This past Sunday, I appeared on Up With Chris Hayes, where I spoke briefly about the rise of austerity politics in the Democratic Party (begin video at 2:13). My comments were sparked by Bruce Bartlett’s terrific piece “‘Starve the Beast’: Origins and Development of a Budgetary Metaphor” in the Summer 2007 issue of The Independent Review. Barlett is a longtime observer of the Republican Party, from without and within. He was a staffer for Ron Paul and Jack Kemp, as well as a policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a Treasury official under George HW Bush.  Now he’s a critic of the GOP, writing sharp commentary at the New York Times and the Financial Times. He and I have argued about […]

I was on Up With Chris Hayes this morning talking about conservatism and the GOP. For various reasons, I can’t yet embed the video here. All I can do for now is provide the links to the three segments in which I appeared. I hope to post an embedded version later.  For now, though…   Part 1: Racial backlash is in the DNA of the modern conservative movement. Part 2: The waning power of law and order as a conservative idea. Part 3: How the Democrats became the party of austerity.   Update (11 pm) I fixed the link to Part 1.