The ruinous side of the divide among Republicans regarding shady-as-hell Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's bizarre and futile lawsuit seeking to overturn election results in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin has been getting the preponderance of the attention so far. The 16 other attorneys general who have signed on, the 106 House members who have endorsed it, and this weekend's Stop The Steal rally in Washington, headlined by Michael Flynn - the Michael Flynn who retweeted the call for martial law.
There are now signs of principled opposition to this madness coming from figures with Rs behind their names, or established connection to what was once recognizably the Party of Lincoln and Reagan.
Some attorneys general are speaking out.
Such is the case in Idaho, where the AG is not at all on board:
Idaho's Republican attorney general, Lawrence Wasden, issued a statementdistancing himself from Paxton's case, saying: "I am declining to join this effort. As is sometimes the case, the legally correct decision may not be the politically convenient decision. But my responsibility is to the State of Idaho and the rule of law."
Down in Texas, Senator John Cornyn's stance puts him at odds with Paxton and the state's other Senator (Ted Cruz, someone I once greatly admired and regarded as the hope for the GOP's future, but who has since those days proven himself to be a coward and a boot-licker):
On Wednesday, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas signaled a contrast with the Texas attorney general and Cruz. Cornyn told CNN: "I read just the summary of it, and I frankly struggle to understand the legal theory of it."
Cornyn added, "Number one, why would a state, even such a great state as Texas, have a say-so on how other states administer their elections?"
Among House members from Texas showing some spine is Chip Roy:
Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said he wouldn't sign on and publicly called the brief "a dangerous violation of federalism" that he said "will almost certainly fail."
The Very Stable Genius tried to strong-arm the Georgia AG for his stance:
Georgia's attorney general, Chris Carr, split with the Trump camp as well, telling The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the lawsuit was "constitutionally, legally, and factually wrong." The paper reported that his public stance Wednesday was met with a fiery 15-minute phone call in which Trump asked Carr not to rally other Republicans against the suit.
The Orlando Sentinel got one of those reality checks like the above-mentioned on I got concerting Ted Cruz:
We apologize to our readers for endorsing Michael Waltz in the 2020 general election for Congress.
We had no idea, had no way of knowing at the time, that Waltz was not committed to democracy.
During our endorsement interview with the incumbent congressman, we didn’t think to ask, “Would you support an effort to throw out the votes of tens of millions of Americans in four states in order to overturn a presidential election and hand it to the person who lost, Donald Trump?”
Our bad.
Waltz, to our horror, was one of the 10 Florida Republican members of Congress who, on Thursday, signed up to support a lawsuit brought by Texas in the U.S. Supreme Court that’s attempting to throw out the election results in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — all states where Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden.
Trust us, some variation of that question will be asked of anyone running for Congress in the future, particularly Republican candidates whose party is attempting to upend the way we choose a president.
Now, a couple of items that are not about the immediate subject at hand, but demonstrate that, as hard as it tried, Trumpism did not stomp out sound reasoning among Republicans and conservative thinkers.
Townhall.com, which has, in the last five years nearly completely given itself over to Very Stable Genius cult worship, every one in a while runs a column by a sane grownup, surely still contractually able to state clear truths that run counter to the narrative about various matters. Such is the case with Veronique deRugy's latest, exposing Trump's protectionism for the garbage economic policy that it is:
President Donald Trump may soon be departing Washington, so now is a great time to assess his protectionist trade policies. From tariffs to his hectic bullying of other governments to renegotiate trade agreements to his support for American export subsidies, the Trump years were more than infuriating on trade matters; they were destructive.
This harsh conclusion is no surprise to those of us who understand international trade. We realized from the start that the president's trade philosophy is the mercantilist one that Adam Smith debunked nearly 250 years ago.
For instance, Trump believes that the success of U.S. trade policy is best gauged with a trade-balance scorecard -- the notion that trade deficits are bad and trade surpluses are good. For this reason, he believes that the ultimate benefit of trading lies in the amounts that we export, while imports are to be feared and kept to a minimum. But Trump's understanding is backward. After all, exports are what we produce for foreigners, while imports are what foreigners produce for us.
Early on in his administration, Trump raised tariffs. The Cato Institute's Scott Lincicome describes the president's trade war as having "implemented five different tariff actions on almost $400 billion in annual U.S. imports (as of 2018) under three different laws with different rationales: 'safeguards,' 'national security,' and 'unfair trade.'" We were promised ever-more jobs thanks to the tariffs. But as numerous academic studies have shown, the people who shouldered nearly all of the burden of these import taxes were not foreigners but, rather, Americans.
Protectionism reduces the overall wealth of the nation. Aside from a few favored and protected producers, Americans, in general, are made poorer. Consumers have to spend a higher share of their incomes to buy goods that they could otherwise get for less. As a result, ordinary Americans save less and have less to spend -- even on nontariffed goods and services. The American producers of goods that use tariffed foreign inputs also see their production costs driven up, which drives their ability to compete down.
Unsurprisingly, the administration's belligerent trade policies disturbed our trading partners. They retaliated with their own tariffs on American exports (to the detriment of their consumers). Adding insult to injury, the president's erratic behavior, threats and contradictory tweets about his trade policy likely spooked investors. The overall uncertainty and negative effects of the trade disputes surely dampened the beneficial effects of the president's few good fiscal policies and regulatory reforms.
And, getting back to signs of clear thinking and integrity in the Senate, Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe is not feeling the giddiness over the latest peace agreement between Israel and an Arab nation:
Sen. Jim Inhofe berated the Trump administration Thursday for recognizing Morocco’s claim over the disputed Western Sahara region, as part of a broader deal to normalize relations between Israel and Morocco.
In floor remarks and a written statement, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee described the White House’s decision as “shocking and deeply disappointing,” adding that he was “saddened that the rights of the Western Sahara people have been traded away.”
“The president has been poorly advised by his team,” Inhofe said. “He could have made this deal without trading the rights of a voiceless people."
I don't know that we can conclude from all of the above that the Republican Party can be salvaged, but these are voices that ought to be welcomed into the conversation about how conservatism repairs itself after the Trumpist infection has been neutralized.
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