The GOP Bait and Switch
I tend to agree with the distinction Paul Krugman pointed out in today’s New York Times (Subscription) “Don’t Cry for Reagan”
…Mr. Reagan’s administration, like Mr. Bush’s, was run by movement conservatives — people who built their careers by serving the alliance of wealthy individuals, corporate interests and the religious right that took shape in the 1960s and 1970s. And both cronyism and abuse of power are part of the movement conservative package.
In part this is because people whose ideology says that government is always the problem, never the solution, see no point in governing well. So they use political power to reward their friends, rather than find people who will actually do their jobs
If expertise is irrelevant, who gets the jobs? No problem: the interlocking, lavishly financed institutions of movement conservatism, which range from K Street to Fox News, create a vast class of apparatchiks who can be counted on to be “loyal Bushies.â€?The movement’s apparatchik culture, in turn, explains much of its contempt for the rule of law. Someone who has risen through the ranks of a movement that prizes political loyalty above all isn’t likely to balk at, say, using bogus claims of voter fraud to disenfranchise Democrats, or suppressing potentially damaging investigations of Republicans…
It seems to me that most voters would agree that we want our government to be efficient in using our tax dollars, and it has been conventional wisdom that the GOP promotes that point of view.. But that may not really be the intention of the GOP leaders, as Krugman points out.
Many of us may have bought the sizzle rather than the steak. People with selfish intention have to be particularly well skilled, and financed, to convince a majority of voters that they share the same interests and values. Fear is a core tactic in their manipulation; Adversaries are represented as a threat to survival. Unfortunately it distorts the good intentions of most supporters and moderate Republicans who genuinely want the best bang for our collective tax buck and pragmatic deliberative management.
My point is that while I am sympathetic with the GOP values of fiscal prudence and social responsibility I don’t believe that the major donors see those values as any more than a strategy for diverting public wealth into their pockets. Meanwhile I generally believe in the sincerity of progressives who want more astute public investment in improving the quality of life for as many people as possible, here and abroad.
I can only hope that moderate fiscal conservatives regain control of the GOP who will collaborate in crafting the most efficient economic path towards achieving those aims.
23 Responses to “The GOP Bait and Switch”
The translation is that President Bush has been a failure because he has been a bad conservative and not becasue he was a good conservative. If he would have stayed true to conservative ideals there would have been no Iraq War. If he would have stay true to conservative ideals, there would be no deficit. If he would have stayed tru to conservative ideals, the size of government would be smaller than in 2001 and not larger.
The reasons that the U.S. is heading to becoming a single party state is that a single party state can pass our “astute public investments” to more than 50% of the population to maintain their loyalty. Once that happens, why would anyone want to be invovled in the political party that is seen as the payers increase of the investees.
I always have a problem with the meme that Republicans serve the wealthy, and the Democrats to working people, when campaign contributions records consistently put that to the lie. It is simply a matter of which wealthy and which corporations each serve, but if one of your constituencies is the press, you can count on that message being buried.
I always have a problem with the meme that Republicans serve the wealthy, and the Democrats the working people, when campaign contributions records consistently put that to the lie. It is simply a matter of which wealthy and which corporations each serve, but if one of your constituencies is the press, you can count on that message being buried.
I don’t completely disagree with the “Bait and switch” characterization of the GOP, but I have difficulty understanding why the Democrats seem so much more trustworthy to you. As superdestroyer has pointed out in recent comment threads, do Democratic party machines in Chicago, Boston, DC, etc really seem pure in their intentions?
And while the GOP might be using “bait and switch”, it seems to me that the Democrats just use bait to put voters on the hook. Promise entitlements and you buy yourself a perpetual constituency just as the GOP policies might lend toward promising corporate favoritism to buy themselves perpetual donors.
This paragraph in particular bothers me:
First of all, I’d argue that it’s not that black and white; the corporate world will play whichever party it thinks will benefit it the most, not necessarily just the GOP. Second, I’d argue that these folks aren’t trying to put PUBLIC wealth into their pockets, they’re trying to keep their PRIVATE wealth in their own pockets. Meanwhile, the donors to the Democratic party often ARE trying to put public wealth into their own pockets through government programs to benefit their own interests. For every “public investment” there are individuals who benefit personally and these individuals are not always putting the public good above their own private interests.
It was said:
> My point is that while I am sympathetic with the GOP values
> of fiscal prudence and social responsibility I don’t believe that
> the major donors see those values as any more than a strategy
> for diverting public wealth into their pockets.
I would argue instead the conventional, that the GOP has as
its primary special interest group the business community,
which exploits any GOP wins. (It has little to nothing to do
with diverting “public wealth” a la Halliburton, but instead a
situation where businesses as well as individuals might get
tax breaks while at the same time spending continues to be
increased.)
> Meanwhile I generally believe in the sincerity of progressives
My, are you naive.
> who want more astute public investment in improving the
> quality of life for as many people as possible, here and abroad.
Don’t fall for their weasel words. It is not “investment” [sic].
Never was, never is, never will be. It is PUBLIC SPENDING.
In part this is because people whose ideology says that government is always the problem, never the solution, see no point in governing well.
This, to me, is proof that big government liberals like Krugman simply don’t get it. Any argument that Republicans consistently see government as the problem and not the solution has been utterly disproven over the last six years–a time during which the size of government has expanded dramatically under a Republican president and Republican congress.
Chuck Schumer made a similar comment when he was on the Daily show about 18 months ago. He argued that Republicans “hate government” and that’s why there’s so incompetent at running it. Mystified by the Senator’s response, Stewart replied:
But it almost seems like, I mean, in a sense of–It’s not that they hate government. It’s that they hate government they’re not controlling. Because clearly their plans have been: They’ve nation built . . . They’ve increased federal spending. It seems like, they’re almost steroidal Democrats . . . I mean, it–it took you forty years of control to become corrupt. They’ve done it in five.
There’s truth in what superdestroyer said above. Bush campaigned as a “fiscal conservative.” He said that he supported a “humble foreign policy.” He was against “nation-building” and using our military to “police the world.”
Granted, there are some on the left who would criticize Bush no matter what he does. But if he had simply stuck to the campaign promises in 2000, we wouldn’t have many of the problems we have today (i.e. the Iraq War, runaway spending at a rate not seen since the LBJ administration).
I don’t dispute the tendency for liberals and progressives to promote bureaucracies and the redistribution wealth. It would be my preference to seek the aims of more opportunity, fairness and security by optimizing market forces if only the GOP were better about proposing and promoting those remedies.
But, to me, in spite of the inefficiencies of some of the left’s solutions they do tend to be the community that first responds to suffering, hardship and fairness while the GOP seems to first respond with denial or knee jerk protection of vested interests.
I believe that the left initiated, and still initiates, the movements towards improving health care, education, retirement, diplomacy, environmental protection, working conditions, civil liberties, regulating predatory business practices, etc. This is why I tend to give the left the benefit of the doubt when it comes to respecting their intentions.
Good post, Paul. I especially agree with Krugman’s meme that since the GOP does not expect government to work, it uses government jobs as perks for networks of loyal supporters. Never has this been more true than now, but it also occured widely under Reagan. The K Street project went as far as allowing private corporations to write the legislation that governed their livelihoods.
I believe that under President Ford, the GOP was still a party of small government, but still attempted to do its best for the common good. Its gone downhill from there. I guess if government bureaucracies fail under Republican leadership, then they fulfill their own prophecies, about the evils of having government try to do too much in the first place.
There might be some truth to the argument that since Republicans tend to be more pessimistic about the utility of government programs, there is less incentive for them to actually make an effort to make them work (paleolibertarian Lew Rockwell–who can’t stand either the Democrats or the Republicans–made this very point about a month ago).
Still, I think it is extremely simplistic (and naive) to argue that Democrats are pro-government and Republicans are anti-government. They’re BOTH pro-government. They just have a difference of opinion on what we should be using taxpayer dollars to do–whether it’s continue to fund the welfare state here at home or propping up a welfare state in Iraq halfway around the world.
Frankly, any talk about one side protecting their “vested interests” could just as easily be made about the other side. Politicians gain clout by sponsoring bills that believe their supporters want. Both sides are constantly pandering to their base–passing bills that might very well be popular among their base but are not necessarily good for the country as a whole and typically have no basis whatsoever in the Constitution that both Democratic and Republican politicians have sworn to uphold.
I agree that it is somewhat of a sham arguement for the GOP to claim they are not for big government, and then increase the size of the bureaucracy. It would be fairer to say that they favor tax cuts and deregulation of business, and often oppose the rights of workers to organize. Their policies have resulted in more consolidated wealth at the top, while Democrats seem to care more about providing a safety net, and don’t mind using taxes to provide it. I don’t see that the GOP is overly concerned with correcting inequality-they feel that if the opportunity is there it is up to the individual to rise to the occasion.
There are problems in the ideology of both parties, I would like to see both become more results-oriented in writing policy and less ideology-driven.
I love the Democrats promoting the idea that Democrats can good at running government. Have any of these people look at the urban schools in any deep blue metropolitan area. Not only do the students do not learn but they usually cannot meet their own building code requirements. The no-show jobs, patronage, and wasting money on suppliers is legendary in places like the DC, NYC, and LA public schools. Just look at social service agencies in those same cities. Just look at DC where the METRO set new ridership records put lose over $150 million because of poor management.
Government is a huge bureaucracy that just cannot be managed very well no matter who is mangaing it. Look at the Urban School Districts that hire and fire superintendents like clock work but cannot find a single one that can produce results.
SD- Urban areas are notoriously tough to run for both Democrats and Republicans due to drugs, gangs, crime and urban blight. Stop trying to blame this on Democrats alone. The only instance I can think of where a GOP candidate ran a big city well is Giuliani, and he appears to have made a ton of enemies along the way. BTW Tony Williams who recently was mayor of DC was lauded for bringing DC back financially, and William Schaeffer did the same for Baltimore . Both Democrats.
. Democrats have made good governors in New Mexico, Arizona and Montana- not traditionally Democratic states and also New York State.
The big vs small government is a cloudy issue.
Contracting gives the appearance of small government, but since taxes still pay for the services, those are still government jobs.
I’ve also noticed how difficult it is to do oversight when the execution of services is hidden in a maze of contracts and subcontracts. To find the responsibile party, seems to require a team of detectives.
The list of big government failures is legitimate, but at least it is clearer what failed and how much it cost. Corrupttion is also easier to trace, because it is a more direct road than the contractor to contractor maze.
It was said:
> There’s truth in what superdestroyer said above.
>Bush campaigned as a “fiscal conservative.� He
>said that he supported a “humble foreign policy.�
> He was against “nation-building� and using our
> military to “police the world.�
He also campaigned in Spanish as well as in English (sounding like a stereotypical “turista” or more accurately, “como un borracho”) and recently he did nearly a one-eighty, almost going in lockstep with “English only.”
As far as Krugman, he’s contemptible as usual. It’s just another instance of his behavior as a liberalism-tainted academic playing a sad role of liberal and Dim party hack. Many in academia are like that. (Schlesinger prostituted himself in defense of Clinton several years ago.) So many liberal northeastern “economists” are nearly 100% or 100% about politics, not economics. (The most transparent was the late Eisner, who said — not about us, as he falsely claimed, the way Krugman claims implicitly to describe on everyone’s behalf, but only for himself and Krugman and others like him — that the issue of a balanced federal budget [to them] “has nothing to do with finances. It has everything [to those people, at least] to do with the size and scope of government we are going to have in Washington…”)
Most who want government reformed do want a smaller, better-run government. Had Krugman had any brains, when trying to mischaracterize people he at least could have quoted some who would say that the federal government should be shrunk to the point where what’s left of it “can be drowned in the bathtub.” Or he could quote Robert Bork, who made the legally and techically correct statement that 2/3 or more of what the federal government has begun doing since the New Deal could reasonably be ruled unconstitutional, and try to mischaracterize truth-tellers such as he as “extremists.”
(Back in 1994-5 when the possibility existed of government reform, a number of people on the Left uttered the Big Lie that what was being sought was “a return to the Articles of Confederation.”)
[D]omajot said:
> The list of big government failures is legitimate,
> but at least it is clearer what failed and how much
> it cost.
Are you sharpening or warming yourself for federally
provided health care after 2008?
Krugman didn’t mention this, but what about the theory that Republicans like to build up the military, and are in favor of tax cuts because it starves major entitlement programs that are unpopular with their base. For example, when pushed to cut the budget the GOP cut food stamps, Medicaid and the student lunch program (some of the money ended up being restored) a couple of years ago.
K. Ritter wrote:
> what about the theory that Republicans like to
> build up the military, and are in favor of tax cuts
> because it starves major entitlement programs
> that are unpopular with their base
Regarding starvation:
I answered this question partly in advance and I can fill in something else that I was going to submit originally but I redacted to save space.
“Had Krugman had any brains, when trying to mischaracterize people he at least could have quoted some who would say that the federal government should be shrunk to the point where what’s left of it “can be drowned in the bathtub.â€? ”
Another metaphor that has been used is that reducing taxes has been referred to as “cutting government’s oxygen supply” (that is, of revenues), even though this statement neglects government debt.
Regarding favored groups: One of the GOP’s special interests is farmers, and that has been why you may have noticed a reluctance or an attempt followed by a reversal when food stamps are selected for reduction. Airlines (big business) are doing well; FAA spending is projected to rise substantially (while the current administration is antagonistic toward the air traffic controllers’ union). The military has sacred-cow status (though the case can obviously be made for spending where it is needed) just as Social Security is seen by so many by the predictable and sickening phrase, “sacred covenant.” (The program will start running deficits very shortly, probably before the 2008 elections. It is when it begins running deficits that its failure is proven to all as well as the need to solve its future problems is obvious. Why isn’t this an election issue?)
OK, well, [returning to topic] we have to settle this Iraq issue first.
It was said:
> in spite of the inefficiencies of some of the left’s
> solutions they do tend to be the community that
> first responds to suffering, hardship and fairness
This is probably why to this day black and Jewish Americans (who faced their own discrimination problems in the past) overwhelmingly still prefer voting Democratic (even if they lean conservative), because they don’t like the Republicans, don’t trust them, or feel the GOP really doesn’t accept them. I scratch my head or even tear my hair out at their choices but in trying to understand it I look back but also look at the GOP now. It is largely, with the GOP, the matter of its being to typicla Americans the lesser of two evils (which is what the true far or extreme Left says about the Democratic Party).
Nic Rivera answered a question I asked elsewhere:
> The reasons that the U.S. is heading to becoming
> a single party state is that a single party state can
> pass our “astute public investments� to more than
> 50% of the population to maintain their loyalty.
OK. It is entitlements, and that’s why the Dems will rule it all someday.
All it will take is health care. Either do the “pincer” where you cover all children first as well as the elderly, then let those in between fall into your lap, or begin by absorbing into Medicare all the state programs such as Medicaid, and any nascent state programs that are more broad in scope. The idea is to save the taxpayer for last, at which point the taxpayer, who is paying for all this, will of course demand that of all people he or she should benefit from it. Plop. Right into your lap. Game over.
“I always have a problem with the meme that Republicans serve the wealthy, and the Democrats to working people, when campaign contributions records consistently put that to the lie.”
Actually Austin it has more to do with things like $8 Billion in tax breaks for the oil industry in years where they have made record setting profits in no small part to the actions of the administration. Also things like assigning a man like Stephen Griles to be #2 at the Dept of Interior when the DOI should be protecting us from guys like him. From the administration that literally invited the heads of the energy industry over to help draft their “Energy Plan” for the country that doesn’t do dick as far as actually getting us off of oil. From an admin that initates a war then lets the VP’s former company get juicy shares of contracts in a no-bid scenario to clean up Iraq with no oversight whatsoever in how the money is being spent.
Republicans deregulated CA energy and opened us up to the colossal screwing we got from energy providers, while republican federal leadership refused to cap the prices during the 2000 crisis even well past the point it was obvious something strange was going on. Enron execs were actually caught on tape mentioning the Bush administration would never ever cap the prices on them. The list goes on and on, but just so you know its not all about campaign contributions.
I reiterate my point:
When job sectors performed by governement are contracted out, it doesn’t reduce the number of jobs, their just performed under a different roof.
The ills of bureaucracy are replaced by the maze of contracts and subcontracts.
We are merely exchanging one set of problems with another set.
No one that I know of has seriously analyzed the cost effectiveness of one way vs the other. Nor has the question of loss of transparency been addressed.
Everything that I read is based strictly on ideological bases, not down to earth analysis.
It’s frustrating. It’s also dangerous, because we’re arguing un in the clouds, while stuff happens under the radar.
This reminds me of the endless arguments about media bias, when no one has defined what bias consists of when you meet in the street.
But it does seem like the GOP caters more to its big guns rather than the working stiff. In Katrina, for example, IAP scooped up a big multimillion dollar contract to provide bottled water. The company did an unsatisfactory job, overcharging the victims of that catastrophe, but were politically connected. As you recall, Bush decided that the disaster meritted suspending the federal pay scale for workers involved in the reconstruction efforts.
IAP was the same company which submitted the successful bid to privatize Walter Reed. A memo received in Kiley’s office blamed the maintenance and staffing shortages on the privatization.