Thread by @AG_Conservative

Milton Friedman once brilliantly explained that the way you get politicians to do the right thing isn't to elect the right people, but to make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Politicians operate on incentives.

I thought of that while reading the responses to Romney's statement critical of Trump. The MAGA crowd overwhelmingly attacked him for not towing the line and then the left (and some in the anti-Trump right) attacked him for not being sufficiently anti-Trump.

Romney is one of the few politicians who doesn't care. He's not running for anything, is popular w/ Utah, and doesn't need either group. But the incentive that creates for most politicians is to pick a team and toe the line, which is exactly what has happened.

Thus you have Dems voting down qualified nominees and attacking policies they previously argued were good, and R's defending/ignoring things they would usually condemn (esp if it came from a Dem).

Voters have only themselves to blame for this incentive structure.

And yes, it would be nice if we lived in a world where even politicians did/said the right thing simply because it was the right thing, but that's not the real world. In the real world, incentives matter. You want to change outcomes, change what behavior gets rewarded.