following the midterm election by explaining, “This is our due.” As Harold Meyerson noted at the time, Cheney’s comment gave new meaning to the term “entitlement program.”
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/09/ta090910.html<snip>
To attack the "fundamental assumptions of contemporary liberalism that were my enemy…. Political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government.” Writing in Financial Times in 2010, columnist Martin Wolff goes into greater detail regarding these political benefits as they have revealed themselves during the previous three decades. “The political genius of this idea is evident,” he writes:
Supply-side economics transformed Republicans from a minority party into a majority party. It allowed them to promise lower taxes, lower deficits and, in effect, unchanged spending. Why should people not like this combination? Who does not like a free lunch?” How did supply-side economics bring these benefits? First, it allowed conservatives to ignore deficits. They could argue that, whatever the impact of the tax cuts in the short run, they would bring the budget back into balance, in the longer run. Second, the theory gave an economic justification—the argument from incentives—for lowering taxes on politically important supporters. Finally, if deficits did not, in fact, disappear, conservatives could fall back on the “starve the beast” theory: deficits would create a fiscal crisis that would force the government to cut spending and even destroy the hated welfare state. In this way, the Republicans were transformed from a balanced-budget party to a tax-cutting party. This innovative stance proved highly politically effective, consistently putting the Democrats at a political disadvantage
Is it any wonder they don’t seem to be able to talk about anything else?
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Super article Alterman - it's all they have - failed ideology
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