Growing up in the South in the 1980s, specifically Florida and Georgia, the cement shoes to fit on any political candidate was liberal. I remember the 1988 Florida Senate race between Republican Connie Mack and Democrat Buddy McKay. Fairly even throughout, Mack's campaign ran advertisements late in the race that ticked off McKay's positions on issues and ended with the tag-line, "Hey Buddy, you're a liberal." You could almost here the collective gasp of twelve million Floridians.
It was an epithet, a slur, a dark family secret best left unspoken and the immediate end to any candidacy on which it was hung. It was more than a word - it was all the baggage that came with it, especially the notion of "tax and spend," which denoted a dearth of ideas and imagination, relying instead on tired and worn liberal practices. The playbook was always the same: A liberal wanted to raise your taxes and spend your hard earned money. The liberal's political solution was always the same no matter what the problem entailed. Almost twenty years later, conservative is the new liberal.
Growing up in the South in the 1980s, specifically Florida and Georgia, the cement shoes to fit on any political candidate was liberal. I remember the 1988 Florida Senate race between Republican Connie Mack and Democrat Buddy McKay. Fairly even throughout, Mack's campaign ran advertisements late in the race that ticked off McKay's positions on issues and ended with the tag-line, "Hey Buddy, you're a liberal." You could almost here the collective gasp of twelve million Floridians.
It was an epithet, a slur, a dark family secret best left unspoken and the immediate end to any candidacy on which it was hung. It was more than a word - it was all the baggage that came with it, especially the notion of "tax and spend," which denoted a dearth of ideas and imagination, relying instead on tired and worn liberal practices. The playbook was always the same: A liberal wanted to raise your taxes and spend your hard earned money. The liberal's political solution was always the same no matter what the problem entailed. Almost twenty years later, conservative is the new liberal.
Last week in a hastily called press conference, President Bush hailed his tax cuts for reducing the projected budget deficit and cited this as proof that the tax cuts should be made permanent. Only in some parallel brain-dead universe could reducing the budget deficit from a projected four-hundred billion to a projected three-hundred billion dollars masquerade as good news. Without a hint of irony the president spoke of the need for the federal government to live within its budget.
For decades, conservatives have made political hay against liberals as the party of uncontrolled spending. Yet during the Bush Administration, the United States has added 2.7 trillion dollars to the federal debt, which led Republicans to an almost comically slap-dash - if it weren't actually happening, attempt to raise the debt ceiling to 9.6 trillion. That's a lot of zeroes folks.
Tax cuts have become the conservative version of the "tax and spend liberal." No matter the country's problems or the evidence at hand the solution is always the same - more tax cuts. If the data shows that tax revenues have been lower every year than they were before the first round of tax cuts in 2001 - no worries, make `em permanent.
The president argued, somewhat correctly, that the problem was the inability to control spending. Glossing over the obvious fact that he's had the ability to veto anything he thought excessive, this has been a common conservative refrain for over twenty years. Yet, despite controlling Congress and the executive branch for most of that time period, it's conservatives that have been largely responsible for the inability to bring spending under control.
And controlling spending is not getting easier when the federal debt is ballooning at a break-neck clip. Increasing the amount of money that the government spends simply to pay down the debt only limits flexibility and ensures cuts in vital programs.
It's time for a new tag-line.