The political savvy Phil notes
below is also a direct result of the Republicans' too clevery by
four-fifths strategy of focusing their spending critique on
earmarks and pork. Almost all of John McCain's credibility as an
anti-spending politician, for example, came from his stand
against earmarks. Earmarks are annoying, but they are not the
spending that is bankrupting our entitlements programs or pushing
us toward a European-style welfare state.
Republicans are right to point to the wasteful spending in the
stimulus package and to highlight the extent to which this is
just a giveway to various Democratic constituencies. But by
focusing only on the waste, they give the Democrats the easy out
of stripping the most egregious projects from the bill. The
stimulus package needs to be opposed because it is bad economics;
because the country cannot afford it; because the real stimulus
portions are tiny;
because the big increases in the deficit happen in the future,
not now. In short, Republicans need to stop playing around and
become a party of fiscal reality again.
