Summations Only

Justin Amash, the Michigan congressman who has left the party in protest of the Trump presidency, called the tweets “racist and disgusting”. Amash’s parents are Palestinian and Syrian. Mia Love, who lost her seat in Utah last year and is African American, told CNN: “It has to stop. I always feel like I’m not part of the ”America First’ that he goes out and he talks about all the time.”Commentators from the Never Trump wing of the party were swift to condemn the president. Charlie Sykes, an editor at the Bulwark website, wrote: “There was a time when GOPers like Paul Ryan, Lindsey Graham, Nikki Haley, Jeff Flake, even Reince [Priebus] would have denounced this kind of racism. Who will speak out now? Will any elected Republican push back?”

Such senior party figures, among them Utah senator Mitt Romney, a frequent critic of the president, were silent. Some, such as Graham, instead devoted media appearances to defending Trump over images from the southern border of migrant men held in cages amid what one reporter called “sweltering” heat and “horrific” stench.’

More frustrating to many internally, they said, was that Mr. Trump interrupted an intraparty Democratic fight between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the freshman congresswomen known as “the squad” by uniting them against a common enemy in the White House.

If anyone knows what Trump is referring to when he says the Congresswomen "have been spewing some of the most vile, hateful, and disgusting things ever said by a politician in the House or Senate", please enlighten us.

Trump accuses the members of Congress of not loving the USA. The members might reply that their whole point was that a great country like the United States can do better than caging children. But in Trump’s rubric criticism amounts to treason.

I don’t know of any other population where people are telling them how to avoid arrest as a result of illegal activity, [Albence] said. It certainly makes it harder for us to effectuate these orders issued.

I think the pinnacle was when [Obama] forced nuns to perform abortions.

To be fair, the economy remains pretty strong, which isn’t really a surprise given the G.O.P.’s willingness to run huge budget deficits as long as Democrats don’t hold the White House. As I wrote three days after the 2016 election after the shock had worn off It’s at least possible that bigger budget deficits will, if anything, strengthen the economy briefly. And that’s pretty much what happened: There was a bit of a bump in 2018, but at this point we’ve basically returned to pre-Trump rates of growth.

The record is actually awesomely consistent. Bill Clinton’s tax hike didn’t cause a depression, George W. Bush’s tax cuts didn’t deliver a boom, Jerry Brown’s California tax increase wasn’t economic suicide, Sam Brownback’s Kansas tax-cut experiment (his term) was a failure.

On the other hand, think of the missed opportunities. Imagine how much better shape we’d be in if the hundreds of billions squandered on tax cuts for corporations had been used to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. Imagine what we could have done with policies promoting jobs of the future in things like renewable energy, instead of trade wars that vainly attempt to recreate the manufacturing economy of the past.

I don’t know why Krugman thinks that the notion of tax cuts is a zombie idea. Tax cuts actually work very well for the people who are actually represented by Republicans in Congress, namely the very wealthy and large corporate donors. It’s not that Republicans believe in a idea that’s false. Republicans believe in a idea that serves a very narrow group of Americans very well. For the rest of their base? A tweet about AOC should hold them for a couple of days.

And they don’t even want our wheat....