The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an article from the AP entitled “Republicans – Less Spending is Path to Prosperity.” It’s as if the scales fell from their eyes the moment President Obama was sworn in.
U.S. Republicans say the path to prosperity is not the excessive spending proposed by President Barack Obama but limited spending that holds down the growth of government, taxes and debt.
“We believe you create prosperity by having an affordable government that pursues its responsibilities without excessive costs, taxes or debt,” Sen. Judd Gregg said Saturday in the weekly Republican radio address.
After the past eight years, the Republicans simply lack all credibility in matters of fiscal discipline. The Democrats are articulating a rationale for why spending is necessary at the moment. If you don’t buy that rationale, that’s reasonable, but if fiscal austerity is the policy in which you believe, then vote for the Libertarians.
Preach it, bro!
It’s good to see the GOP’ers get some old-time fiscal-conservative religion…I guess…
But their credibility (with few exceptions) is nil. At the end of the day, it reduces to political posturing rather than a principled position. Lame…
Doug is absolutely correct and I know that the abandonment of small government principles was a large reason the Republicans were not enthusiastically supported in a couple of recent elections by the fiscal conservatives that used to be a bigger part of their base.
Now, of course, just because the Republicans suddenly have religion again does not mean they are wrong. But, since we know Democrats oppose sound financial and economic policies, The Republicans can’t be trusted to actually implement what they preach and most people won’t ditch partisan tribalism (yet) to vote Libertarian … well, that leaves us pretty much screwed.
Only if you’re right that refraining from government spending and/or investment constitutes sound financial and economic policies.
The Clinton years were pretty good as I recall — the causes for that and how good they actually were is subject to debate.
There was a great editorial cartoon that came out about four weeks ago with exactly this message. “Mine eyes have seen the light!” Lol.
The Republicans have figured out how to be an opposition party, but not the party in power. It’s apparently too much fun to spend other people’s money on your friends when you can. Of course, the Dems aren’t doing anything different than that.
What the Clinton years going for them were gridlock. I’m looking forward to that in 2011, not because I have any faith in either Rs or Ds, but because when they share leadership, they become far more thoughtful about the bills they advance. It is currently the best hope I have for maintaining some fiscal restraint. I don’t know why it is the case that when we have a D executive and R Congress we get that restraint. We sure didn’t with an R executive and a D Congress.
The D Congress was spineless. Guys like Lieberman and Bayh weren’t generally willing to stand up to Bush and the Republicans.
Well, those are cherry-picked examples. Murtha, Clinton, Kennedy, Pelosi, Reid, and Schumer had plenty of spine for Bush in areas other than spending. It just happened that they all agreed on big spending.
Ugh. So now they’re doubling down on the “myth of thrift” garbage? Listen carefully so-called conservatives: a government is not like a household. If there’s no lending, no spending, no jobs, and no Fed interest rate to cut… it’s only government spending that can get things moving again.