The Grand Old Party always stood for small government, low spending and free market. So would the economy be safe and growing and the people should not need more for their welfare. To stimulate higher growth there was the miracle of tax-cuts. The more tax-cuts the more growth is the idea, but only the free market is supported in practice. No tax-cuts for 95% of the people. Every Republican Administration used more officials to do the work and spend more money in senseless projects and wars at the costs of infrastructure and innovation.
Eugene Robinson writes in the Washington Post:
“Since George W. Bush became president, the Republican Party has presided over massive, out-of-control government spending, converted a federal budget surplus into a half-trillion-dollar deficit, and looked the other way while Wall Street’s greed and stupidity turned the hallowed free market into scorched earth. Now the party has to watch as a Republican president orchestrates the biggest government intervention in the workings of the private sector since the New Deal.
Can any Republican candidate claim with a straight face to present the party of small government? For that matter, can any Republican candidate plausible explain what the party I supposed to stand for?”
The unlimited deregulated capitalism of the greed has failed. The question is not whether some drastic, socialistic measures are needed top safe the American economy, but which measures. There are three options:
1. Buying up toxic mortgage-based investments (as the White House first said it will do);
2. buying up the troubled mortgages themselves ( as John McCain wants to do) or
3. pouring money into selected banks and taking part ownership (as the White House now says it will do).
Sitting back and letting the dire situation correct itself, the natural capitalistic way, is not an option, because the Phoenix-like solution begins with self-immolation and perhaps it takes a century, three generations hard work, to recover. Politically there is a small bit of justice that a Republican President has to deal with the Republican-made crisis. After eight years of the Bush-Administration, the Republican Party is a mess and a fraud.
Robinson writes:
“The Bush tax cuts, which heavily favored the wealthy, showed that the president and his allies in Congress didn't believe in progressive taxation. I think that's outrageous, but the administration goes further and actually seems to prefer a regressive tax scheme. That's the only explanation I can think of for why hedge fund managers making hundreds of millions of dollars a year pay taxes at a lower rate than their chauffeurs.”
That’s exactly how it is, but by now it’s election time and therefore the party of the richest 5% of the people has to convince all Americans that this is for the benefit of the John-six-packs and the hockey-moms. They need somewhat else than the economy, so Sarah Palin tells you that the party cares deeply about the eternal rooster of cultural values: abortion, babble, cabal, danger, earn, fads, god, guns, gays etc. And those of the other party are the bad-guys and the dangerous ones.
Robinson writes:
“Oh, and isn't the Republican Party supposed to stand foursquare against intrusions on privacy? Then why were Republicans so unmoved when it was revealed that the Bush administration had been conducting unprecedented surveillance of Americans' private electronic communications?
When Ronald Reagan was president, I had a sense of what ideas and principles his party stood for. When Newt Gingrich and his "Contract With America" brigade took Washington by storm in 1994, I knew what they believed -- loopy though it was -- and what they hoped to accomplish. I defy anyone to give a coherent explanation of what today's Republican Party, under George Bush and now John McCain, wants to do except perpetuate itself in power.”
The promises to give any citizen lots of money and tax-cuts are fake. There is no money for it and you are losing your jobs.
“When a political party reaches the point of lurching incoherence, the most effective cure is a good, long spell in the wilderness. Americans should help Republicans out by sending them home to get their act together.”
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