Bailout Stalled: Cynicism Understandable, But Conservative Anger is Real

The skepticism of fellow The Moderate Voice blogger Polimom is understandable. All the pieces are in place for John McCain to, sometime tomorrow, be portrayed as the hero who brokered a resolution to the financial crisis acceptable to The White House, Congressional Democrats, and recalcitrant conservative Congressional Republicans. It seems so pat, so obvious, and it just might be true.

But I don’t think so.

Conservative anger at the proposed White House bailout plan is enormous.

Yesterday, former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee wrote to his supporters. Here’s some of what he wrote:

Frankly, I’m disappointed and disgusted with my own Republican party as I watch them attempt to strong-arm a bailout of some of America’s biggest corporations by asking the taxpayers to suck up the staggering results of the hubris, greed, and arrogance of those who sought to make a quick buck by throwing the dice. They lost, but want the rest of us to cover their bets so they won’t be effected in their lavish lifestyles as they figure out how to spend their tens of millions and in some cases, hundreds of millions in bonuses and compensation which was their reward for not only sinking their companies, but basically doing the same to the entire American economy.

It’s especially disconcerting to see the very people who pilloried me during the Presidential campaign for being a “populist” and not “understanding Wall Street” to now line up like thirsty dogs at the Washington, D. C. water dish, otherwise known as Congress, and plead for help. I thought these guys were the smartest people in America! I thought that taxpayers like you and I were similar to the people at the U. N. who have no translator speaking into their headset – that we just needed to trust those that I called the power bunch in the “Wall Street to Washington axis of power.”

The idea of a government bailout in which we’d entrust $700 billion to one man without Congressional oversight or accountability is absurd. My party or not, that is insanity and I believe unconstitutional.

Will there be far-reaching consequences without some intervention? Probably, but we honestly don’t know since we’ve really never seen this level of greed and stupidity all rolled into one massive move. But may I suggest that letting “Uncle Sugar” step in and bail out the billionaires who made the mess will be far worse and will start a long line of companies and individuals who will demand the same of the government—which last time I checked means that they will be demanding it out of YOU and ME. This is not money that Congress is risking from THEIR pockets or future, but ours. Many if not most of us have already experienced lost value on our homes, retirement accounts, and pensions. Now they’d like for us to assume some further risks so they won’t have to.

What happened to the “free market” idea? Is that only our view when we WIN and when we LOSE, we ask the government to come in and take away the pain?

If you are a small business owner, is this the way it works at your place? When you have a bad month, a bad year, or face having to close, can you go up to Congress and get them to write YOU a fat check to take away your risk?

Huckabee went on to outline his own proposal and then wrote:

Attempts by Democrats and Republicans to blame each other is nonsense. They are both guilty and ought to own up and admit it. They all lived off big campaign contributions and the swill of the lobbyists who strong armed them into permission to steal. Enough of blame. Fix it!

This would be a start. If we don’t hold these guys responsible, we are all finished.

He then asked for contributions to his HuckPAC in order, he said, to support candidates who agreed with him in his opposition to the Republican president’s plan for fixing the financial markets.

Apparently, in his full-throated anger, Huckabee isn’t speaking just for himself. He sent out a follow-up email today:

We’ve received [an] overwhelming response to my last email. The comments my email generated were loud and clear: we have had enough of Washington’s knee-jerk big government and we want and demand a return to the conservatism our Party has championed for decades.

We also had over 500 contributors more than 300 of whom were first time supporters of Huck PAC.

The Bush-Paulson-Bernanke proposal has put the fraying seams of the Republican coalition, the schism between Wall Street and Wal-Mart Republicans, on full display. The anger middle income conservatives, as demonstrated by the emails from Huckabee, a guy not running for anything this year, and the rapid response to them, especially from first-time contributors, tells me that the impasse in Congress is no fake.

The anger is real. Any resolution will entail genuine compromise. Whether John McCain can play a role in bringing that about is anybody’s guess. Many Republicans aren’t in a compromising mood.

[Here's a link to my personal blog.]