When I was growing up, and Barry Goldwater was my senator, I learned that one thing conservatives were concerned about was budget deficits. They have returned to the charge in response to Obama's budget deficits. However, this is an article written in Business Week in 2004 chronicling the disappearance of deficit hawks from the Republican Party in the Bush years.
In the words of an old Donovan song from when I was a teenager, "First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is."
Or, as John Kerry put it, "I was for it before I was against it."
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However, this is an article written in Business Week in 2004 chronicling the disappearance of deficit hawks from the Republican Party in the Bush years.
Entirely fair. Bush wasted a tremendous amount of money, as did the congress under him. I just think that indicates, at least fiscally, these weren't conservatives. Or 'conservatives' is a very, very broad label.
Republican politicians are not the same thing as conservatives, and most of them are "conservative" only iin comparison to the Dems.
There is a reason, after all, that we call them RINOs.
Not only are Republican politicians not conservatives, but the vast majority of Americans "conservatives" are merely right-liberals.
http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2011/11/debating-conservatism-an-old-mistake-in-the-new-inquiry
And what happened to those erstwhile "deficit hawks" in the next elections? The conservatives didn't vote for them and many of them were turned out of Congress ... which gave control of it to the people who show them up for the amateurs they are.
Yes, the Teabugs have reduced politics to...who can be better accountants. (and forget that their hero Reagan himself was responsbible for record deficit spending...for that matter the TP hypemeisters forget the tax rate was at about 50% on highest brackets during RR era.--over 10% higher than now, and...35% higher than current cap gains).
the TP are the party of Mendacity, in ...religious terms
I think it is easy. Democrats criticize Republican administration deficits but defend Democrat deficits as necessary. Republicans likewise. In partisan politics you never admit the other side is right and you never admit your side is wrong. Simple.
I loudly opposed the overspending of Bush and the Democratic Congress of Reid and Pelosi then, and heard conservatives say the same thing every day. Democrats make themselves wilfully deaf.
Victor Reppert: "When I was growing up, and Barry Goldwater was my senator, I learned that one thing conservatives were concerned about was budget deficits. They have returned to the charge in response to Obama's budget deficits. However, this is an article written in Business Week in 2004 chronicling the disappearance of deficit hawks from the Republican Party in the Bush years."
Mike Darus: "I think it is easy. Democrats criticize Republican administration deficits but defend Democrat deficits as necessary. Republicans likewise. In partisan politics you never admit the other side is right and you never admit your side is wrong. Simple."
David B Marshall: "I loudly opposed the overspending of Bush and the Democratic Congress of Reid and Pelosi then, and heard conservatives say the same thing every day. Democrats make themselves wilfully deaf."
Indeed. Even Ann Coulter, who makes no bones about being a Republican partisan (which is distinct from being a 'rabid partisan'), rips the Republian politicans when they spend like drunken Democrats. That is, her conservative principles trump her partisanship.
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And here (in both VR's question and Mike Darus' response) we also see the prime pitfall of valuing "niceness" or "civility" or "even-handedness" over honesty -- one inevitably says things that are not true ... and that one knows are not true.
Consider VR's question -- he starts out talking about "conservatives" and ends up talking about Republican politicians in Congress; that is, equivocating between the two. His implied argument, depending upon this incorrect equivocation, is that as many elected Republican politicians are not concerned with nor serious about a balanced budget, therefore, conservative grousing about (even more intense) "liberal" disregard for getting the federal budget under control is just so much intellectually dishonest (*) partisan snipping.
Consider Mike Darus' response -- "Yeah, the Republicans are just like the Democrats, and are just as rabidly partisan". This isn't true, and we all know it isn't.
(*) As I keep pointing out, VR is not more shy about making accusations of intellectual dishonesty than I am ... he just doesn't directly use the term.
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