Conservatism Is A Luxury

by digby

...we can no longer afford

In democracies, all political factions run against an elite. Since the New Deal, Democrats have cast themselves against the financial and business elite. Since the 1960s, Republicans have thrashed the cultural and intellectual elite.

Over the weekend, the moneyed class became much more vulnerable. The foolishness of our financial geniuses now threatens to bring economic sorrow to Main Street. Franklin Roosevelt's 1936 attack on "the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties" never sounded so up-to-date.

Americans don't mind wealthy and even rapacious capitalists as long as they deliver the goods to everyone else. But when the big boys drag everyone else down, Americans rise up in righteous anger. The New Deal political alignment endured for decades because the financial elites were so profoundly discredited by the Great Depression. The New Deal coalition dissolved only when prosperity began to seem durable and only after the GOP discovered the joys of baiting Hollywood, the media and the academy.


When things are going well, people have the luxury of being able to argue over lipsticks on blowjobs and whether a blastocyst has more rights than a stem cell. When they aren't, they don't want the blastocyst and lipstick people in charge.

Why would they? Essentially Republicans are entertainers. When times are good, they bring you fun homegrown culture wars and violent foreign shooting wars. (Let's go shopping!.) People barely pay attention and when they can't help watching, as with the impeachment or 9/11, it's turned into a media porn spectacle: Shock And Awe starring Jenna Jameson. It's very cathartic.

But they don't actually govern the country because they don't believe in government (at least for anything but helping them wage their wars for profit and skimming from the taxpayers.) So, when people's lives actually start to become affected by their malfeasance, it's only natural that they get serious. They may just get serious now.

Why, Evuntheconservative Alan Greenspan says this is not business as usual:

The United States is mired in a "once-in-a century" financial crisis which is now more than likely to spark a recession, former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan said Sunday.

The talismanic ex-central banker said that the crisis was the worst he had seen in his career, still had a long way to go and would continue to effect home prices in the United States.

"First of all, let's recognize that this is a once-in-a-half-century, probably once-in-a-century type of event," Greenspan said on ABC's "This Week."

Asked whether the crisis, which has seen the US government step in to bail out mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, was the worst of his career, Greenspan replied "Oh, by far."

"There's no question that this is in the process of outstripping anything I've seen, and it still is not resolved and it still has a way to go," Greenspan said.


Heckuva job conservatives. It's been real. Now step aside and let the other guys try to fix it before you take the whole thing down with you.


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