Jonathan Bernstein, writing...

...in the Washington Post today, provides more evidence for an extreme Goldwater-type candidate to win the Republican nomination in 2012 (my emphasis):

Is there any idea too crazy for the 2012 GOP hopefuls? Is there any nutty idea that, once proposed, GOP presidential candidates won’t try to match or even top?

Looks like we’re about to find out. As Think Progress reports, Herman Cain (above) is now saying that as president he would only sign bills that were no more than three pages long. This would basically disqualify any piece of substantive legislation, including the George W. Bush’s tax cuts.
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How will the rest of the field react if Cain presses them on this silly idea -- which may be totally gibberish, but almost certainly will test well with Tea Party voters? My guess is they'll jump on board.
 
By the way, wasn't it Cain that said he wouldn't hire a Muslim for his cabinet?

The CEO of Rentech,...

...a clean energy business in Los Angeles, is D. Hunt Ramsbottom. (That's him on the right.)

Can you imagine going through life with a name like that?

I can just see him meeting someone for the first time. "No, no; Hunt is my first name. My last name? Ramsbottom. R-A-M-S..."

Or walking into a crowded room and shaking hands with people: "Hi! Hunt Ramsbottom -- nice to meet you... Hello; I'm Hunt Ramsbottom... Hunt Ramsbottom -- glad you could make it..."

That's got to get old.

Barry Goldwater...

...was the Republican Party's nominee for president in 1964. His acceptance speech at the GOP convention was famous for this quote:

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!

Goldwater lost by 22 points.

I'm reminded of this by the economic plan put forth yesterday by Tim Pawlenty. So far it's been met by, ahem, mixed reviews.

Andrew Pavelyev, a moderate Republican (yes, there are still some left), writes in Frum Forum today (my emphasis):

Pawlenty offered very ambitious tax cuts (once again trying to outdo Reagan by lowering the top marginal tax rate to an even lower level than Reagan did). Only in the first four years of the existence of the personal income tax was the top marginal rate even lower than the one Pawlenty has proposed: 25%. He has also proposed a big cut in corporate taxes and elimination of the inheritance tax and taxes on capital gains and dividends.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Chait ponders the political consequences of such a radical plan:

Alarmingly, Pawlenty's plan is being greeted by conservatives not as some nee plus ultra supply-side vision but as an opening bid. The Wall Street Journal editorial page asks, at the end of a glowing editorial, "Now that Mr. Pawlenty has laid down his marker, what do his competitors have to offer?" Once you've eliminated all tax on capital income and slashed the rates, how much further can you go? Romney hasn't come out with his plan yet, but he can't let Pawlenty outflank him. I hesitate to even think of where the bidding will stand by the time Michelle Bachmann unveils her proposal. Perhaps a negative tax rate on capital gains and estate transfers over a million dollars, financed by a tax on the unproductive poor?

And it makes me wonder: if the Republican candidates are this far to the right in June of 2011, how extreme will the eventual nominee be by the fall of 2012?

This is how Barry Goldwaters get nominated.

Tim Pawlenty unveiled...

...his economic plan today and -- Spoiler Alert! -- it involves lots of tax cuts. David Frum summed it up nicely in a blog post, "Pawlenty Economic Plan: 30 Years Too Late":

...to what problems are Pawlenty’s problems the answer?

There’s no inflation to be snuffed, and productivity is improving smartly: up 4.2% in manufacturing in the first quarter of 2011.

What we do suffer from are enormous levels of public and private debt, and lagging domestic demand for goods and services. Tight money will only add to the burden of public and private debt. Nor will a reduction in income taxes for the upper brackets help much with the demand problem: as we saw in the Bush years, rich people use extra income to buy additional capital assets. That’s just what the doctor ordered in the under-invested late 1970s and early 1980s. In the post-1995 era, however, the policy translates into asset bubbles.

Ezra Klein's take is even harsher:

This plan isn’t optimistic. It isn’t a bit vague. It’s a joke. And I don’t know which is worse: The thought that Pawlenty knows that and went forward with this pandering, fantasy-based proposal anyway, or the thought that he doesn’t know it, and he really thinks this could work.

I used to think the Republican Party didn't have a candidate to face President Obama in 2012. Then I realized they haven't had a good candidate in decades. And now I think I know why: they don't have any ideas, either.

Today's GOP is intellectually bankrupt.

Sarah Palin is traveling...

...to the UK this summer and hopes to have an audience with former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The Iron Lady, however, may have other plans. One of her "allies" told the Guardian:

"Lady Thatcher will not be seeing Sarah Palin. That would be belittling for Margaret. Sarah Palin is nuts."

Andrew Gold...

...is dead at age 59.

David Brooks has a good column...

...today in which he runs through some of the problems that exist in the way Medicare is currently designed. And I was right there with him until this paragraph (my emphasis):

Republicans point out that Medicare has tried to control costs centrally for decades with terrible results. They argue that a decentralized process of trial and error will work better, as long as the underlying incentives are right. They suggest replacing the fee-for-service with a premium support system. Seniors would select from a menu of insurance plans. Their consumer choices would drive a continual, bottom-up process of innovation. Providers could use local knowledge to meet specific circumstances.

And he's right: Medicare costs are rising at an unsustainable rate. (No one is arguing that point. That's one reason the Affordable Care Act was passed.) But private sector costs are going up even faster.

Brooks goes on to say:

The fact is, there is no dispositive empirical proof about which method is best — the centralized technocratic one or the decentralized market-based one. Politicians wave studies, but they’re really just reflecting their overall worldviews. Democrats have much greater faith in centralized expertise. Republicans (at least the most honest among them) believe that the world is too complicated, knowledge is too imperfect. They have much greater faith in the decentralized discovery process of the market.

I’d only add two things. This basic debate will define the identities of the two parties for decades. In the age of the Internet and open-source technology, the Democrats are mad to define themselves as the party of top-down centralized planning. Moreover, if 15 Washington-based experts really can save a system as vast as Medicare through a process of top-down control, then this will be the only realm of human endeavor where that sort of engineering actually works.

But my question for Mr. Brooks would be, whom would you rather have making decisions about your health care, 15 disinterested experts in Washington or a private insurance company that earns its living by denying you care?