What's wrong with America's Right Wing?

[welsh]

In a word, hypocrisy.

Or do you need another word or words... hmmmm....let's see...
Crooked? Corrupt? Criminal?

What's gone wrong for America's right
Sep 29th 2005
From The Economist print edition

George Bush's Republicans are in trouble, but if he has the will and the wit he can fix their problems.

Will? The guy seems mostly just anti-government.
Wit? Now that's funny.

APFOR George Bush September has been the cruellest month. The news from Iraq continues to be grim. Hurricane Katrina—and his initial cluelessness in dealing with it—sent his approval ratings to new lows. Mercifully, Rita was less ferocious. But in the meantime the conservative coalition that he heads and which dominates American politics has become engulfed in a political storm of its own.

Ok, another word-
Incompetent.
Slow?
Stupid?
Irresponsible?

In Katrina's wake, rows have broken out about the very unconservative increase in public spending and the cronyism of Mr Bush's appointments. Meanwhile, a party which came to power by running against the sleaziness of Washington, DC, has got engulfed in corruption scandals of its own. First the White House's top procurement official was indicted. Then the Securities & Exchange Commission announced an investigation into share dealing by Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader. Now—and most seriously—the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, has been indicted in a Texan corruption probe. The Hammer has been forced to step down “temporarily”.

Cronyism?
Sleazy?
Corrupt?

Indicted?

It is easy to exaggerate the nature of the “conservative crack-up”. Some of the blame for post-Katrina incompetence belongs to local Democrat officials in Louisiana, and Mr Bush did a better job of handling Rita. Mr DeLay says the investigation into his affairs (run by pretty much the last Democrat in Texas) is politically motivated. Mr Frist seems to have an innocent explanation for his share sale. Bits of the conservative machine continue to grind forward: as The Economist went to press, it looked likely that John Roberts would be confirmed as chief justice of the United States. It would be foolish to bet on the chaotic Democrats winning back Congress next year: in the Senate, they are defending more seats, and in the House, gerrymandering makes most incumbents very difficult to shift.

Cracked up?
Politically motivated?
Cronyism?
Bad choices?

There is plainly more going on than just one bad month. Mr Bush's domestic programme—notably his plan to overhaul Social Security—lies in tatters; and his attention must have drifted from matters overseas. More importantly, the current crisis points to deeper difficulties, to do with competence, cronyism and the contradictory nature of “big government conservatism”. It is not too late for Mr Bush to deal with these things; but he must do so brutally and quickly—and not just for his party's sake. It is not in anybody's interest—even those now smug Europeans who loathe Mr Bush's America—for Mr Bush to become a lame-duck president consumed by domestic woe.

Domestic policy in tatters?
Attention drifted?
Incompetent?
Contradictory?
Consumed by domestic woe?

The Economist has always had all sorts of ideological disagreements with Mr Bush, but our main problem with his administration has increasingly become incompetence. Katrina now stands besides the shambles overseas in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay as supporting evidence. Mr Bush is a bold decision-maker, but he is also a delegator who too often picks the wrong people and seldom fires them. Both “Rummy” and “Brownie” (ie, Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, and Michael Brown, the erstwhile Arabian-horse man whom Mr Bush belatedly removed from the Federal Emergency Management Agency) are symptoms of the same problem.

Terrible delegation?
Irresponsible?
Unaccountable?

America's system of political appointees always risks putting the well connected, rather than the well qualified, into top jobs. But Mr Bush has abused this more than most. One advantage of Republicans is they normally want to restrict government. Yet Mr Bush and Mr DeLay have embraced big-government conservatism. Like Lyndon Johnson's Democrats in the 1960s, they believe they can use the state to do good—but this time for conservative, not liberal, ends. This is not quite as oxymoronic as it first sounds: you can indeed use government cash to make schools more accountable and promote families. But it has come with two serious flaws.

Abusive of the spoils system? (that's a contradiction in terms).
Big government conservatism? (Wait... didn't W promise not to do this?)

The most important is fiscal profligacy. Mr Bush has increased spending more than any president since Johnson, and cut taxes with the enthusiasm of Ronald Reagan. Second, far too much cash has gone on earmarked pork-barrel projects without economic justification. There is $24 billion-worth of such gunk in the highway bill, including the notorious $231m “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska, put there by the chairman of the House transportation committee. When Mr DeLay, the man who led the Republican takeover of K Street, the lobbyists' home in Washington, DC, announced a couple of weeks ago that the budget was “pared down pretty good”, it is hardly surprising that the anti-tax wing of his party went mad.

Fiscal profligacy? (how often do you use those words in a sentence?)
Pork barrel?

Katrina the cleaner and Teddy Roosevelt
What does Mr Bush need to do? One priority is a proper audit of what went wrong with Katrina.

Or more likely, cover it up.

This week, “Brownie” was hauled in front of Congress and harangued for his incompetence. This should remind other cronies of the administration that plum federal postings carry responsibilities, but Mr Brown was right to protest that he was not to blame for everything. Mr Bush is currently resisting attempts to set up an independent inquiry into what went wrong: he would prefer to have an inquiry led by a White House adviser. This is heinous. A thousand people have died and the tax payer faces a bill of up to $200 billion. If those two things do not merit independent investigation, then what on earth does?

Heinous! That's a word for the Republicans we don't hear nearly enough.

The second priority is to tackle profligacy and pork. A good symbolic first step would be for Mr Bush to back a “pork-for-reconstruction” scheme, where politicians give up projects earmarked for their districts, so the proceeds can go to New Orleans; better still he should urge them to get rid of earmarking completely. More important, he should look at the contradictions underlying his brand of conservatism. That means promoting serious spending cuts, especially in entitlement programmes, and giving up some of his cherished tax cuts.

End entitlement programs- Easy to do if the entitlement is education programs for poor blacks but tough to do when it's a nice juicy pay-off to industry.

Yes, except the Republican notion of big government is give lots of money to friends and allies, who will fund your next campaign, and whatever smear tactics you can envision.

Yes, $231 million bridge to nowhere might be better spent on something... like keeping New Orleans' public employees in their jobs for the year while the city tries to rebuild?

Every successful political movement has its contradictions. It is much harder to survive them if you are inefficient and stained by corruption. It is hard to imagine that Mr Bush—a conviction politician if ever there was one—wants to be remembered for the messy bungling of this cruel September. He might take a look at Teddy Roosevelt, the first big-government conservative; he was also famous for waging war against corruption and cronyism. Now is a good time for Mr Bush to follow suit—and start clearing house.

Inefficient?
Stained with corruption?
Bungler?

And the difference between W the dipshit and Teddy Roosvelt is a huge divide = what the Republican party is vs. what it could be.

 

[Loxley]

Ohh i cannot wait to see john usglass retort to this.

 

[Jebus]

Why did I take a subscribtion on The Economist again?

 

[Wooz]

Welsh, I suggest we make the topic thread "What isn't wrong with America's Right Wing?"

Or Right Wing politics in general, worldwide.

Make that "Why Right-Wing party members haven't been shot and their bodies dumped under a compost heap yet?"

 

[Loxley]

Make that "Why Right-Wing party members haven't been shot and their bodies dumped under a compost heap yet?"

Good idea, but a this annoying free speech and democray policy stops us.

 

[John Uskglass]

Why did I take a subscribtion on The Economist again?

That's simply not Convservative by American standards. They supported Kerry.


A lot of things are wrong with the Right, but ultimatley this is little more then a masterbatory exercise. The Right appears to be the only choice to many Americans: the Democrats are probably in their weakest position in 150 years. How the fuck they could have lost to GWB is beyond me at this point. They have to be masichists.

 

[welsh]

How did they lose?

Let's see, the Republican lied and gave us a new work "Swift Boat"?

The incrediably large number of terrorist threats that suddenly popped up during the election?

Oh my God! Marriage for gays means men might kiss?

Jesus Christ has a PR department that enjoys getting pay offs?

Tax Cuts means that you save while your children pay?

That said, I wish the Democrats would get their shit together-

Lexington

Hold the champagne

Oct 6th 2005
From The Economist print edition

The Democrats cannot rely on the Republicans' current woes to deliver victories in 2006 and 2008

TALK about trouble coming not in single spies but in battalions. For much of his first term, almost everything that George Bush touched turned to political gold. He even managed to parlay a badly-handled war in Iraq into a vote winner. But now almost everything he touches turns to dust.

The Democrats are quietly jubilant. They are seizing every chance they can get—and there are plenty of them—to brand the Republicans as the party of “corruption and cronyism”. They seem to be recruiting good candidates for next year's elections. Some even wonder whether 2006 may be their equivalent of 1994—when the Republicans won 52 seats in the House and nine in the Senate, ending 40 years of Democratic rule.

They should hold the champagne. Parties don't win elections just because their rivals hit a rough patch. They win them because they win the battle of ideas, because they think ahead and cook up cogent policies, because they offer a positive vision of the future. Bill Clinton did this brilliantly in 1992. Tony Blair did it even more brilliantly in 1997. But, so far, not the Democrats.

Can anyone name a single exciting Democratic idea for dealing with poverty? Or crime? Or reforming the public sector? Or winning the Kulturkampf with Islamic extremism? In fact, can anyone name a single exciting Democratic idea, full stop? The Democrats have squandered their years in opposition railing against the Republicans rather than recharging their intellectual batteries. They may be winning a few political battles of late—largely because of Republican incompetence. But they are losing the vision wars.

The reason for this is as simple as it is potentially lethal: the Democrats are split down the middle on everything from Iraq to gay marriage. Centrists believe in working with business, protecting family values and fighting terrorism. “We believe that the September 11th attacks changed America for ever,” says the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), “and defeating terrorism is the supreme military and moral mission of our time.” Liberal activists believe the opposite: that corporations are bad, family values are hogwash, and the war on terror a delusion.

Worse still, the wrong side is getting the upper hand. A new generation of angry young activists have used their mastery of the internet to tilt the party to the left. Groups such as Moveon.org (which claims 3.3m members) and blogs such as the Daily Kos (which has thousands of partisans venting daily) now colour the whole tone of the political debate on the left.

The teenage scribblers of the left seem to be turning the Democrats into a deranged version of Pavlov's dog—reacting to every stimulus from Professor Rove's laboratory rather than thinking ahead. Look what has happened in Congress, where the combination of a re-energised left and a ruthlessly partisan White House is making life miserable for would-be centrists. In 1994, 102 House Democrats voted in favour of NAFTA; this year, only 15 voted in favour of CAFTA, a more modest free-trade deal.

The teenage scribblers are wedded to a suicidal strategy: they think that their party's best chance of winning lies not in emulating Mr Clinton and moving to the centre but in emulating their nemesis, Mr Bush, and motivating their base. This ignores the most salient fact about American politics: there are three conservatives for every two liberals. The Democrats cannot win without carrying about 60% of moderates.

The other dysfunctional party
Is it really that bad? Marshall Wittmann, of the centrist DLC, counsels against despair about the party's future. He points out that the anti-Bush left has a built-in sell-by date: Mr Bush will not be running in 2008. He also argues that the person who defines the character of a party is its presidential candidate—and the strongest candidates for 2008, such as Hillary Clinton and Mark Warner, are forward-thinking moderates.

There are two problems with Mr Wittmann's optimism. The first is that Moveon et al will still be in full bark against Mr Bush in 2006. That will not help in a contest where the tables are already stacked against the Democrats. In the Senate, they will be defending seven potentially vulnerable seats while the Republicans will be defending five; in the House, 41 Democrats are defending districts that Mr Bush carried in 2004 while only 18 Republicans are protecting districts that John Kerry carried.

Second, even if a centrist Democrat succeeds in winning the party nomination in 2008, he or she will have a huge mountain to climb. In “The Politics of Polarisation”, a new paper published by the Third Way group, William Galston and Elaine Kamarck, two centrist stalwarts, lay out the topography. The public is profoundly sceptical of the Democrats on both “values” (only 29% of Americans regard the party as friendly towards religion) and defence (it is no accident that the Democrats have won the popular vote only in recent elections—1992, 1996 and 2000—when national security was all but absent from the debate). The party has also lost ground with two groups of swing voters: married women favoured them by four points in 1996, but backed Mr Bush by 12 points in 2004; a 16-point lead among Catholics became a five-point loss in 2004.

The 1990s showed that left-of-centre parties can climb the highest mountains provided they start early and stick to the right path. Mr Clinton made his political reputation as a reforming governor who was willing to think afresh about everything from education to free trade. No sooner was Mr Blair elected leader of the Labour Party in 1994 than he started tearing up left-wing shibboleths about public ownership and rebranding the party as “New Labour”. So far the Democratic Party has been so paralysed by its internal contradictions that it has wasted its years in opposition. Perhaps it will start laying out a blueprint for government soon. But time is short.