Deep Thought: Conservatives are Stupid and Dishonest (Even with Themselves)
I’m enjoying the new commitment conservatives and Republicans to fiscal conservatism, conveniently dawning on them, now that the Democrats are running the show. Let’s take a look at their record, and decide whether this is something anyone with a brain should take seriously. :
From 2001 until 2006 the Republicans controlled the Legislature and the presidency. Throughout this time we were told the economy was the “greatest story never told”. At the same time, the government was clearly operating in deficit territory. In fact, according to the US Bureau of Public Debt, the US government issued over $500 billion of new new debt per year every year since 2003 (and came really close in fiscal year 2002):
09/30/2008 $10,024,724,896,912.49
09/30/2007 $9,007,653,372,262.48
09/30/2006 $8,506,973,899,215.23
09/30/2005 $7,932,709,661,723.50
09/30/2004 $7,379,052,696,330.32
09/30/2003 $6,783,231,062,743.62
09/30/2002 $6,228,235,965,597.16
09/30/2001 $5,807,463,412,200.06
09/30/2000 $5,674,178,209,886.86So — the Republicans clearly have no fundamental issue with deficit spending. Then it must be something else.
Read more at the original link.
Or is deficit math too heady for you? Well Jane Hamsher breaks it down quite simply for the mathphobes among us: “For an encore, I’m anxiously awaiting a lecture on the virtues of thrift from the party who brought you the $800 billion dollar war and the budget they refused to allow under Congressional oversight.” or to put it more bluntly, looking to Republicans and conservatives for guidance when it comes to fiscal priorities and austerity is like going to OJ Simpson for marriage counseling with a focus on anger management.
Finally, Republicans and conservatives don’t seem to have grasped the fact that they lost. ENORMOUSLY. Obama won the presidency with 10 percent more votes that any other president in history: no brag, just fact. Republicans like to pretend that obama’s margin was quite narrow, while at the same time pretending Bush had a mandate with 51% of the vote in 2004. Unfortunately for the GOP and their sycophants, Obama’s margin was wider than Mr. Bush’s, so if 51% was a mandate… well, you do the math. it’s not hard unless you’re a conservative.
And let’s have a look at the maps to get a visual for how thoroughly fucked the Republicans and their allies are. Here’s the US in 2002:
and here’s the US in 2008:
There are three states left that remain solidly Republican, and one that leans Republican. Ten states are “competitive”, including Texas, once a GOP stronghold. Bright red Oklahoma now leans Democratic. There are no more GOP representatives and only one of two moderate Republican Senators from New England. Most of the industrial mid-western states have also turned blue. These states have been hardest hit by the Republicans’ mismanagement of the economy: how do you think it looks back home in Indiana when your representative says NO to the stimulus funding that could save your job? 34 of 50 states are solidly Democratic now. what does that say to you about the popularity of the Republican party or the support for their ideas and policies?
i never thought I’d be quoting Steny Hoyer, who is an appallingly bad Democrat, but even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile:
“I am hard put,” he said, “to take the advice or counsel of people who have followed policies that have put us deeply into debt and led to the weakest economy since the 1930s.”
I’m even more hard put to take the advice of people who not only put us deeply into debt, but who represent so few Americans. Alaska is home to just over 600,000 people. That’s not even as many people as the city of Philadelphia alone. And the same goes for those wide-open and practically-empty states like Utah, Wyoming, and Nebraska (where weed, by the way, is practically legal): those states may be deeply red, but they do not even begin to balance out the majority of this country, which is clearly shifted to the left (if only because of the incompetence of the GOP, and that’s a doubtful proposition.
I realize it’s hard to accept new concepts, but the facts are:
the republicans lost almost everything;
the conservative ideology is bankrupt and bankrupting;
no one cares what the conservatives think anymore;
and given that the GOP has driven moderates out of the party…
They are going to win, first, because Congressional Republicans are predominantly Traditionalists. Republicans from the coasts and the upper Midwest are largely gone. Among the remaining members, the popular view is that Republicans have been losing because they haven’t been conservative enough.
Second, Traditionalists have the institutions. Over the past 40 years, the Conservative Old Guard has built up a movement of activist groups, donor networks, think tanks and publicity arms. The reformists, on the other hand, have no institutions.
There is not yet an effective Republican Leadership Council to nurture modernizing conservative ideas. There is no moderate Club for Growth, supporting centrist Republicans. The Public Interest, which used to publish an array of public policy ideas, has closed. Reformist Republican donors don’t seem to exist. Any publication or think tank that headed in an explicitly reformist direction would be pummeled by its financial backers. National candidates who begin with reformist records — Giuliani, Romney or McCain — immediately tack right to be acceptable to the power base….
This narrative happens to be mostly bogus at this point. Most professional conservatives are lifelong Washingtonians who live comfortably as organization heads, lobbyists and publicists. Their supposed heroism consists of living inside the large conservative cocoon and telling each other things they already agree with. But this embattled-movement mythology provides a rationale for crushing dissent, purging deviationists and enforcing doctrinal purity. It has allowed the old leaders to define who is a true conservative and who is not. It has enabled them to maintain control of (an ever more rigid) movement.
In short, the Republican Party will probably veer right in the years ahead, and suffer more defeats. Then, finally, some new Reformist donors and organizers will emerge. They will build new institutions, new structures and new ideas, and the cycle of conservative ascendance will begin again.
… the hard right will continue to propose “ideas” that were novel thirty years ago, but are now about as up-to-date and appetizing as Arnold Schwarznegger’s 60 year old flabby-abs…
… and as a result, even more people will abandon a failed and flailing party that represents 4 states, and just barely at that. So yes, GOP and conservatives, go ahead and throw spitballs like the children you are. Have your tantrum and vote NO on everything. The Democratic Party does not need your help to pass bills anymore, and whether you realize it or not, you are between a rock and a hard place: vote with the Democrats and Rush Limbaugh will eat you for breakfast while the Club for Growth funds a primary opponent, or vote against the Democrats and face the voters, who are suffering and want to see some results. These guys seem to know who butters the bread:
There was only one Republican in the Senate that voted to confirm Geithner that didn’t sit on one of these three [Banking, Budget, Finance, ed.] committees. But what does that tell us?
It tells us that Republicans are more interested in having some influence over policy than they are in trying to filibuster everything. Geithner was confirmed with sixty votes. It normally takes sixty votes to do anything in the Senate. The Republicans could have blocked Geithner, but they didn’t.
The same thing is going to happen to bills that come out of the Banking, Budget, and Finance Committees. Not all of them, mind you, but most of the bills will be crafted with some input from Republicans, and they’re not going to vote against their own compromises. …
Think about it. The Republicans have no gavels. They can’t set the agenda. Their ability to bring pork home to their states is limited. They cannot accomplish anything unless they are co-sponsors of bills. If a Republican senator wants to be able to run for reelection on anything but a platform of opposing everything, they’re going to have to be a partner in creating legislation. The real work in Congress is done in committee. The GOP cannot sustain filibusters when they have some moderate members and some members with partial authorship.
Keep lecturing about all the spending guys: at least our spending is for the benefit of Americans at home, not the benefit of a Middle eastern nation that doesn’t even want us there anymore.
Get used to your minority guys. We won, and that’s that. a Booman notes:
Their back is already broken, and they know it. All that remains is for them to get used to it.
2 Responses to “Deep Thought: Conservatives are Stupid and Dishonest (Even with Themselves)”
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February 7th, 2009 at 10:24 am
can you explain this to me?
“Obama won the presidency with 10 percent more votes that any other president in history”
I compared him to William H. Harrison and i dont understand how you got your numbers.
Barack
popular
52.87 - 47.13 = 5.74 diff
E.
67.8 - 32.2 = 35.6 diff
Harrison
popular
52.87 - 47.13 = 5.74 diff
E.
79.6 - 20.4 = 59.2 diff
Thanks
February 9th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
that’s a good question. I got the info from openleft.com, who i linked to in the original post. I’ll ask them if i have a chance, but as you may imagine from the recent library posts, I have tons of stuff going on in meatworld. You may want to email them directly, they have contact over there.
if you find out, please email me again and let me know how it turned out.