Hullabaloo

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

 
They've Been Listening

by digby

Perhaps the American people have been paying closer attention than we think:

By a 2-to-1 ratio, Americans blame Republicans over Democrats for the financial crisis that has swept across the country the past few weeks, a new national poll suggests. That may be contributing to better poll numbers for Sen. Barack Obama against Sen. John McCain in the race for the White House.

In a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey out Monday afternoon, 47 percent of registered voters questioned said Republicans are more responsible for the problems currently facing financial institutions and the stock market; only 24 percent said Democrats are more responsible.

Twenty percent blame both parties equally and 8 percent say neither party is to blame.

It occurs to me that all the years of Democratic fecklessness may finally be paying off. Who could believe that a group so lame could have engineered something this complicated? Perhaps there was a method to their madness after all...

Seriously, this is really the only logical point of view. The Republicans are the ones who've been robotically repeating their mantra of deregulation, free markets and the horrors of Big Government for a quarter century. There is no one alive on the planet who doesn't associate all those things with conservatism --- they proudly run on it every election and regurgitate it like mama birds every time they go on television. They can run, but they can't hide.

McCain is going to try to say he's always been against the great malefactors of wealth, but let's just say he doesn't have a lot of credibility on that either.

Here's Jonathan Alter, doing a great job yesterday on MSNBC on laying out exactly what's wrong with McCain's reformer image:

JONATHAN ALTER: [Y]ou remember the Keating Five scandal that he was a
part of, which, by the way, it's crazy but there's been very little
about it in the press in the last few weeks. And McCain thinks he's
getting a hard time, he's really getting a free ride on the fact that he
was in the middle of the last great financial scandal in our country.
But his reaction to that, you would have thought, would have been more
regulation of the financial services industry. Instead he moved forward
on campaign finance reform after being caught in that scandal, but did
nothing – nothing – to try to prevent another savings and loan crisis
from happening down the road. He was missing in action when it came to
even learning the basic lessons of a scandal that he said taught him all
kinds of things that he would never forget.

It's been 20 years since Keating. McCain has built his reputation as a reformer on the back of that scandal, presenting himself as a man who came too close to the fire and became a zealous convert to reform. But lest Americans' ever become persuaded that McCain is somehow "different" than other Republicans, it's probably a really good time to remind them about this episode.

McCain's role in that scandal was very specific: he pressured regulators into going easy on his friend Charlie's savings and loan. And he's done nothing but promote the virtues of deregulation ever since then, spending most of his time warmongering and tilting at windmills on campaign finance reform (which he's conveniently abandoned in his own presidential bid.) His reformer image is a total fraud.

And I don't think anyone needs to make the case that the Republican party is completely and irrevocably corrupt and inept. Who would hire the guy who drunkenly rammed his truck into your living room to take their kids to school? It's time for them to go.



Alter Youtube here.

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digby 9/23/2008 06:30:00 PM |