Politics

The Extremism of the Center

The New Republic unleashes its authoritarian id.

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The New Republic is reacting calmly to the shutdown, I see:

What is a president in a presidential constitutional republic to do when faced with an intransigent, bull-headed faction among his people's representatives?

Well, Boris Yeltsin, Russia's first democratically elected president, was once faced with a similar situation exactly 20 years ago, in October 1993….Yeltsin held a national referendum, a sort of national vote of confidence, which he won, and used it as a justification for what he did next.

Almost exactly 20 years ago, he dissolved parliament.

Here's how TNR promoted its piece on Twitter:

Oh, how coy.
Twitter

I suppose this is the next step after Thomas Friedman's if-only-we-were-China fantasies.