So what would Romney do? I’d say that the odds are very, very good that he will stimulate the economy the Republican way, with tax cuts and defense increases. This will push up the deficit enormously, to the embarrassment of some Republicans, who thought they came to Washington to cut it, but of course it will be explained to them that this is only temporary, that the President hates like hell to do this, but, unfortunately, well, you know, something’s got to give, and, in Washington, what gives is always the deficit. “Reagan taught us that deficits don’t matter,” in Dick Cheney’s famous words. What he really meant, of course, is “Republican deficits don’t matter.” Wall Street went berserk way back in the day when Jimmy Carter talked about an $80 billion deficit. When Reagan started serving up deficits twice that size “as far as the eye could see,” in the words of David Stockman, nobody complained, except Dave, and he lost his job. I strongly suspect that most of the conservative economists so strongly warning that we can’t afford a national debt equal to GDP will fall strangely silent once it’s the Republicans doing the spending.
It’s a general rule that under the Republicans business gets whatever it wants, except when it comes to immigration. Republican rank and file generally kow-tow to the rich, but when it comes to immigration, that doesn’t happen. Those people don’t speak English, after all.
It’s a very good bet that we will see a major rollback in environmental laws, some of which will probably be worthwhile. In the past, Republicans have been reluctant to challenge environmentalists, probably because they have as many vacation homes as the Democrats do, but no one’s thinking about the environment these days. Drill, baby drill! For those of us unenamored with the liberal obsession with “smart growth,” aka the preservation of quaintness, this won’t be all bad.
Romney will certainly try to cut spending for means-tested programs but I wonder how far he will get with it. He will probably lose some right-wing support from people who actually came to Washington to cut the deficit and will not be able to forgive Romney for increasing it. To balance them, he’ll probably need some Democratic support, and, since Democrats generally lack Republican ruthlessness, he’ll probably get it.
Like a lot of people, I fear Romney in foreign affairs. If the domestic political situation is desperate enough, he may be content to talk tough and do little, à la mode de Reagan. The calmer things are domestically, the more likely it is that he will do something Bushian in foreign affairs, preferably a preventive strike on the “suspected” Iranian nuclear program, the holy grail of the American Likudists, an act that will guarantee major military unrest in the Middle East for at least twenty years, or, as Republicans count, at least two presidents. Maybe three!
Oh, and what about Medicare and Social Security? Dude, did you ever play kick the can?
Afterwords
One fairly interesting question is what will Romney do with ObamaCare. It appears that Republicans would like to repeal the unpopular parts and keep the popular ones. That won’t work, but it’s likely that that’s what they’ll do.
