Tom DeLay or Hannibal Lecter? Ed Gein or Trent Lott?
I disagree slightly, and temporarily. Ideally, the conservative wing, as represented by the Republican Party, has a legitimate case to make and deserves a respectful hearing. Regretably, under present circumstances, it isn’t possible to be unmindful of party affiliations, the Republican Party has become swollen and arrogant. Worse, they are in thrall to some of the most negative influences in our political character. The reactionary element in our society is human, therefore legitimate, they have a right to expect some compromises that respect their numbers. They do not have the right to the sort of dominance they have manifested lately, their numbers don’t warrant that.
But if the Republicans repudiate the worst of their lot, they lose the tenuous grip on majority, they face a similar crisis of conscience that the Dems faced in the late 60’s: do what’s right and lose power, or choose power over conscience.
An honest conservative opposition is essential, a car needs brakes. As a radical lefty, I’m almost certain that if all of my political goals were instantly realized, the USA would be much improved, if not actually perfected. But if one’s ideas will not stand up to hostile review, they’re probably crap.
What our nation needs most right now is for the Republican Party to shake loose the half-wits and demagogues with whom they’ve made such an unwholesome bargain. The price will be huge, but temporary.
It is a test of character, and patriotism. And we shall see.
For me I was open to the conservative movement but now I feel like they just don’t seem to have any long term economic planning, they have more of a ‘live for today’ attitude with money. They seem to be cutting social programs and taxes at the same time which will create a generation of screwed up kids in 2020 when the consequences of these actions come to pass. Its no different than Reagan’s voodoo economics of the 80s which helped create a world we have today with a crippling national debt where we pay 350 billion a year in interest alone on it. I don’t want to live in a US where the average family gets about a $400/year tax cut (whoopee, an extra $33 a month for a family of 4) at the expense of a gigantic national debt and cuts to programs to help poor people.
You do know Reagan’s Debt was paid down. This current debt is almost all Bush’s.
The Clinton years had reduced the debt by a huge amount. This doesn’t excuse Reagan’s building up the debt, just pointing out it is not the same debt.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. When I said “steadily”, I meant uninterruptedly. It would be silly to argue that the Reagan administration didn’t markedly increase the federal debt.
Yep. The religious right has little in common with the economic right. These are 2 parts of the Republican base whose hearts are not in the same place.
Am I correct in thinking that it was the deficit that the Clinton Years saw reduced?
I really brain farted on that one, I hope this is true at least. :smack:
Well, this is sort of true. It sort of depends what you count as the debt. Some would argue that the debt should be all debt whereas some would argue that a better measure is the debt held by the public. You can see the difference here. Basically, it boils down to how you treat trust funds like social security. The total debt counts the money that the rest of the government borrows from the surplusses in the trust fund as debts, whereas the debt held by the public doesn’t count that.
Usually, when the deficit / surplus numbers are quoted, they are essentially only talking about additions to the debt held by the public. This is why it is said that Clinton ran surplusses in the last few years of his administration and some of the debt held by the public was paid off. I.e., in those years the surplus in the social security trust fund was larger than the deficit in the rest of the government operations, but there was still a deficit in the rest of the operations (except in 2000 when the rest of the operations were, within various details that I don’t completely understand, basically even).
See my above post…If you consider the debt held by the public then some of this, although less than 20%, was paid off in the last few years of Clinton. And, at the moment it looks like a little over a quarter of the total debt held by the public has appeared since Bush took office although that fraction is increasing pretty rapidly.
I don’t think the conservative movement has run out of steam, but I definitely think the current crop of Republicans in the House and Senate have. They aren’t running on ideas anymore. They’ve substituted principled conservatism for pandering to the social conservative base and for buying the rest of their votes with cash.
I hope the Democrats kick their asses in the next election. They deserve it. And I think they’ll get trounced. Nothing is more disheartening to the ‘base’ than to work your entire life for the day when conservatives controll all three branches of government, only to see them turn into typical political hacks who are only interested in maintaining power and buying votes. Vast swaths of them will stay home in the next election unless the Republicans turn it around NOW.
But the signs aren’t hopeful. They are currently in the process of trying to reject a measly 50 billion over 10 years spending cut. If they won’t cut 5 billion a year in pork out of a multi-trillion dollar budget, then they don’t deserve to be called conservatives. Maybe a sound ass-kicking will smarten the party up and purge its ranks of the old business-as-usual hacks like Ted Stevens.
Current Republicans, you go away now. When come back, bring principles.
This is a very insightful point, and one which I completely agree with. As politics becomes more and more of a team sport, more people care only about their team winning and less about what their leaders are actually doing. It’s just marketing and brand loyalty. It doesn’t help that the parties are getting more skilled at using the increasingly passive media to promote their particular brand image and/or create a negative image of the opposing brand. Catch phrases and sound bytes win elections now, not debates or policies. Right now the Republicans are better at it, but even if/when the Democrats catch up, we’re all still worse off.
Wasn’t this type of dissatisfaction responsible for the Republican shakeup of the '92 elections? I seem to recall (not that I paid attention to politics at that time of my life; maybe it was '94?) that election cycle had a substantial number of incumbents defeated, a slew of first-time congresscritters elected.
Might there be, at least in some sense, a valid comparison to be made?
This isn’t meant to be a debate on taxes, I’m just addressing why republicans don’t cut programs and taxes
The problem is I don’t know if tax cut republicans are really as popular as they are made out to be by the press. If you watch the media you’ll get the impression that the public is outraged by high taxes but I don’t know if that is anything close to the truth. I myself take offense when media outlets assume I am outraged by taxes, I find it insulting to my intelligence for people to expect me to respond like Pavlov’s dog to the fact that 30% of my income goes to things like providing education, retirement funding and healthcare to the other citizens of this country.
For example, under Clinton’s highest tax rate the rate was about 33.6%, under Bush’s lightest tax rate the rate was about 29%.
For a family of 4 making 50k a year that translates into an extra $190/month that they don’t have to pay in taxes in 2004 vs 2000. That may sound like alot but when you consider that deficit spending is astronaumical under Bush (which means that taxes are lower but spending is still high, we are just selling out the kids and making them inherit a deficit to do it) it doesn’t sound nearly as pretty. In fact the average family may only be saving $80/month with all these tax cuts when you factor out deficit spending under Bush vs. Clinton, which is almost nothing. I make $200/month selling plasma 5 hours a week. So I think on some level alot of people realize that even with ‘massive tax cuts’ that may only translate into an extra $100/month for a family of five when you factor out deficit spending. Plus on some level people probably realize that those tax cuts just mean they pay more privately for the same stuff, ie they save $200/month in taxes but now higher education is more expensive for example.
For instance, an overwhelming 80 percent of those polled believe it is more important to maintain spending on popular domestic programs like education, health care and Social Security than it is to cut taxes.
My point is that the idea of massive privitization and tax cuts may be a minority opinion. So the republican party, as a party that has to cater to the majority, is rejecting it. Find me a party that can get elected by disenfranchsing the elderly, the poor, the sick, students and all the people whose jobs depend on government programs.
I think that’s a good post and a legitimate and fair criticism. We’ve only agreed twice before: Houston sucks, and that French kung fu movie with the giant bear/lion sucks. This makes three.
