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DAMN!! How will HISTORY look back on Trump, Fox News & all his supporters during Coronavirus & AFTER he leaves office? UPDATE: Trump WON

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Truss resignation in the U.K. should have Republicans’ attention

Liz Truss tried to address high inflation with unnecessary tax breaks for the wealthy. As she resigns, Republicans in the U.S. have a similar plan.
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Truss resignation in the U.K. should have Republicans’ attention
Liz Truss tried to address high inflation with unnecessary tax breaks for the wealthy. As she resigns, Republicans in the U.S. have a similar plan.

Oct. 20, 2022, 10:43 AM EDT
By Steve Benen
When George Canning’s tenure as British prime minister ended after just 119 days in the early 19th century, he had a good excuse: Canning died while in office. Liz Truss will break Canning’s record with ease — and earn an ignominious place in history in the process.
The outgoing prime minister, just 45 days into her tenure, announced her resignation today, and will leave office after Conservatives choose her successor. The news marks a new chapter in an extraordinarily tumultuous period in British politics.

But as Truss prepares to exit the stage in embarrassing fashion, let’s not lose sight of the agenda that doomed her government. NBC News reported this morning:
Truss, 47, promised a radical shift in Britain’s economic fortunes, turning it into a low-tax, high-growth country that would unleash its post-Brexit potential. In practice, “Trussonomics” was an utter failure and would become her political epitaph.
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The outgoing prime minister, after taking office six weeks ago, unveiled what she saw as a brilliant idea: As Britain struggled with high inflation, Truss unveiled an economic plan built around tax breaks for the wealthy, which would’ve made inflation vastly worse.
The proposal was not well received: The disastrous vision sent the value of the pound plunging, borrowing costs soared, and the central Bank of England scrambled to put together an emergency intervention plan to prevent further catastrophe. The International Monetary Fund found it necessary to reprimand the prime minister for pushing such a ridiculous and counterproductive economic agenda.
Faced with few choices, Truss abandoned the plan, but by that point, it was too late, and the chaos her government had created ultimately proved unsustainable.
Closer to home, however, the response from the right in the United States was ... problematic.

A few weeks ago, Media Matters reported, “Right-wing media figures are toasting United Kingdom prime minister Liz Truss’ massive tax cuts geared toward the wealthy as a potential model for the U.S. if Republicans return to power.”
The report added, “‘I love what Liz Truss is doing in England,’ perpetually wrong right-wing economics commentator Stephen Moore said during a Monday appearance on Fox Business. ‘I think it is exactly the right agenda of cutting taxes.’ The former Trump adviser added that Truss is doing ‘exactly what the United States should be doing,’ and predicted that ‘the cavalry is coming’ if the GOP dominates in the November midterm elections.”
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In other words, conservative media figures saw Tories try to deal with high inflation with a plan that would make inflation worse, and their immediate response was to effectively declare, without a hint of sarcasm, “Great idea.”
It was against this backdrop that The Washington Post reported this week:
Republicans plan to push to extend key parts of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts if they take control of Congress in this fall’s elections, aiming to force President Biden to codify trillions of dollars worth of lower taxes touted by his predecessor.... Many economists say the GOP’s plans to expand the tax cuts flies against their promises to fight inflation and reduce the federal deficit, which have emerged as central themes of their 2022 midterm campaign rhetoric. Tax cuts boost inflation just like new spending, because they increase economic demand and throw it out of balance with supply.
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Or as Catherine Rampell explained in her latest column, “Cutting taxes further is also likely to make inflation worse, for the same reason that Republicans argue that increased government spending can also make inflation worse: Giving people more cash to spend when there’s limited stuff to buy drives prices up.”
In other words, GOP officials — who expect to do well in the midterm elections because of widespread concerns about inflation — just watched the British prime minister fail spectacularly. These same Republicans nevertheless believe the smart move would be to pursue an agenda that looks quite similar to Truss’ disastrous plan.
It led Jennifer Rubin to conclude in a recent column, “So if you like what Brexit and Truss have done for the British economy, vote Republican. If you prefer prosperity, then don’t.”
Update: About a month ago, Fox Business' Larry Kudlow, formerly the top voice on economic policy in the Trump White House, told viewers, "The new British prime minister, Liz Truss, has laid out a terrific supply-side economic growth plan, which looks a lot like the basic thrust of Kevin McCarthy’s Commitment to America plan."
Kudlow added that he believed, as recently as Sept. 23, that Truss' agenda was "exactly right."
 
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What Happened to Liz Truss Can’t Happen Here
The prime minister’s downfall shows that British democracy is still working. American dysfunction is far worse.
By Brian Klaas
Christopher Furlong / Getty
OCTOBER 20, 2022, 12:15 PM ET
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In just 44 days, Prime Minister Liz Truss tanked the British economy, crashed the value of the pound, prompted a major bailout by the Bank of England, then resigned. When she leaves office next Friday, she will be, by far, the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. It isn’t even close. The previous record holder, George Canning, lasted 119 days and had a rather good excuse for his temporary tenure: He collapsed and died in 1827 while in office. Truss was just incompetent.

Truss was forced out after a month of unprecedented chaos. She fired her top minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, for announcing a disastrous “mini-budget” that she personally endorsed. Just about every time she stepped in front of a camera, markets plunged and borrowing costs rose. And on Wednesday night, she threatened to expel any members of Parliament who stood up to her, only to back down on that threat, then reinstate it with a text sent to the press at 1:33 a.m. One tabloid ran a livestream on YouTube featuring a head of lettuce wearing a blond Trussian wig with the caption: “Will Liz Truss outlast this lettuce?” to see who would go off first. The lettuce won.


As an American living in the United Kingdom, I am tempted to marvel at the disarray and breathe a sigh of relief: In the transatlantic political sweepstakes deciding which political system is more broken, Britain has, at least briefly, retaken the lead from the United States. But a victory lap would be misplaced. When you juxtapose the events of the past 44 days in Westminster with the past six years in Washington, it’s clear that America’s democratic dysfunction is far worse.

Paradoxically, Truss’s downfall shows that British democracy is still working. Polarization is so toxic in the U.S. that Trump never dipped below about 35 percent approval, no matter what he did. Truss, who was incompetent but far less dangerous, saw her approval ratings flirt with single digits before she was forced out. Her political party and political base turned on her.

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Democracy relies on a two-way street of responsiveness. Governments act, citizens react, then governments adjust, and the cycle repeats. Unlike in dictatorships, the evolving views of the public are supposed to be considered not just to win elections, but between elections. Without that back-and-forth between the citizenry and their representatives in power, there can be no political accountability, and government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” becomes merely a comforting myth.

But what if the views of the public barely change because polarization reigns supreme? When that happens, democracies stagnate, accountability disappears, and politicians can get away with anything.


Consider the political offenses of Truss and Trump against their political trajectories. Trump presided over the separation of migrant parents from their children, advised Americans to inject disinfectants during the deadliest pandemic in a century, told thousands of lies, tried to pass a bill that would take health-care coverage away from roughly 20 million Americans, repeatedly praised Vladimir Putin, then incited an attempted authoritarian takeover of the United States government on January 6. Despite all that, Trump’s approval rating barely budged. At his highest, Trump commanded the support of 49 percent of the American electorate. At his lowest, he still had 34 percent on his side. Given that polls have a margin of error of a few percentage points, Trump’s real overall approval rating likely stayed within a band of about 10 percentage points during his entire presidency.

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Truss, for all her incompetence, was far from the malicious authoritarianism of Trump. She tried to usher in tax cuts for the very wealthy and her plans led to mortgage payments rising for millions, but she didn’t encourage a violent mob to descend on 10 Downing Street, praise racists and dictators, or get people killed with unhinged medical advice. And yet, the only YouGov poll taken during her time in office saw her with the support of just 11 percent of the electorate, whereas 44 percent of voters backed her political party in the last general election.

Similarly, Boris Johnson—who was frequently compared to Trump—saw his approval ratings soar and plummet during his time in office. In April 2020, his approval rating reached 66 percent. Just over two years later, his approval rating had hit 23 percent, meaning that he had lost the support of roughly half the people who had voted for him in the first place. And Johnson was ultimately brought down by ethics violations that seem positively quaint compared with the Trump-era scandals and alleged criminality.

From the July/August 2021 issue: The minister of chaos

The volatility of public support for leaders functions as a rough proxy for democratic health, with greater swings reflecting a healthier system. Polling volatility is by no means the only measure, but it can offer important clues. The healthiest democracies are home to an electorate in which voters change their minds when the facts change, punishing governments who fail and rewarding those who succeed. But in most American presidential elections, virtually anyone with D or R next to their name can be assured of the support of at least 40 percent of the electorate. Had Truss been a politician in America, she’d still command that level of support.


What accounts for the difference, then? Trump intensified American polarization through extraordinarily divisive tactics, turning politics into a sport akin to professional wrestling. Policy mattered less while making “the right people” angry mattered more.

America’s media environment is also far more fractured than Britain’s, giving partisans the option to “choose your own reality.” Whenever Trump did something egregious, his supporters could consume a steady diet of commentary that consistently explained why it was a “hoax” or a “deep state” plot, or, if all else failed, that the Democrats were still worse. In Britain, TV and radio are far more regulated and far more centrist. As a result, audiences hear more discussions of how to solve problems than arguments over whether a problem is real or not. And despite Johnson’s infamous shamelessness, it’s clear that shaming politicians still works in the United Kingdom.

Finally, British electoral districts are, on the whole, drawn fairly. That has a profound effect on competitiveness, such that hundreds of members of parliament genuinely fear losing their jobs in the next election. In contrast, due to gerrymandering and demographic sorting in the United States, just 31 seats out of 435 in the U.S. House of Representatives are considered a toss-up in the upcoming midterm elections, and only 20 more “lean” Republican or Democrat. That means that 88 percent of the members of the House have nothing to fear from voters, which is not only unhealthy for democracy but also ensures that those elected officials rarely turn on their own. Republicans fear losing a primary if they whisper the mildest criticism of Donald Trump. Tories in Britain feared losing their seats if they whispered praise of Liz Truss.

The past six weeks have been disastrous for Britain. Liz Truss will likely be remembered as the worst prime minister in history. But the speed with which she was chucked out is a positive sign for British democracy. Because in order to function properly, democracy requires an electorate of voters who are willing to change their minds.
 
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Opinion

Liz Truss’s resignation is a warning for Republicans
By Henry Olsen
Columnist|Follow
October 20, 2022 at 11:12 a.m. EDT
British Prime Minister Liz Truss announces her resignation outside 10 Downing Street in London on Oct. 20. (Henry Nicholls/Reuters)
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The resignation of British Prime Minister Liz Truss on Thursday morning puts an end to a month of economic and political turmoil. Republicans should take note of her mistakes if they want to avoid a similar debacle after the midterms and in 2024.

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Truss’s first mistake was to push a radical economic agenda she did not campaign on. Her personal views supporting a low-tax, smaller government were telegraphed years ago in her book, “Britannia Unchained.” But she did not campaign for the premiership on that agenda. She had promised some modest tax reductions and offered rhetorical backing for deregulation. But those were far short of the sweeping tax cuts she and her chancellor of the exchequer unveiled in their now-infamous mini-budget proposed in late September.

Failing to prepare public opinion for her proposals meant there was no widespread support for them in any segment of British society. Conservative MPs who championed fiscal stability were gobsmacked at the prospect of widening deficits as far as the eye could see. The broader public backed more spending and taxation, not less. And investors who had made calculations about the British economy based on her public statements were blindsided, sending interest rates soaring and pushing the pound to historic lows.



Republicans are at risk of making the same mistake if they retake control of Congress. The GOP’s midterm messaging focuses on inflation, crime and immigration, but the party is not telling the public much about what it would do to combat those ills. That might be good politics, but it also means they would have no mandate for significant departures from the status quo. Using the national debt limit next year as leverage to force significant spending cuts, including to Social Security and Medicare, as has recently been rumored, would be as politically disastrous for the GOP as Truss’s supply-side tax cuts were for the Tories.
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Truss also failed by trying to push a revolution through Parliament without controlling all the levers of power. Many Conservative MPs quickly said they would oppose many of her plans, forcing her into humiliating policy U-turns that only fed the sense she was not in charge. Republican attempts to enact similar radical changes would be met with Democratic filibusters in the Senate and a presidential veto. Doing so regardless of that reality would be the political equivalent of Pickett’s Charge.
Republicans should also take note that character matters. I had thought that Truss’s rapid rise to the top meant she was a savvy operator. Instead, power revealed her to be a shallow opportunist with neither courage nor good judgment. Having chosen to launch revolution without broad popular support, she had only one logical course forward: to be intransigent and force Tory rebels to bend the knee. Instead, she started to retreat under pressure almost as soon as her plans were under attack.


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That choice sealed her fate. Once she showed herself to be movable, the rebels were emboldened to take on the rest of her agenda. First, the tax cut for the top bracket was shelved. Then she fired her closest ally, Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng, and installed an ideological adversary in his place. Each move was meant to placate the bleating mob, but it merely whetted her adversaries’ appetite for what they really wanted: her head.
Republicans need to pick a 2024 nominee who has both intellectual depth and genuine courage. Former president Donald Trump has neither. He might sound like a fighter, but he regularly pulled back from his agenda under pressure from his staff. He also publicly excoriated Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whom he will need to pass whatever agenda he comes up with. Much as Truss tried to brush aside dissenters within her own party rather than bring them to her side, Trump and his loyalists deride Republicans who don’t fall into line as RINOs who should be expelled. That’s recklessness, not courage.
Trump also shares Truss’s lack of serious engagement with ideas. Both have pulled 180-degree turns in their careers, switching political parties and reversing themselves on policy commitments when it suited their ambitions. It’s revealing that Trump did not sanction a party platform in his 2020 renomination bid, the first time the party ever failed to issue an updated set of principles and proposals. You can’t change the nation’s course if you don’t have an idea for where it should be going.
Truss’s ideological fecklessness has brought the Conservative Party to its knees. Republicans, take note.
 

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