Then we came to the end

John Podhoretz: "The Tea Party is dead — it’s the Covfefe Party now."

It is impossible to make a case that there is a Republican Party agenda now in the classic sense of the word. Instead, there is whatever works at any given point of time.

To take one interesting example: House Speaker Paul Ryan’s consuming obsession as a public servant these past decades has been the pressing need for entitlement reform — a reform it’s now unlikely we’ll ever see until we hit the moment of existential budgetary crisis in about 15 years.

Maybe Paul Ryan is just tired of being accused of pushing Grandma off a cliff.  Like Ryan, I've been advocating for entitlement reform for ages, usually adopting the language of the program's Trustees who have - year after year - urged gradual reform spread out over decades to ease the transition.  But now I think worrying about debt is a sucker's game: there's just too much temptation to pay for stuff on credit now and shuffle off the bill to the next generation.  Raise a fuss and you'll be accused of throwing Granny into the gutter.