by David Stockman
David Stockman’s Contra Corner
In the improbable candidacy of Donald Trump, the Republican Party got what it deserved. After all, its job in the context of American political democracy is to function as the nation’s fiscal guardian. Yet that role hardly fits the GOP’s new presidential nominee and erstwhile constructor of hotels and casinos, who now promises to build the greatest ever walls, roads, bridges, military and other accoutrements of national greatness.
But then again, the GOP has been derelict on the fiscal front for most of the last for 35 years . Instead, it has become a gang of neocons, social cons, tax cons and just cons. Perhaps Trump is merely the ultimate expression of the latter.
The first two of these contemporary GOP factions—the neocons and the social cons— aggrandize the size and role of the state.