We begin today’s roundup with Eugene Robinson at The Washington Post who write s about the “great fracturing of the Republican Party”:
It is no longer possible to think of “the Republican Party” as a coherent political force. It is nothing of the sort — and the Donald Trump insurgency should be seen as a symptom, not the cause, of the party’s disintegration.
It is no longer possible to think of “the Republican Party” as a coherent political force. It is nothing of the sort — and the Donald Trump insurgency should be seen as a symptom, not the cause, of the party’s disintegration.
It makes no sense anymore to speak of “the GOP” without specifying which one. The party that celebrates immigration as central to the American experiment or the one that wants to round up 11 million people living here without papers and kick them out? The party that believes in U.S. military intervention and seeding the world with democratic values or the one that believes strife-torn nations should have to depose their own dictators and resolve their own civil wars? The party that represents the economic interests of business owners or the one that voices the anxieties of workers?
Damon Linker at The Week analyzes Ted Cruz’s candidacy:
Cruz may not be proposing to round up and deport 11 million undocumented immigrants. He may not have floated the idea of a "total and complete" ban on Muslims entering the United States. And his campaign events may not resemble a fascist rally crossed with outtakes from The Jerry Springer Show. But in just about every other respect, Cruz should be considered an unacceptably radical option for a major-party presidential nomination. The fact that normally sensible commentators have begun to write neutral analysis articles about the possibility of Cruz serving as the Republican standard-bearer is just the latest alarming sign of how Trump's presence in the race has managed to define political decency down. [...]
The list of government offices that a Cruz administration would eliminate is long. The Internal Revenue Service would be shuttered, as would the cabinet-level Departments of Education, Commerce, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development. President Cruz would also do away with 25 additional agencies, bureaus, commissions, and programs, including climate research funding for the EPA's Office of Research and Development; the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program; the National Endowment for the Arts; the National Endowment for the Humanities; all federal regulation of CO2 emissions from power plants and other sources; the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles; and all federal mandates covering renewable fuel standards.
Over at The New York Times, Paul Krugman analyzes “The Big Short”:
“The Big Short” is based on the Michael Lewis book of the same name, one of the few real best-sellers to emerge from the financial crisis. I saw an early screening, and I think it does a terrific job of making Wall Street skulduggery entertaining, of exploiting the inherent black humor of how it went down. [...]
But you don’t want me to play film critic; you want to know whether the movie got the underlying economic, financial and political story right. And the answer is yes, in all the ways that matter. [...]
While the movie gets the essentials of the financial crisis right, the true story of what happened is deeply inconvenient to some very rich and powerful people. They and their intellectual hired guns have therefore spent years disseminating an alternative view that the money manager and blogger Barry Ritholtz calls the Big Lie. It’s a view that places all the blame for the financial crisis on — you guessed it — too much government, especially government-sponsored agencies supposedly pushing too many loans on the poor.
The Daily Beast’s Michael Daly says “Big Pharma jerk” Martin Shkreli got away with his real crime:
The crimes that made 32-year-old Martin Shkreli truly the devil were not the multiple counts of securities fraud and wire fraud outlined in a 29-page indictment that had resulted in his arrest at his Manhattan home Thursday morning and his afternoon arraignment on the third floor at the Brooklyn courthouse.
His far more serious crime is a moral one not even listed in the penal code. The law makes it no crime at all to acquire the marketing rights of a pharmaceutical drug and then hike the price unconscionably beyond the bounds of decency at the expense of the desperately ill.
UN Ambassador Samantha Power has an op-ed at CNN on “putting ISIS out of business”:
To prevent ISIL from enriching itself, we need every country and its citizens to stop buying what ISIL is selling.
This requires unprecedented collective action that the United Nations is uniquely positioned to mobilize. Whatever its flaws, the United Nations is still the only institution that brings together all the countries of the world. And it is the best forum for the United States to spur countries to act -- and to hold them accountable when they don't. [...]
On Thursday, Secretary Lew is chairing the first-ever meeting of U.N. Security Council finance ministers to intensify international efforts on combating terrorist financing. We recognize that if we want to cut off ISIL's access to the international financial system and prevent it from raising, transferring and using funds, we need other countries on board.
And, on a final note, Jay Bookman at The Atlanta Journal Constitution believes Jeb Bush is on the path of dropping out:
In short, the same party leaders who rallied around Bush as the responsible, seasoned grownup may soon go and appeal to him, as the responsible, seasoned grownup, to get out of the race for the good of the party and the country. Stepping aside in favor of his one-time protege, a man whom Bush clearly believes is not ready for the job, would be hard. But sometimes you take one for the team.
Admittedly, this is all conjecture. Hope, pride, family expectations and money in the campaign fund may very well keep Bush in the race a while longer. But I’ll be very surprised if he’s still campaigning come March 13, when the delegate-rich Florida primary is held.