What Republicans Think

NYTimes ^ | 6/16/2012 | David Brooks

[RoosterRedux]

In the 1950s, Dwight Eisenhower reconciled Republicans to the 20th-century welfare state. Between Ike and George W. Bush, Republican leaders basically accepted that model. Sure, they wanted to cut taxes and devolve power, but, in practice, they sustained the system, often funding it more lavishly than the Democrats.

But many Republicans have now come to the conclusion that the welfare-state model is in its death throes. Yuval Levin expressed the sentiment perfectly in a definitive essay for The Weekly Standard called “Our Age of Anxiety”:

“We have a sense that the economic order we knew in the second half of the 20th century may not be coming back at all — that we have entered a new era for which we have not been well prepared. ... We are, rather, on the cusp of the fiscal and institutional collapse of our welfare state, which threatens not only the future of government finances but also the future of American capitalism.”

To Republican eyes, the first phase of that collapse is playing out right now in Greece, Spain and Italy — cosseted economies, unmanageable debt, rising unemployment, falling living standards.

[rbg81]

The Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) employed by Central Banks is the new model for keeping the Welfare State intact. Basically, if interest rates are near zero (or even negative vs. actual inflation), the Government can suddenly afford to borrow unlimited amount of $$ while paying negligible interest. It also is designed to stimulate consumption. While this may sound great, ZIRP is a hidden tax on savings and investment.

ZIRP has also been aided and abetted by the crisis in Europe. Safe haven countries like the US, Japan, and Germany can pull ZIRP off. Countries like Greece, Spain, and Italy can’t. But, of course, those countries will need bailing out by the ZIRP countries.

In the end, the whole thing is one big, distorted mess. And its probably just the beginning as a higher & higher percentage of US citizens (& non-citizens) are in the wagon instead of pulling it. Its unsustainable, but the paradox is these distortions will cause the welfare state to grow a lot more before it implodes (like a sun going super-nova). When it finally implodes, there’s going to be major social unrest. The Politicians know this and will do anything to kick the can down the road—no matter how counterproductive or stupid.

[the invisib1e hand]

Or even, “What Republicans? Think!”

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

3) The next problem was Herbert Hoover, whose administration understood economics, but not people. Had his economic program continued the economy would have recovered much faster, but many Americans were starving and needed immediate relief. To his credit, he did eventually begin to provide this, but by then it was too late.

This resulted in not just the political ruination of the Republican party, but the loss of a stable economic system.

I agree with a lot of what you say, but I no longer have much faith in the view expressed in your item #3. In reality, although Hoover was an anticommunist and ended his days being viewed as the heartless conservative who caused the Depression, Hoover was actually favored by FDR in his younger days. And when it comes to government spending, Hoover set the records that FDR broke. The problem wasn’t that Hoover didn’t do the New Deal before the Democrats could, the problem was that he did. And, just as Bush led to Obama, Hoover’s policy failures led to FDR who pursued exactly the same approach to the Depression that Hoover had.

And just as FDR’s policies never ended the Depression until he resorted to capitalism under the label “Dr. Win-the-War” replacing “Dr. New Deal,” Obama has done what GWB did before him, worse, and got worse results while vociferously blaming his own policies’ failures on his predecessor exactly as FDR did before him.

You are echoing FDR’s critique of Hoover, which was precisely the wrong way to look at it. The New Deal never cured the Depression - and never would have, no matter how long it was tried.

And we’ll never get out of the Obama “Recovery” as long as we continue Obama governance.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

3) The next problem was Herbert Hoover, whose administration understood economics, but not people. Had his economic program continued the economy would have recovered much faster, but many Americans were starving and needed immediate relief. To his credit, he did eventually begin to provide this, but by then it was too late.

This resulted in not just the political ruination of the Republican party, but the loss of a stable economic system.

I agree with a lot of what you say, but I no longer have much faith in the view expressed in your item #3. In reality, although Hoover was an anticommunist and ended his days being viewed as the heartless conservative who caused the Depression, Hoover was actually favored by FDR in his younger days. And when it comes to government spending, Hoover set the records that FDR broke. The problem wasn’t that Hoover didn’t do the New Deal before the Democrats could, the problem was that he did. And, just as Bush led to Obama, Hoover’s policy failures led to FDR who pursued exactly the same approach to the Depression that Hoover had.

And just as FDR’s policies never ended the Depression until he resorted to capitalism under the label “Dr. Win-the-War” replacing “Dr. New Deal,” Obama has done what GWB did before him, worse, and got worse results while vociferously blaming his own policies’ failures on his predecessor exactly as FDR did before him.

You are echoing FDR’s critique of Hoover, which was precisely the wrong way to look at it. The New Deal never cured the Depression - and never would have, no matter how long it was tried.

And we’ll never get out of the Obama “Recovery” as long as we continue Obama governance.

[IronJack]

We are, rather, on the cusp of the fiscal and institutional collapse of our welfare state, which threatens not only the future of government finances but also the future of American capitalism.”

... which was its goal all along.

[mo]

It is the Federal Government, the mindset of those which serve in its bureaucracies, and those that continue to “fund” it in the face of inter-generational indebitude that are the greatest “threat” to these United States.

In that reality, the beast itself still tries to convince We the People that a pack of 7th century ragheads with fan belts wrapped around their scalps is a bigger threat.

[expat2]

Good article by Brooks. Good clear exposition of the difference between the Leftist world model and the Tea Party world model. And he is right about the Euro fiasco affecting the majority view in the US.

[andyk]

I thought it was satire, until I read to the end

Heh, I thought the same thing. It was so outrageous it couldn't have been serious. Alas, there are people out there like it. I loved the bit about tax rates up to 100%.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

While Hoover can take a lot of the blame for that, the 72nd congress, with a Democrat House, did everything in its power to block a lot of what Hoover wanted.

A good question can be raised as to whether Hoover was being pragmatic, with the intent that such actions were temporary, or that he was in agreement that a new economic system was needed.

[LuvFreeRepublic]

Great read, but I disagree with what he said about Romney. Romney won't make any changes, he will just slow the crash of America down.

[Wonder Warthog]

"1) TR was an “aggressive expansionist”, who saw American power finally able to assert itself on the world stage. He saw the US as being far too ‘federal’, a union of powerful states, instead of ruled by a powerful central government like other nations, which he wanted. International colonialism was like the game of Risk, a way to enlarge power and influence."

Sorry. Your starting point/president is half a century late. Try Lincoln, who also wanted a "strong central government", and went to war to get it. TR was only emulating the first Republican president.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Different philosophies involved. Lincoln could be described as a “classicalist”, best described by the Lincoln scholar Harry V. Jaffa, in ‘Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates’ (1959)(a very good read, btw):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_V._Jaffa

Whereas T. Roosevelt was strongly Progressive. H.L. Mencken, at their height of T. Roosevelt’s popularity, wrote a vanity press book, just for his friends, that could have gotten him into serious trouble. On one page, it had a transcript from speeches by TR, opposing it, translated (by Mencken himself) text from Friedrich Nietzsche; clearly demonstrating that TR had plagiarized Nietzsche wholesale.

In that Nietzsche’s greatest influences have been in the subjects of existentialism, nihilism and postmodernism, this casts some very peculiar lights onto TR’s beliefs and actions.