Beowulf on "The Donald"

Bo Cutter had one of his usual propaganda posts over at New Deal 2.0, falling all over the Obama Administration's political handling of the current political emergence of Donald Trump on the GOP side. Excerpt:

'The Donald is the gift that keeps on giving. Every time he opens his mouth a million Americans move toward President Obama,"

This is the type of pure Obama apologist propaganda I've come to expect from Bo Cutter over there and he as usual does not disappoint.

For a dose of reality concerning this situation, our Beowulf posted a comment that I think provides a more accurate assesment. His comment:

Keep your eye on the ball Bo, its a flea flicker play. Trump is running as (in the National Review’s memorably dubbed George Wallace) as a country and western Marxist… though I guess Ed Glaeser’s term “small government egalitarian” probably sounds better. He’s running on cultural and foreign policy issues (pro-birther, pro-life, anti-gay marriage, pro-trade war with China and OPEC) and yet running left on fiscal policy. Thanks to the birther indirection (with a helpful assist from the Obama WH), he’s leading in the GOP polls even as he tells conservative supporters like Sean Hannity what he’d do about entitlement reform;
“I don’t care what plan the Republicans put, I’m protecting the seniors..”
And when Hannity asks how he’d balance the budget, Trump changed the subject from deficits to jobs (taking a whack at China along the way), “Don’t forget China is taking our jobs…. the best thing for balancing the budget is to have a strong economy. And the economy can never come back if we are going to always have high unemployment.”

That last part, of course, is a neat paraphrase of Kennedy’s famous line from his 1962 Economic Club speech, “only full employment can balance the budget”. Not quite accurate to blame China for our unemployment , if we spent enough in public investments to fill the $500 billion demand leakage created by our trade deficit, itt wouldn’t be a problem. But since one has to throw something out to appease the deficit zombies, Trump has the right idea, better to turn on free trade than the sick and elderly. What was it that Wynne Godley and Francis Cripps proposed in the mid 70s… “non-selective protectionism with matching fiscal easing” (i.e. use tariff revenue to cut payroll tax). if he ran on a “fair trade tax cut”, he would win over that fraction of the US population that doesn’t work in DC or on Wall Street (leaving the rest for Obama). (Ed: ooohhhh!)

Trump is rich enough to self-fund and has hit on the perfect angle of attack (if he pulls the trigger and runs), lock down the GOP base on cultural issues by going farther right than anyway else, and then down stand ready to pivot to economics to hammer the President from the left. Politico quoted an interview from last month where Trump sounds like he read Jamie Galbraith’s book.
“When this country becomes profitable again, we can take care of our sick; we can take care of our needy,” he told Human Events. “We don’t have to cut Social Security; we don’t have to cut Medicare and Medicaid. We can take care of people that need to be taken care of. And I’ll be able to do that.”… And he says we won’t need to raise taxes either. Trump is suggesting that, as our economy improves, it will expand to cover trillions of dollars in future deficits…”

I think Beowulf has some insightful analysis and nicely includes some perspective and history in accordance with MMT.

So Trump has so far been taking on Obama, on trade and jobs and our social safely net programs, but next I would like to see him kick the fiscal morons and ”free markets”, Paul Ryan types of the GOP right in the backside for a change, he'll have to do it sometime if he is going to run in the GOP primaries.

It’s a pretty sad state of affairs in our sitting government when it’s up to the flamboyant businessman Donald Trump to make the current political establishment on both sides look like a bunch of Marie Antoinettes.