Richard Miniter, “Why The Democratic Party Is Doomed”:
Yes, the House Republicans may raise the debt ceiling for a mix of spending cuts and revenue raisers. Yes, Barack Obama may win the 2012 presidential contest. Yes, bureaucrats and judges will continue to impose new and costly regulations on the economy.
But it doesn’t matter. The long-term trends are almost all bad news for the left wing of the party.
This week’s fight over raising the federal debt limit exposes a key weakness in the warfare-welfare state that has bestowed power onto the Democratic Party: Without an ever-growing share of the economy, it dies. Every vital element of the Democrats’ coalition — unions, government workers, government contractors, “entitlement” consumers — requires constant increases in payments, grants and consulting contracts. Without those payments, they don’t sign checks to re-elect Democrats.
Like it or not, Obama is not the new FDR, but the new Gorbachev: a man forced to preside over the demise of a political system he desperately wants to save.
Democrat champions in the punditocracy confidently predict that the future of the world’s oldest political party is bright. But in fact, the coalition that is the modern Democratic Party is doomed. Every pillar upholding its heavy roof is crumbling.
The Democratic and Republican parties are structurally different.
The Democrats are a coalition, forged in the New Deal, of diverse interests that do not get along well. Imagine the deer-hunting union member sitting down with the vegetarian college professor and the lesbian lawyer and you will begin to see the trouble party leaders have holding the horde together. So far, money and government preferences have been essential. It is largely a party of unions, government workers and retirees, “green” industries, “entitlement” payees, professors, teachers and social-change activists — all of whom require government payments in one form or another. The only major element of the Democratic base that doesn’t receive government payments is the professional class (lawyers, engineers, stock brokers and so on). These high-earners amount to less than 5% of the population and are not reliable Democrat donors.
On the other hand, the Republicans are a consensus party. Activists and leaders fight like hell — leading Democrats to periodically predict the Republicans’ demise — only to settle on some principle that is then adopted by the majority. Tax cuts and preemptive invasions were once battlegrounds, now they are cornerstones. Significantly, very few of its supporters receive government payments. Yes, defense firms, farmers and small-business owners get contracts, subsidies or loans. Yet the overwhelming majority of Republicans pay more than they receive. They want to pay less, not get more.
The exception is retirees, who want their Social Security and Medicare while sometimes voting Republican. Since this group is large and reliably votes in large numbers, its entitlements will never be severely trimmed in the foreseeable future. But that fact actually spells trouble for the Democrats. The only way to pay retirees is to 1) raise taxes, 2) borrow more or 3) cut funding to other members of the entitlement class. […]
This crisis comes at a very bad time for Democrats. Their coalition is either dying off or going broke.
Whenever I read arguments like this I immediately go back to motive — not Miniter’s, but rather the motives of the left, and specifically Obama, who has so accelerated the unsustainable — and continues to insist that we keep doubling down, be it with new spending, more printing of money, or an increase in the regulatory and tax burdens that he must know will stifle job creation, weaken the private sector, and strain the middle class to the breaking point — that it is certainly reasonable to ask if what is being done is being done out of stubborn ignorance or as part of some plan to create crisis in the system and then, as a fix to the crises, to step in and “reform” the broken system, resulting in a country that has been “fundamentally transformed.”
Looked at from that perspective, the death of the Democrat party Miniter imagines is really only a minor and insignificant blip — particularly to the New Left, whom once despised the Democrats, but then worked to take over the party from within and reform it into the “progressives” they are today.
Their goal is to expand the state and to expand the client base. And “shared sacrifice” — while in effect “shared misery” — will be the mantra by which they attempt to “rebuild” the country, having effectively achieved a balance of crony capitalism and the destruction of the bourgeois middle class, while consolidating all power through the federal government and its bureaucracies.
Obama studied such plans. His work with ACORN taught him how to game the system, how to affect “social justice” through means anathema to our constitutional system, how to lie and dissemble, how to make the ends justify the means.
So why is it that we still refuse to consider that his motives may be what is dictating his policy? What do we fear?
And most importantly, what are the dangers we face in failing to correctly identify who this man may in fact be?
Doesn’t the end Obama wants (assume he could get his way) look like Syria today, whether Obama knows that is what it would look like or not?
how much wasted time will you survive
Why does Obama…?
Because it’s only fair to spread the misery around to everyone forever and ever amen.
Perhaps OT or not since earlier wishful thinking is involved.
Death panels are not just for the old.
Obama’s cool with that. His ilk believe Gorbachev won by losing.
Miniter is certainly correct about R’s fighting like hell with each other, and I think he’s correct in how ProgLibs — they of the lockstep mindset — constantly mistake our forms of argument with their own need to avoid-at-all-costs anything that might disrupt Teh Narrative; but I also think that we don’t “fear” as much as they do that we’re not “identify[ing]” Obama: It’s not nearly as important for us to name the Evil Cause, i.e. playing the Blame Game as they do, as it is for us to just keep pointing out the Effects, which are indeed becoming more and more obvious even to the Lo-Know Voter.
But then, whadda I know? I’m stocking up on Brass and Lead, instead of Gold….
how to make the ends justify the means
Ends usually do justify the means, even for the good guys. It’s just that the ends that Obama and the proggs pursue are evil and tyrranical, so the means they use to achieve those ends are also evil and tyrranical.
When S&P’s and Moody’s (not if, when) dings us down a notch or two, it’ll be because we deserve such dings. There’s not a damned thing Baracky can do about it, either.
Such dinging sounds will signal the end of Social Democrats. We will have much cleaning up to do.
Limbaugh is suggesting we brace ourselves for a deal between Boehner and Obama as early details begin to leak out.
Early details, by the way, aren’t real details (of a deal). Rather, they’re of such process stuff as Boehner calling for a meeting tomorrow morning with the entire Republican caucus in the House, which, according to a Limbaugh communicant within the House, means the revelation of some “plan” Boehner believes necessitates the consideration of the whole, i.e., a decision he can’t simply take on his own.
Jeff, you might need review The Warriors …
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/28599948/detail.html
Barry ain’t no Gorby; he’s Hugo Chavez del Norte.
All I ask is that after the mask slips, we let these sons o’ bitches finish their infighting and elimination of the useful fools before we take up arms of our own. It’ll save us a lot of trouble in the scheme of things.
In his heart of hearts, Barry may want to be Hugo, but he’s not macho enough. And so he’s stuck with Gorbie.
And remember, from the the Proggy point of view, Gorbie changed the world by presiding over the peaceful demise of the Evil Empire (that was more misunderstood than evil, and boy aren’t we lucky that they weren’t evil, because if they were, they’dve nuked the shit outta us when that damn crazy hollywood cowboy was runnin’ things). Gorbie was transformative. He brought about the End of History. What could be more transformative than repeating Gorbie’s Eastern achievement in the Western Word, thereby bringing about the Restart of History?
Ah the Warriors, Great Movie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu6LUQViYTo
Well then, if Barry really is Gorby, then who is the Putin who will swoop in and take over?
So is the book.
http://tinyurl.com/34fckc6
I really enjoyed this adaptation back in the day.
And I wonder why this one hasn’t been made into a movie.
Here’s George Will’s defense of McConnell. Personally, I find the greatest inadequacy saved for last:
McConnell’s plan is not necessary, or even possibly helpful, for the removal of Barack Obama in 16 months. Would that Will would listen to me. Obama is politically dead because of what Obama has politically done. There is therefore no cause to incur the losses — clever though Will may think them to be — of McConnell’s scheme. None.
The Congress can stand firm. Stop spending. Cut the size of government. Rid the people of onerous regulations and the towering bureaucracies that propel them. Don’t give Obama another dime.