Rolling back Big Government is not easy, especially when you are not that into it.
Robert Draper, profiling Steve Bannon in the New York Times, gives us a view into the mind of Trump’s right-hand man, who appears to think GOP insiders are obsessed with principles. “[I]t’s all this theoretical Cato Institute, Austrian economics, limited government — which just doesn’t have any depth to it. They’re not living in the real world.”
At best, this only fits the Freedom Caucus members, who killed RyanCare. But who is avoiding reality, here?
“Bannon clearly is not as familiar with the mindset of congressional Republicans as he imagines,” counters Jeff Deist, head of the “Austrian” Mises Institute. “They are primarily concerned with how the whole ‘repeal and replace’ debacle plays back home.”
Like Deist, I see the spectacular fizzle of RyanCare as evidence of the increasing irrelevance of Republican compromising. “The GOP is the party of trillion dollar military budgets,” Deist insists, noting that it “won’t even kill an openly cronyist program like the Export-Import Bank.”
If keeping Big Government secure is all Republicans can do, what use are they?
“All around us are the almost unimaginable benefits of markets, cooperation, and technology,” Deist explains, “yet somehow we’re naïve if we don’t want to funnel human activity through government cattle chutes.”
Bannon will not secure solid GOP support if he keeps pushing the usual establishment compromises while pretending they are either realistic or revolutionary. Freedom Caucus Republicans seem bent on doing something Republicans usually avoid: change “the real world” for the better by practically limiting government.
Not just in theory.
Bannon seems to have other goals.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
3 replies on “Legislating in the Real World”
Disappointing, as if that Is the case it is Bannon who is not living in the real world by expressing his belief that that laws of natural human interreaction be altered by governmental edict. Sadly, he therefore joins the Washington majority.
If keeping Big Government secure is all Republicans can do, what use are they?
When will they ever learn?
Remember Ayn Rand’s statement, “the evaluation of an action as practical depends on what one intends to practice.” Bannon and his subordinate, Trump, are simply overreaching Tony Sopranos… without any lovable, human qualities.