After Super Tuesday Wait Until 2009 - Road to the Middle Class

OUR DEMOCRATIC friends are racing towards the nomination in a dead heat. They are all excited about change. They are setting high expectations for their supporters.

Sad-eyed Republicans look like they are going to be led by Senator John McCain. He has made his national reputation by working with Democrats on Democrat-style legislation and frustrating the Republican agenda.

So it certainly looks like the Democrats must be prohibitive favorites to win in November. What would that mean?

It’s time to remember Irving Kristol’s words back in the 1980s. The Republicans, he wrote, should cut taxes to the bone and give the government back to the Democrats when Uncle Sam is broke.

That, of course, is exactly what happened in 1992. Bill Clinton was elected in a wave of enthusiasm and a promised middle-class tax cut.

Then we all came down to earth. In 1993, remember, newly elected Bill Clinton told us how that promised middle-class tax cut had gone up in smoke. "I never worked harder on anything my whole life than I did that middle class tax cut," he told us as he raised taxes.

In the end he pushed a $500 billion tax increase through Congress without a single Republican vote, and lost the House and Senate in 1994.

If you look at Bush’s budget numbers in the 2009 budget, you will see that he is handing the next president a live grenade. He has cranked up defense spending enormously. He has made almost no progress in reducing any other spending. See usgovernmentspending.com for details.

So is the next Democratic president is going to dare to get soft on the War on Terror? Or raise taxes? Or cut the Democrats’ beloved social spending? Or renege on universal health coverage?

Clinton and Obama are telling their supporters that the tough choices and arguments of the past eight years will be swept away in a vast tide of change.

Not really. President Bush has served up all the tough choices in the upcoming budget so that they will all land with a thump in the president’s in-tray next January 20.

Which means that we conservatives will have the Democrats just where we want them.

Sphere: Related Content |

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

Comments:

Posted by: Gary Bezowsky on 02/10/08 4:44am

Just how does one move the countries policies to the right, appoint judges like Roberts and Alito, protect the country from the Islamo threats by losing elections?

Posted by: random reader on 02/06/08 7:27am

So, your point appears to be: "Now that we conservatives have made an absolute disaster of things, by pursuing our agenda, let's hand the disaster over to the Democrats, to take the blame, so we can get power back in 2010 and 2012, and continue .... making an absolute disaster of things, by pursuing our agenda?"

TAGS

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

mysql close 0