2016 Jan 21^st

Dr. Sowell, in his column this morning, finishes by quoting Eric Hoffer! Can it be that a true believer has actually read Hoffer’s “The True Believer”? Let’s consider Sowell’s thesis for today: it is, in a more concise form than Sowell presents, that this election is the Republican’s to lose, and that they may well do just that.

Sowell begins by asserting that “…voter’s anger (is) at the Republican establishment which has grossly betrayed the promises that got a Republican Congress elected.” Then he claims that the Congress was elected to fight Obama’s policies, from securing the borders to overturning “Obamacare” to “runaway government spending” and then they caved “when crunch time came for Congress to vote.” Sowell needs to keep up. These Affordable Care Act (ACA) haters tried desperately to block ACA, sending fifty bills toward the President’s desk to defund, or otherwise cripple it. The fact is that not one of them got there where a veto awaited them anyway. (One Bill using an arcane procedural method did get through and was promptly vetoed.) This effort was an enormous waste of effort that the perpetrators must have known was going to fail but they pursued it anyway to provide their constituents with evidence that at least they were in there trying.

As far as “securing the borders” is concerned any greatly increased security is no longer needed. The people coming in about equal the people going back. The Mexican birth rate has dropped and their economy has improved enough so that except for smuggled drugs the whole notion of border security has become nothing but a talking point for people like the xenophobic Donald Trump.

Sowell’s complaint about “runaway government spending” probably doesn’t apply to increased money for border patrol or for the military. He appears to be taking a shot at Speaker Ryan who had the effrontery to cooperate with Democrats to pass a 2 trillion dollar budget. (Trump’s stump speech claims this means we must borrow 2 trillion dollars… and this man pretends to know something about balance sheets?)

Sowell says that the Democratic frontrunner “…is a former member of an unpopular administration…whose personal integrity is under criminal investigation by the FBI.” Sowell goes on with this, “After seven disastrous years of Barack Obama, at home and overseas,…the US may be approaching a point of no return especially in a new age of a nuclear Iran with long range missiles.” Oh, come now Dr. Sowell; this is an unpopular administration only with Republicans. President Obama’s approval rating among Democrats is at 80+ percent, high as it has been for any incumbent President. His approval rating among Republicans is lower that it has been for any out of party President, about 17 percent. In short, Republicans hate him more than any out of party President has ever been hated.

Having someone to hate is important for any movement; the Germans had the Jews, the Russians had their aristocracy and then they had the fascists and then they had the Democracies, Trump has almost everybody who isn’t a nice white Anglo. President Obama serves as the hate target for people like Dr. Sowell. It’s all in Eric Hoffa’s  “The True Believer.” Sowell has apparently read it but I wonder if he understands it.