Social Issues

Really good column by David Brooks today, in which he looks to the GOP’s future beyond Trump. Excerpts:

This is a moment for honesty. Valuably, Trump has exposed the rottenness of the consultant culture, and the squirrelly way politicians now talk to us. This is a moment for revived American nationalism. Trump’s closed, ethnic nationalism is dominant because Iraq, globalization and broken immigration policies have discredited the expansive open form of nationalism that usually dominates American culture.

And:

A reader left this comment on the “What’s The Matter With Utah?” thread. I think it’s really thought-provoking and challenging, but he posted it under his real name, and I’m worried that if I approve it, it will set him up to be attacked. Reader, if you are sure that you want me to approve it, let me know and I will. But I want to throw the comment out there for discussion, because the issues the reader brings up are real, and difficult:

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

An architect of the federal healthcare law said last year that a “lack of transparency” and the “stupidity of the American voter” helped Congress approve ObamaCare.

 

He suggested that many lawmakers and voters didn’t know what was in the law or how its financing worked, and that this helped it win approval.

 

Laura Orr/Shutterstock

A reader writes:

Submitted by John Mauldin via MauldinEconomics.com,

Last month I ran across a fascinating study by economist John Cochrane. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, former University of Chicago professor, and adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute. 

Cochrane wrote a paper on economic growth last year as part of a project to design presidential debate questions where he took a matter-of-fact approach to the growth problem.