President Donald J. Trump responds to a reporter’s question at the protecting America’s Seniors event Thursday, April 30, 2020, in the East Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour) Vice President Joe Biden delivers remarks at the 2016 Chief of Missions Conference in Washington, D.C., on March 14, 2016. [State Department Photo/Public Domain]
Does Joe Biden even know that MAGA stands for: Make America Great Again? Daniel Henninger in the WSJ, asks, “What’s not to like about that, other than the guy who’s making money selling red MAGA hats?”
What Is Fascism?
Being in favor of smaller government, less burdensome regulations, and freedom of speech evidently makes roughly half of America fascists, according to Joe Biden. Even though Biden ran and won as a moderate, his policies as president have not been moderate, explains Mr. Henninger.
Semi-Socialism Now Running the Show?
The Democratic Party’s two leading moderates are Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who spent most of the past two years opposing Mr. Biden’s policy goals, which quickly became contiguous with the party progressives Mr. Biden ran against—Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Mr. Henninger decides to get in “the semi-spirit of this semi-moment by suggesting that the Biden-Sanders-Warren Democrats now stand for semi-socialism.”
And that their method for putting much of their policy objectives in place is semi-authoritarianism, which its proponents simply call “bypassing Congress.” That would be the legislative branch that is the product of millions of individual votes.
The Supreme Court’s recent message in West Virginia v. EPA was that “bypassing Congress” can be, at the least, unconstitutional.
Voters’ Major Concerns
- High inflation
- Labor-market distortions
- Supply-chain impediments
These issues are concerning to voters, but not to Joe Biden. To Biden, these concerns are secondary, “at best,” adds Mr. Henninger.
The Biden administration is implementing policies on an array of longer-term goals, such as healthcare, climate, education, and financial regulation.
Medicare
The new legislation will let Medicare introduce price controls on pharmaceuticals. The bill spends $369 billion to achieve far-in-the-future climate goals, primarily with tax credits for electric vehicles and federal subsidies for renewables.
Some $80 billion for IRS enforcement will target the small and medium-size businesses attempting to recover from the pandemic’s government-ordered dislocations.
As justification for Mr. Biden’s massive student-loan forgiveness order, the administration cited the fig leaf of a Covid “emergency,” though in fact this policy goal predates the pandemic.
Eliminating Fossil Fuels
Despite the pain of higher costs for gasoline, home heating fuels and indeed a historic energy-related crisis in Europe over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the administration has implemented policies to eliminate the U.S. fossil-fuel industry by banning pipeline construction and shutting in production leases.
Benevolent Statism
The scale of Mr. Biden’s use of executive orders is unprecedented, making the issue of semi-authoritarianism at least a talking point. The political left of its nature recognizes no limits on public power. But other than world wars, it isn’t clear the American people consider relentless benevolent statism to be inside this country’s traditions, as Mr. Biden now enthusiastically believes.
Where Does America Want to Go?
Mr. Henninger thinks that Joe Biden has given conservatives an unexpected opportunity. By blurting out unscripted what “(the president) and many progressive Democrats believe—that much of the country is now semi-fascist—Joe Biden has opened a door to debating whether his presidency is semi-socialist. And whether that’s where America wants to go.”
Originally posted September 2, 2022.
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