Via
AngryBear (an excellent economist left-of-center blog, btw), comes this pearl of wisdom, from a New York Times interview of a former two-term FL senator:
The Senator [Connie Mack] comes back with the notion that President Bush wants to cut taxes - and this is where the interview really turned south:
The maddenning interview snippet on the flip, along with my rant about Republicans. This is in response to my ex-girlfriend, who voted Bush despite my attempts to convince her otherwise. I even brought her to the polling place 120 miles away on the election day, to get her to vote. She wasn't clear, but she didn't say that she would vote Bush.
Q: Well, the U.S. government has to get money from somewhere. As a two-term former Republican senator from Florida, where do you suggest we get money from?
A: What money?
Q: The money to run this country.
A: We'll borrow it.
Q: I never understand where all this money comes from. When the president says we need another $200 billion for Katrina repairs, does he just go and borrow it from the Saudis?
A: In a sense, we do. Maybe the Chinese.
Q: Is that fair to our children? If we keep borrowing at this level, won't the Arabs or the Chinese eventually own this country?
A: I am not worried about that. We are a huge country producing enormous assets day in and day out. We have great strength, and we have always adjusted to difficulties that faced us, and we will continue to do so.
Now, this is the man who was picked to lead the White House tax reform commission!
You see, it's because the Republican party today has long abandoned the meaning and spirit of fiscal conservatism. Conservative now only refers to the arcane morals of the Christian Right (Dobson and Robertson and co.), the pull back of the civil rights "the way they used to be", and the imperial hubris of the neocons (Bush and Rumsfeld and co.). I am still unsure why that last position even has the word "conservative" associated with it.
As far as money goes? Well, it's to shift the money towards the rich, squeezing the middle class and screwing the poor. It's to shift the money into the fantasy land trickle-down economics, where the company management altruistically grows the employees' wages in proportion to profit increases. It's the massive, careless spending to feed the imperial hubris (defense and military), to provide the vote-getting pork for bridges to nowhere and to hand out the money, in the croniest of fashions, to campaign-funding oil and other companies. It's the careless plunging of our country into debt, with China amongst the largest of creditors, while expecting our children to "adjust" to such "difficulties". It's the deliberate refusal of science, like a kid grabbing his ears and chanting "na na na, I can't hear you!" For, a Republican leader today is happy to die rich and richer, while the future generations bear the cost.
And this is all before the lies and corruption. This is before the "genius" economists that come up with ways to fix the Social Security "in crisis" by prescribing a booming economy's solution to a crashing economy's problems. This is before the vicious, polarizing political discourse, before the artfully crafted myth of liberal media, before half the country is attacked as America-hating constitution-threatening libruls.
By the way, with two vacancies in the Supreme Court (I told you there would be one), and the Dobson-influenced White House, you can be sure that Roe v. Wade is under some real danger.
So why the hell did you vote Republican?