Five Questions That The Republicans Can’t Answer
As I noted here, the Republicans who show up at Iowa’s quadrennial straw polls and caucuses are about as representative of American voters in general as two-headed cows are representative of cows in general. Furthermore, only two of the six candidates who have won the straw poll in the last 20 years have become the Republican nominee, and the record of caucus winners is similarly scanty.
And so after two weeks of campaigning and debating in the Hawkeye State, Tim Pawlenty goes home with his too-moderate tail between his legs, Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, their tails intact, Bible thump fearlessly ahead, while Mitt Romney, the one man with a decent chance of toppling Barack Obama, proves yet again that he has no tail.
As I have written many times since the landmark 2008 election, the Republicans’ penchant for self destruction seems boundless, and I saw nothing in Iowa to indicate that they have a clue about how to take back the White House when they have the best opportunity to do so since 1980. This is because today’s GOP is more interested in tearing down America than rebuilding it.
That, in so many words, will be Obama’s message as he heads out into the hustings for a series of town hall meetings in the coming weeks, and there are five questions he will ask over the over than the Republican’s can’t answer:
First, how can you stimulate a moribund economy by spending less?
Second, how can you create jobs without providing the stimulus to do so?
Third, how can you ask middle-class taxpayers to do their fair share when the wealthiest Americans aren’t doing theirs?
Fourth, how can you assure future generations that the federal safety net will be reasonably intact when the GOP keeps trying to dismantle it?
And fifth, how can America became great again not by uniting but by dividing?
These questions spell trouble for the GOP congressional leadership and for Bachmann and Perry.
Whatever answers that the Republicans might cobble together will not be reassuring to the tens of millions of voters who don’t happen to be Iowa Republicans. And while depressed about the economy and disenchanted with Obama are not about to lip lock with a congressional leadership whose tool of choice is dynamite and front-running president wannables who ask us to believe in miracles, or in the case of Romney hope that they’ll ignore the fact that he hasn’t taken a stand on anything of substance in the last five years.
25 Responses to “Five Questions That The Republicans Can’t Answer”
You left out “Have you stopped beating your wife?”
1 and 2 are the same question, and the answer from the GOP is the same: tax cuts. Whether cutting taxes is effective stimulus or good fiscal policy is highly questionable, but as a political argument “cut taxes” goes a long way with a large block of voters. I don’t see Obama going that way. You really think the voters are hungry for another stimulus right now?
3 and 4 are based on partisan premises. I have no doubt Obama will try to hammer them home but the argument is only likely to appeal to people already in his corner who therefore will not object to the overblown rhetoric.
The 5th question is ironic considering the 3rd and 4th. I don’t think the irony would be lost on independent-thinking voters.
I love those kind of questions. Torquemada loved them too. If he doesn’t float he has the devil in him.
Only five questions, wow the Reps must be making progress.
[...] Questions posed by a liberal that “conservatives can’t answer” … I guess it helps to never listen to actual conservatives. Answers are to those questions [...]
1. All forms of both tax and spending stimuli have failed. Reality isn’t buying the theory any more.
2. Stop waste. End subsidies and targeted tax breaks like the mortgage deduction. Let Fannie and Freddie live or die on their own.
3. See #2. The difference isn’t so much in the rates, as the exemptions and breaks.
4. By making them sustainable. Duh!
5. The division is mostly in pushing talking points instead of encouraging honest discussion. See: this OP.
adelinesdad:
There is nothing “partisan” about everyone paying their fair share. There is nothing “partisan” about keeping intact a safety net for the elderly and the infirm.
The Republicans want to crash the economy and have set out to try to do so in deed if not in word. They want to tear down the country in order to defeat Obama. It is a vile strategy it is treasonous.
Prof:
We can argue until the cows come home — one-or two-headed — as to whether the stimulus worked. Most economists, the very ones deeply troubled by Republican fiscal policies, believe the stimulus worked but was too small.
I don’t know where you live. Perhaps in a state where your governor refused stimulus money. But in the two states where I live during the week and on weekends there is evidence that the stimulus has had a positive effect almost every where you look: Infrastructure repairs and improvements, schools and in my weekday community police department which got new cruisers, laptops and other hardware as a direct result of the stimulus.
The common denominator in each case is that jobs were created, or in the case of the police department, officers were not furloughed.
Republicans can answer those questions (not saying I completely agree with the answers but that’s different than the party not having answers.) You just disagree with the answers because you deliberately framed the questions in each case with the specific disagreement you hold on the ideology. As LP pointed out in his post, one could do the same as a conservative critiquing the Democrats.
@Shaun
Stimuli is the plural form of stimulus. There have been several, from 2008 on, mostly from the Fed. If you don’t count guarantees, they total to “only” a few trillion. When (pseudo) Keynesians are calling for 4-5 trillion more for a stimulus measure, they’re asking for a hellava lot more faith in their theory than the rest of us — or the markets — can muster.
Wow, that is the bestone-line description of what’s wrong with this economic recovery I ever read.
That’s because the recession is the result of collapsed asset bubbles, not real growth. Real growth takes longer and has to rest on firmer foundation than a quick sucrose injection of liquidity.
CStanley:
First of all, welcome back. Your always cogent participation in comment threads has been sorely missed.
That noted, I take issue with your framing perspective. I believe that my questions were asked in exactly the manner that most hard-working middle class Americans would ask them.
This, not coincidentally, is why the Republicans will most likely be screwed in 2012.
I, for one, agree, Your questions certainly are framed.
And, are scribblers allowed to use “hard-working Americans”, isn’t that phrase owned by politicians.
Thanks for the kind words but I take issue with your taking issue. From my perch here in red state land, I could easily say that I hear the questions more often being asked the way Logan framed them (how can we borrow our way out of a hole, etc.)
We can argue over how many ‘hard working Americans’ fall into the category that you describe vs. the ones I’m hearing, and how many electoral votes are represented by each, etc…and neither of us can prove our case until we see how the election actually shakes out. Of course I have other reasons for thinking that my perspective is closer to reality- and that is, that most people really don’t understand macroeconomics let alone how Keynesian policies could possibly work. They’re inherently skeptical of increased government spending because they know there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and while they welcome the relief of unemployment extensions when they need them, or may cheer the new road construction that promises to ease their commute, they don’t really think on the macro level that this spending solves our problems because they’re deeply worried about the bill that their grandchildren are going to have to pay.
But whether you agree with all of that or not, surely you can see that your assertion of what the average American thinks is skewed by your own environment, not unlike the reporter who once famously pondered how Nixon could have won the election when no one she knew had voted for him.
The questions are silly, not merely biased in favor of political beliefs.
adelinesdad-
There are no examples of “overblown rhetoric” from President Obama.
In fact, that remains the exclusive domin of the Republican Party.
ProfElwood-
There has been plenty of Stimuli examples before 2008 also and they ALL WORKED!
Republican Voodoo economics do not work. That’s WHY we have high debt and slow growth.
Good greif will bury Reagan already?!
Yes, before 2008 borrowing made our economy look better for a brief period. Since 2008, all parties are trying to repair their balance sheets except the government, which will soon have to do the same.
Maybe this guy (hint: he’s a common Republican boogeyman) can explain it better (there’s a quick intro before the interview).
The stimuli did in fact not fail. Quit listening to talking points and check the numbers. The recession ended some time ago. Job have been increasing instead of decreasing. The problem is, although the numbers are going up, they aren’t going up fast enough and people want to spin that as a failure. But I’m going to put this in big letters because somehow you people keep missing this fact:
GDP AND JOBS WERE GOING DOWN, THE GOV’T SPENT MONEY, AND THEY ARE NOW GOING UP. THE STIMULUS HAD A POSITIVE IMPACT.
Because you wish it was going faster does not mean that the direction of the numbers hasn’t reversed. If anything it is proof that the gov’t in fact did not spend enough money. The recession ended some time ago, but we aren’t back to the Clinton era levels of vitality, and apparently that is the benchmark.
Prof. Elwood wrote:
More related remedial reading is in order. Sadly, many won’t learn.
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/doclib/20080711_200515807GothamsfiscalcrisislessonsunlearnedMCMAHON.pdf
When the music stops, if you thought the losers already are loud…
(We’ve seen already in Europe, especially in Greece, what happens when the music diminishes or even is hinted at being diminished.)
How about this number, slamfu: a typical recession lasts about year, maybe two. Try my link above. I think you’ll be surprised who it is, and what he’s saying.
“There is nothing “partisan” about everyone paying their fair share.”
(I just thought that bore repeating.)
No, you’re right. There is nothing partisan about everyone paying their fair share.
Defining what the “fair share” is in the first place is totally partisan, however.
BTW, I should clarify that in this instance I do not mean “partisan” as a criticism. I only mean that different ideological perspectives have legitimately different premises about what constitutes “fairness” in a tax burden. Conservatives tend to believe that “fairness” requires allowing people to keep as much as possible of their own property. Progressives tend to believe that “fairness” requires those who have much more than others to bear more of the burden than others. Both of these are arguably valid moral premises and neither is on its face evil or wrong. But the conflicts between them are existential and the resulting choice between them is therefore inevitably “partisan”.
And there is nothing wrong with that in a democracy.
Sorry I’ve been gone for a while and haven’t had a chance to respond to the comments directed towards me until now.
Yes, as Logan said, obviously the concept of fairness in tax policy is not partisan. However, there clearly is a partisan divide in how fairness is defined. Therefore, asking a question which has as its premise that GOP tax policy is unfair (based on Democratic interpretation) and then asking the GOP why this is so is clearly a partisan framing of the question.
I have no doubt such slanted questions will be asked by both sides, but it doesn’t follow that the GOP has no answer to it. The GOP answer is to reframe the question and then answer it. The reframing, although it will end up just as partisan the other way, will be excused because the original framing was obviously skewed (and thus we perpetuate the political game where no real issue is really addressed). The unbiased version of the question, “Why do you consider your tax policy to be fair across the income spectrum?” lacks the same political bite, but is the more interesting question in terms of policy.
Allen, ignoring your absolute assertion, I’ll just point out that I wasn’t referring to Obama’s rhetoric. I was referring to the OP.
When did you stop wanting to pay taxes and how come the other guys don’t love the country and the constitution?