What Do Liz Truss, Vladimir Putin, And The GOP Have In Common?

There is one common thread that unites the political entities. And it isn't a good one.

by Ben Cohen

Liz Truss, Vladimir Putin and the Republican Party have more in common than you think.

On the surface of it, the three political entities are entirely different. One is a pro choice Tory who believes in funding socialized medical care, the other is a major political party in one of the world’s freest democracies, and the latter is a fascist autocrat opposed to the everything the others (supposedly) believe in.

There is however, a common thread that unites all three.

Liz Truss - chosen for a reason.

Liz Truss came to power in the UK through internal Tory Party politicking. After Boris Johnson was unceremoniously dumped by his party for cascading ethical crises, Truss appealed to the party’s base by promising to become Margaret Thatcher 2.0. Truss ran in the leadership contest on a platform of extreme right wing economics, promising tax cuts for the rich, a massive program of deregulation, and to radically cut down the welfare state. It did not matter that the Tory Party had rebuilt itself under Boris Johnson on doing the exact opposite. Johnson was a liberal Tory who eschewed austerity economics and had siphoned off Labour voters by pledging to reduce inequality and invest heavily in social services. After almost 10 years of David Cameron’s brutalist austerity “medicine”, Johnson cleverly pivoted and rebranded his party to capture the public mood.

Liz Truss though, was the ideologue the powerful party members wanted, so her more moderate and flexible opponent Rishi Sunak was discarded in favor of the free market militant.

Facing a catastrophic energy crisis, runaway inflation, and a collapsing social welfare state, the Truss government’s solution to all of this was to cut taxes for the richest Brits and eliminate caps on bankers’ bonuses. They would also subsidize rising energy costs and, but all funded with £400 billion of debt they had no way of paying back. This truly bonkers plan led to the almost instantaneous collapse of the pound and turmoil in financial markets. The economic fallout was so severe that the Bank of England dramatically announced it was taking emergency actions to halt a run on pension funds. Truss’s militancy was so shocking that even the IMF — the original purveyor of free market extremism — issued a stark warning to Britain that its new economic policies would lead to widening inequality.

Truss and her chancellor, the equally ideological Kwasi Kwarteng, were forced to do a U-turn on their pledge to abolish the top rate of tax. But both still insist that the only way to pull Britain out of its economic misery is to continue with an aggressive agenda of, surprise, surprise, cutting taxes wherever possible, and reducing social spending.

“Cutting taxes is the right thing to do morally and economically,” Truss said at the Tory Party conference on Wednesday. The Conservative Party, she said, “will always be the party of low taxes.”

“Cutting taxes helps up face the global economic crisis, putting up a sign that Britain is open for business,” she continued.

Because if you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

The GOP’s new extremism

Once the party of free markets, the GOP has moved on from belief in unfettered capitalism to a new belief in ethno-nationalism. The emergence of Donald Trump in 2015 as a major political force upended decades of stale Republican thinking, replacing it with an ideology reminiscent of Mussolini’s anti-intellectualist nationalism. Unfortunately for the GOP, the lead figure in the movement didn’t have any ideas beyond “immigrants bad, America good”, and the party is, again, stuck in a quagmire of its own making. Once trapped by the confines of monetarist economic theory, the GOP is now welded to a new form of extreme nativism that imposes even stricter boundaries on what can and cannot be said.

The Republican Party cannot come up with new policy ideas because, according to the new doctrine, thinking is for liberals. Instead, the GOP has become a reactionary party filled with religious bigots and xenophobes. “America First” means using immigrants as political props and scaring white Americans into believing brown people are destroying their neighborhoods. Republicans don’t have ideas on reforming America’s broken medical care system, fixing environmental issues, or addressing the nation’s crumbling welfare state. Donald Trump, it should be remembered, ran on repealing Obamacare and replacing it with something “much better”. There was no health care plan in 2015, and by the end of Trump’s term in 2020, he had yet to produce anything either.

The public finally appeared to catch onto this, resoundingly rejected Trumpism in 2020 by electing Joe Biden to the White House by 7 million votes. Biden trounced Trump in both the popular vote and the Electoral College, leaving no doubt as to which direction the country wanted to go in.

But Trumpism is still popular with the base, so instead of moving where the country is, the party is doubling down on extremism in the hopes that more extremism will cure the toxic effects of….their extremism. On the menu is more hate towards minorities, more hate towards trans people, more anti-environmentalism, more anti-intellectualism, and more conspiracy theories. The fact that Marjorie Taylor Greene is a regular guest on the most popular network news show in the country The GOP is morphing into Trumpism on steroids — basically everything that turns off the center of the country and ensures total defeat in the near or not too distant future.

Vladimir Putin’s ideology

Pinpointing Vladimir Putin’s exact political beliefs is a little tricky. But given he has amorphously followed Russia’s transition from Communist dictatorship, to partial democracy, to fascist dictatorship, it can be boiled down to a form of extreme nationalism. It has been widely reported that Putin believes the collapse of the Soviet Union was the worst thing to happen in Russian history, and the former KGB agent is known to obsessed with restoring his country’s “natural borders” as far they can go. As Russia observers Eric Chenoweth and Irena Lasota note in Just Security:

“He [Putin] was the chosen representative of an anti-democratic, post-communist system built around the reconstituted “organs of power,” namely the security, intelligence, and military agencies. Trained in “late Stalinism” during the periods of Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov, the scions of this new system aimed to restore Russian “greatness” and dominion over a former empire.”

Putin’s leadership in Russia has been defined by his ruthless erosion of democratic norms at home and brutal territorial acquisitions abroad. From Chechnya to Crimea, the Russia leader has used extreme violence to quell dissent and regain land he believes was shamefully given up. Putin only understands the language of force, and his attempts to destroy democracy in Ukraine and incorporate the entire country into Russia was an extension of his militant ideology.

Faced with severe international isolation and a humiliating defeat on the battlefield, Putin has met adversity with more of the same. He is doubling down on his hostility towards the West and intensifying efforts on the ground in Ukraine. Putin cannot accept a new reality where Russia is not the major military force — or empire — it thought it was, so he is simply throwing more bodies at the problem. Some estimates now put the Russian death toll at 50,000 since the beginning of the invasion on February 24th of this year.

Putin is now faced with two terrible options. He can accept defeat and face the political consequences of botching a war for no material gain whatsoever. Or, he can escalate the violence and risk more international isolation, the collapse of the Russian economy, and the near certain defeat of his military in the long term. The early indications are that he will escalate the violence, and dramatically so. He has annexed four regions in Ukraine and now threatened to use nuclear weapons to defend them. This ups the ante significantly, and the world awaits his next move as Ukraine continues to annihilate Russian troops and recapture their land. Should Putin use nuclear weapons, the consequences for him would be incalculably bad.

Extremism always fails

The lesson from Liz Truss, the GOP and Vladimir Putin’s extremism is simple: it doesn’t work.

Hard right economic policies have ripped Britain to pieces, and it isn’t hard to see how more of the same will make matters, much, much worse. The public senses this and the Tories are facing total collapse at the polls. It will take a total about turn on austerity economics for the Truss government to stand a chance in the next general election, and the chances of this are non-existent.

Extreme nativism isn’t working for the GOP either, and while the party might regain the House in 2022, their prospects in 2024 are not good. Donald Trump still leads all Republican candidates in the polls, and should he run, there is no reason to believe he can do better than he did in 2020. Given he was impeached twice and attempted to incite a coup, the chances of him recapturing the middle of the country are non-existent. Nativism might be working for Ron DeSantis in Florida, but national politics are a completely different ball game and the governor has shown little inclination to reach out to those he disagrees with.

Extreme nationalism in Russia has also created a no-win situation for the country. Putin cannot reverse course, and thus he is beholden to an ideology that almost guarantees his demise. The cure for extreme nationalism is not more extreme nationalism.

Ideologues can always gain power under specific circumstances, but they can never hold onto it forever. Monetarism, nativism, and nationalism taken to extremes will always result in disaster, and those leading the charge are always the last to acknowledge it.

Liz Truss, the GOP, and Vladimir Putin all believe they are locked in a deadly battle with their mortal enemies. Unfortunately for them, they don’t seem to realize that their most deadly opponents are their own beliefs.

Read the latest for Banter Members:

Republicans: Abortion Is OK, But Only If We Pay For It

Red Hat shriekers are suddenly okay with Herschel Walker paying to murder a baby (their terms). Why?

image via CNN

by Bob Cesca

I don’t know about you, but it was no surprise to me because I predicted it back on September 24 when I tweeted: “Someone needs to rabbit-season-duck-season Herschel into admitting he's (allegedly) paid for abortions.” And by the way, I stand by the use of the word abortions – plural – because he’s probably paid for more than one. I have no evidence but it’s a safe bet that wherever Herschel goes, an accidental pregnancy follows, and more women will step forward now. 

[UPDATE: As I file this post, it looks like there is, in fact, a second woman who’s in contact with The Daily Beast.]

Incidentally, my tweet was in response to Herschel saying abortions should be banned nationwide. Herschel also said he opposes all exceptions, even in the event of a life threatening medical emergency. Knowing what we know now, he should also include “Whoops!” as an exception, too…

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