A Bit Late Don’t Ya Think?
Republican Party officials are seeking to pass a resolution accusing President Bush and Congressional leaders of embracing socialism. Socialism might be a bit strong, but Bush in many ways has governed like a Democrat not a Republican. In any event where were these boobs say…5 or six years ago? Oh yeah, back then they were riding high both in terms of mid term election results, polls, etc.
“We can’t be a party of small government, free markets and low taxes while supporting bailouts and nationalizing industries, which lead to big government, socialism and high taxes at the expense of individual liberty and freedoms,” said Solomon Yue, an Oregon member and co-sponsor of a resolution that criticizes the U.S. government bailouts of the financial and auto industries.
Mr. Yue must have just gotten back to earth from a long space voyage. The Republican party is no longer a party in favor of limited government, market based economics, and individual liberty. It hasn’t been for at least…oh…8 years.
White House spokesman Tony Fratto defended the Bush administration’s actions, saying, “We understand the opposition to using tax dollars to support private businesses we also oppose using tax dollars to support private businesses. But this was the necessary and responsible thing to do to prevent a collapse of the American economy.”
This is typical of how government grows. Take a crisis, real of imagined, and then grab more power and expand the size of government. Nevermind that often times in these crises government plays an active role (e.g., Great Depression, Drug War). Recently it has been terrorism. If we don’t grant extra powers to the government to listen in on our phone conversations, arrest people and detain them indefinitely, and even torture detainees…why soon there will be a mushroom cloud over New York!
Why is it that buyers remorse only comes after a bitch slapping from the electorate?
We should come up with a term for such things. Verdonosity perhaps.
Archives are indeed a bitch eh Steve.
Bush has not governed like a Democrat at all. At absolutely no point in his administration have the democrats liked or agreed with his policies.
He’s an incompetent Republican, but a Republican nonetheless.
More evidence that the modern GOP is a joke, not that we really needed any.
Steve –
I think your anti-terrosism policy concerns are overwrought, but on big spending: amen, brother.
Fred Barnes wrote about this tendency in his book on Bush a number of years ago.
I knew Republicans had given up on their principles and it was all about the next election when they passed the Medicare Prescription drug benefit. Talk about an expansion of government.
Yea Steve, don’t you know that water boarding is only torture when the Japanese do it?
Which is my biggest fear around all the ‘global warming’ hysteria. Even to the extent humanity contributes toward global warming. The ‘crisis’ will be used to grab money and power rather than solve a potential problem.
I agree. Individual responsibility has taken a few knocks as well.
No, he governed like a republican: huge deficits, huge spending, and incompetent policies. Are you paying any attention at all? You might still be drinking the kool-aid, but the reality-based community understands that those are republican, not democrat, behaviors.
Maybe James can get his new daughter co-blogging with him. His current co-bloggers are pretty stupid.
White house spokesman Tony Fratto added, “We have no problem giving $700 billion to wall street executives. But we have a huge problem giving $15 billion if some of that might end up in the pockets of middle-class people. I mean, we’re like the villains in a James Bond movie. We hate regular people. Hate hate hate.”
Our limiting federal government has over 130,000 pages of regulations on the books. Over 14,000 of them have been implemented during the Bush administration and over 3,000 more are pending.
Try pouring through those 130,000 pages 3,000 times in the 60 days that the Congressional Review Act allows Congress before a new regulation is enacted to see how one regulation effects another. Try doing it 14,000 times in eight years not to mention pouring through state regulations to see how they might be effected and you will learn why things get screwed up.
http://ewebsmith.com/gov/WrongBusiness.html
Preposterous. Profligate deficit spending, extreme expansion of government, foreign policy scandals, illegal, lawbreaking governance, morally bankrupt leadership are all hallmarks of Republican administrations, not Democrats. You conservatives are so addled with Republican propaganda that it’s almost embarrassing. Let’s start with the facts and work from there.
Graph comparing the national debt under Republicans and Democrats
FWIW, I don’t think we should complain too much that someone notices that spending is out-of-control. If someone wants to take the Republican party back to their fiscally responsible days, great. I don’t see it happening, but I wouldn’t mind if someone gave it a try.
James,
Were you born 8 years ago or do you not read history books? Your descriptions are hallmarks of politicians, independent of what symbolic animal they use. “Power corrupts…” It is a rare human that has the desire and ability to lead but doesn’t sell his soul to the devil to win and keep winning. Once the reward of winning happens that corrupt soul determines the extent of the misuse of their power.
Oh BTW, I took a look at your graph. Damn statistics. They say just what you want them to say. I’ll agree that the graph is accurate. The problem with Republicans is that they cut taxes so they have less money to spend but they don’t cut spending therefore the national debt goes up. The problem with Democrats is that they raise taxes so they have more money to spend therefore the national debt goes down but they also don’t cut spending. Why don’t you do a graph of spending since Ford? How much of a difference between administrations will you see. How about a graph of how much taxes I had to pay since Ford. I wonder which administration will have the higher bars then. Or a graph of inflation over the years.
I’m telling you James, ALL politicians cause pain. The only choice you have is which pain you are willing to live with.
Steve, financial irresponsibility was a deliberate and public choice of the GOP, starting with Reagan and supply-side economics.
As for activist, big gov’t, the last GOP small-government president was Hoover. Were you even born then? Were your parents even born then?
“Nevermind that often times in these crises government plays an active role (e.g., Great Depression”
Oh, yea – FDR prolonged the Great Depression/made it worse – well, you guys have been spouting that lie for 60 years now; I guess we’re in for another 60 years of blaming Bush on Obama.
Are you under some kind of delusion that Ronald Reagan cut the size of government?
I’m 32, and in my lifetime, the GOP has NEVER been the party of limited government and liberty. They’ve been the party of letting the rich steal everything they can get their hands on, expanding government like crazy, and going into humongous debt to do so, while punishing my gay friends, lecturing to my non-christian friends, sneering at my minority friends, and making my pot smoking friends untouchable felons. And lying their way into pointless wars that have injured 100,000 of my young friends.
Thank god the american people have recognized the catastrophically bad government the GOP brought, and thrown them completely out of power. Hopefully it will be many years before people believe the ‘limited government and freedom’ lies again, and we can get this country back in some kind of decent shape.
Since the GOP seems committed to make themselves even more white, more straight, and more christian, I think they’ll be safely out of power for the indefinite future, and people with better values will be running things.
Is there some kind of online petition I can sign to get Steve Verdon and Dave Schuler replaced by Katharine Joyner? James is smart but his co bloggers graduated high school right behind Sean Hannity.
(For Steve and Dave, what I mean by the last sentence is that you’re extremely stupid.)
To be fair, I see “Rodney Dill” and “Dodd” as other bloggers here. I don’t mean you guys. I haven’t read any of your posts. I was just talking about Steve and Dave. When I read an articleat OTB, and come across a line that only the most obtuse and sycophantic GOP and operative could have written, I know it’s one of their posts.
Did FDR prolong the depression? No, unless you’re a fox news moron.
I don’t know if even Hugh Hewitt or Glenn Reynolds smoke enough crack to believe that FDR prolonged the great depression.
(In the last 100 years, there have been 2 times that the GOP has been put in charge of both congress and the white house for six consecutive years. The six years preceeding the stock market crash and great depression, and 2000-2006.)
[condescension/]OMG REPUBLICANS ARE SO EVIL!!! LIKE TOTALLY STUPID! Only JFK, LBJ, AND BHO are good guys. it was only that damn nixon, bush, and reagan that lied and fought wars! clinton NEVER engaged in aggressive military actions to divert attention away from the republican witch hunt. democrats like BHO are so inclusive and welcoming of people! he doesn’t publicly approve of gay marriage but we like to think he does, so that makes it so he is not as bigoted as those evil republicans! its not the unions fault that schools suck and the auto companies suck….but we need to make sure those teachers and autoworkers get paid more they are the most important part of those institutions!
always remember, if only we elected the right people – everything would be ok! [/condescension]
…it had been 10 days since i checked the internet before today. glad to see the fools still have the loudest voice.
guy, that article does not prove anything like you think it does