The American Spectator

Ken (Old Texican)| 1.18.10 @ 11:57AM

Mr. Klein, you are precisely correct. We need a bunch of "Repealers" going into office...but there is going to be a loud rending of garments every time they take a popsickle away from the..."chuldrunnn".

Its going to have to get a little worse into the gutter before repealing stuff it seems to me.

Jerry in Detroit| 1.18.10 @ 1:18PM

Rather than trying to fight repeal efforts through Congress, what we need is a Bureau of Government Efficiency with a charter to identify government programs that have been accomplished, failed, corrupted or grown beyond their charter. Once such a program or agency is identified, the BoGErs (Yes, Boogers. All pun intended.) pulls their funding. If the employees can find work elsewhere within the government fine, otherwise they can share unemployment with us. Just to make sure the BoGE does their job, they will have no budget of their own; Their only budget comes from what they pull from other programs. The BoGErs will have no ability to set rules or create programs. All they do is pull government funding to continue their efforts. Heading this bureau will not be for the faint of heart. One will need the most clever, dishonest, avaricious bureaucrat to be found inside the beltway. One can be assured that targeted agencies will do anything up to and likely including outright assassination. The point is they will be fighting among themselves and eventually decreasing to a more manageable level.

Bert Spence| 1.18.10 @ 1:21PM

The real problem with Dionne's analysis is that it assumes there is no underlying truth, only degrees of effectiveness at packaging the message.

Yes, Reagan went through a time of political unpopularity early in his first administration. To suggest this means that Obama could have a Reagan-like recovery is ludicrous, and it has nothing to do with "messaging." Reagan began, on day one, to dismantle the idiotic policies of the Carter administration (and, quite frankly, of the Ford and Nixon administrations) that had produced the famous "misery index." While thinking people in America waited for those measures to bear fruit, Democrats and the media did their usual slime-job on Reagan and the polls reflected this.

Reagan recovered because his policies bore fruit. Obama won't recover because everything he is doing and tries to do is objectively bad for the economy. No matter how good a spin artist he may be, he can't spin into existence jobs for hurting Americans with policies that are objectively, always and everywhere, job-killers.

So forget about comparing Reagan and Obama. They are not cut from the same cloth. They are not even residents of the same universe.

Alan Brooks| 1.19.10 @ 7:52AM

"(and, quite frankly, of the Ford and Nixon administrations)"

what do you mean "quite frankly"? Why shouldn't you be candid? unless there is something about the GOP you wish to hide.

Mary Louise| 1.18.10 @ 1:43PM

As much as it's Reagan's America, it's also Lincoln's America. The Lincolnian streak is as pronounced and as lovely as the Reagan streak. Maybe lovlier, in the end because, in my view, Lincoln was a much greater mind and man.

Brown is going to have to dance with those who brung him. Exit polling will help figure out who that is. He will be a government employee. His wage will come from the taxpayer's purse. What is his stance on term limits? No sooner will he be sworn in than he'll have to begin thinking about how to stay in office to accomplish whatever his goals may be. He'll have to make it a policy not to rile up the left, as Obama has riled up the right.

The Country has to disgorge someone who isn't afraid to have a real fireside chat with the American people. Asking for their support and for their patriotism.

The Stamp Act might not have sparked the protest that it did if the Crown wasn't bent on forcing it down the throat of colonists. It considered the revenue recompense for their efforts in the French/Indian War and the advantages the colonists acquired from that.

War is as much a tax on the liberty of a people as any health care power grab. It destabilizes. The difference is War can end, power grabs like that do not.

Manzi has the best piece out there, presently, on keeping America from decline. Understanding as he does that a breakdown of social cohesion is as dangerous to the Country as 'war, war, interminable war,' and the contempt for the cultural bearings of a lot of Americans shown by the Obama administration.

Reagan never showed such contempt because he never once felt it.

JP| 1.18.10 @ 1:54PM

The dynamics (politically, socially, and economically) of the years 1981-1983 as compared to today were vastly different. Carter's appoinee Paul Volker dramatically raised interest rates (above 18%) in order to a)allow the dollar to recover, and b) kill double digit inflation. This sent the economy into a tailspin, as the price of borrowing more than doubled.

In 1981, President Reagan signed across the board tax cuts, of which the most dramatic cuts occured with top wage earners who's tax rates were slashed from a high of 70% down to less than 35%. Cuts in capital gains taxes, as well as an over-all reduction in federal regulations (esp energy regulation) also occured during the years 1981-1983.

So, while the Fed soaked up excess liquidity, it also lowered the taxes on risk capital. In only 2 years, the GDP more than recovered its earlier losses, and the unemployment rate decreased from 10.1% to less than 6.5% by 1984. The big loosers were commodities speculators (esp in Gold and oil). By 1985, Texas's economy was in free-fall. Not everyone did well, of course.

The total amount of federal spending continued to go up, but it did against a back drop of solid GDP gains. Government grew, but only on the back of an expanding economy. Even if one considers the large increases in military spending ($150 billion in Carter's last year, and $300 billion by 1988), the total share of military spending increased only from 4% of the GDP to 6% at its peak. After 1988, the percentage of military spending to the GDP began dropping. Reagan never shut down the Department of Education (as promised), nor did he shut down the Department of Energy. His attempt to shutdown the School Lunch Program (only a few billion back then) failed, as did attempts to trim the NEA, PBS, the TVA, and a myriad of other New Deal\Great Society spending.

Things are much different now. The biggest being, the front loading of huge amounts of public debt to our GDP. Federal spending for 2009 accounted for most of the GDP gains the last few quarters. You subtract Beltway spending and borrowing and you have negative GDP growth. Unlike Reagan, President Obama has made the Fed Chief into an apparatchik of the Oval Office. Reagan and the GOP took thier lumps in the 1982 mid-terms; but Reagan never put pressure on Volcker to lower interest rates. On top of the huge spending increases, Obama, Barney Frank, and Geithner are proposing or implementing an entire host of new banking and financial regulations. Obama went as far as to propose $100 billion in new banking taxes (which will be passed on), as well as his landmark HealthCare initiatives, which will consume another $2-3 trillion of our nations wealth. And the Dems wonder why non-governmental payrolls continue to shrink.

One last observation: both Reagan and Clinton benefitted greatly from demographics. The largest, most educated, and most affluent generation in our nation's history (The Baby Boomers) came into thier own circa 1980-1985. The energy, ideas, and passion they brought to thier specialties (high tech, finance, banking, debt management) cannot be over-stated. By the time Clinton was inaugerated, this group recovering from the '87 crash and 1991 Recession, poured trillions of dollars of its earnings into high tech, Wall St, and real estate). As a group, the Boomers peak earning years occured from 1995-2005. They themselves were sons and daughters of fortune, as the person they despised (Reagan) gave them the means to enrich themselves beyond thier wildest dreams. President Clinton also helped them with NAFTA, economic trade normalizations with China, and the 1997 capital gains tax cut. Millions of Boomers are now retiring.

This will be a long, very long decade.

martin j smith| 1.18.10 @ 2:46PM

DIONNE Doesn't get it just as Obama doesn't. It about the vast majority of AMERICAN VOTERS who do not buy the LEFT AGENDA . My bet is that if the Democrat Party and Obama actually did what they promised, for better or worse, they would not be in the situation they appear to be in now. Fact is they have shown their true colors and a large majority of voters say NO! Its not about Reagen,its AGAINST an extreme LEFT agenda.

Tex Expatriate| 1.18.10 @ 3:17PM

There's another reason Dionne doesn't get it. That's because he is a true-believing socialist, although he calls it progressivism. Socialists like him don't understand or learn from history, don't understand or know any economics, and can't think clearly because they operate out of a purely emotional process.

As one who spent most of his professional life trying to teach people how to think clearly and act on the rational mental process rather than the emotional process, I understand very well why we will always have Stalins, Hitlers, Obamas, and Pelosis.

Arnie Rosner| 1.18.10 @ 4:07PM

America was founded on principles detailed in the founding documents. Anyone not comfortable living under those principles is invited to move to any place they find comfort in living. No one is forcing anyone to live under democracy and capitalism.

Oldefarte| 1.18.10 @ 5:01PM

American taxpayers have always been extremely charitable and willing to help others that are in need; but these liberal Democrats have now bent these good-hearted, hard-working, patriotic human beings over backwards and run over them with a Mack truck [with their wealth redistributing, governmental welfare schemes]. American taxpayers are sick and tired of lazy, stupid historical welfare recipients living off of their hard work and hard earned incomes; and they're are not going to take any longer!!!!

Patriot| 1.18.10 @ 5:08PM

As Obama's Marxist Reverend Wright (loosely) screeched, "The liberals' chickens have come home to roooost!"

Hopefully.

Richard Baker| 1.18.10 @ 7:27PM

The problem is that Dionne and his ilk have mutated DNA with a prediliction towards tyranny. Those damned Americans, they just keep believing in Liberty and Freedom. Poor Dionne.

Lazy Jack| 1.18.10 @ 9:53PM

I find it remarkable the E.J. Dionne and the left leaning intelligentsia can still claim, with a straight face, that somehow the right’s narrative is the dominant ideology in this country. Since 1932, Democrat’s have controlled the federal legislature nearly eighty percent of the time, by my count. If conservatism is so dominant, how did we end up growing government as a percent of GDP from the teens at the beginning of the depression to about 45% today (including federal, state, and local spending. The 45% is the current figure if you include the monstrous deficit spending running out the door)?

The real problem is that E.J. and his contemporaries have been allowed to habitually reinforce that falsehood with no effective response from conservatives and libertarians. In fact, conservatives have been all too ready to betray the constitution in favor of their own particular pet politics. So for all of us, we either accept that the founders desired, without reservation, the end of imperial central government for our people, or we accept that they planned that the ink from the constitution be erased and replaced with the statism so clearly repudiate throughout history. E.J. apparently should read both the constitution and the federalist papers instead of perpetuating the fabrication that a party other than the Democrats has controlled the trajectory of life in this country for the better part of eighty years.

For the Republicans, if they really want an end to the tyranny of the state they should probably stop acting so much like statists the second they get a bit of power. I know it is a rarity, in the face of the Democrats’ monolith, but it would be less of a rarity if they stuck with the founding principles.

lazy jack

www.thanksforthelaughs.wordpress.com

Franklin| 1.18.10 @ 11:39PM

“The country was founded after fighting a revolution to break away from a government that was exerting too much control over people's lives”

What we have now with Obama et al, is an attempt to take us back to where we were before the revolution.

Progressivism = Socialism = Fascism = Marxism = Communism = central authority makes the decisions.

Remember, this country is a REPUBLIC = by and for the PEOPLE. That’s us.

bluecollarbytes| 1.19.10 @ 7:40AM

The "right's narrative" works (when it's tried) because it is in line with our 'American DNA'.

Most of us also believe we are all equal in God's eye, which generally carries over to our politics. The Left divides us into more easily manageable sub groups of varying levels of 'worthiness', the good & the bad. They assign status based on political calculations meant to hold power. This goes on all the time but is front & center especially today for all to see because the ObamaShow refuses to be bridled.

We Have A Culture after all in America. It's not about old buildings, stone roads, and lineages, but personal freedoms, personal responsibilities, and the right to succeed or fail on ones own merits. It's a magic found no where else.

Mitt Romney| 1.19.10 @ 9:19PM

A Great Election Win By Scott Brown Calls For "The World's Greatest Key Lime Pie", from Kutchie's Key West Kutcharitaville Cafe. Kutchie Pelaez, A Great American, Bakes Those Awesome Famous Pies!! He Has for About the Last 40 Years. So While Were Taking Back Our Country, Why Not Take Back Our "Kutchie's Key Lime Pie"? ..Don't Settle For Anything Less Than The Best! ...Scott Brown and Kutchie Pelaez! .....Let's Send The Both of Them to Washington To Get Things Cleaned-Up!!!

...........Mitt Romney

Old Jolly| 1.24.10 @ 2:54AM

Screw you, Myth; you're NEVER GONNA BE POTUS, bastard!