RSS Feed MenuPJTV has a super-sarcastic (and longggg) video up in which Bruce Bartlett and I are mocked and derided as out of touch with ordinary Americans for questioning the knowledgeability of tea party protesters. A lot of chortling on set. I chortled along with the hosts, but for different reasons:
Irony #1: Among those chortling at our lack of connection to everyday politics – the head of the Ayn Rand Center! Now there’s a movement with grand appeal to everyday working Americans.
Irony #2: Video culminates with a long wish that GOP do better in future by appealing to independents and Democrats. Hint: promising to cut government radically won’t do it, fellows. Been there, tried it, got the wounds to prove it.
Irony #3: Main theme of the video – stinging attack on out-of-touch Beltway elitists. And when Roger Simon, founder of PJTV decided he wanted a Washington book party, whom did he call? And where did he want it held? Yes, exactly, chez Frum. It was a nice evening, too! As for PJTV host Allen Barton: don’t worry, dude, I’Il still be here when your book is out.
mlindroo // Mar 20, 2010 at 12:45 pm
> Video culminates with a long wish that GOP do better in future
> by appealing to independents and Democrats.
> Hint: promising to cut government radically won’t do it, fellows.
> Been there, tried it, got the wounds to prove it.
Indeed, this approach was tried in 1995.
Clinton easily won the showdown with Gingrich, coasted to a second term one year later while the GOP basically broke even or even lost a few seats in the 1996, 98 and Y2K House and Senate elections.
By the year 2000 it was clear to most sensible people that Americans just weren’t buying the Gingrich Revolution. That’s the a reason George W. Bush tried to sell himself as a different sort of Republican — a “compassionate conservative”, a “uniter not a divider.”
MARCU$
John_in_Michigan_USA // Mar 20, 2010 at 1:42 pm
Indeed the ironies abound.
The populist instinct is a strange thing. Among other things, it is always based on, symbolism and even demagoguery. In a winner-takes-all system, successful populist movements are adopted by mainstream parties, during which process the rhetoric and feelings are translated into a coherent and (hopefully) effective policy.
I remember fondly the Gingrich showdown but would agree with mlindroo that Clinton won it.
It seems to me a big part of the problem was, Gingrich didn’t have a publicity campaign (similar to the Contract With America) to explain to the country why the shutdown was necessary or what he hoped to achieve. He should have known he’d need that, since the MSM would turn against him and unfairly state his positions. Without that campaign, his working majority in the House couldn’t hold on.
I wonder if today he could do better, thanks to the blogosphere, Fox News, etc. who would at least ensure that the real debate — assume both sides are decent, compassionate, etc. and debate what the true size of government should be — took place. Also he would have the Tea Party movement on the ground.
Even so, he would have eventually had to compromise, if for no other reason that big government is too deeply entwined in our lives to permit it to be right-sized in one fell swoop. I wonder what the basis would be for his compromise? A spending freeze? Limit spending to last year’s budget plus population growth and GDP growth? An end to base-line accounting? Any of those things would be valuable.
mlindroo // Mar 20, 2010 at 4:10 pm
> I wonder if today he could do better, thanks to the blogosphere, Fox News, etc.
> who would at least ensure that the real debate — assume both sides are decent, compassionate, etc.
> and debate what the true size of government should be — took place.
>Also he would have the Tea Party movement on the ground.
*Neither* side would be “decent, compassionate, etc.” when debating this issue, trust me:-)
I’m pretty certain there would be lots of screeching and fear-mongering on both sides of the aisle. But cutting social security benefits etc. for the middle class is never popular, even if it would help reduce the deficit.
BTW, the Republicans did receive strong support from Rush Limbaugh & co. in 1993-94.
MARCU$
advocatusdiaboli // Mar 20, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Even the name Tea Party is ludicrous–these folks have representation for their taxation. THey vote in the wrong people because they are ignorant, as your poll of them shows, of the facts of taxation and our economy. But instead of educating themselves and voting intelligently, they go off half-cocked and ignorant of the facts and rail and rant against policies on a subject they are ignorant of and rally behind vacuous boobs like Sarah Palin who has no clue either. They make a travesty of the tea party concept and the ideals underlying this nation’s founding. It is they not tea that needs to be dumped overboard.
John_in_Michigan_USA // Mar 20, 2010 at 4:51 pm
“I’m pretty certain there would be lots of screeching and fear-mongering on both sides of the aisle”
Fair point, the debate I was hoping for wouldn’t have stayed civil for very long. But I do feel at least the debate would more be two sided, which it basically wasn’t back in 93-94. Limbaugh back then had a decent sized audience, but still small compared to the big 3 nightly news or the NY Times circulation, not to mention all the local papers that followed the NY Times lead. Also the MSM knew they could mostly ignore him, except to expose (or even, invent) the more outrageous things he said.
“But cutting social security benefits etc. for the middle class is never popular, even if it would help reduce the deficit”
Well that was the MSM framing the issue as a win-loose allocation of slices of a fixed pie. But, back in the early 90’s, we had the luxury of time and compound interest. Permitting workers to divert some of their FICA tax into a personal account would have generated massive returns during the 1990’s. It is possible they could have ended up with a more generous retirement package, even if traditional social security benefits were reduced somewhat (perhaps by means testing). Plus the added benefit for the poor, that if they die early, the personal retirement part of their social security benefit would belong to their families. That alone could change a lot of lives and give a nice break to people who really need it, at a time when they really need it.
Today there is only a few years before the SS and Medicare trust funds run out, and only about a decade or so before maintaining SS and Medicare benefits become unsustainable under the most likely scenarios. It will take a smarter person than I to figure out how to solve this without triggering a politically radioactive win-lose situation.
After Lisbon passed (but before the Greek crisis…), the Europeans I blog with were quite full of themselves, and happily explained how the American century is ending. Perhaps the single most gnarly political problem of the coming decades will be, which system — the mostly free, entrepreneurial US or the mostly technocratic EU — is best able to deal with our respective, massive entitlement gaps. We will see.
sinz54 // Mar 21, 2010 at 10:33 am
John_in_Michigan_USA: Limbaugh back then had a decent sized audience, but still small compared to the big 3 nightly news or the NY Times circulation, not to mention all the local papers that followed the NY Times lead.
So how come HillaryCare got defeated in 1993, just one year after Clinton drove Bush 41 out of the White House?
Part of the reason is that the much-maligned MSM analyzed HillaryCare and found that it really did have problems.
Right now, the MSM has analyzed ObamaCare and has been quite open about its good points and its bad points.
sinz54 // Mar 21, 2010 at 10:37 am
John_in_Michigan_USA: Permitting workers to divert some of their FICA tax into a personal account would have generated massive returns during the 1990’s.
And then what?
In the bear market following the dot.com meltdown, aggressive mutual funds like Fidelity Magellan lost some 70% of their value. Due to the second bear market of 2008-2009, the stock market today is lower than it was in 2000, meaning that those who invested in the late 1990s still haven’t broken even. Anyone who would depend on such investments to pay for a sudden illness in 2002 or 2009 would be screwed.
That’s not how health care is supposed to work. It’s not a financial investment, and you can’t hope to just get sick during bull markets and stay healthy during bear markets. The point of health insurance is that it must be there for you in good times AND bad times.
Insurance is not an investment. It’s a bet.