"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president" Senator Mitch McConnell
Well, at least he's being honest. Funny thing is that I remember a time when it was fashionable to pretend that most important thing was the well-being of the country. Heck, I remember when responsible conservatives -- people I hated, like Reagan and Bush I -- made painful compromises, raising taxes in order to actually accomplish prudent policy objectives. But something happened to the GOP (maybe around 1994) when they were transformed into the anti-tax cult. Their political philosophy is now completely encapsulated by the follwing three steps:
1. Do whatever is necessary to obtain power.
2. Cut taxes
3. Profit!
The behavior of the GOP in 1993-4 (heck, 1994-2000 as well) and in 2009-10 is consistent with only one thing: destroy an opposition president by paralyzing the government, preventing him from accomplishing anything, and by doing so, stoke up the opposition, portray him as failed, and recapture power.
Consider Jim Demint on the conservative-designed and endorsed health care reform:
"If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."
It's not about what's best for the country, it's about breaking the President.
So what's next? What would happen if the GOP did retake both houses of Congress? Well, of course, these deficit warriors would extend the Bush tax cuts. Does anybody who has been observing them think they would actually find $3100 billion in spending cuts to offset their impact on the deficit? Or even $830 billion for the two-year extension they are talking about? Of course not, not any more than they found funding sources for the first ten years of the tax cut, or the middle east wars, or medicare part D, etc etc etc. Cantor et al have been asked what cuts they would make to balance the budget, and they haven't been able to name a single one.
Now this is not to say that the Dems are awesome -- they also are proposing a two year extension of most of the cuts. But, characteristically, that's out of political cowardice, not because they are ideologically committed to tax cuts. The dems, to their credit, seem to make occasional forays towards responsible, sustainable governing. Then they get beaten soundly for it and retreat back into their defensive crouch for a decade or so. But I can't blame them too much. In a form of government which grants such veto power to the minority, all policy-making involves negotiation. And you can't negotiate with a madman who is willing to choose self-immolation over compromise.
There's an old quote, which I had always thought was Cicero but turns out to have been apocryphal:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy.
It's funny, because this, on its face, sounds like an indictment of democrats and the welfare state. Indeed, this quote is often used by conservatives for that exact purpose. It's one of life's little ironies that the actual abuse of fiscal policy which (let's hope not) could threaten our democracy is actually the supply-siders who discover they can continue to enjoy the benefits of government, for a while anyway, while no longer paying for it. Instead of redistributing wealth through public largesse, they take advantage of the fungibility of money to enrich themselves by slashing taxes while spending without restraint.
"To spend is to tax," so sayeth Milton Friedman. We have only half that equation now. When will we have two parties that are capable of acknowledging that fact?
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