RUTHFULLY YOURS

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (including those of you Donald Trump didn’t call “truly odious”),

True story. When I took the SAT (which once was an acronym for “Scholastic Aptitude Test,” then “Scholastic Assessment Test,” but is now simply called the SAT because the gormless quislings of the higher-education establishment are too scared even to defend the idea their test actually measures anything. But that’s a topic for another day) . . .

. . . Where was I? Oh right. True story: When I took the SAT (at Martin Luther King Jr. high school on West 65th street), right before the administrator guy said, “Open your books,” a kid raced into the room and took the chair right in front of me. He was a species of Manhattanite I knew very well: The urban hippie, a close relative of the more dignified bohemian, but a distinct breed. This guy was a cross between Jeff Spiccoli, Shaggy, and maybe a young Lincoln Chafee.

Anyway, the instructor told us all to open our booklets and get started. Almost immediately, the kid started shifting in his seat like maybe he was sitting awkwardly on his roach clip. By the middle of the test’s first section, the urban hippie started muttering in an exasperated whisper: “Oh man.”

With every turn of the page, he’d suck in a lungful of air through clenched teeth and run his fingers through his greasy pre-white-guy-dreadlocks hair, while kicking out his feet in shock. “Aw man, aw man, aw man.” His anguish was matched only by his surprise at how much worse each new page could be the than the one that preceded it.

I thought the whole thing was hilarious, and ended up giggling through most of the test, which probably seemed prickish to kids who thought I was gloating.

I bring this up partly because I had no idea how to begin this “news”letter this morning and partly because I imagined something similar was going on at Bush campaign HQ during the CNBC debate.

The Jeb Test

Full disclosure: I don’t hate Jeb Bush, nor do I scorn him. I respect the guy. I don’t like the way people trash him and act as if no serious conservative could possibly support him. But, as I’ve been saying for a longtime now, I don’t think he’s the right candidate for 2016. While not my first choice by any measure, I think he could be a fine president, and it would be a no-brainer to vote for him over Hillary Clinton. That said, I’ve always thought he’d be a deeply, deeply, flawed nominee. As I’ve written before, in a contest of familiar brands, the more popular one does better — and the Clinton brand is more popular than the Bush brand. In a change election, when the other side has an old and tired brand, the last thing in the world you should do is respond with an older and even more tired brand.

But if anyone put on a worse performance than Bush, it was CNBC’s moderators: John Harwood, Becky Quick and Carl Quintanilla. That became clear when Ted Cruz answered the second question posed to him. The lengthy exchange is worth quoting in full:

Quintanilla: Sen. Cruz, congressional Republicans, Democrats and the White House are about to strike a compromise that would raise the debt limit, prevent a government shutdown, and calm financial markets that fear of another Washington-created crisis is on the way. Does your opposition to it show that you’re not the kind of problem-solver American voters want?

Cruz: You know, let me say something at the outset. The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media. [applause]

This is not a cage match. And you look at the questions: “Donald Trump, are you a comic-book villain?” “Ben Carson, can you do math?” “John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?” “Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?” “Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?” How about talking about the substantive issues people care about? [applause]

Quintanilla: Does this count? Do we get credit for this one?

Cruz: And Carl—Carl, I’m not finished yet. The contrast with the Democratic debate, where every fawning question from the media was, “Which of you is more handsome and wise?” And let me be clear.

Quintanilla: So, this is a question about the debt limit, which you have 30 seconds left to answer, should you choose to do so.

Cruz: Let me be clear. The men and women on this stage have more ideas, more experience, more common sense than every participant in the Democratic debate. That debate reflected a debate between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. [laughter and applause]

And nobody watching at home believes that any of the moderators has any intention of voting in a Republican primary. The questions that are being asked shouldn’t be trying to get people to tear into each other. It should be: What are your substantive solutions to [inaudible]?

Plus Republicans want another great communicator and 26 states sue to stop the President’s so-called Clean Power Plan.
Peggy Noonan says it’s hard to see how the Jeb Bush campaign can work. “By hard I mean, for me, impossible,” says our columnist. “It‘s widely believed among high Jeb supporters” that Donald Trump “has kept Mr. Bush from rising. But Mr. Trump isn’t the problem, he was the revealer of the problem: Jeb just isn’t very good at this.”

Ms. Noonan adds that Mr. Bush is “not good at the merry aggression of national politics. He never had an obvious broad base within the party.” And he “was playing from an old playbook—he means to show people his heart, hopes to run joyously. But it’s 2015, we’re in crisis; they don’t care about your heart and joy, they care about your brains, guts and toughness.”

Kimberley Strassel writes that on debate night, “An outsider race gave way to an insider breakout. Three insiders, to be precise: Marco Rubio, Chris Christie and Ted Cruz.” A big reason why is that Republican voters want “a great communicator, an effective advocate for their cause. They haven’t had one since Reagan, and the Bushes and McCains and Romneys have highlighted how big a problem that is.”

British politics was thrown into turmoil this week when Parliament blocked David Cameron’s plan to reform family tax credits. There’s a warning here for conservatives elsewhere, especially American Presidential candidate Marco Rubio, about the dangers of social engineering through taxation.

At issue is a convoluted tax benefit developed by Tony Blair in 2003 that was supposed to reward low-income work and childbearing. Under 2015-16 rates, low-income families can receive up to £2,780 ($4,263) in refundable credits per nondisabled child and £3,140 per disabled child, in addition to a per-family credit of £545. The per-child benefits go down as incomes rise up to £35,000 a year. Low-income workers with or without children can also earn a working tax credit on incomes below £6,420. The credits now cost some £30 billion per year in lost revenue and refunds to lower earners.