Dying For The Dow

Donald Trump and his party are morons. They never -- indeed, it seems they can't -- learn anything. Paul Krugman writes:

For a little while it seemed as if we were finally settling on a strategy for containing the virus while also limiting the economic hardship caused by the lockdown.

Yet Trump and his party have come out against further aid to the unemployed and against helping beleaguered state and local governments. Instead, the party is increasingly putting all its hopes on a rapid reopening of the economy, even though that prospect terrifies health experts, who warn that it could lead to a second wave of infections and many more deaths.

So how does one explain the rapid reversal of what was a pretty sloppy strategy in the first place?

The answer, surely, is that they’re reverting to type. In the early stages of this pandemic, Trump and the right in general downplayed the threat because they didn’t want to hurt stock prices. Now they’re pushing for a premature end to containment because they imagine that it will boost stocks again.

It didn’t have to go this way. Another leader might have told Americans that they’re in a tough fight but will win in the end. Governors like Andrew Cuomo who have taken that stance have seen their approval soar.

But Trump can’t get beyond boosterism, insisting that everything is great on his watch. And he’s clearly still obsessed with the stock market as the measure of his presidency.

In the end, Krugman writes, Americans are going to have to die for the Dow -- and be heroic about it. It's tunnel vision and selfishness combined. It's also a clear sign of moral bankruptcy.

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Put It Out Of Its Misery

Tom Friedman believes that the Republican Party is morally bankrupt. He wrote this week in the New York Times, that it should be blown up and reconstructed from scratch:

Today’s G.O.P. is to governing what Trump University is to education — an ethically challenged enterprise that enriches and perpetuates itself by shedding all pretense of standing for real principles, or a truly relevant value proposition, and instead plays on the ignorance and fears of the public.

It is just an empty shell, selling pieces of itself to the highest bidders, — policy by policy — a little to the Tea Party over here, a little to Big Oil over there, a little to the gun lobby, to antitax zealots, to climate-change deniers. And before you know it, the party stands for an incoherent mess of ideas unrelated to any theory of where the world is going or how America actually becomes great again in the 21st century.

It becomes instead a coalition of men and women who sell pieces of their brand to whoever can most energize their base in order for them to get re-elected in order for them to sell more pieces of their brand in order to get re-elected.

The United States needs two parties to function democratically:

America needs a healthy two-party system. America needs a healthy center-right party to ensure that the Democrats remain a healthy center-left party. America needs a center-right party ready to offer market-based solutions to issues like climate change. America needs a center-right party that will support common-sense gun laws. America needs a center-right party that will support common-sense fiscal policy. America needs a center-right party to support both free trade and aid to workers impacted by it. America needs a center-right party that appreciates how much more complicated foreign policy is today, when you have to manage weak and collapsing nations, not just muscle strong ones.

But cowardice is the hallmark of today's GOP. None of the party's leaders will take on Donald Trump:

All top G.O.P. leaders say they will still support Donald Trump — even if he’s dabbled in a “textbook definition” of racism, as House Speaker Paul Ryan described it — because he will sign off on their agenda and can do only limited damage given our checks and balances.

Really? Mr. Speaker, your agenda is a mess, Trump will pay even less attention to you if he is president and, as Senator Lindsey Graham rightly put it, there has to be a time “when the love of country will trump hatred of Hillary.”

Like an old dog who's hips haven't given out, the Grand Old Party should be put out of its misery. What succeeds it is up to those who have the courage to reject Mr. Trump as the party's presidential candidate. 

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