George Will leaving the GOP

I'm surprised this hasn't received more attention on this board. His arguments seem to align to our own Mr. Deez a bit.

This is an awesome twitter exchange:


Trump tweeted his reaction to the news Sunday, writing, “George Will, one of the most overrated political pundits (who lost his way long ago), has left the Republican Party. He’s made many bad calls.”

Will responded, “He (Trump) has an advantage on me because he can say everything he knows about any subject in 140 characters and I can’t.”

Do the conservatives and/or Trump supporters care that George Will is leaving the GOP? Is he simply another symptom of the problem? Out with the "elites"?

Couple this with the news that Brent Scowcroft, foreign policy advisor to 4 GOP Presidents including Reagan, is now supporting HRC and the purging of the Republican party seems to be in full force. Soon, all the academics will be gone from the GOP with only Anne Coulter and Sean Hannity to carry the torch. I'm not sure anyone but their fans would consider them intellectual heavyweights though.

 

We have two "big tent" political parties in the US. The good side of that is it allows disparate viewpoints to emerge on the national scene. The bad side is that you have to share a political party with people who hold some views that can fall into a range from bad policy to nutty as all hell. If Will wants to be part of an organization dominated by deep-thinking, logical persons of a conservative political bent, he's going to be in a pretty small organization. Depending on his standards, a convention he might be a séance with a non-voting medium and the ghost of William F. Buckley.

 

If you are "getting out" because you prefer HRC to Trump, then you are part of the reason why Trump won the nomination in the first place. This is all about George Will thinking he knows better what is good for the voters than they do.

 

Is he getting out because he prefers HRC to Trump? Where is HRC mentioned in this passage?

I'm sure George Will does think he knows better than the voters who nominated Trump. Isn't that the point of his leaving? He doesn't feel the party is one that represents him anymore or that he wants to be associated with a party more worried about winning than ideological principles. Is Will not conservative anymore? It could be that there is no room for conservatives anymore, which is what Mr. Deez appears to be lamenting.

I didn't always agree with Will but never doubted his intellectual power.

 

Will carefully cultivates an image of a person with a lot of knowledge, historical perspective and research skills. He carefully states positions with intellectual precision, sometimes using words and concepts seldom encountered by the poorly educated. It's natural that he and Trump are incompatible.

That said, it's clear that a lot more people will readily validate what they hear from Trump than what they hear from Will.

 

Does he cultivate an image of a person with a lot of knowledge, historical perspective (etc.), or is he a person with a lot of knowledge, historical perspective (etc.)?

 

He has a Pulitzer and written many books. Clearly he's spent more time researching and studying these topics than most of us, combined.

 

Since he has so much knowledge (more than most of us combined), does it make you question the reasons that you are a liberal since such a learned man like George Will is not?

 

Both.
Will has changed my mind on some issues, but my political outlook is to the left of his. There are liberals who are smarter than me as well as folks of most political stripes. But I was smart enough to graduate from UT with an A minus average and I understand how to look at issues using logic and facts. That's my preferred sort of political communication, but obviously most folks are more responsive to other sorts of political appeals.

 

Okay. What writers/authors would you recommend that write in support your liberal views? I'm not talking about social issues as much as economic issues and the historical effectiveness of the liberal viewpoint.

 

Paul Krugman and Thomas Friedman are intelligent observers of economic and policy issues that mostly express opinion considered progressive or liberal.

 

They do express a liberal view. Any others? (Honest question)

 

I honestly read more to learn than to validate my world view. Books I would recommend that gave me clarity of perspective, not so much liberal/conservative as informed and insightful are Phillip K Howard's The Death of Common Sense and The Dictator's Handbook, why Bad Behavior is almost Always Good Politics by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith. I like Malcom Gladwell and Michael Lewis books. Those guys are really observant and open my eyes to aspect of trends and events that I would have overlooked or less well understood.

I honestly learned a lot 10-15 years ago from Al Gore's books on climate science. I know people make fun of him and what he wrote doesn't explain the latest data. But he wrote interesting, readable and fact filled books that outlined important environmental issues that are too important to ignore. It's too bad that conservatives just mock him rather than taking issue with his facts and logic. But again, there's a reason Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter sell more books than George Will, and it's not because of superior ability to craft a persuasive and logical message.

 

The Wixit?

 

I like Gladwell and Lewis is a master storyteller. He can depress and disgust both supporters of the free market and government intervention advocates alike with his tales of stupidity and fraud (read "Boomerang"). I'll check out the others. Thanks.

 

Will is a smart guy and actually believes in conservative principles. If you fit into either camp, you're going to detest Trump, and you're not going to feel comfortable in the GOP with Trump as the party leader. Will has attacked Trump on policy, and Trump makes fun of his glasses. That pretty much says it all. If this got any further, Trump would start in with the "your momma's so fat" insults.

 

One other thing:

Here is what Michael Lewis said after writing Flash Boys, which shows that most of the stock buying public is getting screwed by a few High Frequency Traders:

"The effect of the existing system on these savings is not trivial. In early 2015, one of America’s largest fund managers sought to quantify the benefits to investors of trading on IEX instead of one of the other U.S. markets. It detected a very clear pattern: on IEX, stocks tended to trade at the “arrival price”—that is, the price at which the stock was quoted when their order arrived in the market. If they wanted to buy 20,000 shares of Microsoft, and Microsoft was offered at $40 a share, they bought at $40 a share. When they sent the same orders to other markets, the price of Microsoft moved against them. This so-called slippage amounted to nearly a third of 1 percent. In 2014, this giant money manager bought and sold roughly $80 billion in U.S. stocks. The teachers and firefighters and other middle-class investors whose pensions it managed were collectively paying a tax of roughly $240 million a year for the benefit of interacting with high-frequency traders in unfair markets."

After reading his book, Flash Boys, and doing a little research, I instructed the money manager I deal with to use IEX whenever possible. Regardless, the fact that the SEC made rules (or ignored existing rules) to help these crooks is a very bad sign for everyone.

 

that she can't fit into a chat room!

 

iatrogenic: You are obviously well read. What are your public policy book recommendations?

 

If he's bagging on Trump, then he is helping HRC. There's no 2 ways about it.

 

Need to head to an appointment but I will get back with you. "Well read" is relative of course.

 

My preferences:

The Guru
https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/2056.Thomas_Sowell


Any history book. You get different views depending on authors, but if you have a modest ability to separate the facts from the fiction (the gift of discernment), they all help.

Anything on economics.

Everyday functional help:

Oddly enough, reading opinions from appeals courts on Findlaw.com (avoid cases about divorce and minor children to wade through the various courts quicker) is very helpful for business, especially if you need to review, change, write contracts, deal with insurance, etc.

The WSJ. The Economist on occasion. Forbes.

 

I love reading the Economist. Fareed Zakaria leans way left but he generally has some good insights.

 

Looks like Will wanted to repeal the 2nd Amendment back in the early 1990s

 

I wonder how many times Trump has changed his position on guns since 1991.

 

Yeah, but he ain't leaving the GOP.

 

He didn't have to. He made the GOP leave conservatism and therefore people like Will.

 

Nobody outside of maybe a few old baseball fans actually like Will.

 

Actually, I would argue that the fact that the GOP ceased being a conservative party is what allowed a "whatever the hell Trump is" candidate to win the nomination. The GOP has been complicit in massive amounts of government spending increases and deficits for quite a while now. The recent Omnibus spending bill was the nail in the coffin. There is an unprecedented level of anger among the rank and file. The GOP establishment has no one to blame but themselves for this mess.

 

With all due respect, this is like the Stab in the Back Myth that Nazis perpetuated after WWI. It's a very questionable and weak narrative driven by people who want to hustle their way into office. Let's look at the numbers. The GOP took control of the House in 2011, which means the first budget they had some control over was FY2012. Federal spending in FY2012 was $3.536T, a REDUCTION of $67B from FY2011. How often does that happen? They reduced it another $82B in 2013. That's $145B in annual spending cuts - not cuts in projected increases. Real reductions. In FY2015, it increased to $3.688 - $85B over 2011 levels, and much of that is Medicare spending, which they don't control.

Is $88B a lot of growth for a 4-year period? No. How big was the increase from 2007 - 2011? $875B - almost ten times as much. How about the previous four years (2003 - 2007)? $569B. How about 1999 - 2003? $458B. How far back do you have to go to find increases as small as $88B in a four year period? Back to the early '70s, and you have to ignore inflation (obviously a massive factor when we're going back over 40 years) to do that.

What about spending as a percentage of GDP? It's at 20.7 percent - down 2.7 points (which is huge) since 2011.

Is spending too high? Of course. Has the process been ugly? Very. But considering that the GOP doesn't have the White House (and until last year only had one half of one branch of government) and has to deal with a President who wants to spend like a drunken sailor, they've done quite well at holding the line on spending - far better than they're given credit for.