The GOP's Misplaced Rage

[bascule]

A very interesting article from conservative economist and historian Bruce Bartlett, who served as a treasurer under George W. Bush and a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan:

 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-08-12/the-gops-misplaced-rage/

 

Lots of comparisons are drawn between Bush, Clinton, and Reagan, noting how there are many more parallels between the economic policies of Reagan and Clinton than there are to anything Bush did.

 

The article blames the present economic problems pretty squarely on Bush, and that the rage exhibited towards Democrats and Obama at the town hall meetings should really be directed at Bush.

 

This section was particularly interesting:

 

According to the CBO, federal taxes will amount to just 15.5 percent of GDP this year. That’s 2.2 percent of GDP less than last year, 3.3 percent less than in 2007, and 1.8 percent less than the lowest percentage recorded during the Reagan years. If conservatives really believe their own rhetoric, they should be congratulating Obama for being one of the greatest tax cutters in history.

 

Certainly deflates the sails of the teabaggers. He also discusses the importance of healthcare reform in curbing federal spending:

 

But there is yet another dimension to Bush’s failures—the things he didn’t do. In this category I would put a health-care overhaul. Budget experts have known for years that Medicare was on an unsustainable financial path. It is impossible to pay all the benefits that have been promised because spending has been rising faster than GDP.

 

In 2003, the Bush administration repeatedly lied about the cost of the drug benefit to get it passed, and Bush himself heavily pressured reluctant conservatives to vote for the program.

 

Because reforming Medicare is an important part of getting health costs under control generally, Bush could have used the opportunity to develop a comprehensive health-reform plan. By not doing so, he left his party with nothing to offer as an alternative to the Obama plan. Instead, Republicans have opposed Obama's initiative while proposing nothing themselves.

 

What do you think?

[Pangloss]

The article blames the present economic problems pretty squarely on Bush, and that the rage exhibited towards Democrats and Obama at the town hall meetings should really be directed at Bush.

 

We need to direct rage at someone?

 

Why?

[bascule]

We need to direct rage at someone?

 

Why?

 

Oh come now Pangloss, that was not the sentiment of either my post or Bartlett's article. Where exactly are you getting the idea that I'm in favor of a bunch of angry Republicans venting rage?

 

Many Republicans have practically been throwing a temper tantrum since Obama got elected and the Democrats gained control of Congress. Bartlett's point is that such tantrums would be properly directed at the Bush Administration, not at Democrats.

[Pangloss]

Mkay. Then Mr. Bartlett is committing an obvious logical fallacy. Anger at Obama doesn't mean lack of anger towards Bush. And most of the conservatives I talk to these days have plenty of animosity for the most recent former president, as you should know if you followed his poll numbers during the last two years of his administration. I believe it to be one of the driving factors pushing them towards the conservative-libertarian camp.

[iNow]

Bascule,

 

I tend to agree with the assessments you've shared above, and we've spoken about the issue here at SFN many times. It very often seems that the republiotards just attack the "other side" at all costs, but use a ruse of some sort when stating their motivation (it happens on both sides, obviously, but I find the attacks coming from dems more often genuine in their stated motivations, whereas republicans will tend more often to attack and the attack will really have nothing to do with their stated purpose).

 

As an example, we had those tea parties earlier in the year, where a gigantic number of our super intelligent citizens bought millions of dollars worth of tea and shipped it to to the White House to express how angry they were about wasteful spending (the irony, ya know?) and high taxes.

 

When, in point of fact, their taxes were LOWER under Obama than they were under Bush. Obama had literally just lowered taxes for 95% of our populace, where we all saw an immediate increase in the dollar amount of our paychecks, and at the same time people were protesting in fits of rage about his awful democratic policy of increasing our taxes.

 

Another example is now with healthcare, and how people are fear mongering about death panels as a result of language in the bill which guarantees payment if a senior seeks voluntary end of life care counseling with their doctor. It just means that if a senior wishes to speak about their options for terminal care with their physician, it needs to be covered... and yet, we hear "they're gonna kill grandma" as an argument against this. The funny thing is, when republicans controlled congress, and when they changed Medicare, they used the EXACT same language in their bill when supporting it... but now that language appears in a democratic bill and it's time to use the politics of fear over an issue they supported just a few short years ago (Sen. Grassley from Iowa has been really sickeningly bad about this).

 

I don't know if these people are simply misguided, misinformed, or just mischievous, but one thing is for sure... their stated motivations are far too often directly contradicted by the facts and it doesn't seem to matter to them.

 

 

I see the same thing happening here to an extent with healthcare. Nobody raised a peep when Bush extended Medicare without paying for, increasing our debt position by a tremendous degree and in a hugely irresponsible way. While (as discussed in another thread) Pangloss is correct that the number of people aging with the baby boom generation is a huge part of the issue, that comment completely misses the point (increasing population size is not a controllable spend variable, whereas negotiation standards for pharma products is a negotiable and manageable spend variable... This is basic finance... You work to decrease controllable spend and find ways to bring in revenues to balance and pay for uncontrollables like population size increase).

 

The point is that when our debt position was made unmistakably larger under Bush, people blindly supported it, and accused dissenters of being unpatriotic. Now, when Obama is trying to make changes, and is actively seeking ways to keep his changes budget neutral, people are hanging him in effigy and likening him to Hitler.

 

This seems to have much less to do with fear of our nations economic future and more to do with manufactured fear of "those evil socialist democrats." Of course I concede there are valid concerns out there, and that not all of this is misplaced fluff, but my point is those valid concerns tend to be marginalized to the fringe, and that the center of the opposition really has little (if anything) to do with their actual stated purposes, or those aforementioned valid concerns.

Edited August 16, 2009 by iNow
clarified ambiguous point

[bascule]

To be fair, I have seen some genuine libertarians express equal amounts rage for Bush and Obama, but as far as I can tell, that's a rather rare occurrence. This rage didn't start until Obama took office (unless you count the Republicans who showed up to rallies more because they were expressing rage at the idea of Obama being president, more than to support McCain)

 

This seems to have much less to do with fear of our nations economic future and more to do with manufactured fear of "those evil socialist democrats." Of course I concede there are valid concerns, but my point is those tend to be marginalized to the fringe, and that the center of the opposition really has little (if anything) to do with their actual stated purposes.

 

Agreed

[Pangloss]

Mkay. Then Mr. Bartlett is committing an obvious logical fallacy. Anger at Obama doesn't mean lack of anger towards Bush. And most of the conservatives I talk to these days have plenty of animosity for the most recent former president, as you should know if you followed his poll numbers during the last two years of his administration. I believe it to be one of the driving factors pushing them towards the conservative-libertarian camp.

 

To be fair, I have seen some genuine libertarians express equal amounts rage for Bush and Obama, but as far as I can tell, that's a rather rare occurrence. This rage didn't start until Obama took office (unless you count the Republicans who showed up to rallies more because they were expressing rage at the idea of Obama being president, more than to support McCain)

 

Rage is always more focused on the current than the past. I do agree that there is a lot of inaccurately-fed anger towards Obama.

 

 

When, in point of fact, their taxes were LOWER under Obama than they were under Bush. Obama had literally just lowered taxes for 95% of our populace, where we all saw an immediate increase in the dollar amount of our paychecks, and at the same time people were protesting in fits of rage about his awful democratic policy of increasing our taxes.

 

Not that I disagree with your post, but I was curious about this. If you're talking about the tax break in the stimulus plan, I don't believe that has hit paychecks yet. The Wikipedia article on ARRA has it hitting wallets in the second half of this year. (Or are you talking about something else?)

 

 

While (as discussed in another thread) Pangloss is correct that the number of people aging with the baby boom generation is a huge part of the issue, that comment completely misses the point (increasing population size is not a controllable spend variable, whereas negotiation standards for pharma products is a negotiable and manageable spend variable... This is basic finance... You work to decrease controllable spend and find ways to bring in revenues to balance and pay for uncontrollables like population size increase).

 

I did not miss that point; bascule didn't even raise it. Just can't resist another subtle dig, eh?

[bascule]

Rage is always more focused on the current than the past. I do agree that there is a lot of inaccurately-fed anger towards Obama.

 

I think it's rather telling there were no contemporaneous teabagger-esque protests directed at TARP, but as soon as Obama wants to provide government money to rebuild infrastructure and business through the stimulus the teabaggers came crawling out of the woodwork.

 

In another telling incident, Penn & Teller, two Cato Institute libertarians I'm otherwise a huge fan of, recently did an episode of their show Bullsh*t! on taxes, and while discussing TARP threw up a picture of Obama and Biden.

 

Somehow Obama's name has retroactively ended up on TARP even in the minds of otherwise highly rational conservative libertarians who would normally have many bones to pick with the GOP.

[Pangloss]

Sure, this is normal (and bad, I agree). Why are there no more peace rallies over Iraq? Same deal. Some people are just partisan.

[Mokele]

How much of this supposed rage-fest is even *real*? I wonder whether this is driven more by media attention than anything else.

 

Town Hall A gets heated, it shows up on the news, reporters start turning up at more town halls and the few where anything gets heated show up on the news, the crazies start going to town halls in disproportionate numbers to get attention and feel self righteous, cue more media amplification, etc.

 

The whole thing reeks of how media, in its relentless pursuit of ratings, will distort a situation by focusing on the most shocking, crazy, or otherwise attention-getting aspect of a story.

 

I suspect that the actual american public isn't anywhere near as polarized or angry as the media makes it seem, and the actual level of rage is pretty minor.

---

Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

Why are there no more peace rallies over Iraq?

 

Aren't there? Or are they just not getting covered?

[iNow]

Not that I disagree with your post, but I was curious about this. If you're talking about the tax break in the stimulus plan, I don't believe that has hit paychecks yet. The Wikipedia article on ARRA has it hitting wallets in the second half of this year.

My net paycheck became larger as of April 1.

 

 

http://business2press.com/2009/02/22/obama-tax-cuts-coming-april-1-2009-obama-aims-to-cut-deficit-by-half-by-2013/

President Obama has now directed his U.S. Treasury Timothy Geithner to begin implementing tax cuts that will benefit 95% of all Americans by April 1st. The tax cuts come part of the recently passed $787 billion stimulus package, of which $282 billion has been earmarked for tax cuts. Obama just said in his weekly presidential radio address that “a typical family will begin taking home at least $65 more every month,” and went on to say, “Never before in our history has a tax cut…gone to so many hard-working Americans,”

 

 

 

I did not miss that point; bascule didn't even raise it. Just can't resist another subtle dig, eh?

No.

[bascule]

Sure, this is normal (and bad, I agree). Why are there no more peace rallies over Iraq? Same deal. Some people are just partisan.

 

Sorry, I couldn't resist:

 

[Pangloss]

You couldn't resist making an invalid, partisan comparison? You should try harder.

 

The people on the left would object even if the war had zero cost.

 

The people on the right would not object if government health care had zero cost.

 

So which ones are the "'tards", again?

 

 

 

(Isn't it funny how the word "retarded" is politically incorrect except when applied to conservatives? I know that's not your graphic, though.)

---

Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

My net paycheck became larger as of April 1.

 

http://business2press.com/2009/02/22/obama-tax-cuts-coming-april-1-2009-obama-aims-to-cut-deficit-by-half-by-2013/

President Obama has now directed his U.S. Treasury Timothy Geithner to begin implementing tax cuts that will benefit 95% of all Americans by April 1st. The tax cuts come part of the recently passed $787 billion stimulus package, of which $282 billion has been earmarked for tax cuts. Obama just said in his weekly presidential radio address that “a typical family will begin taking home at least $65 more every month,” and went on to say, “Never before in our history has a tax cut…gone to so many hard-working Americans,”

 

Ok.

[iNow]

So, it seems that we've established there is rage on both sides. The question then presents, is the rage of both sides misplaced? Or, is the rage we've seen from one side more justifiable than the rage we've seen from the other?

 

What do you think, reader?

 

 

[/Acting like a responsible moderator, even though I'm neither responsible nor a moderator]

[bascule]

You couldn't resist making an invalid, partisan comparison? You should try harder.

 

It's a comic. Grow a sense of humor.

 

The people on the left would object even if the war had zero cost.

 

The people on the right would not object if government health care had zero cost.

 

Let me get this straight, you accuse me of making an "invalid, partisan comparison" (which I did vicariously through a comic strip, itself intended to be facetious) then you immediately follow it up with an invalid, partisan comparison (except serious)?

 

You should try harder.

 

While I'm at it, let me take a shot at this one for real this time:

 

Sure, this is normal (and bad, I agree). Why are there no more peace rallies over Iraq? Same deal. Some people are just partisan.

 

Perhaps people are happy with the progress made on this front. We have a president committed to a scheduled withdrawal instead of one clamoring about how he's going to keep the troops there indefinitely.

 

I still don't see how that compares to Republicans who sat on their hands while Bush drove us from a budget surplus to record deficits and economic ruin, then decided to start complaining only after a Democrat was elected president.

Edited August 17, 2009 by bascule

[Pangloss]

It's a comic. Grow a sense of humor.

 

Yup. And Rush Limbaugh is just an entertainer.

 

 

I still don't see how that compares to Republicans who sat on their hands while Bush drove us from a budget surplus to record deficits and economic ruin, then decided to start complaining only after a Democrat was elected president.

 

Well as I said above, I agree that that's bad.

[iNow]

So, yeah... Is the rage misplaced?

 

I mean, it sure seems that way to me. For example, my own "rage" is a result of double standards, hypocrisy, lying, deceit, and pursuing a path which is completely counter to their stated motivations and goals.

 

I'm not one to engage in partisan smear... at least, I try not to. However, I find myself incredibly justified in my anger toward the GOP, and those who self identify as such. I'm not arguing that two wrongs make a right, merely that my rage is based on a very legitimate set of evidence, history, and experience... whereas much of the rage coming from other groups is based on lies, ignorance, and falsehoods.

 

So... I find myself hoping to get a response to this question, and will ask again...

 

 

Is the rage we've seen from one side more justifiable than the rage we've seen from the other?

 

What do you think, dear reader?

[bascule]

Is the rage we've seen from one side more justifiable than the rage we've seen from the other?

 

Short answer: yes.

[Pangloss]

For example, my own "rage" is a result of double standards, hypocrisy, lying, deceit, and pursuing a path which is completely counter to their stated motivations and goals.

 

I'm not one to engage in partisan smear... at least, I try not to. However, I find myself incredibly justified in my anger toward the GOP, and those who self identify as such. I'm not arguing that two wrongs make a right, merely that my rage is based on a very legitimate set of evidence, history, and experience... whereas much of the rage coming from other groups is based on lies, ignorance, and falsehoods.

 

Is the rage we've seen from one side more justifiable than the rage we've seen from the other?

 

Interesting. Obama doesn't seem outraged to me when I see him in these town hall meetings. I don't see any rage in the face of Arlen Specter, in the political race of his life at age 79, standing in front of raving ditto-heads who can't even talk without spitting. These men seem to genuinely love the process.

 

So I guess I would have to answer the question "yes", but as I indicated at the beginning of this thread, I'm not sure I see what purpose it serves. I didn't understand it when my conservative friends were upset over the behavior of Democrats during the Bush administration either.

 

But hey, good luck with that.

[Sisyphus]

Interesting. Obama doesn't seem outraged to me when I see him in these town hall meetings.

 

I can't recall ever seeing Obama visibly angry about anything, now that you mention it. [/nonsequitor] [/or is it?]

[iNow]

Interesting. Obama doesn't seem outraged to me when I see him in these town hall meetings.

Yes, because he's a better man than I am. However, we're not talking about Obama, so that's somewhat non-sequitur...

 

 

So I guess I would have to answer the question "yes", but as I indicated at the beginning of this thread, I'm not sure I see what purpose it serves. I didn't understand it when my conservative friends were upset over the behavior of Democrats during the Bush administration either.

 

But hey, good luck with that.

I don't think anybody was talking about the "purpose served by the rage felt," merely how much of that rage seems misplaced among members of the GOP. Am I wrong that this thread is about that, and not what purpose these feelings serve or accomplish?

 

No, I can't be. I just looked up and read the thread title again.

[Pangloss]

I can't recall ever seeing Obama visibly angry about anything, now that you mention it. [/nonsequitor] [/or is it?]

 

Yup, he's a pretty cool character. He believes in the process and sees great value in communicating and not dwelling on emotions like rage. I wouldn't say he's a better person, I'd just say he's got his eye on the ball, and he recognizes the lack of value in demonization. Not that I really think there's anything wrong with getting a little upset about politics. It can be a good motivator.

 

And he's quite right when he points out that much of the Republican outrage is misplaced and inaccurate, as has been pointed out by folks here.

[john5746]

I find this interesting. The Obama as Joker artist is a Palestinian-American student. His ethnicity isn't important, not sure why they felt the need to report it, but could you imagine if this was a picture of Bush? Wow, the rednecks would be claiming that all who used the picture and protested were supporting terrorism.

 

Obama Joker Artist

[Sisyphus]

The Joker is a socialist?

[john5746]

More like an anti-socialist. The artist is quick to claim he only made the picture and did not label it or distribute it for political purposes(although the picture itself is a political statement, IMO)