Yes, we’re right back to that old saw. Elect Mr Romney and he will singlehandedly — along with Ryan and the America people — slash taxes, slash regulations, strengthen Social Security and Medicare, bolster defense, balance the budget,and pay down the deficit. Like any snake oil pitch, this one begins with a tiny element of truth, a teensy-weensy admission that’s supposed to make us think, hey, maybe they’re finally coming around to reality:
WSJ — Mitt Romney said Saturday that his party had fallen short on its fiscal promises even as he campaigned alongside a top Republican congressional leader. “We’re going to finally have to do something that Republicans have spoken about for a long time and for a while we didn’t do it. When we had the lead, we let people down,” Mr. Romney told a crowd in this important swing state. “We need to make sure” they are not let down again. “I will cut the deficit and get us on track to a balanced budget.”
Incidentally, Romney will do all this by reenacting and doubling down on the same policies that caused huge deficits and crashed the economy. No, really, that’s what he’s literally running on.
It’s a con job of course, pure and simple. The GOP today is composed of the wingnut grassroots, that’s mostly social conservatives and various neoconfederates who provide the votes on election day, the defense conservatives who lived high on the hog during the Cold War and would like very much to continue, and the billionaire boyz club conservatives who really run the party. They need those three legs to win often enough to ratchet up their own shitty policies and obstruct others, but there’s no doubt who gets served politically first and foremost, it’s the guys with the dollars, always the fucking dollars. And if it comes down to cutting deficits or cutting taxes, the taxes are gonna take it walking away, leaving the US even deeper in the hole, and leaving DC deeper in the boyz pockets.
That’s the really worrisme part. This whole gig about small goveernment is a smokescreen for transferring power from electable public servants to unelectable and often shadowey profiteers accountable to no one person and no one country.
Who was it that famously said something like :
“insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get a different result each time?”
As long as >30% of the American electorate chooses to be deliberately ignorant for racist, religious or other reasons the REpublican party will remain a threat to the US and any democratic systems elsewhere.
How is making rich people richer going to solve our problems? There is no lack of capital in our economic crisis. If capital were scarce, the cost of capita, interest rates, would be high. But rates are very low.
So there’s plenty of capital. Why aren’t businesses investing it to upgrading their productive capacity, offer new services, and hire people who really would like jobs? Are they simply mean? No, they quite correctly assess that they are unlikely to make any kind of return on that investment that justifies the risk. They are correct in assuming that the customers probably won’t be there.
And why is that? Regular folks don’t have any fuckin’ money to buy anything with.
SO HOW IN HELL IS SLASHING SOCIAL PROGRAMS AND RAISING TAXES ON THE POOR WHILE CUTTING TAXES ON THE RICH GOING TO HELP ANYTHING?????
How is it that with no formal training in economics I can figure this out and the average Republican can’t?
Sorry to turn on the flames. I don’t think I broke protocol since I wasn’t flaming anyone here.
You’re right, it won’t help. The scary thing though, if Romney wins and runs up huge deficits to cut taxes on the rich, it might work hand in hand with the fragile recovery enough to make things seem better for a year or two — you can always live a little better right after a huge loan hits your checking account. And the GOP will use that to raid the Treas and load us up with debt like a Bain taken firm, until the financial backbone of this nation is gone.
Cutting taxes on the rich: Does it go too far enough? Should we begin a massive program of subsidies to keep the Job Creators happy?
Hey honey I know last time I really screwed up. This time will be different. I promise. Trust me.
Seriously though…
The problem is that we aren’t giving the job creators enough of a break. Cut the taxes on the top tiers to zero plus give them grants, subsidies and incentives and they’ll fix everything. And if that doesn’t work it means we just haven’t given enough. Or prayed hard enough. Or something.
StevoR
I’d always heard it was from Einstein, but according to wikiquote, it gets misattributed to Einstein, Twain and Franklin but is most likely from a Narcotics Anonymous pamphlet from 1981
He doesn’t have to run much of a con, as conservofans (ha, con – conservative artist) eat it up before he’s even done vomiting it out. I saw his speech at the RNC, which was complete fucking drivel. I was sitting next to a dyed-in-the-wool pop-conservative who mocked his idiocy (but of course he hates hates hates Obama, and also pretty much hates all pollies, as I do, from a different angle).
Also, why do pollies run on platform items over which they never have control, like jobs?
@8.jakc : Okay. Cheers.
Well, Rmoney may have to do it singlehandedly since his running mate, Mush Mouth Ryan, isn’t exactly running up points with the anointed. See, for instance this from, gasp, Faux News:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/08/30/paul-ryans-speech-in-three-words/
Short version: Dazzling, Deceiving, Distracting. And, refreshingly, from the home of Bill O’Really, this:
I was only a little startled at this. After all, being hard of hearing doesn’t always mean stone cold deaf.
at least without going Godwin.