The Old Formula Never Worked

One aspect of Faith is that it seek a moment when perfection has been achieved. The nature of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Science is the art of drawing reasonable conclusions from replicable experiments. This explains why scientists think religion is crazy. It also explains what is wrong with conservatives. Like any religion, the conservative faith has its mantra. Small government, balanced budgets, tax cuts, family values. And like any faith based system that has failed to achieve nirvana, conservatives insist it didn't work because they did not have true faith. The only reason the magic moment did not happen in the Busch years is that Busch was not a true conservative, they now insist. Of course he was probably the truest conservative since Hoover. Busch, backed by a GOOP based Congress, reduced the size and the effectiveness of government. He substantially slashed taxes, giving rich people the best years of their lives. Busch increased government effort to establish religion by "faith based initiatives" and used the Justice Department to fight religious discrimination (as opposed to racial discrimination). He set back stem cell research in the US by a generation and forbade the use of federal funds to promote safe sex, preferring to teach abstinence. Not to mention he was a hawk's hawk. He got tough with everyone and would have rather bombed hell out of the opposition than talk to them. The only aspect of the conservative mantra that Busch did not live up to was that he spent money like a drunken Air Force reservist. Starting out with money is his pocket, he created the largest debt in history. Conservatives insist The Raygunner was the real conservative whose eight years of service brought us a political nirvana we should all aspire to. Raygun was a scumball and a fool, but he was not otherwise a conservative. The government had 61,000 more employees when the Raygunner left office than it had when he was sworn in. (Clinton cut 374,000 federal jobs). Raygun never balanced the budget, leaving GHW Busch with a record deficit (which he, in turn, left to Bill Clinton). The Raygunner largely cut taxes for individuals, including wealthy individuals, he also implemented the largest corporate tax increase in history. Although he got a lot of his policy advice from an astrologer, The Raygunner could have cared less about establishing a religion. On the whole he was hands off on social issues. The truth is the Raygunner was a pragmatist, and he knew conservatism did not offer a way to govern. Conservatism does not work. This is not because it has not been tried, but because if government is intended to maintain peace and ensure domestic tranquility, conservatism does not work. Conservative principles cannot regulate a stock market and conservative governments, with their blind faith in free markets and scorn for regulation are the primary cause of economic meltdown. Conservative governments substitute war for negotiation and thus require a substantially higher investment in the military budget. Conservatives have no respect for government and so they put incompetents in charge and the government does not work when you need it to. Balanced budgets are a good thing, a fact demonstrated by Bill Clinton, but in times of economic collapse the government must act as the engine of the economy. Failure to do so is the highest form of economic malpractice, a fact that we learned from Herbert Hoover. A fact that even that Moron George W. Busch finally understood. But while it is fairly clear that FDR's failure to pour more money into the economy in 1937 ended the recovery and created a new depression, the GOOP wants to go there again. If you want to balance budgets, you must raise taxes or cut spending. You can't cut spending in hard times. History has already proven that but the GOOP wants to cut taxes and spending. The President has presented a pragmatic, fact-based budget with a comprehensive plan for long term budget control. The GOOP is standing on the sideline like an ancient witch doctor mumbling the mantra and whistling I the wind.