Are conservatives seeing the Keynesian light?
There is now talk of Keynesian economics – in reverent tones, on both sides of the aisle. As a quick review, John Maynard Keynes is the Big Government economist who said that even if the government paid people to dig ditches and fill them back up again, that would stimulate the economy. Obama – along with Bush, McCain and many others who voted for the bank bailout – seems to believe this.
Thus the Left is propagating the story that FDR’s initial attempts to stem the Great Depression failed not because he spent tax money but because he didn’t spend enough. They point to the way WWII stimulated the economy.
What they forget is that back then
1 – America was a huge manufacturing engine. The war primed this engine.
2 – America was on the gold standard. Money spent to stimulate it was real, not the play money we use today
The mainstream media, enamored of Big Government, are saturated with stories about how conservatives are leaving the GOP for the Democratic Party. The narrative is that, now that Bush and McCain have gone down in flames, one-time conservatives have seen the failure of conservative principles, have seen the light and are drifting leftward in droves. Capitalism needs “change.” Pro-life ideas need “change.” And change is spelled: d-e-s-t-r-o-y.
I just got done gagging on one article written in this vein. My response to the author is below.
Hello Mike,
Re. your article mjoseph@centredaily.com
You make some good points, but you missed the main story:
Bush did not fail because he was too conservative. He failed because he was too far left.
Look at the evidence:
– overtures toward global governance (SPP, Mexican truck highway, acquiescence on climate control)
– open borders
– attempt to massively pardon invading lawbreakers
– harsh sentence for border patrol agents who fired at fleeing drug dealer, use of this drug dealer’s testimony (with immunity) to convict the agents
– no real advances in the pro-life agenda, with abortion proceeding unabated
– majority of Syrian Christians forced to flee Iraq and now living in Sweden, their churches burned to the ground (they were safer under Saddam!)
– support for creation of a Muslim state in Europe (Kosovo)
– treatment of the far-left Lula in Brazil as a moderate
– support for a trillion dollar bailout bill with no strings attached to the giveaway
– faith-based initiatives providing a means for the State to control major aspects of church policy
– No Child Left Behind greatly expands government, further reverses Constitutional role of the states in education
– acquiescence to the Left’s agenda to strong-arm banks into lending under no-down payment, no-doc policies under the CRA, as aided by ACORN (I have a copy of Bush’s HUD site’s page touting his “Zero-Downpayment Initiative”)
Economically, Bush was a Big Government Republican like Herbert Hoover. The mistakes of this left-leaning politician posing as a conservative have misled some gullible people to believe that conservatism is not viable.
The thing that is not viable, and may never be viable, is the GOP. Their election of moderate Michael Steele as the RNC chair shows they just aren’t smart enough to win any more.
The real story for you to cover is Republicans fleeing to the American Independent Party.
Best,
Don Hank
Editor in Chief
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Leave a Reply