Are Republicans evil, or stupid? When Robinson Crusoe finds himself shipwrecked on a desert island he draws up a written account of the state of his affairs, tallying the goods and the evils of his condition to arrive at the conclusion that, on balance, things could be worse. The same accounting for the Republicans will yield the answer to our question.
Republicans say it is immoral, anti-capitalistic and downright un-American for the government to bail out home mortgage holders. Reckless lazy careless people who borrowed too much for homes they can't afford have to pay the price for their ill-considered greed. Why reward the losers? is the way one CNBC comedian puts it.
This is perfectly stupid because the overwhelming majority of home mortgage holders in trouble are so not because of anything they did wrong but because of lost jobs or depressed property values. Furthermore all the genuinely bad loans were made by banks far more reckless, lazy, careless, and greedy than their clients. As for rewarding losers, none have lost so much to be rewarded so lavishly as the corporate giants in banking, insurance, and autos, into whose slavering maws the GOP is eager to dump hundreds of billions of no questions asked government dollars. Screwing homeowners while enriching giant corporations is decidedly evil.
Republican argue that the economic stimulus package is merely big government waste that serves only to expand the influence of the federal government at taxpayer expense. This is extremely stupid because in the current total absence of private sector demand the only way to revive the economy is with vastly increased government demand, which is to say spending. Furthermore government spending on roads and bridges and schools is neither wasteful nor spending at all but investing.
This argument is also evil because not one of the faux-principled small government Republicans now wringing his hands over federal dollars for useful projects and services ever raised an objection to the trillions utterly wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor will a single one of these shameless hypocrites refuse a single dollar of any federal largesse winging their way thanks to their Democratic colleagues.
Which brings us to the Republican position, as articulated by the embittered John McCain, that Obama has gone back on his campaign pledge of nonpartisanship. Considering that Obama made every attempt to win GOP votes for his economic measures, has tried to appoint Republicans to key positions in his administration, and went so far as to sit down to dinner with sociopaths like Brooks, Kristol, and Krauthammer, this is an evil lie. It is also so transparently mendacious as to be stupid.
Our tally so far: three evils and three stupids, which makes the GOP both evil and stupid. But like Robinson Crusoe we can conclude that things could be far worse. As bad losers as they are, at least the Republicans are indeed losers.