“Nonsense Debt” 0
Josh Marshall looks at the developing war within the Republican Party between the absurd and the absolutely crazy, witness the recent Alabama primary victory of Judge Roy Moore.
Marshall suggests that Republicans have done it to themselves. (Unfortunately, they are poised to do it to the rest of us, also.)
Here’s a crucial bit; follow the link for the rest (emphasis added).
This is the crux of the issue. Last spring I said the Trump phenomenon was a product of what I termed ‘nonsense debt‘. Republicans had spent years pumping their voters up on increasingly extreme and nonsensical claims and promises. This worked very well for winning elections. But it had also built up a debt that eventually had to be repaid. Concretely, they were making claims and promises that were either factually ridiculous, politically unviable or unacceptable to a broad swath of the voting public. Eventually, you get elected and need to produce. By definition that’s never really possible: both because the claims and promises are nonsensical and unviable but also because a politics based on reclamation, revenge, and impulse is almost impossible to satisfy through normal legislative politics.
Image via Job’s Anger.
