The Republican Party appears to be in kind of a tough spot. George W. Bush is one of the most unpopular presidents of all-time. People loathe the guy; his presidency is widely considered to be a failure. Numerous polls name Bush as the worst president ever by popular opinion. History is likely to be no less harsh. As a result, to avoid tarnishing the entire party with that stain, the Republicans running for office in 2008 were forced to distance themselves from his policies. Herein lays their problem.
The Republican Party was full tilt in support of President Bush and his policies during his entire administration. The failure of the last 8 years wasn’t so much the fault of George W. Bush personally as the entire conservative ideology as a whole. The Bush, Jr. Presidency was simply the culmination of 25+ years of destructive conservative policies that have finally wrought enough havoc on our nation and the world to cause the American people to sit up and take notice. So watch in amazement as the Republican Party attempts to argue that the policies that have caused so much damage, the policies that they wholeheartedly supported, the policies that have obviously failed this nation, its people and the entire world, were someone else’s fault.
As we suffer through maybe the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, it has become abundantly clear—as the title of my diary states—conservative ideology has failed.
Republicans cannot govern. This simple fact has been proven over the past 3 decades. It might have taken some time to become apparent, but it is now abundantly clear that the Ronald Reagan model of Republican rule is a complete and utter failure.
And yet somehow, Reagan is still lionized as the great leader of post-World War II America. But the last eight years are essentially a realization of the policy ideals of Ronald Reagan. Bush was able to enact the majority of the policies that Reagan wanted but was unable to achieve because he served with a Democratically-controlled Congress.
It’s really pretty simple to see how and why conservatism is an utter failure as a governing ideology. Conservatives have no real interest in running the government properly. Since a major tenet of their political philosophy is that government is part of the problem, they cannot be trusted to actually run the government with any type of efficiency or effectiveness—to do so would invalidate their entire belief system.
The simple fact is that conservatism is not a governing ideology. It is a critique of government. It is a check on the unrestrained exercise of government power. Conservatives operate best as a vocal minority, ensuring that a liberal majority does not go off the rails. When conservatives actually gain power, it is a disaster.
Sports Analogy
People like sports analogies, so here it is. Conservatives hate government, yet they expect us to hire them to run ours. But would you hire someone who hated baseball to be the general manager of your baseball team? If you did, what results could you expect? I think that you would end up with a bunch of your GM’s buddies on the payroll, free tickets given to his/her family, friends and business associates, a budget in the red and a team that isn’t worth a damn. You certainly couldn’t expect someone who doesn’t really give a shit about the sport or the team to run it effectively. But this is pretty much what we’ve gotten with the Republicans in charge of all the branches of government.
Are you surprised? I’m not.
Questions
So here are some questions to all Republicans, now that you see these policies in action, how do you feel about them?
How do you feel about the tax cuts skewed disproportionately toward the affluent and the massive budget deficits that resulted?
How do you feel about the deregulation of the lending industry that has led to a mortgage crisis and the failure of major financial institutions (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual, etc.)?
How do you feel about the $700 billion+ of taxpayer dollars that are being paid for a bailout of these companies?
How do you feel about the billions in tax breaks handed to the oil and gas industry that inflated their already record profits but didn’t help to reduce fuel prices?
How do you feel about the hundreds of billions (ultimately trillions) of dollars we’ve spent in Iraq to achieve: 1) thousands of dead and wounded soldiers; 2) a strained military; 3) an Iraqi civil war; 4) increased terrorist recruiting; and 5) a strengthened Iran?
How do you feel about the Medicare prescription drug benefit that doesn’t do anything to lower drug costs for seniors, but does a great job sending your tax dollars to pharmaceutical and insurance companies? (Not to mention busting the budget.)
How do you feel about the wiretapping of untold thousands or even millions of Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing?
How do you feel about members of our military, intelligence agencies and/or private contractors working for the U.S. government torturing people under the guise of obtaining information? Does it matter that no actionable intelligence is obtained and many of these people are likely innocent? Does it matter that any confessions obtained are tainted and unusable in a court of law, hampering the prosecutions of any detainees who are guilty?
How do you feel about Superfund being exhausted so that the costs of environmental cleanups are thrust on taxpayers instead of the companies that made the mess?
These are just the highlights. Anything there make you feel warm and fuzzy about conservatism or the Republican Party? Because a majority of your conservative Republican Party supported every one of those things. They aren’t just Bush failures—they belong to all of you.
Trojan Horse?
Recently, I had an epiphany. I was pondering these many failures of the Bush Administration and thinking of our current disastrous situations with regard to the: 1) collapsing economy; 2) skyrocketing deficit/national debt; 3) disastrous war(s)/foreign policy; 4) increases in international terrorism; 5) unchecked nuclear proliferation; 6) outrageous and increasing health care expenses; 7) crumbling infrastructure; 8) failing schools; 9) weak and inefficient regulation of business; 10) unfair tax structure; 11) unaddressed long term unfunded liabilities in Medicare and Social Security; 12) impending environmental calamity due to global warming; 13) continued over-reliance on foreign oil; 14) ever-increasing energy costs; 15) politicization of the Justice Department and other government agencies; 16) massive infringement on privacy and individual liberties; 17) inflation; 18) counterproductive energy policy; 19) continued failure to rebuild areas destroyed by Hurricane Katrina; 20) torture and denial of rights of detainees; 21) U.S.’ poor standing in world opinion and more...
I put that all in context with the longstanding conservative goal of shrinking government "to the size where [they] can drown it in the bathtub" and I realized that this failure may be completely by design. The actual goal may be to turn public opinion as a whole against government.
The public perception of our current government is that it is a failure. This opinion is not limited to President Bush, who, as much as he is hated, has actually had a higher approval rating than the Democratically-controlled Congress.1 The danger we face going forward is that the public will begin to believe the old conservative saw that government cannot offer any solutions because it is part of the problem. And while I don’t believe that government can always offer a solution, I do believe (as any liberal does) that government can enact policies that will have a positive impact on the lives of most American citizens.
There is a funny quote that goes, "Conservatives do not believe that government can work and then they get elected and prove it." I recently began thinking that this might not be an accident, but completely on purpose.2
The policies of this administration have damaged the nation in a multitude of ways; in some areas we may never recover from that damage. Our fiscal and foreign policies are like grenades waiting to detonate on the Obama administration; they are completely unsustainable and hinder our ability to maintain the other policies that still have value. So it’s entirely likely that the public’s negative attitude toward the Bush administration will carry over to the Obama administration and taint President Obama and the Democrats with the stain of Bush’s failure. Regardless, President Obama will probably be forced to enact some unpopular policies in order to reverse the damage done by this administration (tax increases, budget cuts and the like). Again, this may be by design. The Republican brand is already hurting. After President Obama takes office and has to clean up Bush’s mess, the Democratic Party as a whole may soon suffer the same low approval rating.
Therefore, my theory is that once it became clear that his policies were an utter failure, the goal of the Bush Administration became poisoning the well; turning the American public against their government. When people dislike their government, conservatives win. People are less likely to support government intervention in any area if they view that government as inefficient and ineffective and the idea of privatizing more government functions could gain favor among many Americans in that circumstance. Also, while it’s never really hard to drum up public support for tax cuts, the obvious ineptitude of the government to observe rational spending priorities makes a "starve the beast" agenda even easier to enact, harming many worthy programs in the process.
So we need to make sure that we keep a separation between the Bush Administration (and the Republican Party) and the government in general. It must be made clear to people that government can work effectively and be a positive force in the lives of ordinary Americans if it is simply run properly. It wasn’t that long ago that we had competent management of the government. And while the Clinton Administration will probably always be a disappointment to many of us here, it cannot be denied that during those eight years, the majority of the country—even many Republicans—was satisfied with the way things were being run. And we can have it again as long as people don’t fall for the conservative-biased arguments that the government is part of the problem and that all politicians are alike. At this point, the Republican goal is probably to convince everyone to throw the baby out with the bathwater. (Irony, thy name is Republican politics.)
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1 This is likely due to the fact that Republicans hold a negative view of Congress simply because it is controlled by the Democrats, while Democrats are disappointed that their representatives and Senators have failed to offer any significant resistance to the most disastrous policies of the Bush Administration or otherwise present themselves as a check on Bush’s power.
2 Maybe I was naïve or foolish to ever think that it was an accident.