Single Payer and Striking Down the 14th Amedment

This might strike you as a strange concert of two positions that are considered 'radical' but on the opposite sides. Single payer at least within American politics has proven to be a radical position-too radical.

Maybe Scott Sumner is right and it's all about race why they have it elsewhere but not here and why Germany is so deadset against a fiscal union in the EU. 

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/trumpism-none-dare-call-it-national.html

According to this pessimistic view-which does have some empirical history to suggest it-people won't accept the welfare state if it serves people who don't look like them.

In the above link I followed Krugman in calling this 'national socialism.' This can be very popular. It was George Wallace's bread and butter and later Pat Buchanan-who had to run against Wallace as Nixon's campaign strategist back in 1968. 

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/gop-pscyhoanalysis-william-buckley.html

http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-wallace-the-unforgiven-216

What's interesting about this Buchanan piece is that he thinks Wallace deserves better from history yet he does this by pointing out that Lincoln thought the slaves should go back to Africa-so why should he be immortalized and Wallace damned?

Actually there are some nice things you can say about Wallace-though obviously he's not Lincoln- and I said them myself in the above piece. Another thing which could be mentioned is that he later got elected to Governor of Alabama on an anti-racist platform and that he directly appealed to African Americans and asked their forgiveness. 

But I digress on the very interesting topic of Wallace. 

Right wing populism-that Wallace and Buchanan and today Trump are running on remains a potent brew as Ezra Klein and others at Vox have shown. 

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/yes-donald-trump-is-moderate-candidate.html

The point of my title is that Trump kind of is running on that platform. He has at least praised single payer and said it  has worked very well in Canada and Scotland and it could have worked here. though not any more he implies for 'time-path' reasons. 

Ann Coulter recently made an immediately notorious tweet-everything by design that she says becomes notorious-that she'll let Trump perform abortions in the Oval Office after his immigration policy. 

http://www.mediaite.com/online/coulter-i-dont-care-if-donald-trump-performs-abortions-in-the-white-house/

So if that's the case is abortion really and truly murder?  If so then Coulter's position is monstrous. Murder should be wrong even if it keeps out illegal immigrants or it's a a morally incoherent position. 

.I've recently wondered if the very framing of abortion as murder provokes violence. 

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/is-there-connection-between-anti.html

Again, my argument but also even Coulter's hyperbole both suggest that in principle abortion is something other than murder though it is a morally complex subject I agree. 

As for Trump despite what I'm saying in the title about the 14th amendment he's not as stupid as that. He knows full well that trying to change the Constitution is a dead end. What he's arguing for is a possible reinterpretation of the 14th amendment-sort of like what recently happened to the Voting Rights Act. 

Again, as I've said, Trumpism preceded Trump in the Republican party by a long way. 

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/trump-didnt-invent-trumpism.html

So this loose talk of his about 'Gee, I just want my lawyers to review it' is in this same vein. Basically he's talking about bringing a case to the SJC and asking for a reading whereby they argue that 'anchor babies'-very ugly term-are not covered. 

Again, as I said earlier, Trump is a brilliant satirist whether conscious or not-I don't believe he's 100% conscious but I don't think it's zero either. 

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/why-stephen-colbert-loves-trump.html

One comment I've heard about his immigration plan is that he clearly doesn't know how the Constitution works. I think that's dead wrong. If you're assuming he's just a fool I think that's a big mistake: don't underestimate Trump here. He's not at all clueless about how the system works.

UPDATE: As crazy as Ms. Coulter's comments are-and are meant to be; everything she says is calculated to be absurd and she knows it-you do see a lot of this horse trading in ideas.

I know a lot of firebaggers who are pretty dismissive of a woman's right to choose. These are the white liberals who worship Bernie. The main issues they care about are Social Security-they're sure Dems like Hillary and Obama are hellbent in cutting it-and single payer.

So someone who wasn't that great on abortion but really strong on SS and SP might get a look from them.