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The tax cut of the G.W. Bush years set the stage for an adamant demand for "fiscal responsibility", because the tax cuts themselves represented an abandonment of that principle. This is true especially of the second round of tax cuts for the wealthy, which even caused G.W. Bush to question what was being proposed. He was quoted roughly as saying in a White House meeting, "Didn't we just take care of those people?, meaning the rich.
Now, the Republicans want to collect on their gambit of the Bush years: ending any hope of using the leveling hand of national government to ameliorate the brutalities of our economic system. Having assured that government does not have enough money to carry out the laws on the books, they now demand that it come into line with their tax policies. If this were to happen, further tax cuts could then be demanded (deficits would not be so bad if they were Republican deficits and served their purposes). In this manner, the Democrats could be stripped, for generations perhaps, of their reason to be, protecting and supporting government programs and paying some modest attention to the great middle of income earners, those neither rich nor direly poor.
The Republicans have dealt themselves a losing hand and they are determined to play it out past closing time. Ross Douthat, a Republican sympathizer who writes for the NY Times, sums up the arguments against the right's agenda much better than I could:
"The public loves to vote for leaner government and then recoil from the reality. Already there’s a backlash against conservative governors in states like Wisconsin and Ohio who are perceived to be cutting too much too fast. When Ryan and his colleagues release what promises to be an ambitious plan for entitlement reform next week, they’ll be putting a bull’s-eye on their party’s back."
Well put. In fact, Ryan said Sunday that the Republicans are going to propose more than 4 trillion dollars in cuts over the next ten years of Federal budgets. That's enough to hurt every man, woman, child and dog or cat in America. Watch out for the goldfish.
The fact is, there are major elements of the so called welfare state that appeal mightily to those in states that usually go red. Billions of dollars in farm subsidies would be one of those welfare programs the Republicans love more than most of them love their mamas. Whether there is any seriousness, beyond political gainsmanship, in the Republican efforts will easily be known: are the cuts in their favorite welfare programs at all proportional to those that don’t primarily benefit their states? The answer will be, no. The budget cutting excuse, for politicians on the right, is mainly about cutting other people’s favorite programs, not their own. The depth of the Federal deficit and the growth of entitlement programs, however, makes that very difficult this time around. Without tax increases, without a growing economy, cutting is going to hurt and voters are going to scream.
As for the absence of "major" candidates in the field for the Republican nomination, these are intelligent, experienced politicians who know that, come Nov., 2012, some Republican stands a great chance of being sacrificed, not elected. The smart money is holding back, waiting for an Obama mistake of major size and to see which way the wind is blowing closer to primary time. The dumb money is all in.
This is not surprising: if you are a third tier candidate, someone judged as least likely to be nominated, then the whole campaign is a risk with a potential gain win or loose, if you make yourself into a credible national force. The people at the bottom see only the road up. The people who are more or less automatically taken as serious candidates don’t want to run this year and next just to prove they can do it, just to face a big defeat. With the fringe elements of the Republican party on the way to becoming mainstream, the risks of running are even higher, since presidential candidates also have to consider future runs in other years than the immediate one.
2010 had the smell and taste of a Republican year that was unmistakable. When you threw in the Tea Pot people with the hundreds of millions being spent by outside campaign groups to undermine Obama, some sort of Republican gains appeared to be inevitable. The so called major candidates will be jumping up and down to get in the race if they sense that is the mood for 2012. As yet, the verdict on that is out.
Doug Terry
4.4.11
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