2015-12-11

Krugman Notices the Political Winds of Change

Empowering the Ugliness
My European friends will no doubt say that I’m oversimplifying, but from an American perspective it looks as if Europe’s establishment has tried to freeze the xenophobic right, not just out of political power, but out of any role in acceptable discourse. To be a respectable European politician, whether of the left or of the right, you have had to accept the European project of ever-closer union, of free movement of people, open borders, and harmonized regulations. This leaves no room for right-wing nationalists, even though right-wing nationalism has always had substantial popular support.

What the European establishment may not have realized, however, is that its ability to define the limits of discourse rests on the perception that it knows what it is doing. Even admirers and supporters of the European project (like me) have to admit that it has never had deep popular support or a lot of democratic legitimacy. It is, instead, an elite project sold largely on the claim that there is no alternative, that it is the path of wisdom.

...But there is a strong element of bait-and-switch to this strategy. Whatever dog whistles get sent during the campaign, once in power the G.O.P. has made serving the interests of a small, wealthy economic elite, especially through big tax cuts, its main priority — a priority that remains intact, as you can see if you look at the tax plans of the establishment presidential candidates this cycle.

Sooner or later the angry whites who make up a large fraction, maybe even a majority, of the G.O.P. base were bound to rebel — especially because these days much of the party’s leadership seems inbred and out of touch. They seem, for example, to imagine that the base supports cuts to Social Security and Medicare, an elite priority that has nothing to do with the reasons working-class whites vote Republican.
Krugman closes by blaming the establishment for this problem. He doesn't fully understand the politics of it though, because he is still viewing it through an ideological lens. He thinks there's a way to not move to the right; there isn't. The establishment in Europe and America have been opposed to the wished of a large segment of the population, including left-wingers. Sweden Democrats would be a left-wing party were it not for the immigration issue. This is why I still predict Trump will win a massive landslide in 2016 and he could win a 3-way race. Trump will cut more deeply into the Democrats support. There have been polls showing Trump at 25% support among black voters. Regarding Trump's recent comments, 96% of blacks had no problem with it.

A term that hasn't been used much lately is transnationalists. The establishment in Europe and America decided the nation state would be subverted to pan-national or global institutions. They also decided there are no nations, by opening the borders. This was never voted on or discussed because it would be a losing issue to publicly lay it all out. Changes were slowly made over time, but the creep was always towards the loss of sovereignty. The latest in Europe: EU plans border force to police external frontiers
Brussels is to propose the creation of a standing European border force that could take control of the bloc’s external frontiers — even if a government objected.

The move would arguably represent the biggest transfer of sovereignty since the creation of the single currency.
It's not a transfer of sovereignty, it is the end of sovereignty. This is the control Russia had over Eastern Europe from 1945-1989, or the control of Iraq by the U.S. No one thought the nominal governments in charge at the time were sovereign.

By silencing the opposition and creating an echo chamber, the establishment stopped having to debate. There were few arguments against Trump's proposal for a freeze on Muslim immigration that held up. One line of attack was to call it unAmerican, which was refuted by many instances of prior and existing visa restrictions (and relaxations) based on religion, nationality, and other factors. The next line of attack was to say it is unconstitutional, but that was quickly shown to be false as well. Not only would it be constitutional, but Trump could carry it out by executive order. The establishment is like a boxer who hasn't been in a fight for 20 years, while his opponent has been fighting non-stop, in this case on the Internet, away from the gatekeepers who shut down debate.

More voters favor a ban on Muslim immigration than would oppose one. As I've shown, the public was generally leaning immigration restrictionist, but this was always suppressed by the media. Most voters still haven't learned the real cost of immigration, with welfare rates use far above that of natives. Trump, or whoever takes up the mantle on the issue of immigration and nationalism, is nowhere near peak support numbers. As I've written before, I would not be surprised to see a freeze on all immigration, or even a multi-generational halt as was passed in the 1920s. Trump's political policies represent the new center of American politics, they appear extreme only because the existing policies are extreme. This is still the very early innings of a long political transformation in the West.

No comments:

Post a Comment