Well, it likely is defeatist to some extent, yes!
Fannie and Freddie was in fact passed with tremendous Republican support...and it started under Newt’s watch. Should Newt have been perfect? No, but my point is that even under governments with a conservative mix in them like as you mentioned, Reagan and Newt’s times, the leftward march went on steadily in America. The conservatism of those days really changed nothing at all in the course of the nation.
I don’t think the Left’s movement is small - or even starts small in the manner of pursuing its issues. It is a world-wide internationalist movement...socialism is the paradigm of the world right now. Post World War 2, Europe went hard left rapidly into what we called soft-socialism and America began a similar but much slower transformation into a socialist society. We are catching up with the where the rest of the west has already gone. The west was dominant post-WW2 and has developed the world system we now largely operate under, the Soviets were there for awhile but they were much weaker overall and Russia has always had trouble creating wealth.
America’s fall into socialism has been coming for 75 years. But maybe we shouldn’t curse it too much...there seems to be a rising new power in the face of the very weak, rudderless west mired in the sclerosis of its socialist paradigm. Islam and Shariah may be the new force that dominates the world, if the west is as corrupt, craven and ignorant as it appears to be...and that will be a very dark age indeed.
I don’t disagree that international socialism and Islam are the two strongest global ideologies right now. But capitalism and free markets are still in the game. Lots of Asian countries have become more capitalist even as Europe became more socialist.
Reagan and Gingrich did not control the whole government. That’s why the leftward march went on. So, it’s still not a knock on conservatism. Yes, conservatism has hard a time getting elected in big enough numbers to enact complete change. But that should still be the goal.
Stepped-up executive regulations under Clinton which used Carter’s 1977 Community Reinvestment Act as their basis were the main drivers of the housing crisis, not anything Newt enacted.
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-cra-debate-a-users-guide-2009-6
How could a piece of 1977 legislation be significant to the deterioration of mortgage standards 25 years later?
The CRA was not a static piece of legislation. It evolved over the years from a relatively hands-off law focused on process into one that focused on outcomes. Regulators, beginning in the mid-nineties, began to hold banks accountable in serious ways. Banks responded to this new accountability by increasing the CRA loans they made, a move that entailed relaxing their lending standards.