The Atlantic: The New Shape of American Politics (JANUARY 1987 ISSUE)

After six years in office Ronald Reagan has changed everything about American politics except ideology. Democrats and Republicans agree that Reagan has transformed the agenda, but in a peculiar way. We want to do the same things as before--stabilize the economy, protect the poor and the elderly, fight drug abuse--only with less government. Public opinion, however, hasn't shifted to the right. If anything, the voters have moved slightly to the left since Reagan took office--there is less support for military spending, more support for domestic social programs, increased concern about arms control, hunger, and poverty. Why hasn't there been a discernible conservative shift in public opinion? Because the impact of the Reagan revolution is more likely to be felt in the long run than in the short run. The President has not, after all, dismantled the New Deal welfare state. As Hugh Heclo, of Harvard University writes in *Perspectives on the Reagan Years,* "Much as F. D. R. and the New Deal had the effect of conserving capitalism, so Reaganism will eventually be seen to have helped conserve a predominately status quo, middle-class welfare state." [...]

Another element in this new institutional order is the new coalition structure that the Reagan revolution has given to American politics. Reagan brought together a variety of interests united by a distaste for big government. That coalition is not only larger than the traditional Republican Party but also more diverse. It includes business interests and middle-class voters who dislike taxes and regulation. It includes racial and religious conservatives who dislike the reformist social agenda embraced by the federal government in the 1960s, as well as neo-conservatives who want a tougher foreign policy. [...]

What keeps the Reagan coalition together is not affection or agreement but the perception of a common threat. The threat is that liberals will regain control of the federal government and use it, as they have in the past, to carry out their "redistributionist" or "reformist" or "anti-military" program. The threat will not disappear when Reagan leaves office, and neither will the Reagan coalition--not even if it loses the 1988 election. A coalition may be defeated, as Reagan's was in the 1986 Senate elections, but that does not mean it has been destroyed. In the short run the Republicans are likely to lose many elections, just as the Democrats did over the fifty-year history of their New Deal coalition. The short-term fate of the Republican Party is highly dependent on the condition of the economy. That is what brought the party to power in 1980 and kept it in power in 1984. A major recession would spell the end of Republican rule. But the Reagan coalition would dissolve only if the various groups that compose it no longer felt they had a common interest in limited government. The Republicans are now the party of a weak government and a strong state, attracting people who are committed to one or both objectives. The Reagan revolution, not just Reagan himself, has acquired a popular constituency.[...]

It worked because Ronald Reagan has two different political personalities. His rhetoric is that of the hard-core conservative ideologue, a bold and uncompromising man of principle who portrays every issue as a confrontation between "us" and "them." But his actions are those of a shrewd, practical politician, maneuvering for political advantage and accepting the best deal he can get. When it is useful, Reagan abandons his harsh rhetoric and speaks soothingly in terms of unifying values and symbols. Sometimes he even seems to abandon his principles, as when he accepted a tax increase in 1982 or when he reversed himself in early 1986 and facilitated the departure of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, or, most troublesomely, when he violated his own Administration's anti-terrorist policy by secretly selling arms to Iran. [...]

The anti-government revolt had been brewing for many years. Polls taken by the University of Michigan showed steadily rising anti-government feeling beginning in 1964. The percentage of Americans who believed that they could trust the government in Washington "to do what is right" most or all of the time went from 76 percent in 1964 to 54 percent in 1970, to 33 percent in 1976, and to 25 percent in 1980. The proportion who felt that the government was run "by a few big interests looking out for themselves" was 29 percent in 1964, 50 percent in 1970, and 69 percent in 1980. Less than half of the public in 1964 thought that the government wasted a lot of tax money; the figure was two thirds in 1970 and more than three quarters by 1980. Reagan's conservative regime is a natural consequence of this trend.

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Foreign Policy: Can a New Currency End Tehran’s Economic Woes?

Faced with surging inflation and a falling national currency due to harsh U.S. sanctions that were reimposed after the United States unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal with world powers in May, Iran is planning to remove four zeros from the rial, taking its current official exchange rate with the U.S. dollar from 42,000 to the more palatable 4.2. The official rate is meaningless on the street, however; in reality, the value of the rial is far less – this week, it was trading at 120,000 to the dollar on the black market. [...]

The redenomination proposal comes just over two years after a previous attempt on a smaller scale. In early December 2016, President Hassan Rouhani’s cabinet approved a measure aimed at removing one zero from the national currency, effectively introducing the toman as the new official unit. Officials emphasized that it was not an attempt at redenomination but merely an initiative aimed at easing day-to-day transactions. It was criticized as a costly and insufficient move, so the initiative remained in a state of limbo and was ultimately rejected by lawmakers in September 2018. [...]

But in addition to the currency crisis and inflation, the local political landscape is also different this time. There is much more cooperation between Rouhani’s administration and parliament in terms of reaching economic solutions. For months, parliament’s economic commission has been reviewing and gradually passing bank reforms that promise to deliver the biggest changes to Iran’s banking system in decades— including granting the CBI more independence. [...]

In 2005, neighboring Turkey took six zeros off its currency and redenominated the lira in response to an inflation rate of higher than 50 percent. The move was relatively successful because it was implemented in tandem with wider reforms. But Turkey’s 2018 currency crisis proved immensely challenging and again decreased confidence in the lira mostly due to a problematic banking system. Turkey’s central bank gained independence in 2001 in the aftermath of an economic crisis, but that hasn’t meant it has been fully free of government meddling.

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UnHerd: The five elections to watch in 2019

Bremen’s election this year, scheduled on May 26, the day of the EU elections, will test the SPD’s resilience – the party has received the most votes there in every state election since 1946. No polls have been taken since the recent Green spurt, but in August the SPD were level with the CSU and only 6% ahead of the Greens. If the national poll trends since then – which show the SPD falling and the Greens rising – are occurring in Bremen too, the SPD is currently running behind the CDU in Bremen and running neck and neck with the Greens.[...]

The other state elections occur in three former East German states, and the key question there is whether the AfD will take first place in any – or even all – contests. The most recent polls in Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia all show the AfD in second place, but only a few points behind the front runner. Moreover, each state’s poll shows the combined vote share for the AfD and the descendants of the former East German Communist party, Die Linke (“The Left”), at between 39% and 44%.[...]

All three trends are apparent in the Madrid region. Vox’s staunch opposition to Catalonian separatism and migration has seen it skyrocket in the polls, where it currently receives 12-18%. Much of this support, seemingly, comes from the traditional party of the centre-Right, Partido Popular (PP). But support also seems to be coming from former Podemos voters too. Podemos and the United Left had received over 23% in 2015, but the new grouping Unidos Podemos was polling at only 18% in early January. Just as is the case with support for similar parties around the world, like the Sweden Democrats and Germany’s AfD, Vox’s support thus seems to come from both the Left and Right.[...]

EKRE emphasises Estonian nationality above all else – arguing that Estonia has become a “vassal state” of the EU. It strongly opposes immigration and Russian involvement in the Ukraine and Georgia, and challenges the market forces it says have made Estonia a home of cheap labour for foreign capital. Inclusion of the EKRE in government would undoubtedly sound alarm bells among the European establishment, but their participation may be unavoidable if there is to be stable government.

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Politico: Call Emmanuel Macron any name you like — but not ‘liberal’

Emmanuel Macron’s La République En Marche (LREM) is in many respects a liberal party. It is engaged in a coy flirtation with the liberal group in the European Parliament ahead of the election in May — but it refuses to fully jump into bed with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE). [...]

Officials in the LREM say the reasons are more nuancées. As a “party of government” with an overwhelming majority of seats in the National Assembly, Macron’s 3-year-old party is reluctant to commit itself to a group that uneasily unites smallish parties from 21 countries. [...]

The popular meaning of the word “liberal” has long been variable. In the United States it means “leftie." In Britain it means “centrist.” In Europe it means secular right-wing — pro-market and pro-individual liberties, anti-state and anti-church.

In France, however, the word has taken on the darker meaning of “heartless capitalist.” Liberalism is a force in French politics but it no longer dares to answer to its name. [...]

Tocqueville, though a great liberal thinker, was more concerned with political and personal freedoms than economic freedom and the power of the market. He warned against the market-driven, despotic power of the “manufacturing aristocracy,” which he saw developing in Britain and the U.S. The “French Adam Smith,” Frédéric Bastiat, was admired in theory but ignored in practice.

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Vox: Pope Francis’s mass in the United Arab Emirates was historic — and complicated

UAE officials say that Francis’s public mass at Zayed Sports City Stadium in the capital city of Abu Dhabi drew about 4,000 Muslims and about 135,000 people total — many of them Catholic migrants from places such as the Philippines and South America. They’re part of a large migrant community in the oil-rich country that works building gleaming new towers or as domestic help, often under harsh or discriminatory conditions.[...]

The UAE is more tolerant of different religions than some of its neighbors in the Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia. Though the UAE’s constitution establishes Islam as the country’s official religion, it also “guarantees freedom of worship as long as it does not conflict with public policy or morals,” according to a 2017 State Department report. Christian churches as well as Hindu and Sikh temples operate on land donated by the ruling family, the State Department report notes.

But the country is still far from a bastion of religious freedom. There are strict laws against proselytizing by non-Muslims; blasphemy and converting from Islam are strictly prohibited and those who do so face harsh punishments, potentially including the death penalty. Anti-Semitic literature and sentiment is prevalent, particularly on social media, and discrimination against followers of the minority Shi’a sect of Islam is not unheard of.[...]

Pope Francis did speak out against conflict in the region, including the war in Yemen. On Monday, in front of an audience of Emirati and other religious leaders, Pope Francis signed a statement on “human fraternity,” promoting peace among nations, races, and religions, with Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Egypt’s Al-Azhar mosque, who hosted Pope Francis in 2017.

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Al Jazeera: Pope Francis admits priests, bishops sexually abused nuns

"And I think that it's continuing because it's not like once you realise it that it stops. It continues. And for some time we've been working on it," he said.

The February issue of Women Church World, a supplement distributed with the Vatican's Osservatore Romano newspaper, stated that nuns have been silent over abuse for decades for fear of retaliation.[...]

The pope has summoned the heads of some 110 national Catholic bishops' conferences and dozens of experts and leaders of religious orders to the Vatican from February 21 to 24 for an extraordinary meeting on the sexual abuse crisis.[...]

Pope Francis said Pope Benedict XVI had taken action against a France-based order after some of its religious sisters were reduced to "sexual slavery" at the hands of the priest who founded the order and other priests within it.

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