With Republicans soon to be in control of the White House and both houses of Congress, this might be a good time to recall “Jane’s Law”, coined by Megan McArdle, at that time blogging under the name “Jane Galt”:
The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane.
There is an inevitable tendency on the part of the Democrats or Republicans to view the smugness and arrogance on the one hand and the insanity on the other as permanent qualities of the opposing party rather than just attributes of their relative power.
The rising insanity of “devotees” of the Democrats are already apparent, particularly in the person of Paul Krugman. He has made a series of predictions, nearly all of which have immediately failed, most notably that the stock market would never recover from a post-Trump’s election slump.
It will be entertaining if depressing to see that rising insanity.
Keep your eyes out for increasing signs of smugness and arrogance among the “devotees” of the Republicans. Perhaps they will be kept so off-balance by President Trump, certainly not a Reagan Republican and by some reckonings not a Republican at all, that they won’t be able to bring the smugness and arrogance of their notional ascendancy into full flower.
I won’t keep my hopes up.
I will not be surprised if this is most scandal-ridden administration in history. I think that could dampen whatever fortunes the GoP expect during the next two years.
I wouldn’t either, Andy. I also can’t help but wonder if the pain and complexities of separating himself from his business interests won’t give The Donald pause.
I disagree with the above two comments. I do think, however, that it will be the most intensely scrutinized administration, where if a hair of political deviation is out of place, it will be immediately pounced upon and denounced — unlike much of what happened in the Obama Administration.
Jan,
Trump is coming into office with enormous conflicts-of-interest. It remains to be seen if he is willing and able to keep his business and other interests separate from the Presidency and personally, it’s not even clear that he believes they should be separate. That’s just his business stuff.
“Keep your eyes out for increasing signs of smugness and arrogance among the “devotees†of the Republicans.”
Yes, true enough. But not a particularly information filled statement. These cycles seem to run some 10-20 years, with the out of power party using the time to productively reconstitute itself. As such, more interesting, to me at least, is that the Democrat response appears to have been to go even further left, doubling down on no growth is OK, attendant redistribution schemes, identity politics, and the notion that anyone who disagrees is a deplorable.
This rigidity could add to the time in the wilderness, or, say, New Zealand, before the Republicans overreach.