Hmm. I hate to admit it as a Republican, but I can’t help but concede that Democrats are actually more fiscally conservative than Republicans. Maybe it’s an issue of both parties wanting balanced budgets in theory, but the Republicans wanting it a lower level of spending and taxation than the Democrats so that the balanced budget just can’t happen given that you can have balanced budgets with fairly high taxes versus very low ones…Republicans are really, really good at making themselves look responsible, common sensical, when their record says otherwise, and Democrats are really bad at defending their record. I wonder why…or whether this observation is even valid.
Yes to both, I should think.
The point, however is this: By “Socialists” I mean “democratic socialists,” by which I mean those who (1) want democratic government, (2) combined with “socialism,” meaning, here, a system where the state (or workers’ cooperatives, etc.) owns and manages most (not all) of the means of production in the economy – i.e., democratic socialism instead of capitalism, as distinct from a vigorous welfare-state and labor-representation within it. The latter being “social democracy,” which, looking around the world, works better for all than anything else yet tried. (Democratic socialism has never yet been tried, though Venezuela might be heading that way. Authoritarian one-party socialism has been tried and does not work, or, only works for limited purposes, e.g., if a country wants to do heavy capital formation in a hurry; but it’s helpless at fine-tuning.) And if we had a two-party system made of the Socialists (e.g., the Socialist Party USA) and the Democrats, then the vector-sum of their pushing for their respective policies, as it were, would be some form of social democracy. (An actual social-democratic or progressive party would be the Working Families Party; the Greens are a different breed of animal.)
I think this has been very clear based on the past 30 years of political policy.
Perhaps. But it’s also that Republicans are convinced that lowering taxes ALWAYS equals fiscal conservatism. This is ridiculous- sometimes the conservative, pragmatic move is to raise taxes. Obviously we can’t lower them to zero (or raise them to 100%)- so there must be some non-zero amount that maximizes revenue.
Yes. My impression is that over the last 30 years, the Democrats have been far better at policy, and the Republicans have been better at politics. I think the latter point is starting to change, because of demographic shifts. If the Republicans can’t appeal to more than a tiny percentage of non-white Americans, they will cease to be a national political party, and become a regional party.
Ultimately, I think what matters is not which party has control, but whether or not the Democratic process is healthy. Granted, I’d HATE the policies the Republicans would enact if they were in control, because I do think they are controlled by wealthy plutocrats who are strip-mining the middle class of its wealth and will eventually create a country with a very small economic elite and a huge underclass that will probably call itself “middle class” but will in fact be more accurately describable as “the poor.”
But hey, if Americans WANT this and VOTE for it, if they get the chance to debate their honest opinions in the marketplace of ideas and as many are encouraged to vote as wish to, free from coercion, then I’m OK with it … if that’s what America wants, so be it.
However, Republican efforts toward voter suppression and enabling wealthy plutocrats to flood the marketplace of ideas with unlimited campaign donations indicate to me that the Republicans do not share my atttitude. So, once again, I have to go with the Democrats, though what the country NEEDS right now is a viable progressive party.
I’ve seen no evidence that the Republicans want a balanced budget even in theory. They only talk about it when it’s a convenient way to push for cutting programs that benefit the poor and the middle class. It’s sort of like how Republicans believe in “states rights” for policies they like (such as Arizona’s immigration laws) but completely abandon the principle for policies they don’t like (such as Montana’s election laws).
:smack: 
I’m saddened that supery00n is unfamiliar with Democrat deficit reduction in 1993. Let me tell that important story One . More . Time:
Is it also like how they’re for small government when they’re in charge of the executive branch?
Also, is it just me or is the Republican Party pretty much an outlier in terms of its platform and beliefs? I simply don’t see any other political party in the world that’s like it. I think you have to go back to the Greek city states to really see it. You had individual city states which governed themselves as opposed to centralization (“small government”), there was a free market economy in its primitive stage with a big division between the rich and the poor (free enterprise), an emphasis on abstract ideology and philosophy that was somewhat anti empirical (for example, science was viewed as less important than philosophy, morality and ethics, metaphysics), etc. I find these similarities rather puzzling, as the Greek form of government in the classical Greek period was a democracy, and not a republic.
Anyone agree? :dubious:
The reason I am a Republican is because they seem to really care about making the government responsive to the people, efficient, and I feel like they truly believe what they say, and it’s not like they did that many things that were bad, and they did do many things that ended up working out very well. But I can’t help but notice that their ideas are somehow almost like a faith based system that you can’t really question, you just have to accept it and trust that it will all work out. However, the lack of (modern) precedent is unsettling, and they seem to look at the Founding Fathers, the late 19th century, and (IMHO) 5th century Greece for their governing model, and even Marxism in that both Marxism and Communism eventually want to make government “as small as possible,” to the point where the very need for government itself will disappear.
Is it just me, or does this vision of the free market in GOP ideology seem not unlike the Communist utopia of the “workers’ paradise,” where ultimately politics disappears and becomes reduced to economics, a sort of economic determinism in a sense. I fear that we’ve tried basing a system on an abstract ideology before, and that it didn’t work out the last time…and I wonder how someone could believe in free markets to the point that’s quasi-religious…
And I have always said that Republicans are partially to blame for the deficit as well. I think that Reganomics was as disasterous to the US spending as Roosevelt’s New Deal and the current Obama Recovery Act in that although they may have been needed at the time to deal with major economic issues, the policies carried over for decades afterwards when such high spending was not needed to stimulate the economy.
However, the difference is that Republicans create deficit by lowering taxes and the Democrats create deficit by raising spending and I believe history shows that Democrats will tend to increase spending at a rate higher than increasing taxes and that is what is untenable.
BobLibDem, you can criticize Bush all you want for going into Iraq/Afghanistan but don’t forget that the Democrat-controlled Congress voted to fund it and that we are still at war after 4 years of Obama so I think there is enough blame on both sides of the aisle for that money pit.
Robot Arm, my point about Keynesians was not to absolve Republicans of their budgeting ineptitude. I was criticizing his point that Keynesians stop the deficit spending when were were out of recovery and I was showing him that historically we have have many years of deficit spending without being in a recovery economy.
I also blame the Keynesians and their stimulus spending during normal economic times as the reason we’re in the position we are where the government HAS to be the major spender or the economy will tank . . . but that’s a different thread.
And the sad part is that not only do Republicans not appreciate what happened there, apparently Democrats don’t either. I took the liberty of highlighting one point from your quote in that Clinton’s budget involved spending cuts and not only did the economy not founder, it actually thrived. I think that lesson is lost on current Democrats that think any spending cuts at anytime (Recovery Act or not) will undermine the economy and send the country into a financial apocalypse.
Until the religious right are severed from the Republican party, giving them total control would make this country a theocracy in all but name only. Hell, maybe in name too. They’ll just call it “ceremonial deism” when they rename the USA to “The United Holy States Of Jesus”.
What history leads you to this conclusion? The stimulus and auto bailout were one-time events, to deal with extraordinary circumstances. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act includes cuts to Medicare to mitigate the cost. Seriously, what was the last big-spending program enacted by Democrats? What’s in their current agenda that you think will raise spending so dramatically?
I’m not asking you to absolve Republicans, I’m asking anyone to defend blaming Democrats. It’s hardly fair to accuse them of not following through on Keynesianism during those times when they were not in the political majority.
In the last four years of budget disagreements, Democrats have REPEATEDLY offered spending cuts, so long as they were paired with raising taxes, and the Republicans REFUSED to listen. So your argument … fails.
I’m not directly involved in this dialogue, but just as a side comment, on the first segment of your post, I find it more frustrating that the Democrats seem to come across as being indifferent to inefficiencies in their programs which just add up to more costs. They’re willing to support cuts to their programs, but that’s actually not the point. The point is to cut costs while giving the same quality of service, or improving the quality of service at the same cost. I think someone said this: it’s not necessarily how big or small government is, it’s how well it works and how responsive it is to the actual, sometimes changing needs of the people at any size.
Their general attitude seems to be: "Stop asking questions, we’re doing things the way we do now because it’s the best way to do it. Just pay your taxes, and we’ll provide the services. There’s no sense of self-critique where the Democratic leaders look at their own programs and try to proactively improve them with the experience and feedback that’s there. I mean, if you’re going to be the party of strong, active government, then it makes sense politically, it would seem, to make that government function at a level that makes us feel…pleasantly surprised and satisfied."
Maybe I’m totally wrong, and the government does things really well, and we just don’t get it because we’re misinformed or don’t really understand how hard or complicated administration is?
A serious attempt at a serious answer, just for the heck of it. (I guess that makes it a nonserious reason) —
• In a loose and floppy (and admittedly uncited) sense, I think the Democratic Party and its leadership thinks that it does not want total control; it believes it wants some version of “power to the people” and hence wants the populace to hold the reins of power. As long as the People don’t do horribly wrong things with that power, like oppress other people, vulnerable minorities and whatnot. Or disenfranchise themselves by choosing laws that would make impositions upon freedoms that we should all have. Or make other silly badly-chosen decisions. So, umm, well, it’s kinda important to the Democratic Party that some kind of elite leadership makes sure the People use their power appropriately. They don’t want to vest them with some godawful horrid hegemonic POWER or anything, but it’s important to ensure proper and fair outcomes, that’s all. Meanwhile, the Republican Party and its leadership is considerably more blunt and honest about it: they want sufficient control to make things the way they’re s’posed to be. I mean, they wouldn’t abuse it or anything, but, hell, right is right, and when you’re in favor of what’s right, you’re right, so you have the right to step forth and right those wrongs and separate right from wrong and step up and do what’s right, you know? And to that end, any necessary seizing of power is, well, you know, right. Right?
• If asked (and I was!) to visualize an autocracy in the hands of either political party, I see the Republicans in unchallenged power as ersatz parents, know-it-alls who try to be fair but are absolutely convinced of the correctness of their own determination of right from wrong. Moralistic. Not great, not fun, but a familiar motif with lots of historical references. The Democrats would be sneakier salespeople, trying to run their Brave New World like Aldous Huxley, with indoctrination, the power of social unacceptability to limit inappropriate viewpoints, with lots and lots and lots of prominent lip service to autonomy and against coercion in all its forms. Instead of the blatant determination that you are espousing wrongful and wicked thoughts and must be forcibly stopped, they’d invest the energy to spin their interventions as something that needed to be done FOR you for YOUR OWN GOOD or else they’d orchestrate a massive pushback by people who would denounce what you were doing as coercive towards THEM, that YOU were a person seizing unequal and unfair power over other people.
• On balance, I think the Democratic Party would be more dangerous via being sneakier and more condescendingly nasty in its paternalism. So I choose the Republicans as my autocrats.
Democrats. An entire Senate full of Democrats still couldn’t pull together a super majority even if there was no opposition party. They’d waste time and money and little would get fixed but at the end of the day they’d be mostly harmless. An all Republican government would be scary because not only would they agree on their bad ideas but they would take turns trying to one up each other on making them worse.