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The Spectacle Blog
Matthew Yglesias offers a primer, using an unfortunate Irving Kristol quote unearthed by Brad DeLong as a jumping-off point: "The presence of a major ideological movement in the United States of America dedicated to the dual propositions that taxes must never go up, and that government expenditures don't need to relate to government revenue in any real way as long as the Republican Party is in charge simply makes it almost impossible for the country to be governed in a responsible manner."
Well. Certainly Republicans deserve criticism for increasingly substituting borrow-and-spend economics for the Democrats' tax-and-spend economics. But one might at least point out that the national debt declined as a percentage of GDP under Clinton without returning to pre-Reagan tax rates. Or that Barack Obama explicitly promised to reduce federal revenues "to below the levels that prevailed under Ronald Reagan" while increasing federal spending. Or that the economic picture looked quite a bit different after the policy mix intended to whip stagflation went into effect, a mix that included Reagan's tax cuts.
The political class' "rather cavalier attitude toward the budget deficit and other monetary or fiscal problems" has been bipartisan and transideological. So has been the realization that at least some of the basic observations of supply-side economics are sound.
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More Blog Posts by W. James Antle, III
http://spectator.org/blog/2009/09/21/how-to-argue-as-tendentiously
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S.L. Toddard| 9.21.09 @ 11:27AM
Nothing on the miserable performance of the offensive line yesterday? It was like watching Brady's last SB all over again. Miserable and dispiriting. And it can't all be blamed on Welker's sitting out.
W. James Antle III| 9.21.09 @ 1:10PM
The less that is said about that unmitigated disaster, the better. If the offense hadn't come out of the locker room at the end of halftime, the outcome wouldn't have been any worse.
S.L. Toddard| 9.21.09 @ 1:21PM
I keep probing at it, like a sore tooth. In terms of soul-crushing despondence this obviously doesn't compare to the SB loss, which was one of the darkest days in NE sports history. But there was something familiar about the complete lack of cohesion yesterday, and I think that SB is what it reminded me of.
Not to mention coming after the previous game! I actually thought "Maybe this will be even MORE fun, now that they're not guaranteed to win every game!" Stupid me.
W. James Antle III| 9.21.09 @ 4:13PM
The SB was obviously a more consequential, devastating defeat than Sunday's. But I'm filled with a greater sense of foreboding than I was after the SB. I figured the Pats would pounce back after losing the Super Bowl. After yesterday, I worry about every game played against a team with a minimally competent defense looking like the Super Bowl all over again.
Tim| 9.21.09 @ 2:28PM
Football analogies? If the Feds ran the NFL, every player would get his own ball...