Republicans/conservatives are gearing up to to obstruct the Obama administration’s attempts to enact speedy and effective remedies for the economic crisis. Paul Krugman writes on this today and he has it exactly right.
First, how dire might the situation be?
“If we don’t act swiftly and boldly,” declared President-elect Barack Obama in his latest weekly address, “we could see a much deeper economic downturn that could lead to double-digit unemployment.” If you ask me, he was understating the case.
The fact is that recent economic numbers have been terrifying, not just in the United States but around the world. Manufacturing, in particular, is plunging everywhere. Banks aren’t lending; businesses and consumers aren’t spending. Let’s not mince words: This looks an awful lot like the beginning of a second Great Depression.
And what can we expect from congressional and senate Republicans, from conservative activists and ideologues, and from the rightwing propaganda apparatus in response to the crisis and Dem moves to ameliorate it?
News reports say that Democrats hope to pass an economic plan with broad bipartisan support. Good luck with that.
In reality, the political posturing has already started, with Republican leaders setting up roadblocks to stimulus legislation while posing as the champions of careful Congressional deliberation — which is pretty rich considering their party’s behavior over the past eight years.
More broadly, after decades of declaring that government is the problem, not the solution, not to mention reviling both Keynesian economics and the New Deal, most Republicans aren’t going to accept the need for a big-spending, F.D.R.-type solution to the economic crisis.
We’ll see a continuing campaign to paint stimulus moves as a give-away of taxpayer monies, as pork barrel gifts to Dem constituencies, as covert attempts to graft ”socialism” into the economy and the country, and as undisciplined profligacy in managing government and financial matters. Attendant with these claims will be another – that the situation we find ourselves in was caused by Dem/liberal policies and personnel in the past OR by some small ‘r’ republicans who fell into the trap of behaving like liberals/Democrats.
Some of these people forwarding these notions likely believe them. Others won’t care particularly whether there’s any truth in them at all, but rather will care only as regards their effectiveness as public relations or propaganda tools to inhibit any further increase in citizen opinion of and support for Democratic or liberal politicians and policies. The primary desire here for the ideologues is to prevent evil, corrupt, wrong-headed liberalism or progressivism from seducing Americans once again (as they believe happened with the New Deal and during the Sixties) and for the propagandist types the primary desire is to – by any means – regain ground lost in the last two elections.
As more than a few of them have already stated (I’ve noted this earlier here) a fundamental strategy on-going for the Republicans/conservatives is to differentiate their party/movement in the public mind. Nothing wrong with that, in an of itself, of course. It’s how it is done that matters. If you are in some contest with one other person, you could promote your positives or you could make accusations and suggestions that the other fellow is a child molester or you could bash the other contestant across her shins with a steel rod as she steps onto the ice. The latter mode is the one commonly adopted by Republicans and conservatives since at least the period of Nixon. If we are not as yet disabused of the romanticism that these people care much at all about the facts, about honesty, and about citizens’ health and well-being, then we are dull indeed.
All of the above is readily predictable and easily observable if one attends to what these people are saying and doing. I will set this post up as the first of an on-going series on the same issue and update regularly to demonstrate the strategies and statements and inititatives they will use in attempting to accomplish their goals.
