Posted: Mon 22 Sep 2008 15:35 Post subject: The Death of Republican Philosophy
Quote:
The Death of Republican Philosophy
Last week was historic. It is a week that financial and economic people will study for generations. It also marked the end of certain elements of the Republican Party's ideology. Below are statements the Republican party can no longer claim as part of their core ideology.
We are the party of small government
Actually, this week simply added to the the end of this claim. Under Bush II, discretionary spending has increased from $640 billion to $1.040 trillion dollars. Also remember that Bush had a Republican controlled congress for 6 of those years. However, Paulson will send a package to Congress which totals $800 billion. The Treasury will create a new agency to buy bad debt (which the WSJ's Marketbeat blog has called the Treasury Garbage Machine). In short, when the Republicans control all branches of government they spend like drunken sailors.
We Support Free Markets
Last week the SEC banned short-selling in financial shares:
The Securities and Exchange Commission has announced a ban on short-selling financial stocks over the next two weeks. Short-selling is essentially betting that a stock's price will go down. The SEC hopes the ban will reduce downward pressure on the market, but some think it will backfire. Wall Streeter Barry Ritholtz tells Madeleine Brand that the SEC action reverses 1,000 years of theory about how free markets should work.
In short, markets are supported when they are going up. But when they are going down, we're going to do everything we can to prevent them from going down.
We Are the Party of Fiscal Responsibility.
No they aren't. No Republican president has ever balanced a budget. While Republicans have argued that Reagan had to contend with Democrats, Bush II did not for 6 years. Under this scenario where the Republicans controlled all branches of government they never even came close to balancing a budget.
We are the Party of Personal Responsibility
No you're not. When companies make really stupid decisions the Federal government bails them out. Just ask any shareholder of AIG. Or any taxpayer who will not help to finance the latest government bail-out.
Simply put, this week has demonstrated a key point: when the going gets tough, the Republicans become socialists:
If you are a fan of irony, consider this: The conservative movement has utterly hated FDR, and his New Deal programs like Medicaid, Social Security, FDIC, Fannie Mae (1938), and the SEC for nearly 80 years. And for the past 8 years, a conservative was in the White House, with a very conservative agenda. For something like 16 of the past 18 years, the conservative dominated GOP has controlled Congress. Those are the facts.
We now see that the grand experiment of deregulation has ended, and ended badly. The deregulation movement is now an historical footnote, just another interest group, and once in power they turned into socialists. Indeed, judging by the actions of the conservatives in power, and not the empty rhetoric that comes out of think tanks, the conservative movement has effectively turned the United States into a massive Socialist state, an appendage of Communist Russia, China and Venezuela.
Whenever a Republican talking head says they are for any of the above mentioned things they should be questioned to explain how that statement (I'm for free markets) jibes with banning short selling of an entire sector of the market. Whenever a Republican says he is for smaller government, have him explain the nearly doubling of discretionary spending when the Republicans controlled all branches of government.
Simply put, this week demonstrated how hollow many of the Republican values are. They sound great on paper, but aren't put into practice when that result might cause financial harm to another Republican.
"Just like there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no ideologues in a financial crisis."
I think that it has been no secret over the past four years that G.W. doesn't exactly hold to conservative Republican values - "amnesty" by another name for illegal immigrants, increased government involvement, decreased individual freedoms, etc. To think otherwise is to misunderstand conservative values. Just because the "Republican Philosophy" has been abandoned by Bush et al., doesn't mean the Republican Party has done away with this philosophy or that the philosophy is dead. In fact, some Republican Senators and Representatives are standing up to this detrimental bailout.
For example...
Quote:
WOLF BLITZER ("Late Edition" host): What do you say to the president who wants you and your fellow Republicans and Democrats to quickly pass this $700 billion bailout package?
PAUL: Well, I think that's a mistake because we don't have the money. But that doesn't mean you have to do nothing. I mean, we could reform the system. We could return to sound money. We could balance our budget. We could change our foreign policy. We could take care of our people at home. We could lower taxes.
There's a lot of things that we can do. But the worst thing that we can do is perpetuate the bad policies that gave us this trouble in the first place, and that is that we no longer, over the last quite a few decades, believed in free-market capitalism. Capital is supposed to come from savings. We're supposed to work hard and save.
As a matter of fact, the Chinese work hard, right now, and they save, and they're buying up the world. But we borrow and spend and consume, and now it's caught up to us and it's undermining our whole system. ... So this $700 billion is not going to do it.
Paul also argued that ...
... contrary to the White House's contention, this plan does not help Main Street.
"This is Wall Street in big trouble and sucking in Main Street, now, and dumping all the bills on Main Street. ... And you can't solve the problem of inflation, which is the creation of money and credit out of thin air, by more money and credit out of thin air, and not changing policy. We have to change basic policy.
"Yes, it would be painful, but it wouldn't last so long. What they're doing now, they're propping up a failed system so the agony lasts longer. They're doing exactly what we did in the Depression."
With anger mounting from the left and right against the Treasury Department's proposed financial bailout, one of the opponents' most powerful allies is Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, a Democrat-turned-Republican who espouses free-market principles with a populist streak.
Mr. Shelby, the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, said in an interview Tuesday that he is likely to vote against the proposal. "I've never supported a direct bailout," Mr. Shelby said. "I voted against Chrysler when I was a freshman congressman. They said, 'Well, Chrysler will fail.' And well maybe if it'd failed then we wouldn't have the problems facing us today."
Sen. Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, is one of several conservatives joining Sen. Dodd and other Democrats in their opposition to the Treasury's financial bailout.
As a Republican, Mr. Shelby would normally be the one to defend a Republican president's policies. Instead, he's the leader of a mounting chorus of conservatives who think President George W. Bush has sold out conservative principles.
As the administration stepped up the hard sell on its initiative, House Republicans emerged as a particular focus in the push for the bailout, with the conservative members of the rank and file expressing alarm at what they saw as a betrayal of free market principles. Even a visit from Mr. Cheney, typically a persuasive presence in such circles, did not seem to win many converts despite his being joined by a bevy of top White House officials.
“They believe socialism works in a crisis, and I am not prepared to say that,” Representative Louie Gohmert, Republican of Texas, said after the session.
The clear resistance from the Republican side was being noted by Democrats, who as the majority could conceivably muscle the plan through on their own. But they are reluctant to bail out both Wall Street and the Bush administration without significant Republican involvement.
By the way, sagascend, did you write that article? I wasn't sure if I was addressing your beliefs or an article written by a non-member, so I tried to just address the content of your post.
By the way, sagascend, did you write that article? I wasn't sure if I was addressing your beliefs or an article written by a non-member, so I tried to just address the content of your post.
LOL no I didn't. I just forgot to post the link.
I think there is a case to be made that the Republican Party has abandoned centrists, social moderates and fiscal conservatives in the move towards embracing the neo-con/evangelical element of the party. Whitman wrote about it in It's My Party Too. I think that move started with the Southern Strategy, way before Bush. The nation-building neo-con element is what has risen with his presidency.
The Republican Party of Bush resembles a strange reconfiguration of Christian fundamentalism with corporatism, militarism, anti-science and sectarian populism. Traditional Republicans in the U.S. are unrecognizable in anything but the broad strokes of the party platform. It seems like the only places one can still find such Republicans (i.e., that actually get elected) are in the northeast and west coast.
Joined: 27 Nov 2004 {Posts: 1434 } Location: Hudson Valley, NY
Posted: Tue 30 Sep 2008 17:57 Post subject:
Quote:
The Republican Party of Bush resembles a strange reconfiguration of Christian fundamentalism with corporatism, militarism, anti-science and sectarian populism. Traditional Republicans in the U.S. are unrecognizable in anything but the broad strokes of the party platform. It seems like the only places one can still find such Republicans (i.e., that actually get elected) are in the northeast and west coast.
LOL, we can say the samething about traditional Democrats. I am talking about Democrats in the FDR/JFK mold. Practically non-existant. The far left has hijacked the Democratic party. Hence, Democrats sometimes have to mask who they really are to get elected. A lot of people my age have parents who are still die hard Democrats, though they are not really hardcore "liberals". What they fail to grasp IMO, is that the Democratic Party of today is not the Democratic Party of 1960 or 1964. It's a completely different party. Samething though with the GOP. I still think there is a branch of the GOP that are country club oriented. They are in the Northeast and West Coast as indicated. To a degree, Biden is an old style Democrat, but has moved toward the left, like Kennedy, Kerry, Al Gore, who 20 years ago, were still traditional Democrats. Sorry, but Nancy Peolsi, Barney Frank, are not traditional Democrats. They are a part of the far left fringe who control the party, like Howard Dean. Sorry, the Evangelical Christians (Christian right to leftists), do not control the GOP. Many do not feel welcome in the GOP. My political roots are traditional Democrat if you can believe that. As they ventured left, I ventured right....out of the party!!!
The Republican Party of Bush resembles a strange reconfiguration of Christian fundamentalism with corporatism, militarism, anti-science and sectarian populism. Traditional Republicans in the U.S. are unrecognizable in anything but the broad strokes of the party platform. It seems like the only places one can still find such Republicans (i.e., that actually get elected) are in the northeast and west coast.
LOL, we can say the samething about traditional Democrats. I am talking about Democrats in the FDR/JFK mold. Practically non-existant. The far left has hijacked the Democratic party. Hence, Democrats sometimes have to mask who they really are to get elected. A lot of people my age have parents who are still die hard Democrats, though they are not really hardcore "liberals". What they fail to grasp IMO, is that the Democratic Party of today is not the Democratic Party of 1960 or 1964. It's a completely different party. Samething though with the GOP. I still think there is a branch of the GOP that are country club oriented. They are in the Northeast and West Coast as indicated. To a degree, Biden is an old style Democrat, but has moved toward the left, like Kennedy, Kerry, Al Gore, who 20 years ago, were still traditional Democrats. Sorry, but Nancy Peolsi, Barney Frank, are not traditional Democrats. They are a part of the far left fringe who control the party, like Howard Dean. Sorry, the Evangelical Christians (Christian right to leftists), do not control the GOP. Many do not feel welcome in the GOP. My political roots are traditional Democrat if you can believe that. As they ventured left, I ventured right....out of the party!!!
Why apologize? I'm not a Democrat. I am an independent, but because most libertarians in this country are rightist or dissaffected conservatives, and most Republicans are socially conservative/authoritarian (or pretend to be), I don't usually vote for them.
How can you say that evangelicals do not control the GOP when Palin was selected as a base pick to appeal to them specifically? Obama chose Biden, a centrist, to appeal to Reagan Democrats. The Democratic Party is certainly left of center overall, but your selection of the term "fringe" to describe Howard Dean or Pelosi (given their voting records) isn't really accurate. If you are going to point to a Democrat who is much further left, why not Kucinich? There are Democratic politicians who are more liberal than Obama. Most politicians more liberal than Democrats are actually not Democrats at all, but members of other parties. There's no difference in their movement out of the center-left than there is the movement of people like Bob Barr or Ron Paul out of the center-right. Yet I would never refer to either as ''fringe rightists." A fringe rightist is someone who is truly on the edge of the spectrum and appeals to a narrow minority of extremists.
You're not unlike many people I know who have become socially conservative with age. Some people in my acquaintance experienced a religious conversion of some kind and just became more authoritarian as a result. Others joined the military and became more hawkish. Another just believes that Democrats have ruined African American culture and votes Republican to harken back to the days of Lincoln and Reconstruction and A-A self-determination.
Personally I am not interested in marrying myself to an ideology or political party. I am interested in ideas that are effective and provide the most freedom and opportunity for the most people. I like smart politicians with a long term, global view who are less domineering and more collaborative.
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I wasn't sure if I was addressing your beliefs or an article written by a non-member, so I tried to just address the content of your post.