The choice of supply-side economic crackpot Stephen Moore for a seat at the Federal Reserve is daft even by Trump standards. Moore has been egregiously wrong about every economic twist and turn for decades, now, and at no point has his catastrophic wrongness caused introspection; he was a key advocate for the arch-conservative Kansas "experiment" that quickly spiraled into fiscal crisis; even in conservatism, a movement in which serial wrongness is often held up as proof of brave devotion to ideological tenets even in the face of the strongest possible evidence to the contrary, he has fallen out of favor. Stephen Moore is the Larry Kudlow of Bill Kristols. He is to economics what Dinesh D'Souza is to historical interpretation. The man is a loon, in other words—a professional contrarian, at best.
It was likely this C-tier status that drew him into Trump's orbit; Trump has tended to stock his administration with figures whose careers have taken enough of a downward trajectory that courting and being serially abused by a narcissistic incompetent is seen as something worth pursuing. But Trump may not get his way on this one; even the conservative Senate is skeptical of Moore's qualifications, due to his lack of experience and, you know, all the sucking, and Moore's admission that he would be "kind of new to this game" and "on a steep learning curve" while steering the national economy through dodgy times did not settle any stomachs.
That newspapers keep digging up evidence that Moore's personal life is peppered with the same episodes of economic incompetence as his writings is not going to help either. Now reporters have gotten hold of Moore's 2011 divorce records.
Those records, posted online Monday by The Guardian, which first reported details of the divorce, show that a judge found Mr. Moore in contempt of court in March 2013 for failing to pay more than $330,000 in spousal support, child support, attorney’s fees and a one-time fee to his ex-wife.
So Trump's proposed new member of the Federal Reserve was held in contempt of court only a few years ago for skipping out on court-ordered child support payments? Well, it's on-brand, you've got to give them that. It also follows news that the IRS hit him with a $75,000 tax lien last year due to tax errors significant enough for the agency to mark them as "fraudulent."
Either of these things alone has easily been enough to scuttle past presidential nominations. (The theory went, back then, that with an entire nation of citizens to choose from we can at least find someone who didn't do that. The newer Republican theory appears to be that, at least among devoted conservatives, they can't.)
This is all rapidly turning into a wreck, but there so far seems no suggestion that Moore is going to bow out before the Senate sits him down for confirmation hearings, or that Team Trump is getting cold feet about the nomination. And it now seems certain that the Senate will be asking about these personal financial troubles, in addition to Moore's obvious professional ones.