. It had none of the Trump jollity
And the origins of Hitler and Trump could hardly be more different: The impoverished artist versus the rich businessman
So Noah simply does not know what he is talking about
The more I watch the 2016 election, the more I see parallels to Weimar Germany of the late 1920s and early 1930s. This was a society that was culturally and socially progressive, with Berlin in particular a hotspot for new liberal attitudes towards gender and sexuality.
It was also a period of economic hardship, political gridlock and fragmentation. The economic crisis after the First World War and Treaty of Versailles left many Germans disenchanted with capitalism and the international order.
Throughout Weimar Germany’s entire existence from 1919-33, there were tensions between left and right which erupted in parliamentary debates and in violence on the streets.
The extreme left – in the form of communism and anarchism – became one popular alternative to liberal capitalism. By the late 1920s, the other alternative that promised to make Germany great again was the extreme right fascist movement of the National Socialist Party (Nazis).
By the early 1930s, democracy was clearly broken (if it ever was working in Weimar Germany). Historians and political scientists have written extensively about why the Weimar Republic was so dysfunctional, including a flawed electoral system, the international impositions of the Treaty of Versailles and – what I find most intriguing – the notion that democracy has inbuilt logic designed to destroy itself (read Theorising Democide).
By the early 1930s, there were no working coalitions, political parties would not compromise and the political system reached crisis proportions. In the end it was the Nazis rather than the communists who came to power through the very political system they despised. They only won 33 per cent of the votes in the November 1932 election (incidentally, 2 million fewer voters than they had four months earlier). Whilst not a majority, the Nazis did have a plurality in the German Reichstag.
In January 1933 the president appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany in the hopes that he would stabilise the situation and perhaps even reign in the Nazi Party. A few months later the Reichstag passed the Enabling Law, abolishing democracy and ushering in the Third Reich. I do not need to recap how that worked out.
I look at the United States in 2016 and am struck – indeed frightened – by the parallels to Germany circa 1932. While the causes of the present crisis are different, there are a lot of similar symptoms.
Again, there has just been a major economic recession. Whilst the US economy is improving, people are still angry – and rightfully so – because those who caused the economic crisis have gotten away with it and the political establishment has allowed that to happen.
The political system is not working at all. Congress is so polarised that nothing gets done, compromise has become a dirty word and politicians are willing to let the government shut down just to score points and get their way.
In Weimar Germany one reason for the political fragmentation was because *the electoral system allowed parties with minute percentages of the vote to win seats in the Reichstag*. In the US, political parties controlling the state legislatures have gerrymandered districts so much that now there are only a handful of marginal districts.
Instead, Republicans are fighting Republicans and Democrats are fighting Democrats to win primaries which may as well be the general elections in most electorates.
A serious consequence of the gerrymander is that Republican candidates for Congress often appeal to the hard-right fringe to win elections. Democrats are just as guilty at gerrymandering, except they have not been nearly as effective in most states, meaning that *Republican control of the House of Representatives seems all but assured for the foreseeable future*.
Like in Weimar Germany, a significant proportion of the population is looking for alternatives to the political mainstream. Popular movements on the political fringes, left and right, have manifested in the respective forms of presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump (not to mention Ted Cruz and the entire Tea Party).
I openly admit to being a Sanders fan, and many of his cause celebres (i.e. universal healthcare) are common sense in other developed countries. But in the United States, a self-proclaimed socialist who advocates a revolutionary overhaul of American capitalism is someone from the left fringe.
*A Bernie Sanders presidency* would send shockwaves through the American political system, but it would not mean the end of democracy. Bernie Sanders wants change, but he still believes in the core tenets of the Bill of Rights and the principles of civil rights.
In fact, he would expand the notion of rights to include economic rights. Notwithstanding a groundswell of support especially from young voters, a Sanders nomination for the Democratic Party seems unlikely given the delegate maths.
A Trump candidacy and presidency, however, is becoming ever more plausible, and this truly frightens me. Trump is the culmination of over 30 years of Republicans convincing many Americans that government is the enemy, or what conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks calls 30 years of antipolitics.
As former liberal Congressman Barney Frank argues, in power Republicans have dismantled government programs and regulations in a self-fulfilling prophecy that reinforces the perception of government’s ineffectiveness. Now, to the horror of the Republican establishment, Donald Trump has seized their message and is channelling it with gusto, but with his own warped, authoritarian tinge.
Donald Trump openly talks about implementing torture, undermining freedom of speech and the press and behaving belligerently with other nation-states. What worries me the most is that he scapegoats and demonises Muslims and Latino immigrants with alarming comparisons to Hitler’s rhetoric about Jews
Trump’s populist-nationalism may not mesh with traditional Republican conservatism, but it ticks many of the boxes for fascism.
Until last week I really believed that Trump would never be president. Now I do not know anymore, and it terrifies me. If we look at the outcomes of the Republican primaries, caucuses and polls, it is clear that Trump has a hard-core base of between 30 to 40 per cent of Republican voters.
That is not a majority of Republican voters or even a majority of Americans. But in a broken, fragmented system, that may be enough support to be elected president.
Would a Trump presidency turn America into a fascist state? I like to think that the constitutional system has enough checks and balances not to let that happen. I like to think that Congress would never pass enabling legislation to force Muslims to wear badges or to force the deportation of millions of Latino families. I like to think that the Supreme Court would exercise judicial review and that the executive branch would respect any rulings from the court.
But I just do not know any more. And even if Trump does not become president, I still cannot help but think that Weimar America will never be the same again.
SOURCE
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- with news from Britain about current idiocies
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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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