A Great Set Up?
Most people enter politics because they want to win. Sure, they may make a show of “public service” but as the behavior of most politicians demonstrates, they want to acquire and keep power. To do that they need to win. Political parties are established to get their candidates to win and advance the agenda the party believes in. If that party and the candidates within it do not have any guiding moral principles, winning becomes everything and any means are acceptable to that end.
Consider also that the leaders within a party are not as short sighted as most politicians, who cannot see past the next election or even this week’s poll. It is their job to ensure their party continues to win and they do whatever is necessary to ensure their dominance for years, if not decades. It has been clear since the sixties that the Democrat party has been much better at this than the Republican party. Winning is not the final goal, complete destruction of their opponents is. Certainly since the nomination of Judge Bork, the personal vilification of the opposition aided by a media that agrees with most of their worldview, the Democrats have nearly perfected their brand of smash-mouth politics. In their efforts they have lied, accepted intolerable levels of corruption among their own, distorted the very language of politics and have enacted policies that have been by any objective standard miserable failures. Irrespective of these things, they have been electorally successful, particularly on the national level. The Republicans have never come close to the supermajority they enjoyed last year and since the New Deal, have rarely held majorities at all.
I have said these things not to excuse Republicans, whose behavior has been far from angelic, but to propose a scenario in which the Democrat party may establish itself, at least at the national level, as the only party of consequence. Many of us have become educated to the fact that a government solution to a problem is recipe for disaster and that government spending is going to lead to financial Armageddon eventually. We now borrow nearly forty cents out of every dollar we spend. We complain about skyrocketing deficits yet this administration is going to double it again. We know that Medicare is bankrupt and Social Security’s demise has been moved forward by decades, placing the explosion of that financial time bomb within the next ten years. We are aware that the government uses various accounting tricks to make things seem better than they are. Even the financial community itself is starting to follow the lead of David Walker, former comptroller of the US, in warning about the “unsustainable” nature of all this.
Not all politicians are stupid. Some, perhaps, but not all. They may live in a bubble but most of them know what is going on. Sure, some of them may ignore it, others hope it doesn’t happen until they’re gone and a few are doing what they can to warn us. Then there are those who are trying to bring the system down. For them, the trick is to bring it down in a way they don’t get blamed for it. Democrats are very good at this. Chris Dodd and Barny Frank, in collusion with Fannie Mae and ACORN, were largely responsible for the housing collapse but since it happened during President Bush’s tenure, the Republicans got the blame. Ted Kennedy was responsible for creating HMO’s yet it was the Democrats that tied Republicans to those insurers and others, demonizing them to pass Health Care Reform. Those are just two examples and does not include their penchant for creating a crisis where none exists. Again, Republicans have tried to play the game and have created their own set of problems but the Democrats are so much better at it.
By all accounts, the Republicans are going to make great gains in November and in 2012, perhaps they will have the presidency as well. The problem is, the financial situation we have created will require the kind of drastic action anathema to politicians. Our whole political class operates on the principle that is exists to give goodies to the people, “bring home the bacon”, create new “rights” and entitlements. Actual cuts, much less the elimination of whole programs and departments as well as the reductions in benefits that will be necessary to keep us solvent go against all the momentum Washington has built up for eighty years. What happens if in the middle to the end of this decade it all comes apart? If the Democrats filibuster any attempts to cut taxes to help the economy or cut programs or benefits to reduce or eliminate the deficit and fix our broken “entitlements”? The current Democrat leadership has mashed down the accelerator as we approach the cliff. If they bail out and let the Republicans take the wheel knowing there is no chance to avoid a catastrophe, the Republicans will be blamed for the mess just as they were after the 1929 crash. They will be reduced to a small minority for decades and the march to Washington’s totalitarian control will be rapidly completed.
Other than the timing, and I wouldn’t put it past Democrat operatives to provide the catalyst for the catastrophe, you may be saying it won’t happen because we are so much better educated today. Really? Maybe you are because you have put in the effort but even now there are 45% of the people that approve of the president’s job even with all we know. The American people have been trained like Pavlov’s dogs to look to government to solve problems and if there are problems, it must be the party in power’s fault. The vast majority of the people in this country, after going through government schools and with the attention span of a gnat, are not going to think all this through. They are going to have a knee jerk reaction and will be susceptible to a new messiah who may make this president look tame in comparison. Only if we get a hold of our neighbors and somehow convince them that, as Reagan said, government is the problem, not the solution, will we have any hope of thwarting such a devious plan.
Consider also that the leaders within a party are not as short sighted as most politicians, who cannot see past the next election or even this week’s poll. It is their job to ensure their party continues to win and they do whatever is necessary to ensure their dominance for years, if not decades. It has been clear since the sixties that the Democrat party has been much better at this than the Republican party. Winning is not the final goal, complete destruction of their opponents is. Certainly since the nomination of Judge Bork, the personal vilification of the opposition aided by a media that agrees with most of their worldview, the Democrats have nearly perfected their brand of smash-mouth politics. In their efforts they have lied, accepted intolerable levels of corruption among their own, distorted the very language of politics and have enacted policies that have been by any objective standard miserable failures. Irrespective of these things, they have been electorally successful, particularly on the national level. The Republicans have never come close to the supermajority they enjoyed last year and since the New Deal, have rarely held majorities at all.
I have said these things not to excuse Republicans, whose behavior has been far from angelic, but to propose a scenario in which the Democrat party may establish itself, at least at the national level, as the only party of consequence. Many of us have become educated to the fact that a government solution to a problem is recipe for disaster and that government spending is going to lead to financial Armageddon eventually. We now borrow nearly forty cents out of every dollar we spend. We complain about skyrocketing deficits yet this administration is going to double it again. We know that Medicare is bankrupt and Social Security’s demise has been moved forward by decades, placing the explosion of that financial time bomb within the next ten years. We are aware that the government uses various accounting tricks to make things seem better than they are. Even the financial community itself is starting to follow the lead of David Walker, former comptroller of the US, in warning about the “unsustainable” nature of all this.
Not all politicians are stupid. Some, perhaps, but not all. They may live in a bubble but most of them know what is going on. Sure, some of them may ignore it, others hope it doesn’t happen until they’re gone and a few are doing what they can to warn us. Then there are those who are trying to bring the system down. For them, the trick is to bring it down in a way they don’t get blamed for it. Democrats are very good at this. Chris Dodd and Barny Frank, in collusion with Fannie Mae and ACORN, were largely responsible for the housing collapse but since it happened during President Bush’s tenure, the Republicans got the blame. Ted Kennedy was responsible for creating HMO’s yet it was the Democrats that tied Republicans to those insurers and others, demonizing them to pass Health Care Reform. Those are just two examples and does not include their penchant for creating a crisis where none exists. Again, Republicans have tried to play the game and have created their own set of problems but the Democrats are so much better at it.
By all accounts, the Republicans are going to make great gains in November and in 2012, perhaps they will have the presidency as well. The problem is, the financial situation we have created will require the kind of drastic action anathema to politicians. Our whole political class operates on the principle that is exists to give goodies to the people, “bring home the bacon”, create new “rights” and entitlements. Actual cuts, much less the elimination of whole programs and departments as well as the reductions in benefits that will be necessary to keep us solvent go against all the momentum Washington has built up for eighty years. What happens if in the middle to the end of this decade it all comes apart? If the Democrats filibuster any attempts to cut taxes to help the economy or cut programs or benefits to reduce or eliminate the deficit and fix our broken “entitlements”? The current Democrat leadership has mashed down the accelerator as we approach the cliff. If they bail out and let the Republicans take the wheel knowing there is no chance to avoid a catastrophe, the Republicans will be blamed for the mess just as they were after the 1929 crash. They will be reduced to a small minority for decades and the march to Washington’s totalitarian control will be rapidly completed.
Other than the timing, and I wouldn’t put it past Democrat operatives to provide the catalyst for the catastrophe, you may be saying it won’t happen because we are so much better educated today. Really? Maybe you are because you have put in the effort but even now there are 45% of the people that approve of the president’s job even with all we know. The American people have been trained like Pavlov’s dogs to look to government to solve problems and if there are problems, it must be the party in power’s fault. The vast majority of the people in this country, after going through government schools and with the attention span of a gnat, are not going to think all this through. They are going to have a knee jerk reaction and will be susceptible to a new messiah who may make this president look tame in comparison. Only if we get a hold of our neighbors and somehow convince them that, as Reagan said, government is the problem, not the solution, will we have any hope of thwarting such a devious plan.
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