You make a good point, BUT: If “conservative” candidates just parrot the libertarian economic nonsense, then “conservatism” is going down the tubes, at least on the GOP side of things.
The GOP can’t fix anything if they are delusional about what caused the problems. Sadly, even after Wall Street has screwed the country over once again, many conservatives haven’t broken free of their libertarian bias to get a grip on what happened. They want to blame the CRA and poor folks for all the problems and just blithely ignore overwhelming evidence to the contrary,
Try running a “conservative” candidate who tells the electorate that gov’t needs to cut back its expenditures AFTER the gov’t has spent trillions bailing out Wall Street. People aren’t going to buy that crap anymore. Sensible people on the right AND the left are fed up with business as usual. And the ones MOST guilty of toadying to Wall Street is the GOP. That is why McCain lost the election and why you have a liberal in the White House now. Who in their right friggin’ mind would trust a Republican to bust out Wall Street. Not me. And not enough people to push McCain into the White House.
And what is the right wing line on this? Well, that durn McCain is a RINO and if he had been more “conservative” he would have won. But what they mean by “more conservative” is really “more libertarian” and more against gov’t fixing problems they helped create.
Eight years ago I left the GOP (after 30 years) because Bush signed off that stupid Bankruptcy Reform bill that chose rich bankers, usury, and bad lending practices over everyday Americans who were were struggling trying to stay afloat. I came out on FR and did a post on it. March 15, 2001. Some people thought then, and now, that I am some kind of pinko but other people have caught on.
Karl Denniger over at Market Ticker dot com, and people at Naked Capitalism and even some at the Wall Street Journal itself are starting to question the “free market” paradigm as it has been used in this country. These people are not communists, or socialists, class enviests or even leftists. They are simply realists who recognize that the system is threatened when income and wealth inequality has gotten as high as it has and that when the average joe on Main Street feels like the system don’t work for him, we are trouble as a country. Mark Faber of the doom/gloom thing isn’t a closet commie. He realizes it.
The GOP has been way too easy on its candidates. All someone (typically a durn dumb*ss) has to do is come out with some Rush Limbaugh type strawmen and the GOP base starts having spontaneous orgasms. Let somebody say “we need to reduce the size of gov’t” and the GOP base starts drooling. Forget the hows,whens, wheres, etc. Then when they get elected, they are powerless. BECAUSE, the other thing they tend to believe is that gov’t can’t do anything right and shouldn’t even try in the first place. Put gov’t nihilists in power and don’t be surprised when squat happens.
I remember a freeper meeting I went to once where the local conservative candidate came to speak, and you might as well have been talking to an empty head. I was polite, and like I told the guy, I wasn’t there to debate him or interfere with his presentation, so I pretty much shut up. But all he did was trot out one strawman after another for everybody to go ga-ga over. It was pathetic.
Conservatives believe in limited gov’t NOT no government. Conservatives tend to think you can overdo anything, but that gov’t doing its legitimate job is a MUST. It is not optional. To not do your duty is called dereliction of duty, and sadly, that is where the GOP has been over the last few decades.
But when you look at it, NOT doing your duty in gov’t, is really a libertarian thing, not a conservative thing. This is why I keep saying, conservatives in the GOP need to purge their party of the libertarians, once and for all. If some clown can’t get behind social security, medicare, minimum wages, and other basic needed regulations, then what you are dealing with is really a libertarian, not a conservative. If a person believes in a “flat tax”, they are probably either a libertarian, or influenced by them. Hoffman, sadly, believes in a flat tax rate. Gee whiz, tell people in a depression that fairness dictates they pay the same tax rate as a Wall Street tycoon, and boy are you going to reel the voters in. (/s) sadly, the GOP is about one well spoken democrat away from permanent minority status. All, for that nincompoop 1%.
When they run on their own platform, as libertarians, they usually get about 1% of the vote. Whoopeeee! Keep them in the GOP and maybe you will eventually get down to that idiotic 1% level, too.
parsy, who just ate some grits and sausage and is going to try to go back to sleep.
The article is pay, but the comments are free and are pretty decent Fears of a New Bubble as Cash Pours In
There’s a critical piece to the puzzle and you’re ignoring it. (Don’t overlook the big picture.)
One of the primary strategies of liberal activists is to create a wedge within the conservatives and attempt to drive it deep with misinformation. (These liberal activists fool themselves, thinking language can create reality.)
Whenever the supposed “rift within the GOP” is repeated, wisdom requires consideration of these underhanded, snivelling tactics. Tactics perpetrated by leftists whose greatest obstacle is the fact that the worthlessness of their ideology is most visible when it is viewed in plain sight.
parsy, who might not be aware of his own internal conflicts