PG22: Republican Quitters, China Talks, VW Cheating, Popeamania in D.C., and Monkey Selfies

This week, The Politics Guys talk about how John Boehner was hounded out of office by the radical Republicans in his caucus and why it matters, using football *and* baseball analogies. The second big Republican quitter of the week was Scott Walker, an early favorite for the GOP presidential nomination whose campaign ran out of money at the same time his SuperPAC had millions in the bank. Mike explains how SuperPACs work and why Walker’s SuperPAC couldn’t save him. Mike is a big fan of China’s announcement that they’ll be instituting a cap-and-trade system to clean up their air starting in 2017, pointing out that this is a policy that Congressional Republicans rejected when President Obama tried to enact it. Jay is more skeptical about the announcement, calling for a ‘wait and see’ approach. Both Mike and Jay agree that the agreement between Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping about cybercrime may not amount to much, thought it’s better than nothing. The Guys next get into the VW emissions cheating scandal, drawing very different lessons from it: Jay sees it as an example of poor management at the EPA (which needed outside help to catch the violation) while Mike says it’s the inevitable result of years of Republican budget cuts to regulatory agencies. Finally, Mike and Jay discuss PETA’s attempt to secure intellectual property rights for a monkey.

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