The zombie election of 2016
Discredited GOP ideas just keep shambling along
Last week, a zombie went to New Hampshire and staked its claim to the Republican presidential nomination. OK, it was actually Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. You see, Mr. Christie gave a speech to position himself as a toughminded fiscal realist. In fact, his policy idea was a classic zombie — an idea that should have died long ago in the face of evidence that undermines its basic premise but somehow just keeps shambling along.
A deep attachment to long-refuted ideas seems to be required of all prominent Republicans. Whoever gets the nomination for 2016 will have multiple zombies as his running mates.
Mr. Christie thought he was being smart and brave by proposing that we raise the age of eligibility for both Social Security and Medicare to 69. Doesn’t this make sense now that Americans are living longer?
No. This line of argument should have died in 2007, when the Social Security Administration reported that almost all the rise in life expectancy has taken place among the affluent. The bottom half of workers, the Americans who rely on Social Security most, have seen their life expectancy at age 65 rise only a bit more than a year since the 1970s. Furthermore, while politicians may consider working into their late 60s no hardship, things look different to workers who perform manual labor.
Also, while raising the retirement age would impose a great deal of hardship, it would save little money. And the Congressional Budget Office says raising the Medicare age would save almost no money at all.
But zombie ideas apparently have eaten the brains of Republicans like Mr. Christie.
Another zombie out there is health reform. Before the Affordable Care Act went fully into effect, conservatives made dire predictions about what would happen when it did. It would actually reduce the number of Americans with health insurance, premiums would soar, it would cost the government far more than projected and blow up the deficit, it would destroy jobs.
In reality, the act has produced a dramatic drop in the number of uninsured adults, premiums have grown much more slowly than in previous years, the law’s cost is coming in well below projections and 2014, the first year of full implementation, had the best job growth since 1999.
So how has this changed the discourse? On the right, not at all. Prominent Republicans talk about Obamacare as if all the predicted disasters have come to pass.
Finally, there’s the triumphant return of voodoo economics, the “supply-side” claim that tax cuts for the rich stimulate the economy so much that they pay for themselves. In the real world, this doctrine has an unblemished record of failure. Despite right-wing predictions of doom, neither the Clinton tax increase of 1993 nor the Obama tax increase of 2013 killed the economy (far from it), while the “Bush boom” that followed the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 was unimpressive even before it ended in financial crisis. Kansas, whose governor promised an experiment to prove supply-side doctrine, has failed even to match the growth of neighboring states.
In Republican politics, however, voodoo’s grip has never been stronger. Wouldbe presidential candidates audition in front of prominent supply-siders to prove their fealty to failed doctrine. Supply-side economics is the ultimate zombie: No amount of evidence or logic can kill it.
So why has the Republican Party experienced a zombie apocalypse? Most GOP politicians represent states or districts that will never vote for a Democrat, so the only thing they fear is a challenge from the far right. Then there’s the need to tell Big Money what it wants to hear: a candidate saying anything realistic about Obamacare or tax cuts won’t survive the Sheldon Adelson/ Koch brothers primary.
The result is clear. Pundits will try to pretend that we’re having a serious policy debate, but, as far as issues go, 2016 is already set up to be the election of the living dead.