Both Sides Do It, But the Democratic Party is More Neoliberal
By 
What this country needs is for the Republican Party to get really serious about its war on the administrative state:
When career employees of the Environmental Protection Agency are summoned to a meeting with the agency’s administrator, Scott Pruitt, at agency headquarters, they no longer can count on easy access to the floor where his office is, according to interviews with employees of the federal agency.
Doors to the floor are now frequently locked, and employees have to have an escort to gain entrance.
Some employees say they are also told to leave behind their cellphones when they meet with Mr. Pruitt, and are sometimes told not to take notes.
Mr. Pruitt, according to the employees, who requested anonymity out of fear of losing their jobs, often makes important phone calls from other offices rather than use the phone in his office, and he is accompanied, even at E.P.A. headquarters, by armed guards, the first head of the agency to ever request round-the-clock security.
A former Oklahoma attorney general who built his career suing the E.P.A., and whose LinkedIn profile still describes him as “a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda,” Mr. Pruitt has made it clear that he sees his mission to be dismantling the agency’s policies — and even portions of the institution itself.
When, oh when, will this country be offered a choice rather than an echo?
First, Pruitt operates in secrecy — by history, by habit, by instinct, and by necessity — because what he’s doing has no policy justification and very little public support, like most of the contemporary GOP agenda.
There used to be some detail in conservative arguments about environmental regulations, some nuance about which ones did and didn’t operate effectively, or pass cost-benefit, or conform to proper interpretations of statute.
But Pruitt is wielding a scythe, not a scalpel. He is dismantling rules, customs, practices, and the budget at his agency without discernment. There is no conceivable intellectual or policy argument to make on behalf of that kind of nihilism. There’s no evidence that Obama-era rules had any negative effects on the economy or overall employment, much less that every single one did. If there were any evidence, Pruitt’s every statement to the press or the public wouldn’t be packed with gobbledygook.
So why would Pruitt meet with environmentalists or conservationists or public health groups? There’s nothing to say, no policy merits to discuss, no real argument to have. His side won, so his guys, the fossil guys, get what they want. It’s not policy, it’s dominance.
Strange — Pruitt is acting as if all-out war on the administrative state is extremely unpopular. I wonder what could give him that idea, besides the uniform conclusion of every survey of public opinion.