I'm glad the House Republicans voted unanimously against Obama's spending bill, but still, I'm slightly embarrassed to be agreeing with them. After the last eight years of government expansion, the Republicans are rightly perceived as hypocrites, which discredits anything they say about reducing government power, spending, borrowing, etc. Their opposition looks like pure politics (not to mention protection of their wing of the corporate state), enabling economist Brad DeLong to dismiss even academic economists who oppose the bogus stimulus spending as "ethics-free Republican hacks."
As I've said before, the Republican Party is a massive negative externality for the radical free-market movement.
Republicans want to create a foreign relations crises in order to spend your money and grow government, while Democrats want to create an economic crises to do the same thing.
ReplyDeleteGreat post!
ReplyDeleteNow that the GOP is in the minority, they suddenly remembered they were fiscal conservatives? Where were they during the Bush stimulus?
There is, in my mind, a big difference between the consistent, principled opposition of Austrian economists like Ron Paul and most members of congress.
Sheldon,
ReplyDeleteVolaire said that if God didn't exist,he would be invented.
Szasz said that if mental illness didn't exist, it would be invented.
I say that if Republicans/Conservative didn't exist that they would be invented. A pseudo-free market movement/Party is needed by the Establishment. They are needed to discredit the radical free market movement.
Anon, you got it!
ReplyDelete