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.
Born 1950, Married, Living in Austin Texas, Semi
Retired Small Business owner and investor. My political interest
evolved out of his business experience that the best decisions come out of an objective gathering of information and a pragmatic consideration of costs and benefits. I am interested in promoting Centrist candidates and Policies. My posts are mostly about people and policies that I believe are part of the solution rather the problem.