Vlad to the Bone

The BS of the new Bull Moose Party.

By

Animated by a week’s worth of pent-up rage—inspired by the nonsensical prattling of would-be authoritarians and the dupes who love them—Jonah brings a cantankerous energy to today’s Ruminant, which quickly devolves into a rant of titanic proportions. He begins with some brief thoughts on Joe Biden’s rumored plans to announce his re-election campaign, before diving into an obscure Edmund Burke speech and its implications for the modern conservative movement. Then, an exceedingly curmudgeonly rant ensues against the totalitarian instinct driving factions of the Republican Party. When will the grownups return to American politics?

Show Notes:

– Christine Rosen’s Remnant appearance

– Edmund Burke’s “Speech in Commons on India, 1783”

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  1. Avatar photo
    Rlritt

    Rupert Murdoch is 92 and he just canned the most popular commentator on TV. I don't see him retiring. Biden is 79 Trump is 75. Did you see Biden at the SOTU?
    He wiped the floor with the obnoxious Republican legislators. Off the cuff! Git the R's to agree not to cut SS and Medicare.

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    The Stray Goose

    I subscribed to Boiling Frogs and then I left. He's really not very good. Very amateurish. Not up to the Dispatch standards. Just my opinion.

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  3. Deleted Comment

    This comment has been deleted

  4. Avatar photo
    George.Skinner

    Picking a label like "Bull Moose" for a group's name based on a vague understanding of its association with Teddy Roosevelt but completely misunderstanding the context and detail seems very on brand for right wing populists.

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  5. Jennifer Stanowski

    I’d be curious what Ben Sasse has to say about what is going on in Florida at his school regarding free speech.

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  6. Avatar photo
    C C Writer

    Thank you, Jonah, for being more and more definite in telling people how early it is in the election cycle and that it's not all that helpful to be placing bets on imaginary matchups at this point.

    It would be far more helpful if anyone with a platform would use it to discuss what we actually would want and would vote for in a candidate, rather than spending so much time saying "oh, well, I'm prepared to vote for an evil again, and I'm announcing it right now so nobody needs to be bothered going in a better direction for a change."

    It seems to me that the kingmakers and power brokers, such as they are, are suffering from (among other things) a lack of imagination, and so it's up to the rest of us to paint a picture and set a higher bar. We also need to remind everyone (politicians and voters alike) that nobody owns your vote, and that means you have the right (and IMHO the obligation) to insist they earn it. Votes are not supposed to be driven by expected results. If that were the case there wouldn't even be elections. They'd just take polls (or roll dice between two foul sandwiches) and assign your vote to you. They wouldn't even need you to be part of the process at all.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Aylene Wright

      This This This!

      Unfortunately, although Jonah himself seems to get it, it doesn't seem all of his colleagues do.

      TD coverage of politics so far, at least on the Presidential level, really seems to *not* be what we were promised, it's been quite superficial and focused on polls and endorsements.

      Now, perhaps at this point in the race it's too early for candidates to actually put out a platform. But the take from many media outlets on Trump vs Desantis, is that it's basically just a contest on the size of the reproductive equipment of both men, that it's just a sheer personality based contest of dominance, as if they're in a dogfight to determine who the alpha is. A very cynical, almost dehumanizing take, that no one in the GOP cares about policy anymore. And maybe that's true. But I expect more from TD than just following this superficial media consensus. Which has been such obvious inanity.

      One egregious example is a recent NBC poll that's been widely reported as "almost 70% of Republicans support Trump despite his recent indictment" is based on a Q that doesn't even ask that. It gives two scenarios, one that the indictment was an attack on Trump who is a unique candidate who Republicans should support, and another that the indictment is a distraction from an election contest with Biden, and asks which of these statements comes CLOSER to the view of the respondent. No other options are offered!

      It's a really manipulative question basically designed to get anyone who thinks the Bragg indictment was bogus, to express support for Trump. I mean, how would, say, Sarah Isgur or Mitt Romney answer this poll question?

      But in the same poll, only 47% of respondents actually expressed support for Trump as the GOP nominee.

      If I didn't know differently, I would assume that this was a push poll conducted by someone connected to Trump.

      I really hope TD writers don't fall for such manipulative techniques, just because it confirms their priors that Trump is just going to keep dominating the GOP until he dies.

      Chuck Grassley of all people was complaining on Twitter that Trump only talks about the past and hasn't discussed anything about what he plans to do in a second term. And yes, he actually mentioned Trump's name. A very mild criticism, to be sure, but he certainly doesn't seem eager to follow some fellow Senators onto the Trump 2024 bandwagon.

      Now, maybe me and CCW are outliers even among the TD readership in wanting more actual substance to political coverage. I am sorry if I have been coming off as overly harshly critical of TD since my return. But I am being critical because I really do think TD is capable of doing much better.

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      1. Avatar photo
        C C Writer

        Yep, early polling means very little, because so few people are even aware or care at this stage, and there's not enough to be polled on anyway. (And by the way, how do they determine what is a "Republican" anyway? That to me is the most unstable part of the polling. I mean, has nobody figured out that too many who used to be Republicans have been left by the party, and too many who call themselves Republicans now have rejected everything good the party used to stand for? The thing becomes tautological.)

        But when it comes to looking in the direction where the beef is likely to be found: I happened to watch Meet the Press yesterday and was impressed with Chris Sununu. He now has a solid place on my "will consider" list. Energetic, not mincing words, and pretty much in my sweet spot when it comes to his positions (free market and stuff that goes along with it). Maybe there are others who are emerging right about now. And it is time to start taking notice of them instead of gloomily dismissing such possibilities.

        In fact I'll go ahead and say it: Cheney/Sununu or Sununu/Cheney 2024. I say this not to invite anyone to dump a truckload of "never happen" on that idea--because probability and horserace betting are not the point. I say this because it sets a benchmark for my demands and points in the direction I am coming from. If anyone bothers looking into their political positions and backgrounds and considers for a moment their compatibility with what they (the remnanty voter) believes, and the potential appeal to moderates and swing voters, then it's going to make all the mud-wrestling stuff look very pathetic and irrelevant. I hope.

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  7. Terryotoolesr

    I enjoy your podcast a lot. Have been listening to it since you came on air. You have one of the sharpest insights around. Yout championing of reasonable conservatism is so vital to the political conversation.

    Just one thing…will you please stop using the phrase “permission structure” or “giving permission.” Pretend you went to a podcast trainer at the Golds Gym for professional talkers and told him/her that you wanted the equivalent of washboards abs for your diction. He’d tell up right off to lose “permission structure” and “giving permission.”

    So give yourself permission to drop this obnoxious verbiage.

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  8. Nathancrow77

    I had a hard time finding decent explanations of the mortgage fee issue, so I figured I'd regurgitate what I could come up with here in case it's of interest to anyone, or if anyone can correct/add to my understanding.
    -The fees in question are Loan Level Price Adjustments (LLPAs): "A loan-level pricing adjustment (LLPA) is a risk-based fee assessed to mortgage borrowers using a conventional mortgage. Loan-level pricing adjustments vary by borrower, based on loan traits such as loan-to-value (LTV), credit score, occupancy type, and number of units in a home. Borrowers often pay LLPAs in the form of higher mortgage rates"
    .-The fees already existed, and, all else being equal, are higher for low FICO score borrowers than for high FICO borrowers. This is still the case, but with the new adjustment, higher FICO borrowers' fees are being raised and lower FICO borrower fees are being lowered. But there's still an inverse relationship between FICO and fees. In no case will lowering your FICO result in you paying a lower fee. If you Google "LLPA matrix" you can compare the before and after grids to verify.
    -There are additional changes to the fee structure - in particular, borrowers with LTVs >40% are facing additional fees.
    -There are now more credit score bands at higher FICO levels, so the fee differentiation is more granular at high levels. Notably, the fee increases for FICOs >780 are barely going up and in some cases are going slightly down

    This is the best article I could find explaining the actual changes, and has a nice heatmap showing the changes across FICOs and LTVs: https://www.mortgagenewsdaily.com/news/01192023-big-llpa-changes

    A couple additional thoughts:
    -If you're taking out a mortgage that's subject to these fees, then your mortgage can or will be bought and guaranteed by a GSE (effectively guaranteed by the government), so you're being effectively subsidized no matter what your credit score. So, philosophically, rather than saying "This is high FICO people subsidizing low FICO people", the better story, in my view would be something like "The government is reducing its subsidy to higher FICO people and increasing its subsidy to lower FICO people."
    -By reducing the penalty for low FICO scores but increasing the penalty for high DTI, another way to look at this is that the FHFA is reweighting credit risk factors so that DTI is a bigger factor.
    -This doesn't directly lower lending standards, just reduces the interest rate of lower credit borrowers. I'm sure on the margin it will cause some borrowers to get loans they previously couldn't, which would increase credit risk, but it's also going to leave more money in the pockets of these borrowers, which would decrease their credit risk. I have no idea which way this nets out, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
    -There's a Fox Business article with the following quote: ""I literally just got an email from an executive with a mortgage lending company. He goes, ‘So I guess we have to teach borrowers to worsen their credit before they apply for a mortgage in order to get the better price.’ I mean, that's a bit of an extreme, but yes, I totally recognize and appreciate the effort to bring more people into homeownership who have traditionally not had that opportunity." This seems to be how a lot of people are interpreting the change from just reading headlines, but it's dead wrong. This is like an accountant advising someone to turn down a raise to lower their tax bracket to take home more money. It's just not at all how this works.
    -From what I can find, this is the first change to these fees since 2009. It's plausible, to me, that the credit risk of lower FICO borrowers is significantly different than it was then, thanks to things like increase forbearance options, so the fees should be updated to accommodate that. But this is just speculation; I haven't heard anyone actually say this.
    All in all, I'm agnostic as to whether this is a good idea, but all the criticism I've seen has been knee jerk, uninformed, and/or dishonest (I'm not including Jonah's sufficiently caveated comments in this category). I'm still open to the possibility that this is a bad idea, but I just haven't found any convincing argument yet. It'd be nice to hear from an AEI housing policy person or Mark Calabria or someone like that - ie. someone who could've defined LLPA before the recent news cycle.
    Just FYI, I don't have any expertise in this area, so if I screwed up any facts here I'd welcome a correction.

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      Mary

      Thank you. I have been trying to find info on this since Jonah started mentioning it because it was setting off my “ain’t right” meter My BLaw prof taught me that if your “ain’t right” meter is going off , you most likely do not have all the facts.

      In digging around everything I found went back to the same article in the Washington Times which was short on actual information that made sense.

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  9. Kyle C

    Not trying to be a snob, but you have the definition of a simile when talking about analogies.

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  10. Bobby D

    I’ve often wondered whether the Hochman wing of the new right has any kind of political destination in mind. It often seems like their embrace of transgressiveness is an end in itself. They’re like rebels without a cause, or at least without any cause besides cynical self-promotion.

    A few times a year I do a personal self-evaluation using Benjamin Franklin’s thirteen virtues. When I look back at certain failings in life, they’re mostly attributable to an unwillingness to work hard enough to accomplish the task, a tendency to complain too much and indulge self-righteousness, or a refusal to defer gratification. Diligence, patience, and thrift aren’t very fun, and they rarely offer a quick path to success. But now that I’m in my 50s, I’m glad that I practiced these virtues with a certain degree of consistency. That’s a message that the right used to inculcate in its young. That seems to have changed now.

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      Aylene Wright

      Interestingly, Hochman is a speechwriter for Ron Desantis now. He probably wrote the recent speech RDS gave at the Heritage Foundation 50th anniversary event, as I actually came across a Tweet from him boosting it.

      In a quite different dimension, say one in which Nikki Haley wasn't as wishy-washy and Hochman had succeeded the Fair Jessica and was writing speeches for Haley's campaign, and she was actually the front or even second place runner... then Jonah would probably be proudly citing his meteoric rise as proof that interning at The Dispatch is a career boon for young conservatives, in his "Remnant Moves Product" voice. Alas, we don't live in that dimension.

      Hochman once wrote a hit piece for NR on Alyssa Farah, accusing her of just being a hired gun who flipped from pro-Trump to anti-Trump for mercenary reasons. That really gave me the impression of a severe case of projection, even before the whole Fuentes incident. It's sad. I hope he eventually figures out what he really believes.

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      1. Bobby D

        I didn’t realize that. The fact that RD has hitched himself to this crowd provides some explanation as to why he’s not doing well. Hochman and the crowd of self-important kids at TAC seem like they’re looking for some emergent movement in the GOP, so that they can’t jump in front of it and claim to be its leaders. But I’m not sure that there’s much to this movement. Never mind that it consists mostly of New Deal liberalism plus some cultural grievances around increasing ethnic and religious diversity.

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        1. Avatar photo
          Aylene Wright

          Now, full disclosure, I actually tend to agree with Jonah, who pointed out on this episode that it's way too early to say Desantis is done. So that's my bias. Even though Desantis using COVID to "attack Trump from the right" annoys me, to say the least.

          Per a Twitter guy, AGHamilton, who also has a blog on media bias that I subscribe to, and who has been Retweeted by Dispatchers: around this time in spring of 2007, HRC had similar poll numbers among Democrats as Trump does among Republicans now, and Obama wasn't even in 2nd place, John Edwards was! As late as November 2007, Clinton was still leading Obama, and many of the same people writing Desantis off now, were probably writing Obama off then.

          Also a slight parallel in that, although HRC has always had a slightly different, more progressive brand than her husband, that in 2007-8 she was definitely running on a "put me back in my rightful place in the WH" platform that is similar to Trump's. Even a message that her incumbent opponent even being in the WH at all, was due to an illegitimate, rigged election.

          Wow, history really rhymes at times.

          But I do agree with the criticism of Desantis's pre-campaign so far, as too influenced by the "own the libs" types. They really think, for example, that Desantis backing the Bud Light boycott is going to make a difference.

          But Trump has had unforced errors too. Just after a bunch of Florida Republicans endorsed him, he launched a rambling rant trashing not only Desantis, but the entire state of Florida. That resulted in a lot of backlash (at least online) against those Reps. Seriously doubt he will get any more Florida Republican endorsements any time soon.

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          1. Bobby D

            I agree. It’s way too early to write his epitaph.

            Trying to find issues on which to get to the right of Trump is a losing strategy. That’s because Trump’s appeal is cultural and stylistic, not political. These young kids like Hochman want to believe that there’s some populist political swell afoot that they can lead. I don’t see it. Trump’s appeal to his voters has little to do with a populist political message. Rather, his appeal is that he’s garish and crude and tends to mock and humiliate the denizens of the professional “expert” class. This has been Trump’s game for his entire life, from erecting unsightly gold-colored buildings in NYC to eating his steaks well done and with catsup. For his entire career, he’s been a boorish figure who mocks the notion of decency, good taste, and prudence. His opponents cannot compete on that ground because they are all so transparently members of the class of which Trump’s existence and success makes a mockery. It’s far better to attach him as being an ineffective loser.

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