Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Paul Krugman: The G.O.P. Is in a Doom Loop of Bizarro
But will it doom the rest of us, too?
Here’s what we know about American politics: The Republican Party is stuck, probably irreversibly, in a doom loop of bizarro. If the Trump-incited Capitol insurrection didn’t snap the party back to sanity — and it didn’t — nothing will.
What isn’t clear yet is who, exactly, will end up facing doom. Will it be the G.O.P. as a significant political force? Or will it be America as we know it? Unfortunately, we don’t know the answer. It depends a lot on how successful Republicans will be in suppressing votes.
About the bizarro: Even I had some lingering hope that the Republican establishment might try to end Trumpism. But such hopes died this week. [..]
This process of radicalization began long before Donald Trump; it goes back at least to Newt Gingrich’s takeover of Congress in 1994. But Trump’s reign of corruption and lies, followed by his refusal to concede and his attempt to overturn the election results, brought it to a head. And the cowardice of the Republican establishment has sealed the deal. One of America’s two major political parties has parted ways with facts, logic and democracy, and it’s not coming back.
Jamelle Bouie: I’m Not Actually Interested in Mitch McConnell’s Hypocrisy
To make his case for the filibuster, he has essentially rewritten the history of the Senate.
On Tuesday, Mitch McConnell, now the Senate minority leader, spoke in defense of the legislative filibuster. [..]
I’m not actually that interested in McConnell’s hypocrisy. I’m interested in his history. To make his case for the indispensable importance of the legislative filibuster, McConnell has essentially rewritten the history of the Senate. He has to create a new narrative to serve his current interests.
The truth is that the filibuster was an accident; an extra-constitutional innovation that lay dormant for a generation after its unintentional creation during the Jefferson administration. For most of the Senate’s history after the Civil War, filibusters were rare, deployed as the Southern weapon of choice against civil rights legislation, and an occasional tool of partisan obstruction.
Editors’ Picks
How Do We Regain Trust in Institutions?
My Co-Worker Is a Scammer and She Gets on My Last Nerve
Why the Death Penalty Is Dying: A New Book Tells the Surprising StoryFar from necessary, the filibuster is extraneous. Everything it is said to encourage — debate, deliberation, consensus building — is already accomplished by the structure of the chamber itself, insofar as it happens at all.
Michelle Goldberg: The First Post-Reagan Presidency
So far, Joe Biden has been surprisingly progressive.
During Donald Trump’s presidency, I sometimes took comfort in the Yale political scientist Stephen Skowronek’s concept of “political time.”
In Skowronek’s formulation, presidential history moves in 40- to 60-year cycles, or “regimes.” Each is inaugurated by transformative, “reconstructive” leaders who define the boundaries of political possibility for their successors. [..]
Skowronek doesn’t present his theory as a skeleton key to history. It’s a way of understanding historical dynamics, not predicting the future. Still, if Trump represented the last gasps of Reaganism instead of the birth of something new, then after him, Skowronek suggests, a fresh regime could begin.
When Joe Biden became the Democratic nominee, it seemed that the coming of a new era had been delayed. Reconstructive leaders, in Skowronek’s formulation, repudiate the doctrines of an establishment that no longer has answers for the existential challenges the country faces. Biden, Skowronek told me, is “a guy who’s made his way up through establishment Democratic politics.” Nothing about him seemed trailblazing.
Yet as Biden’s administration begins, there are signs that a new politics is coalescing. When, in his inauguration speech, Biden touted “unity,” he framed it as a national rejection of the dark forces unleashed by his discredited predecessor, not stale Gang of Eight bipartisanship. He takes power at a time when what was once conventional wisdom about deficits, inflation and the proper size of government has fallen apart. That means Biden, who has been in national office since before Reagan’s presidency, has the potential to be our first truly post-Reagan president.
Amanda Marcotte: Media tries to “both sides” an insurrection: No, anger over the Capitol riot isn’t “partisan rancor”
The Washington Post ran a “both sides do it” headline — but only the GOP is tacitly supporting Trump’s failed coup
The endless mainstream media urge to cast any and every partisan conflict in “both sides do it” terms — no matter how one-sided any conflict actually is — hit a shocking new low on Friday morning when the Washington Post ran this front-page headline: “Congress hits new levels of partisan rancor.”
The Post’s appalling headline really underscores the mainstream media’s slavish dedication to false equivalence. It minimizes the growing Republican support for the violent insurrection of January 6 and the continued Democratic anger over those events as merely a partisan spat. Readers who clicked the story saw more of the casual equation between the intended victims of the mob Donald Trump sent to the Capitol and Trump’s supporters with the internal headline: “Hostility between congressional Republicans and Democrats reaches new lows amid growing fears of violence.” The headline manages to insinuate that both parties are rolling out the welcome mat for violence — when truly, it’s only the Republicans. [..]
That is the real story here: Instead of shunning Trump and his fellow travelers for stoking an insurrection, congressional Republican leadership is supporting and encouraging the very people who are most responsible for the attempted overthrow of the government.
Jennifer Rubin: Reporters are hounding the wrong people about the covid-19 rescue package
Where is Republican cooperation?
Since he took office last week, President Biden and multiple members of his administration have engaged Republicans on his proposed rescue package. They have solicited approval from business groups, mayors, governors and even former Trump officials. Now that the House, as an insurance plan, is preparing to pass a budget resolution (which in turn could be used to push a relief measure through the Senate with a simple majority vote), Republicans are complaining.
Typical of the utter disingenuousness among Republicans, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) whined about a possible reconciliation bill: “It’s just wrong. I think it’s bad for the administration and I’ve made that point repeatedly to the White House in the last several days, including last night. We’ll see what they do. But I think it’s much better to work with us.” He pouted that using reconciliation would “poison the well.” Puh-leeze.
Where is the Republican counteroffer to the White House plan? What response, other than “No, no, no,” have they offered to multiple entreaties to start negotiating over the elements of the package? [..]
Indeed, Democrats in Congress and outside groups should be putting far more pressure on Republicans. The ex-president they still embrace allowed the pandemic to run wild and the economy to tank. Call them out for their indifference to covid-19 deaths. Take them to task for harboring QAnon extremists and re-running their obstruction routine.
If they do have to resort to reconciliation, Democrats should make clear it is because Republicans are rooting for failure. That’s what Republicans would say if the shoe were on the other foot.