Thanks to Republicans

 Though I may never have voted for a Republican, I think we should acknowledge the principled Republicans who did the right thing--VP Pence for resisting the former guy's pressure and his mob; the representatives and senators who voted to accept the state results on Jan 6; and most of all the mostly Republican administrators of elections in WI, PA, GA, NV and AZ who affirmed the counts.

Republicans--Original Practitioners of Identity Politics?

 Current reading in David Reynolds' "Abe" showed me this cartoon attacking Lincoln and the Republican party.  If the captions are too small to read, below is the Library of Congress summary: 

Abraham Lincoln's supporters are portrayed as radicals and eccentrics of various stripes. The satire is loosely based on an anti-Fremont cartoon from the previous presidential race, "The Great Republican Reform Party" (no. 1856-22), also issued by Nathaniel Currier. Here Lincoln, sitting astride a wooden rail borne by Horace Greeley, leads his followers toward a lunatic asylum. Greeley instructs him, "Hold on to me Abe, and we'll go in here by the unanimous consent of the people." Lincoln exhorts his followers, "Now my friends I'm almost in, and the millennium is going to begin, so ask what you will and it shall be granted."

•  At the head of the group is a bearded man, arm-in-arm with a woman and a Mormon. He claims to "represent the free love element, and expect to have free license to carry out its principles." The woman looks at Lincoln, saying "Oh! what a beautiful man he is, I feel a 'passional attraction' every time I see his lovely face." The Mormon adds, "I want religion abolished and the book of Mormon made the standard of morality."
•  They are followed by a dandified free black, who announces, "'De white man hab no rights dat cullud pussons am bound to spect' I want dat understood."
•  Behind him an aging suffragette says, "I want womans rights enforced, and man reduced in subjection to her authority."
•  Next a ragged socialist or Fourierist, holding a liquor bottle, asserts, "I want everybody to have a share of everybody elses property."
•  At the end of the group are three hooligans:
•  one demanding "a hotel established by government, where people that aint inclined to work, can board free of expense, and be found in rum and tobacco." 
• The second, a thief, wants "the right to examine every other citizen's pockets without interruption by Policemen."
•  The last, an Irish street tough, says, "I want all the stations houses burned up, and the M.P.s killed, so that the bohoys can run with the machine and have a muss when they please." Source: Reilly.

The Party of Reagan or Trump?

I saw a poll the other day showing that lots of Republicans now believe that Trump was a better president than Reagan.  

I didn't like either president, but Reagan had an emollient quality which was the opposite of Trump's abrasive mode.  It's the difference between the man whose Eleventh Commandment was: speak no ill of any Republican and the man who accused his vice president of lacking courage on Jan. 6.

The Great Switcheroo: Republicans

A quote:
"

Second, the Republican policy reversals are staggering:

• Members of Congress who once claimed to be committed to debt reduction would increase debt by more than $2.7 trillion in just seven weeks.
• Congressional Republicans would increase government spending by 50% more than they cut taxes two months ago.
• The self-labeled fiscal conservatives in Congress, who had once insisted that all government spending increases be offset by spending cuts, would abandon that principle.
• A party that just a few years ago proposed reforming old-age entitlement spending, the principal driver of government spending growth, would have no proposals to do so. If press reports are true, this bill may even increase Medicaid spending.
• The Republican Congressional Majority, which built last year’s balanced budget plan on deep future cuts to nondefense discretionary spending, would be supporting big increases in that spending."

Who is saying all this: Keith Hennessey, CEA under Bush.

The Old and the New Republicans

Back in my youth the lines of division in the Republican party ran between Bob Taft and Dwight Eisenhower.  Roughly speaking the former was more isolationist/nationalist/anti-communist/anti New Dealer and the latter was more international, more free trade, more open to talks with the USSR, and more willing to swallow hard and keep Social Security. In 1960 Nelson Rockefeller represented the latter (the Wall Street Republicans) and Richard Nixon the former (the Main Street Republicans). The Goldwater movement put the former on top, for a while, while Nixon in 1968 merged the two pretty well. Reagan also blurred the lines by the way he governed.

Jumping ahead to now, it's fascinating to look at the divisions Trumpery is creating.  George Will and Charles Krauthammer are anti-Trump, though Krauthammer's last column acknowledged possible benefits in foreign policy from a good-cop, bad-cop approach.  Some economists, like Don Beaudreaux of GMU at Cafe Hayek and Keith Hennessey, former CEA member, are somewhat horrified by Trump's trade and economic thoughts/tweets.