Is America Idiot-Proof?

Jeb!’s shadow political strategist and all-around colorful GOP campaign maven Mike Murphy gives us the lowdown as he packs up his boxes in the aftermath. In this one bit, captured by The Weekly Standard‘s Matt Labash, Murphy considers the economic consequences of President Trump…

Murphy suspects that if Trump wins the Republican nomination, the country is “idiot-proof” enough that Hillary (who he adds “I’m not a fan of”) would beat Trump. The head-to-head numbers have consistently suggested such, which is why he’s long called Trump a “zombie frontrunner.” But when asked what unintended consequences he sees if Trump is elected president, he says that political consultants who handle overseas elections in sketchy places with corrupt politicians, as he himself has done on occasion, have a joke. “We like to say law, order, freedom — pick one, amigo.”

More seriously, Murphy suggests, “We turn into Paraguay. Which is probably an insult to Paraguay. Trump suing the attorney general because he tried to turn off the air-conditioning in the Rayburn building. It’ll turn into a bad reality show. And all the crap you see in foreign countries where the parliament members are suing each other and everything turns into a big legitimacy fight. .  .  . We lose everything. The brand will be destroyed.

“Then the problem becomes how are we the world’s reserve currency anymore? We get away with a lot of shit because people think we have a stable system. But if your banker comes in one day wearing a diaper, speaking gibberish, you’re going to pull your money out of that checking account. So that has a huge potential impact on our ability to protect our economic strength. We borrow a lot of f — ing money. Because people think the number one safest instrument in the world is the U.S. Treasury bond. And if we start making reality-show clowns in charge? Run on the American bank. You think the pissed-off steelworker in Akron has trouble now? Wait until we have a financial collapse and they take 25 percent off the dollar. He’ll be serving hot dogs in an American restaurant in China.”

Sure, that’s one direction things could go. So, are we idiot-proof enough to prevent this from even being a serious possibility? Is there a large enough group of people who would actually love to see the whole thing burnt to the ground anyway?

Source:

Debriefing Mike Murphy (The Weekly Standard)