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Do alleged conservatives really care about the debt, if we can afford to lower taxes during a time of war on abstractions; historically, the reverse has been true during times of war.
Why do you care NOW when you didn't care when Bush was raising the debt to record levels after being given a SURPLUS?
Pubs specialize in selective concern for the debt. Only care when a Democrat is successfully running the country.
All you are doing is perpetuating misinformation. Most conservatives hated Bush during his last four years, yet the left conveniently and consistently ignore that fact. You know that it's actually possible to remain a conservative while admitting that we've been played by RINOs.
What's your excuse? Now that you've been utterly and completely fooled by your guy, why so much denial? Democrats don't want to admit they've been played- exactly the same way! Like a broken record, they keep screaming it's Bush' fault. Obama is the most transparent panderer to ever grace the office. I know it. The press knows it. Everyone in Europe and Asia knows it. I'd even bet HE knows it! Why don't DEMs seem to?
I'm all ears when DEMs honestly decide to cut the party line BS and come to the table with equal concern about their parties blatant mishandling of everything. We've had 11 years of the bobbsey twins playing monopoly with our country.
All you are doing is perpetuating misinformation. Most conservatives hated Bush during his last four years, yet the left conveniently and consistently ignore that fact. You know that it's actually possible to remain a conservative while admitting that we've been played by RINOs.
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That's funny? I didn't remember any militant tea baggers marching on Washington or demonstrating against GWB. Nor do I remember angry right-wingers yelling at town hall meetings nor any conservative political leader singing anything but praise for Bush.
What you are engaging in is conservative revisionism. Besides the possible exception of Ron Paul, who criticizes everything, there wasn't any outcry from conservatives when Bush and Republicans ran record deficits in relatively good economic times.
If you disagree, quote when a conservative criticized Bush on deficit spending during his tenure.
Quote:
Originally Posted by steven_h
I'm all ears when DEMs honestly decide to cut the party line BS and come to the table with equal concern about their parties blatant mishandling of everything. We've had 11 years of the bobbsey twins playing monopoly with our country.
You can't get away with saying "blatant mishandling of everything." What specific policies do you disagree with? How would you have solved the economic crisis that you would have inherited on Jan 20, 09?
That's funny? I didn't remember any militant tea baggers marching on Washington or demonstrating against GWB. Nor do I remember angry right-wingers yelling at town hall meetings nor any conservative political leader singing anything but praise for Bush.
What you are engaging in is conservative revisionism. Besides the possible exception of Ron Paul, who criticizes everything, there wasn't any outcry from conservatives when Bush and Republicans ran record deficits in relatively good economic times.
If you disagree, quote when a conservative criticized Bush on deficit spending during his tenure.
You can't get away with saying "blatant mishandling of everything." What specific policies do you disagree with? How would you have solved the economic crisis that you would have inherited on Jan 20, 09?
I agree 100%!
I have noticed that when republicans cannot defend their leadership they refer to them as RINOs. I have no idea what that stands for, except it appears to be a duck-and-cover response.
I have noticed that when republicans cannot defend their leadership they refer to them as RINOs. I have no idea what that stands for, except it appears to be a duck-and-cover response.
RINO stands for Republican In Name Only.
But I've heard people here state that Bush was a liberal because he didn't balance the budget. It is true, Bush did not balance the budget, nor did the Republicans in Congress care about deficits as soon as Bush was elected. Cheney has a famous statement that , "deficits don't matter." But Bush also was strongly in favor of cutting taxes and privatizing government. He clearly wasn't a liberal.
That doesn't make them RINOs; that makes the hypocrites. Republicans frequentlysay they believe in positions when they're not in power and take opposite positions when they get in power.
Republicans say they believe in balanced budgets, limited foreign intervention and limiting the government's encroachment upon individual liberties and freedom. However, when they were in power they tapped American's phones without warrant and threw citizens in jail without charges or legal representation.
Republicans of yesteryear respected state sovereignty and believed that torturing prisoners was only what the Communists did. But when in power Republicans had no compunction about using their federal muscle to overrule state courts (e.g. Terry Schiavo) and argued the merits of torture.
At a time when the country is seeing the worst recession in 70 years, do you really think that now is the time to worry about deficits/debts? Did you say "yes?"
I know the GOP establishment is focused like a laser on deficits, now that Obama is the President. But look at what the core GOP was saying in 2005, when one of their own was in the White House:
WHEN DICK CHENEY SAID, "Deficits don't matter," economists took that as proof of the economic illiteracy of the Bush administration. But it turns out there is a case to be made that Cheney was onto something.
On the deepest level, the vice president was echoing, in slightly exaggerated form, an idea put forward a few years ago by Irving Kristol, the Godfather of the neoconservatives who have had such a wide-ranging effect on Bush administration policy. Kristol wrote then, and still believes, that "We should figure out what we want before we calculate what we can afford, not the reverse."
... The deficits that Bush ran up in the years in which the country was teetering on the verge of a serious recession had the beneficial effect of righting the economy. In that sense, deficits not only didn't matter, but were a force for economic good.
There we have it. Republicans favored deficits to combat recessions and let's not let them forget it.
No matter what anti-Keynesian nonsense the GOP now spouts, they believed in Keynes when the last Republican lived in the White House.
When you reduce the price of something the demand increases. When airline fares dropped after deregulation everyone wanted to fly. Computers have been dropping in price for years and many are not satisfied with just one. And when taxes, the price of government, went down, voters demanded more from government. Far from starving the beast, it makes it grow faster.
That's actually an interesting, and insightful arguement, and one I hadn't considered. To summarize, when EVERYONE pays high taxes, they consider just what they really want the government to provide, and evaluate if what they receive is worth the price. Yet while taxes are low, the price is ignored and the demand for what are perceived as low-cost "goodies" goes up.
This is an arguement that does make sense. However, until all voters have some skin in the game (aka actually PAY income taxes), you won't see any change in behavior. When people get to have someone else pay for government largess, they will always push for more.
This is one of the reasons I am a fan of the "fair tax". Everyone gets a first-hand look at just what government costs, without taxes hidden in the cost of goods or services.
I am a progressive liberal leftist that is intensely angered that both the Republicans and the Democrats and borrow money for WAR against the World but cannot fund anything for the people most damaged by the recent bursting of the mortgage bubble. We need to maintain domestic spending on things like unemployment, /social Security, Medicare and similar and simply drop 90% of our Military waste and all the useless wars.
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Better question for Cons
