The Republican Party has always had the reputation of being the party of smaller government – yet in the years where GOP has control of the White House, the Senate, and the House, non-defense discretionary spending has skyrocketed. The Bush Administration’s single biggest flaw in terms of domestic policy has been its utter unwillingness to control the rate of growth in government. Bush’s tax cuts have helped grow the economy, but the rate of spending – especially the massive fiscal burden of the new Medicare prescription drug entitlement – threaten the fiscal future of this country.
Moreover, they hurt the future of the Republican Party. The three most basic tenets of the GOP since the Reagan Revolution have been 1) rolling back the size and intrusiveness of government, 2) defending the institution of the American family and American civic culture, and 3) a strong national defense. There are tensions between those goals, but they represent the core values of our party, broad principles which all Republicans agree on and aspire to. President Bush is resolute on the third, strong on the second, but has abandoned the first.
Republicans by and large understand that government power and individual liberty are at odds with each other. The growth of the state by necessity requires the abdication of small amounts of personal liberty. This country was founded upon the notion that civil society, not the state, is the best agent of action for dealing with this country’s problems. In the balance between state power and personal liberty, liberty should take precedence. President Reagan, a man who represented some of the best of modern conservatism, understood this and was unafraid to share that message with the American public.
President Bush faces the unprecedented task of having to rebuild miles upon miles of devastated coastline while a second massive storm threatens to unleash similar devastation. The costs of rebuilding from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita will be massive, and the federal government has a statutory obligation to help the region rebuild. Such an effort combined with the ongoing worldwide war on terrorism and the other crucial functions of government add to the fiscal strain.
Now, more than ever, President Bush must demand that Congress restrain spending. This country faces a crisis that is unprecedented in our history – and the true test of President Bush’s leadership will be in how he rises to the occasion and leads this country.
Circumstances have not been kind to President Bush. The level of strain placed upon him by the events of his Presidency is something most Americans can only imagine. The vitriolic and hate-filled rhetoric launched at him by his opponents is unprecedented in modern history. Yet the burden of leadership demands action. President Bush was too slow in personally showing leadership after Katrina, and his poll numbers have suffered as a result. He faces the hatred of the Democrats, but also a Republican Party that is rightfully worried about the direction of this country and our fiscal future.
President Bush went from an isolationist to a nation-builder by necessity following the terrible events of September 11, 2001. Now, necessity demands that he go from being a big spender to a fiscal hawk. We do not need more pork, we need to focus all of our government’s efforts at meeting the immediate needs of war and reconstruction. Every member of Congress has a patriotic duty to put the good of the country as a whole over sending pork to their districts. And the President should lead them in that regard by promising to veto any appropriations bill that includes unnecessary pork projects. The President should work with Congress to stop the Medicare prescription drug benefit and replace it with a targeted program that gives drugs only to those who have a true need for it.
In a time of crisis, Americans are perfectly willing to make sacrifices. Republicans must reassert the values of fiscal discipline and smaller government. It was a good idea then; it has become critical now.
If Republican members of Congress cannot control their urge to spending, the political backlash will be huge. The future of this country, and the future of our party depends on our willingness to stand firm on the core values of our party. Our President needs to show leadership, and our Congress needs to follow. The political power of the Republican Party is based on the strength of our principles, and we will win or lose based largely in part into how well we defend and establish those principles. It is time to affirm our identity as the party of small government or risk losing that which defines us as a party.
Your reflexive inability to even consider morbidly obese tax cuts as part of the recurring problem to American financial and social stability since 1981 negates your entire position on everything else in this post. It’s no coincidence that your cartoonishly simple-minded “economic growth” justification for the latest round of ruinous, budget-busting, child-abusing tax cuts occupied only a half of one sentence. A half sentence is all that even the most robotic supply-side ideologue could realistically muster up in defense of a worldview that should have been passe in mid-morning of September 11, 2001…..and which completely betrays the reality of 2005 post-globalization America where very little is “trickling down.”
We could have had 20 years of economic recession starting in the spring of 2001….but the first positive quarter of growth experienced in 2021 would have had you proclaiming it as “evidence that Bush’s tax cuts are working.” The economy runs in cycles and non-dramatic tax policy has very little effect on growth. That’s why Clinton was able to raise taxes in 1993 and be lucky enough to be at the early stages of an economic growth spurt that nullified all the theories of your ilk that tax increases=economic ruin. Only the terminally ignorant are still married to supply-side dogma at this point, yet here you are, holding over-the-top deficit-financed tax cuts harmless when confronted by the undeniable need for greater Federal funding.
It’s understandable that you people are nervous these days. Republicans who hate government have been successfully requesting that Americans allow them to govern for the past 12 years. The results are now in full view for the whole world as we botch one after another foreign policy and homeland security undertaking, fail to properly regulate corporate looters whose white-collar shenanigans result in painful financial meltdowns before anyone receives as much as a reprimand, and failing to administer disaster relief to afflicted individuals in the wake of Mother Nature’s fury. The Republican Party’s “government is the enemy” house of cards is falling down on top of them as they are now being to retroactively finance and correct the institutions that didn’t work because elected leaders were convinced government was the bad guy rather the people who government used to regulate.
Put all that on top of the fact that Third World America was allowed into the living rooms of self-involved soccer moms for nearly a week, raising the public spectre of our nation’s fast-growing poverty problem, and there’s definitely a risk of an evolving worldview among the American voting majority…..a worldview that embraces a more public response to collective problems and is less absorbed by the climate of avarice and me-first gluttony that puts Republicans into office.
Personally, I don’t think we’re gonna see any more of a cultural shift post-Katrina than we did post-9/11. Americans have been pampered and cradled for so long that the concept of sacrifice is lost. Two months from now, most of us will continue pursuing our petty pet issues, be they further tax cuts, banning cigarette smoking on private property, covering up Janet Jackson’s nipple, and forbidding them nasty queers from marrying. The biggest risk for the GOP is that that Karl Rove’s borrow-and-spend formula is at its breaking point. Now Republicans will have to make good on some of the real spending cuts that go along with “less government.” Whether those cuts are imposed on porkish transportation projects designated for red state pseudo-cowboy parasites, government-financed prescription drugs for seniors, or relentless giveaways to farmers, the GOP is likely to learn that much of their base isn’t gonna like “smaller government” half as much as they thought they would.
All that unnecessary verbiage for such a simple (and dumb) argument.
I know liberals don’t much care for things like evidence, but for those that do engage in the act of thinking for time to time, the evidence shows that everything you argued is wrong.
For instance, you argue that the Bush tax cuts didn’t have any effect on the economy – when it so happens that GDP growth picked up immediately after they took effect. GDP growth in the third quarter of 2003 was the single largest quarterly gain in 20 years. Unemployment has steadily decreased. GDP growth is steady. Every measure of economic health increased after the passage of the Bush tax cuts. Yet obviously evidence trumps blatant emotionalism for the Democrats.
And Katrina exposed the failure of government alright – the Democratic stronghold of New Orleans failed its people. Mississippi took the brunt of the storm, yet managed to have far fewer problems. Mayor Nagin let the city’s buses flood while sending people to a “shelter” with no food, water, sanitation, or police. Gov. Blanco was an obvious wreck who dithered while people died, yet somehow everything is FEMA’s fault.
The only thing the Democrats have is hatred, invective, bile, and vitriol. Look at your own rhetoric: “ruinous, budget-busting, child-abusing tax cuts”, “Only the terminally ignorant”, “Third World America”, etc.
In case you haven’t gotten it in the past four years, people think that the Democrats are a bunch of condescending elitists. And if there’s any doubt of that, all they have to do is look at someone like you for confirmation of it.
Two things:
I applaud you for FINALLY taking a stand on the fiscal irresponsibility of the current incarnation of the GOP. It boggles my mind that it took so long for so many conservatives to notice that the party had abandoned that key principal of modern conservatism. However, I’d go as far as to say that on point #3, national defense and security, the Bush Administration has been rather pathetic as well; yet that’s an entirely different position. And as a “small-l libertarian”, I see his strength on #2 as more of a liability than anything else, as social engineering, right or left, isn’t the government’s job.
Second, this is something that a Clintonesque “New Democrat” could potentially capitalize on. Civil liberties, limited government, anti-pork, anti-corruption, strong security- like Clinton, a Dem could potentially take the best parts of the Republican platform- the parts that are nominally lip service- and run with it in 2008. Watch out for Warner, he could be the man. When I read you blasting Democrats above, keep in mind what Zakaria said in the Future of Freedom- American political parties are fictions. The “Dean” Democratic party doesn’t have much gas left in it- someone new will come along and, like Clinton, rewrite the playbook. I hope it’s in a libertarian direction, one which pro-business, globalist, pragmatic Democrats and socially-liberal, security and fiscal sanity minded Republicans can agree on, in a fashion made palitable to the American public- but I’m not holding my breath.
Like Europeans, Americans have realized that they can vote themselves money from the treasury, and they can have their free cash, bash homos, tick off the world, and protect America from the “evils” of secular humanism at the same time. As Andrew Sullivan, that horrible lefty, has pointed out, the GOP is looking more and more like something straight out of 1930’s Italy or Spain and completely unlike anything that a libertarian minarchist can support in good conscience. The Democratic party may suck, but I’d be damn suprised if they can do worse (even Mr. Moore- the Club for Growth one, not the filmmaker- is saying as much these days). The Republican Party is out of control, drunk on a populist power that makes Huey Long look moderate.
Rant off, back to work. But suffice it to say, I’m sick of the way things are going, and I don’t see any relief in site in 2006… and if my choices in 2008 are Bill Frist or Hillary Clinton, I might as well move to Dubai…
Jay, your “evidence” is laughably anecdotal. The status of the economy concurs with the ebb and flow of the business cycle. Government plays very little role in micromanaging that cycle, and whatever extent that it does is primarily in the hands of the Fed and its monetary policy. You seem to be suggesting that every twist and turn of the economy is the direct result of Federal tax policy.
Using the same anecdotal evidence you have about the current growing economy being the sole product of Bush tax cuts, does it not follow that the anecdotal evidence of America’s growing economy 1994-2000 was the sole product of Clinton’s 1993 tax increases? You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that tax policy single-handedly engineered 2002-2005 economic growth but that much greater economic growth of 1994-2000 had nothing to do with tax policy, but completely controlled by “outside influences.” Don’t you hate it when your own narrow-minded propaganda comes back to smack you in the jaw?
Furthermore, the arrogance of you and your ilk on the current state of the economy could also contribute to your own undoing. Much as you congratulate yourself for your masterful of the economy (which basically amounts to deficit-financed tax cut after deficit-financed tax cut), the majority of American voters still think the economy sucks. From the penthouses of the GOP base, things are going very smoothly, but for the two-thirds of Americans facing greater job insecurity than ever, substantially higher fuel prices, and the likelihood of lacking health insurance any day now, things are worse now than in the 2001 recession. And the more you guys breathlessly remind us how wonderful things are, the more likely American voters are gonna dismiss you as completely out-of-touch with how things are going off of Wall Street.
“And Katrina exposed the failure of government alright – the Democratic stronghold of New Orleans failed its people. Mississippi took the brunt of the storm, yet managed to have far fewer problems. Mayor Nagin let the city’s buses flood while sending people to a “shelter†with no food, water, sanitation, or police. Gov. Blanco was an obvious wreck who dithered while people died, yet somehow everything is FEMA’s fault.”
That’s funny. And George Bush told us just last week he takes responsibility for the Federal failure. Is this a malicious act of betrayal against your Commander-in-Chief? Why do you hate America so much?
“In case you haven’t gotten it in the past four years, people think that the Democrats are a bunch of condescending elitists”
Guess you haven’t seen the latest polls. American voters identify themselves as Democrats by an 8-point margin over the GOP. Last fall at this time, it was tied. Seems that the nervousness you reflected at the top of this thread about the future of the GOP is justified.
Oh, and one more thing….your continued abdication of the Federal role in everything but lowering the tax burdens of millionaires would be a little more convincing if you hadn’t spent four years standing at the mailbox waiting for financial aid giveaways so you could attend a private college with $25,000 per year tuition on the taxpayers’ dime. 😉
Nicq, I share many of your feelings on libertarianism, but can’t envision a scenario where the American political climate will embrace it any time soon. Whether it be those on the right “cleaning up the airwaves” or spending billions to “promote marriage”, or those on the left lobbying to slap the cigarettes and double cheeseburgers right out of our jaws, the majority of the public seems to be cheering them on. Even if we fire one nanny, we can be assured another nanny will soon be hired to take his/her place.
I’m afraid your fear of a Hillary Clinton candidacy is highly justified. It’s almost as though she’s already been anointed. I’d give Warner marginal odds if Hillary were to go away, but I don’t see that happening. I don’t know enough about Warner to advocate his candidacy, and I wonder if his proponents do either…or if they’re simply assuming he’s a “moderate Southern Governor” and therefore electable. The only thing I know he did was commandeer an increase in cigarette taxes in Virginia. I’m a non-smoker, but increasing the cigarette tax represents virtually everything I see as being wrong in America today…..an increasingly regressive system of taxation….the proliferation of government as our nanny….the willingness of the majority to deflect collective sacrifice into the hands of the minority…..and the dependency of the Treasury on revenue sources with no long-terms prospects for living up to expectations. If a cigarette tax hike in Virginia is top among Warner’s list of assets, I prefer to look elsewhere.
And I don’t believe a Democratic Party that embraces globalization has a prayer of winning. Since Clinton signed NAFTA in 1993, the Democrats have been battered bloody in five out of six election cycles. The white, socially conservative working class abandoned the Democratic Party for good when they became Republican clones on trade issues. While the demographics of America are changing, it’s gonna be hard to convince the new working class the Democrats are their friends if they support the same business-minded global trade policies as the Republicans, who are at least giving them a small dose of the populism they long for on the social issues.
Lastly, I think Frist blew his chances at the nomination when he supported stem cells. With Brownback, Gingrich and George Allen all speculating on a Presidential run, Frist squandered his foothold on the religious right. I suspect that after he retires from the Senate next year, Frist’s political career will be as dead as John Edwards.
In 1997, President Clinton slashed capital gains taxes from 28% to 20% – and coincidentally, that’s when the economy really started to pick up. The 1993 tax cuts softened the recovery from the 1991-1992 recession, but the economy didn’t truly pick up speed until Clinton enacted those “reckless tax cuts for the rich.”
Why do you love hyperbole so much?
FEMA screwed up in several ways, but none of those compare to the idiocy of Nagin and Blanco’s utter failure to plan. Compare that with Florida, which has a comprehensive emergency management plan started by Gov. Chiles and completed by Gov. Bush that has already ensured that Florida is prepared for a hurricane strike. Nagin and Blanco couldn’t even follow what plans they had.
Yes, because a biased polling sample in an off-year election obviously means something.
The only poll that matters is in November of next year, and the Democrats are going to get another rude awakening then…
“In 1997, President Clinton slashed capital gains taxes from 28% to 20% – and coincidentally, that’s when the economy really started to pick up. The 1993 tax cuts softened the recovery from the 1991-1992 recession, but the economy didn’t truly pick up speed until Clinton enacted those “reckless tax cuts for the rich.—
You’re spinning your wheels. I know about the capital gains tax cuts, which by the way were imposed during a time of peace and when deficits were all but erased. And the steady growth of the economy was one of, if not the primary reason Clinton was re-elected in a landslide in 1996.
Basically, your premise is that economic growth is the sole product of the tax policy of the hour? I am hearing that right. The tech bubble of the late 90’s had nothing to do with that era’s economic growth…it was all the 1997 capital gains tax cut?….just as the current economic growth is all the response of Bush’s tax cuts with zero influence from other market forces? If you honestly believe this tripe, I recommend you head immediately back to Econ 101. Even if you found the most ideological supply-side Econ Professor in America, he/she would still be able to expand your economic worldview beyond the rudimentary tax cut=prosperity status where it stands right now.
“FEMA screwed up in several ways, but none of those compare to the idiocy of Nagin and Blanco’s utter failure to plan. ”
I won’t dispute their failures, but FEMA’s inability to land a helicopter or a vehicle inside New Orleans city limits for four days rises to a level of incompetence that makes Nagin and Blanco look like seasoned pros. Furthermore, Bush has conceded this was his screw-up. Much as you try to spin this to your advantage, nobody’s listening. The people you’re saying should be held harmless are admitting their guilt. You’re not gonna win this one….you should go back to assuring us that Turdblossom “did nothing wrong” in the Valerie Plame case.
“The only poll that matters is in November of next year, and the Democrats are going to get another rude awakening then…”
I’m certainly not gonna tell you that you’re wrong there. The hapless, uninspired leadership of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi makes the Tom Daschle-Richard Gephardt era seem like the good old days. That leadership will always keep skeptical Americans from fully divesting themselves in the Democratic Party, as disgusted as many of them rightfully are with the Republicans. On the other hand, you guys are trying so damn hard to go against majority opinion on every issue that even the Democrats could prove less revolting an alternative this time. Only time will tell.