The Nature Of Conservatism: Over The Cliff... In England And In Our Own Country

British far rightists threw their economy over the cliff with Brexit. So don’t think for a moment that Tim Burchett (R-TN) is the only psycho in the House uninterested in a settlement. They want default and will settle for nothing less. They’re not as crazy as the Brits, you say? An American neo-fascist outfit, the Edmund Burke Foundation, organized a far right conclave for conservatives in London a few days ago. The belle of the ball was much-reviled nincompoop and Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who jumped ahead to after the Conservatives lose Parliament to make a play for post-Sunak party leadership post by appealing to the extremist fringe. And she sounded just like a garden variety Freedom Caucus nut or… Ron DeSantos. Oh, I forgot… he is a garden variety Freedom Caucus nut. This craven, unadulterated meanness could be coming right from Tallahassee: “The left’s is a politics of pessimism, guilt, national division, resentment and utopianism. The left on the other hand sees the purpose of politics as to eradicate the existence of inequality, even if that comes at the expense of individual liberty and human flourishing.”

Braverman argued that conservatism “has no truck with political correctness,” in a section of the speech that squarely addressed culture war issues. In one of a series of attacks on Keir Starmer, she said: “Given his definition of a woman, we can’t rule him out from running to be Labour’s first female prime minister.”

She said the left was “ashamed of our history” and could “only sell its vision for the future by making people feel terrible about our past”, adding: “Nobody should be blamed for things that happened before they were born.”

In apparent criticism of academics and other advisers in “ivory towers,” Braverman said Conservatives should be “sceptical of self-appointed gurus, experts and elites who think they know best what is in the public’s interest.”

Politico’s Burgess Everett and Olivia Beavers are watching our own little monsters, as GOP unity starts cracking around the edges— or fringes. It’s more than just senators urging the the Freedom Caucus- dominated House to “some flexibility” in the debt ceiling negotiations. The two reporters wrote that “while Republican senators are still refusing to undercut McCarthy and pursue their own deal, they’re still wary of the potential for GOP unity to fracture… [leaving] a lingering question in the Republican Party: What will the congressional GOP accept without revolting against its leaders? It’s all the more salient as some House conservatives talk about their opening bid as the floor— not the ceiling.”

The extremists in the House are howling about far more radical— and devastating— prescriptions for the economy that what was already proposed. Extremists like Bob Good (R-VA) and Ralph Norman (R-SC) have pet projects they’re trying to squeeze into a final settlement and insist there will be no negotiating their offer down. Shelley Moore-Capito (R-WV): “We don’t want to default. At some point, we’re going to have to find a way through this. And it really hinges on the Republicans on the House side pulling together as much as they can.”

Default isn't the only indication of how terribly the Republican has lost its way. Today, Trump’s former national security advisor, John Bolton, said he’s been in room with Trump when he was interacting with Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un and “they think he’s a laughing fool. And the idea that somehow his presence in office would have deterred Putin is flatly wrong.” Bolton was referring to Trump’s absurd, self-glorifying comments on CNN last week claiming he could end Russia’s war in Ukraine in one day if he wins reelection to the White House. The war never would have happened, Trump said, if he won a second term in 2020. His comments, said Bolton, also on CNN, “shows he’s utterly out of touch what the war is all about and what the implications of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine are all around the world… not fit to be president.”

Yesterday Jonathan Chait was worrying that the media has been normalizing the kind of debt-ceiling extortion the House Republicans are using the potentially shove the country over the fiscal cliff. “Ten years ago,” wrote Chait, when Barack Obama faced down an attempt by House Republicans to extract concessions in return for lifting the debt ceiling, he explained that he saw this tactic as inimical to functioning self-government. ‘If we continue to set a precedent in which a president … is in a situation in which each time the United States is called upon to pay its bills, the other party can simply sit there and say, Well, we’re not going to … pay the bills unless you give us … what we want, that changes the constitutional structure of this government entirely,’ he explained. For a while, Obama’s perspective mostly carried the day. But as the new Republican-led House seeks to renew the effort to use the debt ceiling as a hostage, a revisionist interpretation has taken hold: This isn’t a new or dangerous tactic, it’s just how Congress operates.”

It is true that, historically, debt-ceiling bills have also been wrapped together with other measures. But what McCarthy is doing is not that. He is threatening to refuse to lift the debt ceiling unless President Biden grants him concessions. The parties are not engaged in “horse-trading,” because all the horses are being handed by one party to the other. They are only negotiating over the size and contours of the ransom payment.

This is neatly illustrated by the recent news that Democrats have met the Republican’s putative concern over deficits by proposing to include closing a handful of small tax loopholes, but Republicans have categorically ruled out any revenue increases in the bill. There is no mutual exchange of concessions, as past bills accompanying a debt-ceiling hike have featured.

The difference between an ordinary negotiation over the contours of a debt-ceiling increase and extortion is that the latter includes demands and threats. The demands are not proposals to combine policy one side prefers with policy the other side wants (i.e., we’ll fund my food stamp program in return for funding your farm subsidy program). A demand is an insistence on obtaining unreciprocated policy gains that the counterparty would otherwise oppose.

The threats are the mechanism for obtaining the demands: Specifically, the threat is to refuse to lift the debt ceiling unless concessions are given in return.

Congressional negotiations are sufficiently obtuse that an extortionist can in theory hide demands behind the veil of legitimate negotiations. (Think of the small-business owners who hire Tony Soprano’s garbage collectors: They are getting a real service for their money, but the deal is underwritten by an extortionist threat.)

In practice, everybody knows perfectly well when Congress is horse-trading around a debt-ceiling bill and when it is holding it hostage. When you have a hostage threat, as we have now and had under Obama, there are hundreds of news articles about the standoff and serious fears the debt ceiling will not be lifted. You have Republican leaders stating the debt ceiling might not be lifted, and if that happens, it will be Biden’s fault for failing to give him enough. (i.e., Kevin McCarthy: “It’s time for President Biden to come to the negotiating table or risk bumbling into default.”) This, not coincidentally, is exactly what hostage-takers say to the people they are extorting.

Can you recall any of these things happening under President Trump or George W. Bush? Of course not. Under those presidents, the debt ceiling was lifted, but the press barely paid any attention to it, and the few stories they did produce were boring, because there was no drama. Democrats never threatened to refuse to lift the debt ceiling or even seriously contemplated using the vote to force Republicans to do things they would otherwise refuse.

…You can certainly make an argument that Democrats have no practical alternative but to give in to debt-ceiling extortion. I think this argument understates the risk that, by enshrining it, it both perverts the Constitution and creates a regular game of chicken that is highly likely to end in disaster when eventually neither party is willing to be the one to swerve first. Among other things, this argument fails to anticipate what Republicans in Congress will do the next time a Democratic president needs a debt-ceiling hike. The answer, almost certainly, is another crisis. But a case could be made that putting that problem off to the future is better than default.

In any case, we need to be clear about what is happening. McCarthy is not horse-trading with Biden. He is extorting him. He might wish to pretend, à la Michael Corleone, that he is no different than any other powerful man, like a senator or a president. But he doesn’t want to hide it too much, because his power in this situation derives from letting it be known he is very much willing to inflict horrible pain upon innocent victims to get what he wants.