The Leftosphere and the Rightosphere

Even in 1995, many in the Democratic Party knew that the demographic trends were in their favor.  However, with less than half of the kindergarten students being whites, the Republicans have no chance of long term survival.  What is even worse is that President Bush, Karl Rove, and many in the Repubican Party have bowed to political correctness and refuse to admit that virtually  every illegal aliens put on the path to citizenship will eventually be a Democratic voters and demanding a huge array of government services paid for by taxes on rich (read white) Americans.

15 years ago, the idea was patriorism/security, limited government and fiscal prudence. Who can argue with that?

But that's not what happened when the Right achieved ascendency under Bush's leadership.

The policies implemented have been bad across the board.  The question is why?  The answer, is they weren't consistent with the ideas of limited government and fiscal prudence.

The next question is, why weren't the policies implemented consistent with those policies above and what were they consistent with? 

On 9/11, as I watched the towers collapsed I remember poundering what the response would be.  I anticipated, perhaps a thorough clean up of the Middle East on a massive scale.  We had the international backing.  I anticipated Bush calling for the draft on 9/12.  And on 9/12, the nation would have given it to him. 

Why the draft? Because on 9/12 we didn't know for sure what the manpower needs would be to fix the Mideast a year and ahalf out hence - and if you need two million boots on the ground in two years, you have to start the draft almost immidiately.  We didn't know if we would have to occupy nations a year and a half hence or have threatre size battle fronts as in WWII or if we did, that China or NK wouldn't stirr things up in the East Asian theatre (recall that there was a big clash with China over a spy plane incident only months before 9/11) .  A draft would have made Bush an immensely powerful president.  In my mind, the lack of boots on the ground accounts for the failure of all policies pursued in the Middle East -  be it Afghanistan or Iraq (although, Afghanistan should have been completed long before starting things up in Iraq, if starting things up in Iraq was indeed wise).

So why didn't Bush pursue a draft?  In my mind, the surge's limited success has proved General Sinseki's manpower estimates as correct.  Bush's Mideast policy is hanging by a thread because he didn't have enough manpower.  On 9/12 everyone was a patriot - even Democrats would have supported a draft on 9/12. 

So why no call for a draft on 9/12. 

This has mystified me for ages. But when the Dubia Ports deal came up, I realized that Bush wasn't that concerned with the security issue.  So what was his top concern? For Bush what topped the issue of patriotism?

The answer is tax cuts for the well healed.  You can't have a draft on one hand and tax cuts on the other - its too great of a policy diachotomy. 

Limited Government and fiscal prudence has always made sense to me  because makes governement and society more efficient and thus left more purchasing power in the hands of the people, creating demand and spuring economic growth. (I've never believed in 'Supply-Side' economics.  GM doesn't want to 'supply' a 60mpg car because American's wouldn't buy such dinky cars, not because it wasn't feasable -since they already exist in Europe). 

What Bush has pursued is 'supply side' economics, which works great as rhetoric, but in the real world is a total flop.  The policy concentrates wealth. Concentrated wealth drains demand from the economy as fewer and fewer people have purchasing power -  Donald Trump can only buy so many cars, so if no one else has money, there's no demand for cars etc...  To compensate for the tax cuts to facilitate wealth for the wealthy, Bush had to borrow money from Chinese communist dictators and their central bank to facilitate demand (they now have a trillion dollars of our debt), which came from people refinancing their houses. The reduced payments released money for purchasing goods but when that was up, well you know the whole credit fiasco.

So the real problem for conservatives is bad policy.

The reason for the bad policy was that their was a policy priority to make the rich richer.  That policy trumped patriotism and security and the twin concepts of small government and fiscal prudence (Bush spent money like a drunken sailor). 

If Bush's policies hadn't been so bad, there would be no problem right now for conservatives. 

In essence the problme is one of priorities.  The entire conservative movement is sliding down the drain out of the want to make billionaires richer.   That idea is not necessarily bad, but making it the top priority has definitely proven to be bad.  Had we shrunk the government and balanced the books first we could have given permanent tax reductions without the debt nor the undermining of demand.

I know there will be people here to criticize this view here.  All I can do is point to what 's happening now.  You can argue I'm wrong, and probably best me in the argument. fine, but that won't change what's going on in the real world. And that  won't stop the conservative slide.

I suppose, I'm a libertarian conservative.  Personally, I think the problem with the conservative movement is that it's too beholden to short sighted billionares and even shorter sighted religious leaders. Patriotism, limited government and fiscal prudence ought to be enough  to stand on their own. Now they are drowning with those dance partners that brung them to the dance.

I, too, really never believed in trickle-down economics. It seems to me, if tax cuts were given to the vast middle class, "trickle-up" economics would follow. In such a case, the business class would have no choice but to respond (grow) or go out of business.

I do find one fault with your analysis though, when you say..."To compensate for the tax cuts to facilitate wealth for the wealthy, Bush had to borrow money from Chinese communist dictators and their central bank to facilitate demand." It is true China, as well as Japan, do in large measure finance our deficits, but they are not the largest financiers of our deficits. By far the largest is the U.S. government itself in the form of massive savings accounts for programs like Social Security and Medicare. It will be these programs that will pay the price of our growing deficit first, not our foreign financiers.

But, hey! Since when has the future economic security of the American public bothered any presidential candidate when it comes time to pass out the goodies during an election year? After all, it's not their responsibility to addrees this issue, it's the voters' responsibility.

ex animo

davidfarrar