Here is columnist Robert Samuelson with the help of Right Wing political hack Michael Barone constructing a convenient rhetorical dichotomy between Democrats in the thrall of New Deal Nostalgia, a reactionary political manifestation:
“A reactionary is someone who, says Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, desires “a return to an earlier system or order.” This defines many liberals. They “pine,” Michael Barone writes in the Wall Street Journal, for “the golden years of the 1940s, ’50s and early ’60s [when] Americans had far more confidence in big government.” Modern liberals want yet-bigger government to enhance social justice. They defend virtually all Social Security and Medicare benefits. Everything can be financed, they suggest, by cutting defense or increasing taxes on the rich.”
And a Republican Party in a the hands of Conservative Radicals bent on the destruction of the what is left of that New Deal, i.e. Medicare, Social Security etc. and its project to radically reduce the size of Government, the Kill the Beast strategy of Mr. Grover Norquist:
“Conservatives have become radical by seeking “drastic political, economic or social reform.” Their obsession with tax cuts when even today’s taxes don’t cover today’s spending implies radically shrinking government programs that are woven into America’s social fabric. All this ignores a basic conservative tenet: to respect existing institutions and traditions that anchor the social order. Change — especially radical change — is a last resort, not because today’s world is perfect but because efforts to improve it might make it worse.”
This is mere rhetorical preparation for the Rational Centrism that Mr. Samuelson, here, proposes as antidote to these two political poisons. Yet one might more easily characterize the split as between The Weak New Democratic rule of Barack Obama and its’ essential timidity, in all areas of Policy including the Economy, and a Republican Party courting economic disaster in hopes of creating a political opportunity, that they can then exploit for a Presidential win in 2012. Mr. Samuelson predicates himself as the one lone voice of economic rationalism, in the cacophony of partisan political argument, surely that also qualifies as a dream.
Political Observer
StephenKMackSD's Blog 