2016 May 6^th

Today we have the interesting juxtaposition of two columnists on the Record-Eagle’s opinion page. At the top there is George Will with a column titled “The Misadventures of Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac.” Below his effort is Eugene Robinson’s “Trump fills a vacuum left by Republican Party.” (Robinson has the advantage of a photograph of Trump flanked by his six-foot tall, blonde, daughter Ivanka; his strikingly attractive Slovakian model wife, Melania, and son Eric’s very attractive, very tall blonde wife, Lara.) This is obviously an unfair contest.

Will describes GSEs of which Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac are his most salient examples. For the uninitiated, GSEs are “government-sponsored enterprises.” These two agencies guarantee 80 percent of American mortgages. According to Mr. Will, these GSE’s should never have existed. Everyone would have been much better off if “market forces” instead of these GSEs had been involved. Then came the housing crash and many wind-fall financial opportunities erupted, all the result of government over reach. (In spite diligent searching I can find the term “government under reach” nowhere in any right wing lexicon.) Had enough? I certainly have.

Of all the interesting political things to write about, from Paul Ryan’s current reluctance to endorse Trump and Trump’s current reluctance to endorse Ryan’s “agenda” in their grade school tit for tat, carefully orchestrated game, why would George Will think anyone would be interested in an extended disquisition on GSEs? Of course it doesn’t matter to Mr. Will, if he can take some abstract, impenetrable, utterly boring topic, and illustrate his grasp of the issues, and by doing so illustrate his intellectual brilliance he really doesn’t care whether or not you are interested.

Eugene Robinson, on the other hand, has chosen to comment on the Republican Party in these days of its near terminal angst. His thesis is that the Republicans captured the Reagan Democrats and the let them hang out to dry and left them there for years, ignoring their economic concerns. “Trump is filling a vacuum left by years of inattention to voters who have been patronized and taken for granted. The fissures he exposed in the GOP will not go away.”  Robinson claims that the party has nominated a candidate who does not subscribe to many of the party’s core beliefs. “Post Trump, Republicans will have a choice: They can develop new policies or they can look for new voters.”

That’s quite straightforward, easy to understand and hardly debatable. The far right of the Republican Party has effectively stalled the government.  By crippling the legislative branch they have made sure that Congress has the lowest approval rating in its history and provided all the ammunition Donald Trump could possibly want. The leader of the Tea Party’s attempts to throttle the government is none other than Speaker Paul Ryan.