Paul Krugman Nails The Problem

[Minimalist]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/opini....html?_r=3

A Party Not Ready to Govern

But the broader Republican quagmire — the party’s failure so far to make significant progress toward any of its policy promises — isn’t just about Mr. Trump’s inadequacies. The whole party, it turns out, has been faking it for years. Its leaders’ rhetoric was empty; they have no idea how to turn their slogans into actual legislation, because they’ve never bothered to understand how anything important works.

[Anomalocaris]

They've operated on the principle of totally faking it since 1994. The irony is the first part of bush administration, including the faking of Iraqi WMD intelligence, and the calamitous invasion of Iraq, actually represent the most grounded and least make belief period in the entire post 1994 Republican Party history.

[Crossless2.0]

I expect nothing less from a political party whose fundamental governing principle is that government generally does not and cannot work. Guess what happens when they are put in power?

The working poor and the vanishing middle class who vote for these clowns will be hurt the most by their policies but will also be the first to believe their exploiters when it comes time to blame the liberals. That fucking song was old twenty years ago, but the fools still get up and dance on cue.

[Anomalocaris]

The troup of "the government governs best that governs least" really mean public good is nonsense so long as those with the biggest advantage under the rule of the jungle is likely to be the last ones to perish. If they are threatened with perishing ahead of some others, watch the republicans instantly pivot to authoritarianism.

[Minimalist]

The government that governs best governs least mantra may have been true in Jefferson's day when you had a agricultural nation with no infrastructure to maintain and everyone waited for the mud to dry before setting out on the roads.  The conservatards seem to have a hard time understanding that one size does not fit all and those days are gone.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I still like the idea of the smallest possible government. The thing is, as Min points out, that the smallest feasible government nowadays is unimaginably larger than the founders could envision at all.

There's two sorts of people who don't heed the passage of time: fools, and the dead.

[vorlon13]

They've operated on the principle of totally faking it since 1994.  The irony is the first part of bush administration, including the faking of Iraqi WMD intelligence, and the calamitous invasion of Iraq, actually represent the most grounded and least make belief period in the entire post 1994 Republican Party history.

Goes back further, about Reagan, he was described as "sleep walking through the 20th century" and I heartily concur.  His frequent confusion of motion picture scenes with actual reality was disturbing.  And some facts simply would not stay in his mind no matter how often he was corrected.

In regards to Iran contra (one of many scandals in that era) it was said about Reagan, "What did he know, when did he know it, and did he know he knew it?"  And unfortunately, that was not a snarky dig at him and his dunce like acumen, it was simply a resigned acknowledgment of his sadly limited cognitive skills.

[GUBU]

I still like the idea of the smallest possible government. The thing is, as Min points out, that the smallest feasible government nowadays is unimaginably larger than the founders could envision at all.

There's two sorts of people who don't heed the passage of time: fools, and the dead.

Even in the time of the founding fathers a minamilist government was an unfeasible option. They found that out when their volunteer army got its collective arse handed to it when trying to annex Canada in 1812.

[Anomalocaris]

They've operated on the principle of totally faking it since 1994.  The irony is the first part of bush administration, including the faking of Iraqi WMD intelligence, and the calamitous invasion of Iraq, actually represent the most grounded and least make belief period in the entire post 1994 Republican Party history.

Goes back further, about Reagan, he was described as "sleep walking through the 20th century" and I heartily concur.  His frequent confusion of motion picture scenes with actual reality was disturbing.  And some facts simply would not stay in his mind no matter how often he was corrected.

In regards to Iran contra (one of many scandals in that era) it was said about Reagan, "What did he know, when did he know it, and did he know he knew it?"  And unfortunately, that was not a snarky dig at him and his dunce like acumen, it was simply a resigned acknowledgment of his sadly limited cognitive skills.

Reagan might not have had all his marbles, but to make it a principle to rule by sabotaging the basis of minimally adaquate governance, that came later.

---

I still like the idea of the smallest possible government. The thing is, as Min points out, that the smallest feasible government nowadays is unimaginably larger than the founders could envision at all.

There's two sorts of people who don't heed the passage of time: fools, and the dead.

That depends on how many caveats you put on the word "possible".   The smallest possible government is no government by Uncaveated definition of possible.

[Minimalist]

His frequent confusion of motion picture scenes with actual reality was disturbing.

The man was in the early stages of Alzheimers.  Which only goes to show that if you surround yourself with knowledgeable people you can fake it.  It you surround yourself with useless asswipes as the WLB has done, you're pretty well fucked.