An Anti-RFK Coalition?

 Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  In 2024, RFK Jr. initially looked as if he might be a consequential independent candidate. But after Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, his support collapsed.  He pulled out and endorsed Trump, who is nominating him to head HHS.

 RFK Jr. will probably win confirmation on a party-line vote. But if he doesn't, his downfall could result from a coalition of vaccine supporters, Republicans who oppose his stance on abortion and regulation, and farm-state senators who object to his plan to stop high-fructose corn syrup.

Mary Kekatos at ABC:

Ever since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was picked by President-elect Donald Trump to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, he has been vocal about his plans to "Make America Healthy Again."

Kennedy has vowed to crack down on dyes in the food industry and to reduce pesticides in the farm and agriculture industry.

He has called for restrictions on ultra-processed foods as part of an initiative to address the high rates of chronic disease in the United States, and he's said more research needs to be conducted on vaccines.

"I think where you would see the challenges would be on allocation of money," Shana Gadarian, a professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in New York, told ABC News.

"If all of a sudden HHS is now in the business of passing more regulations on the food industry, on agriculture, we might see that a Republican Senate majority and a Republican House is less interested in allocating a budget to HHS that then would be under a different leadership," she continued.

Incompetence Update, March 2019

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's approach to governing.  The update  -- just published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

It was announced today by the U.S. Treasury that additional large scale Sanctions would be added to those already existing Sanctions on North Korea. I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional Sanctions!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 22, 2019

John Hudson and Josh Dawsey at WP:

The source of the confusion was Trump’s reference to “today.” No sanctions had been announced Friday, leading analysts to assume the president was referring to a round of sanctions imposed Thursday by the Treasury Department.

In fact, Trump was referring to a future round of previously unknown sanctions scheduled for the coming days, said administration officials familiar with the matter. The officials declined to specify what those sanctions would entail.

The move to forestall future sanctions represents an attempt by the president to salvage his nuclear negotiations with North Korea in the face of efforts by national security adviser John Bolton and others to increase punitive economic measures against the regime of Kim Jong Un.

The confusion created by policy differences inside the administration was compounded by the president’s imprecise tweet.

When asked to explain the tweet, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders simply noted that “President Trump likes Chairman Kim, and he doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary.”

So to summarize: Trump did not cancel previously imposed sanctions, he cancelled a classified round of large-scale North Korea sanctions that would've been a total secret had he not tweeted it out https://t.co/oP8MiebRsH

— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) March 23, 2019

Fred Barbash and Deanna Paul at WP report that federal judges have ruled against the administration at least 63 times since 2017.

Two-thirds of the cases accuse the Trump administration of violating the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), a nearly 73-year-old law that forms the primary bulwark against arbitrary rule. The normal “win rate” for the government in such cases is about 70 percent, according to analysts and studies. But as of mid-January, a database maintained by the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law shows Trump’s win rate at about 6 percent.

Seth Jaffe, a Boston-based environmental lawyer who represents corporations and had been looking forward to deregulation, said the administration has failed to deliver.

...

Some errors are so basic that Jaffe said he has to wonder whether agency officials are more interested in announcing policy shifts than in actually implementing them. “It’s not just that they’re losing. But they’re being so nuts about it,” he said, adding that the losses in court have “set regulatory reform back for a period of time.”

Contributing to the losing record has been Trump himself. His reported comments about “shithole countries,” for example, helped convince U.S. District Judge Edward M. Chen in San Francisco that the administration’s decision to end “temporary protected status” for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Central America, Haiti and Sudan was motivated by racial and ethnic bias.

At least a dozen decisions have involved Trump’s tweets or comments.

Acknowledgement of Harm

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the political impact of economic and regulatory policy.

Coral Davenport and Kendra Pierre-Louis at NYT:

A major scientific report issued by 13 federal agencies on Friday presents the starkest warnings to date of the consequences of climate change for the United States, predicting that if significant steps are not taken to rein in global warming, the damage will knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy by century’s end.

The report, which was mandated by Congress and made public by the White House, is notable not only for the precision of its calculations and bluntness of its conclusions, but also because its findings are directly at odds with President Trump’s agenda of environmental deregulation, which he asserts will spur economic growth.

Mr. Trump has taken aggressive steps to allow more planet-warming pollution from vehicle tailpipes and power plant smokestacks, and has vowed to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, under which nearly every country in the world pledged to cut carbon emissions. Just this week, he mocked the science of climate change because of a cold snap in the Northeast, tweeting, “Whatever happened to Global Warming?”

But in direct language, the 1,656-page assessment lays out the devastating effects of a changing climate on the economy, health and environment, including record wildfires in California, crop failures in the Midwest and crumbling infrastructure in the South. Going forward, American exports and supply chains could be disrupted, agricultural yields could fall to 1980s levels by midcentury and fire season could spread to the Southeast, the report finds.

Noam Levey and Evan Halper at LAT report ton regulatory and legal filings acknowledging multiple kinds of harm from Trump's deregulatory policies.

The Department of Education, for example, did not report how many student borrowers would be affected by a proposed rule issued earlier this year making it more difficult for students who have been defrauded by colleges or universities to get debt relief. Nor did the agency report how much more debt these students could face.

Only when borrowers sued did the agency acknowledge in court filings that scaling back the federal government’s debt relief program had left students with $56.9 million in additional debt.

Similarly, the Department of Health and Human Services has been granting states permission to impose work requirements on Medicaid beneficiaries without any assessment of how many people could lose health coverage as a result.

Many advocates fear that the administration may simply stop reporting potential adverse effects from their proposals.

To date, however, agencies have acknowledged that several of the administration’s highest-profile policy shifts would likely cause significant harm.

Nowhere has this been more apparent than at the EPA, an agency that has long set the standard for evaluating the costs and benefits of proposed regulatory moves.

When Trump in 2017 ordered the EPA to scrap President Obama’s landmark initiative to fight climate change by limiting power plant emissions, agency scientists reported the move would cause up to 4,500 premature deaths annually.

The Return of F Troop

The ethics flap was one sign that the House GOP  is still F. Troop.

Dana Milbank writes at The Washington Post:

Those worried that President Trump and congressional Republicans are about to enact a sweeping agenda may have an unexpected ally: legislative incompetence. As Carl Hulse points out in the New York Times, nearly two-thirds of House Republicans have never served with a GOP president. McCarthy, elected in 2006, has never experienced unified Republican control. Now Republicans have to switch from reflexive opposition to passing their own laws and being held responsible for the consequences. Turns out they haven’t developed those muscles.

Take Obamacare. For six years, Republicans have talked of replacing it, and dozens of times they voted to repeal it. But now they’re in no hurry. At Tuesday’s session, McCarthy said repeatedly that Republicans hadn’t yet decided what to do about Obamacare. “We’re being sworn in today,” he pleaded.

 What are some possible alternatives?

“No decision has been made yet. There’s nothing right out there.”

Would the GOP alternative cover as many as Obamacare?

“There’s a lot of areas that you want to look at.”

When will repeal happen?

“I only do week by week.”

How would they avoid upsetting insurance markets?

“Nothing has been decided yet.”

McCarthy was equally unprepared to talk about another longtime GOP priority: the repeal of regulations. “We’re just being sworn in,” he demurred, again, when asked.

Constitutionalist Agenda

At NRO, Ramesh Ponnuru and Reihan Salam write of a "constitutionalist agenda" for the GOP. They write that conservative remedies are other either fanciful (constitutional amendments) or inadequate (appoint conservative judges).

A practical constitutionalist agenda for the Congress would attempt both to strengthen constitutional principles such as federalism and the separation of powers and to habituate legislators to the idea that they have a role to play on these questions. The agenda would also illustrate how these principles would make for better government. Here are a few ideas that conservative congressmen, and presidential candidates, should be considering.

... 

• Medicaid:  "As Michael Greve has argued in The Upside-Down Constitution, the Founders envisioned a sharper division between state and federal responsibilities, a division that enabled competition and accountability. The best way to move back in that direction would be for the federal government to cash out most of its spending on Medicaid and give it to the beneficiaries to help them buy insurance in the private market. The federal government should simultaneously make it easier for states to do the same thing with most of their Medicaid spending. And the federal contributions should no longer reward states for higher spending."
• Regulation: "The REINS Act: Many Republicans have, to their credit, advocated legislation requiring a congressional vote before major regulations can take effect, and it was one of the first bills House Republicans passed when they took Congress in 2011. Republicans have mostly described the legislation as a way of safeguarding economic growth and economic liberty, but it too has a constitutional dimension: It is a means of countering the tendency of modern government to vest legislative power in unelected agencies."
• Spending: "Bring agency spending under congressional control: Another step toward reining in agencies would be to make their funding depend on Congress. Congressional power over spending — a powerful protection for self-government that predates the Constitution — has been eroded as government agencies have been given independent funding streams."
• Taxes: "Eliminate the deduction for state and local taxes: Believers in federalism should loathe the state- and local-tax deduction, which in effect transfers resources from taxpayers living in low-tax states to those living in high-tax states and, worse, raises the average state tax rate...Eliminating the deduction would also make voters in states such as New York, New Jersey, and California more tax-sensitive, as they would no longer be shielded from the full impact of their tax bills."  And it would drive these states even deeper into the Democratic column.
• Marijuana; "Allow states to go their own way on marijuana: Public opinion on marijuana is changing rapidly."

Advice to Republicans

At The Huffington Post, Jon Ward writes:

The path back for Republicans, and for conservatives more broadly, is as much cultural as it is tactical. Tactically, they need better candidates, and younger, more diverse people at all levels: political consultants, field operatives, grassroots volunteers. But to attract organic support from young people, women and minorities and continue harvesting new faces, conservatism needs an attitude adjustment: get hungry, get humble, and get to know more people who aren't like you. 

A cultural shift in the GOP -- more youth and more real relationships with people outside the traditional conservative demographic -- will go a long way toward fixing the party's other big problem: the idea that you can persuade people by talking at them, and not with them.

...
AEI scholar Henry Olsen showed an odd cartoon short, in which a few conservatives try to figure out how to appeal to women. The point, Olsen explained to the largely white audience of about 50 or 60 people, was that the men in the cartoon kept talking over the one woman in their group.

"What we saw in the video is the inability to listen. The video started off with six guys and one women trying to design a product for women, and none of them would let her talk," Olsen said. "The Republican Party has for too long talked at people rather than spoken with people. And I think that is one of the main sources of the disconnect."

That insight stood out as I spoke to key members of the Obama campaign's senior staff in the following days. "Listening" to prospective voters had been a core value of the Obama campaign's ethic -- managers listened to field staff and volunteers, and trained them, in turn, to listen to the folks in their neighborhoods who were possible supporters.

"The biggest thing is listening and not just barking at [voters]. People don't want to know our 10 point plan," Jeremy Bird, the 34-year-old organizer who oversaw the Obama campaign's field operation, told me. "They want to know that we're listening to them, and that last time we talked to them, and they told us their son was an Iraq war vet, we listened to that and therefore we're going to talk to them about that and not come at them like political marketers." 

Peggy Noonan tell the message-deprived and strategy-deficient Republicans that it's pirate time:

Now's the time to put a dagger 'tween their teeth, wave a sword, grab a rope and swing aboard the enemy's galleon. Take the president's issues, steal them—they never belonged to him, they're yours!

In political terms this means: Reorient yourselves. Declare for Main Street over Wall Street, stand for the little guy against the big interests. And move. Don't wait for the bill, declare the sentiments of your corner..

Really, it's pirate time.

Examples of what might be done:

If you are conservative you are skeptical of concentrated power. You know the bullying and bossism it can lead to. Republicans should go to the populist right on the issue of bank breakup. Too big to fail is too big to continue. The megabanks have too much power in Washington and too much weight within the financial system. People think the GOP is for the bankers. The GOP should upend this assumption. In this case good policy is good politics.

If you are a conservative you're supposed to be for just treatment of the individual over the demands of concentrated elites. Every individual in America making $400,000 a year or more just got a tax hike that was a blow to the gut. Regular working people are seeing their payroll deductions increase. But private-equity partners who make billions enjoy more favorable tax treatment. Their income is treated for tax purposes as a capital gain, so they're taxed at far lower rates. This is called the carried interest exemption, and everybody knows it's a big con.

The Republican Party should come out against it in a big way. Let the real rich pay the same percentage the not-actually-rich-but-formally-declared-rich are paying. If the Republicans did this they'd actually be joining the winning side, because carried interest will not survive the new era. If congressional Republicans care about their party they'll want it to get credit for fairness, as opposed to the usual blame for being lackeys of the rich.

She also calls for action on gun control and immigration, which would be much tougher sells to grassroots Republicans.

Pawlenty's Economic Agenda

At the University of Chicago today, Tim Pawlenty laid out his economic agenda:

• “Let’s start with a big, positive goal. Let’s grow the economy by five percent, instead of the anemic two percent envisioned currently.
• “We should cut the business tax rate by more than half. I propose reducing the current rate from 35% to 15%. But our policies can’t just be about simply cutting rates. They must also promote freedom and free markets. The tax code is littered with special interest handouts, carve-outs,subsidies, and loopholes that should be eliminated.”
• “On the individual rates we need a simpler, fairer flatter tax system overall. I propose just two rates: 10% and 25%. Under my plan, those who currently pay no income tax would stay at a zero rate. After that, the first $50,000 of income – or $100,000 for married couples – would be taxed at 10 percent.
• “Everything above that would be taxed at 25 percent. That’s it. A one-third cut in the bottom rate to allow younger, middle, and lower-income families to save andbuild wealth. And a 28 percent cut in the top rate to spur investment and job creation.
• “In addition, we should eliminate altogether the capital gains tax, interest income tax, dividends tax, and the death tax. Government has no moral or economic basis to claim a second share of the same income. When you deposit a dollar in your bank account, every penny should be forever more yours and your children’s, not the federal government’s.”
• “There are some obvious targets. We can start by applying what I call ‘The Google Test.’ If you can find a good or service on the Internet, then the federal government probably doesn’t need to be doing it. The post office, the government printing office, Amtrak, Fannie and Freddie, were all built for a time in our country when the private sector did not adequately provide those products. That’s no longer the case.”
• "So I propose that Congress grant the President the temporary and emergency authority to freeze spending at current levels, and impound up to 5% of Federal spending until such time as the budget is balanced. If they won’t do it…I will. As an example, cutting even 1% of overall federal spending for six consecutive years would balance the federal budget by 2017."
• "One efficiency program, Lean Six Sigma, already has a proven track record. Using performance-based management practices to streamline programs at the CIA and the Pentagon. And as I can personally attest various agencies of the Minnesota state government."
• “I will require sunsetting of all federal regulations, unless specifically sustained by a vote of Congress.”

The last item would be a particular challenge. According to Clyde Wayne Crews:

• The 2010 Federal Register stands at an all-time record-high 81,405 pages.
• Federal Register pages devoted specifically to final rules rose by 20 percent, from 20,782 in 2009 to 24,914.
• In 2010, agencies issued 3,573 final rules, compared with 3,503 in 2009.

Public Opinion Challenges for Democrats

More poll data suggest challenges for Democrats. Though the president supports strong regulation of business, the public thinks otherwise. Gallup reports:

At a time when the debate over the optimal role of government involvement in regulating business is a prominent policy debate, new Gallup polling shows that 57% of Americans are worried that there will be too much government regulation of business, while 37% worry that there will not be enough. Half of Americans believe the government should become less involved in regulating and controlling business, with 24% saying the government should become more involved and 23% saying things are about right.

The president also hit some sales resistance in his State of the Union. Rasmussen reports:

The president in the speech declared that his administration has cut taxes for 95% of Americans. He even chided Republicans for not applauding on that point. However, just 21% of voters nationwide believe that taxes have been cut for 95% of Americans. Most (53%) say it has not happened, and 26% are not sure. Other polling shows that nearly half the nation’s voters expect their own taxes to go up during the Obama years. The president also asserted that “after two years of recession, the economy is growing again.” Just 35% of voters believe that statement is true, while 50% say it is false. Obama claimed that steps taken by his team are responsible for putting two million people to work “who would otherwise be unemployed.” Just 27% of voters say that statement is true. Fifty-one percent (51%) say it's false

.