Quote:
Originally Posted by Riverman
1. I hate the GOP, but any real spending restraint will come from the right. To fix spending you have to fix Medicare and SS, and the Democrats simply refuse to touch them. Hell, they won't even agree to calculate inflation properly.
2. Dems will internalize the Obama lesson that they have to stay very hawkish on foreign policy so as to keep from getting swiftboated / labeled as pussies / whatever. They will come to see it as the only threat to their dominance, and our FP will continue to be a disaster. This concept also applies to the drug war (sigh).
3. Continued Keynesian fiscal policies. Obviously we can debate whether or not it works, I happen to think 'stimulus' is usually (but not always) bad policy. The point here, though, is that Keynesianism will be used as cover to financially reward political allies.
4. General patronage. In a one-party town, it will get worse.
Thoughts?
The highlighted is a proven fallacy. You can just look at the spending numbers from Bush 1 to Clinton to Bush 2 on through Obama.
Both Clinton and Obama have reigned in spending, (Clinton even left the country with a SURPLUS rather than a deficit, if you can get your mind around that one) and both Bushes incurred huge unnecessary expenses, including the prescription drug entitlement (a gigantic giveaway to the pharmaceutical companies which costs us trillions, and was designed to shore up their profits in the face of threats from cheap Canadian generic drugs) and the Iraq war, a vastly expensive boondoggle featuring hundreds of billions spent on "rebuilding" Iraq and mostly going straight into the pockets of corrupt crony capitalists with government connections. Meanwhile, the Republican rhetoric about social programs is mostly meaningless scare tactics appealing to racism and xenophobia, and do not address any of the actual problems.
There is some validity to the aggression / drone war point, but Obama has already ended one "endless" war, and is in the process of ending a second. He is transferring drone strike capability to the military from the CIA, for greater accountability, and has made sounds about drawing down forces in Europe and Asia. The "Democrats" are also noticeably less hawkish about Iran, and Netanyahu has famously made several frowny faces in Obama's presence (fodder for millions of pages of hyperbolic "right wing" articles, radio shows and Romney speeches). The Obama administration also seems to be somewhat more transparent and democratic, and also somewhat less militarily ostentatious and vainglorious than the Republican Bush administration was, less show offy, and less inclined to encourage Fox News to post color coded hourly "terror alerts" and that sort of thing than the Bush Republicans were. Of course Obama has also clearly demonstrated that he is not ****ing around when it comes to terrorists, and has given no quarter where some have whispered that Bush did.
All in all it seems as if we are actually heading into a time of peace and prosperity, as difficult as that may be to accept after the utter disaster that was the Bush white house years. Your point about cronyism and corporate corruption is of course always something to be aware of, but again, the Republicans have proven themselves to be the kings of that sort of thing.
Democrats certainly aren't perfect, and I agree there should be two parties. Actually, if you'll notice there are actually THREE parties right now, that is part of the problem, the Republicans are caucusing with the Tea Party which is why they are so confused.
LoL that Fox created the Tea Party as a hoax to "reinvent" the Republican party and now it's out of their control and is becoming an actual party, that is splitting their caucus down the middle.