Scott Sumner — The Tea Party won

The recovery has since picked up speed, so the deficit should be falling especially fast right now. Unfortunately, the FRED data site does not have updated figures, but the deficit is no longer falling. Indeed it’s exploding, expected to reach $1.1 trillion in 2019. Nothing like this has ever happened in America during a period of peace and prosperity. There is such a firehose of spending that Washington is hardly able to shovel dollars out the door as fast as they are being appropriated…

This is what happens when you give the GOP full control over the government.

Hardly anyone is reporting this story, even though it’s one of the most bizarre things to have happened in America during my lifetime. Perhaps this is because none of our “tribes” has an incentive to acknowledge these facts. The GOP wants to tell voters that it’s a responsible, small government, conservative party, pushing back against the deficit spending of the Obama years. The Dems want to tell voters that the GOP is a mean-spirited, small government, conservative party. Both are lying. The press plays along with this framing, because it lets the two tribes set the terms of the debate. The GOP is actually a big governmentparty. Neither the NYT nor Fox News will tell you that.…

The Money Illusion
The Tea Party wonScott Sumner | Professor of Economics at Bentley University

Sputnik — Former Trump Strategist Bannon Warns GOP Candidates Against Kochs' 'Toxic' Money

Turf wars.

Sputnik International
Former Trump Strategist Bannon Warns GOP Candidates Against Kochs' 'Toxic' Money

And now it is official: the official non-Trumpist Republican line is now that all of that stuff about the tax "reform" bill delivering materially faster economic growth in exchange for widening inequality was just boob bait for the bubbas.

Marco Rubio has second thoughts. Watch GOP candidates up for reelection in 2018 backpedal.

Grasping Reality
And now it is official: the official non-Trumpist Republican line is now that all of that stuff about the tax "reform" bill delivering materially faster economic growth in exchange for widening inequality was just boob bait for the bubbas.
Brad DeLong | Professor of Economics, UCAL Berkeley

Mallory Shelbourne — Kasich: I can't support the GOP if it doesn't reform

The shoe drops.

The Hill

Kasich: I can't support the GOP if it doesn't reform
Mallory Shelbourne

The crazy just got crazier

Giving the GOP establishment heartburn. Hey, they asked for it.

RawStory
Joe Arpaio tells GOP he’s hot on the trail of Obama’s birth certificate and running for Congress

Newsweek

also

Newsweek

Joe Arpaio Revives Birtherism, Defends Record As Sheriff, Teases Return To Politics In Fresno

Alexander Nazaryan

See also

Fortune
Roy Moore Makes Ted Cruz Look Like a Democrat
Allen Tullos is a professor of history at Emory University

Breitbart News — The Long Game: Bannon Creates Political Coalition to Advance Populist Economic Nationalist Agenda and Smash the Establishment

Former White House strategist and current Breitbart News executive chairman Steve Bannon has teamed up with conservative donors Robert and Rebekah Mercer to promote insurgent candidates to challenge the GOP establishment and create an organizational apparatus to advance the populist and economic nationalist policies championed by those candidates....

Breitbart News

The Long Game: Bannon Creates Political Coalition to Advance Populist Economic Nationalist Agenda and Smash the Establishment

Robert Waldmann — Bizarro World

Health insurers confess to be being held hostage by Wall Street against their will. Some GOP senators react.

Capitalism at its "finest."

Angry Bear

Bizarro World
Robert Waldmann

Brad DeLong — David Brooks: The G.O.P. Rejects Conservatism

David Brooks is wrong, I think, in his claim that the current crop of Republican politicians have no vision of American society. I think they do have a vision....

WCEG
David Brooks: The G.O.P. Rejects Conservatism
Brad DeLong | Professor of Economics, UCAL Berkeley

Mike Murphy — House health-care bill is too ‘mean,’ Trump reportedly tells senators

President Donald Trump called the House-approved health-care bill “mean” and told a group of Republican senators that their bill should be “more generous,” according to reports Tuesday....

In Tuesday’s lunch with 15 Republican senators, both the Associated Press and CNN reported that Trump said the House bill did not do enough to protect individuals. “We need to be more generous, more kind,” he said, according to the AP....

Trump shows again that he is more politically savvy than his party. Can save them from themselves?

MarketWatch
House health-care bill is too ‘mean,’ Trump reportedly tells senators

Mike Murphy | Editor

Also

Congressional sources say President Donald Trump has told Republican senators that the House healthcare bill is "mean" and that the Senate version should be "more generous."

The remarks were a surprising critique of a Republican-written House measure whose passage Trump fought for and embraced. They also seem to undercut efforts by Senate conservatives to impose restrictions in their chamber’s legislation, such as curbing the Medicaid health care program for the poor and limiting the services insurers must cover....

Business Insider
Trump tells GOP senators that the House healthcare bill he celebrated in Rose Garden ceremony is 'mean'
Bob Bryan and Associated Press

Lee Fang — GOP Lawmakers Now Admit Years of Obamacare Repeal Votes Were a Sham

It is hard to overestimate the role of the Affordable Care Act in the Republican resurgence.

Over the last seven years, the GOP has won successive elections by highlighting problems with Obamacare, airing more than $235 million in negative ads slamming the law, and staging more than fifty high-profile repeal votes. In 2016 every major Republican presidential candidate, including Donald Trump, campaigned on a pledge to quickly get rid of it.

Now in total control of Congress and the White House, some GOP legislators are saying that the political assault on Obamacare was an exercise in cynical politics, and that an outright repeal was never on the table.

“We have Republicans who do not want to repeal Obamacare,” said Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., on Sirius XM Patriot on Wednesday.

“They may have campaigned that way, they may have voted that way a couple of years ago when it didn’t make any difference,” Brooks continued. “But now that it makes a difference, there seems to not be the majority support that we need to pass legislation that we passed fifty or sixty times over five or six years.”…

Cue enraged base.

The Intercept
GOP Lawmakers Now Admit Years of Obamacare Repeal Votes Were a Sham
Lee Fang

Kevin Robillard — Koch network pledges to defend Republicans who vote against GOP health bill

The Koch brothers' network of well-funded outside groups says it will spend millions to protect Republicans who oppose the party's health care bill from political fallout.
Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners, the Koch network's big budget grass-roots activism and advertising groups, are teaming up to create a "seven-figure" reserve fund to support lawmakers who buck President Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan on the health care vote, as the threat of primaries looms over some opponents of the bill. The Koch groups will spend the money on paid media, direct mail and grass-roots canvassing.

Freedom Partners called the GOP bill "Obamacare 2.0" and said it falls short of truly repealing the 2010 law....

The Koch groups argue that the GOP's bills refundable tax credits to make health coverage more affordable are a new entitlement….

The GOP goes to war with itself over purity versus practicality.

Politico

Koch network pledges to defend Republicans who vote against GOP health bill

Kevin Robillard

Lou Dobbs — Speaker Paul Ryan Should Resign

Here it comes.

Breitbart News
Lou Dobbs: Speaker Paul Ryan Should Resign

Neil Munro

Pfaff: GOP Leadership Undermining the Trump Agenda — Setting Up 2018 Fight with House Freedom Caucus?

The rift between the Ryan and Trump camps widens.

This week, Speaker Paul Ryan and House leadership introduced an Obamacare replacement bill. They said it was the culmination of months of discussion and input with members of the GOP caucus in the House. “We listened to our members,” they said, and this was the result.

It turns out that isn’t the case at all. The House Freedom Caucus and conservative groups like Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, Freedomworks and Club For Growth—among others—came out opposing the plan. And the furor began. What’s being revealed as this plays out is the real challenge it will be to “drain the swamp.” And as the fault lines between conservatives and leadership in the House widen, the Trump agenda is truly at risk.

Breitbart News
Pfaff: GOP Leadership Undermining the Trump Agenda — Setting Up 2018 Fight with House Freedom Caucus?

George Friedman — Trump's Dilemma

Donald Trump’s presidency will have geopolitical consequences. Most of the world wants to know what he will do. But that depends on what he can do. That, in turn, will be determined by the political dynamics within the United States as well as by counteractions of other nations. This is a case where politics rises to the level of geopolitics. Trump’s actions will be conditioned by the actions of other players, particularly in Congress. Trump, after all, will only be the president and his unilateral powers will be limited. For most of the things he wants to do, he needs Congress to go along. Therefore, the American stance toward the world will depend, for the moment, less on what Trump wishes than what Congress decides to do.…

Trump's dilemma arises from not having a popular mandate, yet wanting to be a transitional president.

Geopolitical Futures
Trump's Dilemma
George Friedman

Mallory Shelbourne — Cruz predicts 'pitchforks and torches in the streets' if GOP doesn't deliver

“If we’re given the White House and both houses of Congress and we don’t deliver, I think there will be pitchforks and torches in the streets. And I think quite rightly,” he told ABC’s “This Week.”

You betcha!

The Hill
Cruz predicts 'pitchforks and torches in the streets' if GOP doesn't deliver
Mallory Shelbourne

Jonathan Swan — Trump adviser tells House Republicans: You're no longer Reagan's party

Donald Trump’s economic adviser Stephen Moore told a group of top Republicans last week that they now belong to a fundamentally different political party.

Moore surprised some of the Republican lawmakers assembled at their closed-door whip meeting last Tuesday when he told them they should no longer think of themselves as belonging to the conservative party of Ronald Reagan.They now belong to Trump’s populist working-class party, he said.

A source briefed on the House GOP whip meeting — which Moore attended as a guest of Majority Whip Steve Scalise — said several lawmakers told him they were taken aback by the economist’s comments.

“For God’s sake, it’s Stephen Moore!” the source said, explaining some of the lawmakers’ reactions to Moore’s statement. “He’s the guy who started Club for Growth. He’s Mr. Supply Side economics.”

“I think it’s going to take them a little time to process what does this all mean,” the source added of the lawmakers. “The vast majority of them were on the wrong side. They didn’t think this was going to happen.”

Asked about his comments to the GOP lawmakers, Moore told The Hill he was giving them a dose of reality.

“Just as Reagan converted the GOP into a conservative party, Trump has converted the GOP into a populist working-class party,” Moore said in an interview Wednesday. “In some ways this will be good for conservatives and in other ways possibly frustrating.”...

“Reagan ran as an ideological conservative. Trump ran as an economic populist,” he said.

“Trump’s victory,” Moore added, “turned it into the Trump party.”

Sound of heads exploding in the background.

The Hill
Trump adviser tells House Republicans: You're no longer Reagan's party

Jonathan Swan

Alexander Mercouris — John McCain stands in the way of Trump’s rapprochement with Russia

Will John McCain be to Donald Trump as Joe Lieberman was to Barack Obama? Looks like it, only worse. It appears the two hate on each other. Adding to all the things that Mercouris mentions, McCain probably can't deal psychologically with the fact that he lost his election and Trump won his.

John McCain is no match for Donald Trump is a pissing contest. But it will be fun to watch if it comes to that.

The Duran
John McCain stands in the way of Trump’s rapprochement with Russia

Alexander Mercouris

Bob Carr — If you think Donald is bad, imagine Donald Trump 2.0

Sen. Tom Cotton waiting in the wings.

The Sydney Morning Herald
If you think Donald is bad, imagine Donald Trump 2.0

Bob Carr, former foreign affairs minister and former NSW premier

ht The Automatic Earth

Alex Christoforou — Republicans look to nail Hillary Clinton for perjury [Video]

This could conceivably lead to a constitutional crisis.

The Duran

Republicans look to nail Hillary Clinton for perjury [Video]
Alex Christoforou

Lord Keynes — The Strange Death of American Libertarianism in the GOP

Interesting insights on US politics from abroad as the Big Tent folds.

Social Democracy For The 21St Century: A Post Keynesian Perspective
The Strange Death of American Libertarianism in the GOP
Lord Keynes