The Party of Know

When it comes to the current buzzword criticism of the Republicans in Congress, the pundits are spelling it wrong.

The party of no absolutely knows what it's doing.

It's been doing it for 30 years.

The latest example -- all-filibuster, all-delay, all the time -- is a tactic where the country will be put on hold for a year as a way to boost Republican power come November. It's going to work, too -- history shows the party out of power always gains in the first midterm election of a new Presidential administration.

The idea here is to turn a mudslide into an avalanche, just like what happened in 1994. Thing is, back in 94 all the pundits said Bill Clinton would never win a second term, just as people are calling Barack Obama a one-termer today.

Why did Clinton win in 96, and why might Obama win in 2012? Because Republicans are defined by what they oppose, and at some point you have to become something more than a protest vote.

The genius here is that on a very basic level the people who wind up hurt by the Republican leadership are the people voting for them. They vote for the theory, the philosophy, and when those theories and philosophies collapse, people turn them out.

Until they come up with something new to oppose.

***

Life, and the current mess of the federal government, is more simple than people make it out to be. Here's one such example.

You're interviewing someone for a customer service job. They tell you they hate customers, that customers are stupid and wrong. "Great," you say, "You're hired."

That's the case with any politician who says government is the problem. The issue today is how to make government work again, and anybody who doesn't believe it can work at all should not be there. Simple as that.

The Republican mantra for 30 years has been tax cuts, deregulation and the privatization of government functions because business can handle it more efficiently. All three have worked against the people voting for it.
• the tax cuts didn't stimulate the economy, the borrowed money stimulated the economy, and anybody who doesn't understand this doesn't understand basic economics. And now the people who giggled their way to $10 trillion in debt are raising holy hell over the 11th.
• deregulation gave us Enron and Madoff and the AIG / Goldman Sachs led financial meltdown. Once again, people at the top made a lot of money and the middle class got stuck with the bill. See a pattern here?
• six of the richest counties in America are suburbs of D.C. These people aren't government bureaucrats, they are contractors and lobbyists. If business is more efficient, and can do things more cheaply than government, then why are all these people getting rich and the cost of government constantly expanding?

***

Thanks to a strong libertarian streak, I spent years saying I was more of a liberal Republican than a conservative Democrat. I am very much a low-tax, limited-government type of person. I thought the government shutdown after the 94 election was great, and I thought Sen. Jim Bunning's recent stand against unfunded benefits was great.

But in both cases, it wasn't a principled stand, it was a stunt, and the free-spending ways continued. As a wise pundit once noted, Republicans come to Washington calling it a cess pool, and then find out it's a hot tub.

The problem isn't the Republican Party, per se -- though its cynicism, hypocrisy and shamelessness are breathtaking. The problem is an American public that keeps voting for feel-good soundbites while ignoring a multi-billion dollar theft that's taking place in plain sight.

Right now our government is by the money for the money, and it's going to continue to be a gravy train with biscuit wheels until the money runs out. It won't be Congress that stops runaway spending, it'll be bond traders. At some point those trillions will be real money, not accounting fiction.

What will happen when nobody will lend the U.S. money anymore? It's hard to predict the ugliness, but of one thing we can be sure.

Republicans will have something new to oppose.

-30-

Mr. Marshall is always amazed at how many high-paying jobs are available in the parts of Virginia where he does not live.

(Back to top)