The Republican Party is feeling oddly euphoric, like a man who has just stepped out of the smoking wreckage of his car and found that, not only has he survived, but he feels pretty damn good about the whole thing.
Here's Karl Rove, writing in the Wall Street Journal:
Over the past month, House Republicans have used the stimulus bill to redefine their party, present ideas on how to revive the economy, and force congressional Democrats and the president to take ownership of the spending programs soon to be signed into law... Mr. Obama, for all his talents, has already re-energized the GOP and sparked a spending debate that will last for years.
The caving of Judd Gregg has given another reason for GOPers to feel cheerful, as Politico reports:
Nevertheless, for a Republican Party desperately careening from message to message, from “drill, baby, drill” to “the future is Cao,” Gregg’s move has rallied the troops and provided them with a set of organizing principles around which to begin rebuilding their tattered brand — or at least to sully Obama’s sterling brand.
Perhaps this really does the mark the beginning of a surging Republican comeback, barely minutes after the car they've been driving crashed into an angry electorate that night in November. Perhaps that comeback will be sustained, over the next two years, on the basis of fierce opposition to government spending and everything the new president does, and they'll be welcomed back to majorities in 2010. Perhaps.
But what are these "organising principles" they think they've found? Small government, laissez-faire, Reaganite economics. Just at the very moment when the rest of the world has realised, with a shock, that it's that philosophy which is - in part - responsible for this mess. The Owl of Minerva has flown, and the Republicans are still staring backwards whence it came, with a crazed grin on their faces.
After the euphoria passes, car crash survivors usually end up in a shivering, weeping mess, don't they?
Yes, it's always easier to be against the OTHER guy's spending -- but Tax Cuts did, in fact, get Bush's US economy moving after the dot.com bubble pop.
And the 2008 tax rebates did, in fact, increase spending enough to allow many folk to even claim that there was no problem (Bush's mixed message was not helpful). "Dude, where's my recession?" The Dems will say it didn't work.
The historical truth is more likely to be that it wasn't enough, so that more actually would have worked. But that more tax cuts / rebates weren't politically feasible without a bigger crisis (the economy only became a real issue after the Bear Stearns and especially Leahman failed, so rich Big Bankers saw their cushy jobs at risk.)
Free Market ain't perfect, but it has always performed better in macro jobs growth than gov't, including FDR's Great Depression.
Recall it was Fannie Mae and the dishonest politicians trying to get poor people into private homes that they couldn't afford, who accepted not looking into the CDS derivatives and sub-prime stuff as long as the housing bubble was being fed.
The gov't sets the rules. Greedy folk try to make money with those rules, and in so doing help others. On sub-prime, Fannie set bad rules, with the punishment for those not playing being a loss of market share and bonus. Not laws, but rules none-the-less.
Dems forget that not all rules are laws.
Posted by: Tom Grey | February 13, 2009 at 05:47 PM
brilliant post marb - roeg's 'fearless' paired with the owl of minerva? - by cracky!
and those who shall end up in a weepy mess? those 'grey' folk elegizing by the wrong graveyard -
Posted by: rob | February 13, 2009 at 07:44 PM
brilliant post marb - roeg's 'fearless' paired with the owl of minerva? - by cracky!
and those who shall end up in a weepy mess? those 'grey' folk elegizing by the wrong graveyard -
Posted by: rob | February 13, 2009 at 07:44 PM
Has the phrase 'largest deficit in human history' appeared anywhere in these newfound ideals?
Posted by: dp | February 15, 2009 at 10:55 PM