Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Bush 43 policies paved the way for Obama as Herbert Hoover policies paved the way for FDR-Mark Levin

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The Bush crowd scolds the Silent Majority for daring to speak:

1/7/14, "Here's another effort by the Ruling Class," Mark Levin Facebook

"Here's another effort by ruling class apparatchiks to dumb down the founding and conservatism.

This article (see below link
) is verbose, platitudinous, and misleading but a must read as it reveals the mindset and approach of the GOP establishment. They cherry-pick history, redefine conservatism, and embrace big government. 

Written by two former top staffers to Bush 43, neither of whom is particularly well informed about the founding (they repeat many of the usual liberal arguments for expansive government), endlessly attack the Tea Party and its candidates in other writings, and presume to define conservatism through previous perversions of Edmund Burke's writings about moderation, among other things (of course, Locke and Montesquieu were the primary, albeit not exclusive, influences on the Founders). They're typical of what I call the neo-statists. 

You can see why Bush 43's policies paved the way for Barack Obama much the way Herbert Hoover's policies paved the way for FDR and the lurch toward institutionalized progressivism. 

http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/a-conservative-vision-of-government"

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Winter 2014, "A Conservative Vision of Government," National Affairs, MICHAEL GERSON and PETER WEHNER

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In 2007 Peggy Noonan wrote that George Bush destroyed the GOP, had complete disdain for conservatives:
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6/1/2007,Too Bad,” Peggy Noonan, Wall St. Journal, President Bush has torn the conservative coalition asunder.”
not only for one political party 
but for the American future.... 
But on immigration it has changed from “Too bad” to “You’re bad.” "... 
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12/15/14, Breaking The UniParty,” Angelo M.  Codevilla, libertylawsite.org

The Republican Party’s leaders have functioned as junior members of America’s single ruling party, the UniParty. Acting as the proverbial cockboat in the wake of the Democrats’ man-of-war, they have made Democratic priorities their own when the White House and the Congress were in the hands of Republicans as well as in those of Democrats, and when control has been mixed. The UniParty, the party of government, the party of Ins, continues to consist of the same people. The Outs are always the same people too: American conservatives. They don’t have a party. Whatever differences exist within the Uniparty, between Republican John Boehner and Democrat Nancy Pelosi, between Republican Mitch McConnell and Democrat Harry Reid, get worked out behind closed doors. Those differences are narrow.”…

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2/20/13, "As Country Club Republicans Link Up With The Democratic Ruling Class, Millions Of Voters Are Orphaned," Angelo Codevilla, Forbes
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"Increasingly the top people in government, corporations, and the media collude and demand submission as did the royal courts of old."...(subhead 'Public Safety') 

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10/20/11, "The lost decade," Angelo M. Codevilla, Claremont Institute (2001-2011)

"Rule by Experts" (subhead, scroll down)

"Decision-making by "experts" rather than by people and procedures responsible to the American people has always been American progressives' prescription for American life. During the past decade, the pretense that America was at war has given this practice a major boost. For example, official and semi-official panels of experts from government, business, and the academy generated "studies" on the energy and health-care sectors of the economy. Based on these, the government promulgated regulations and presented Congress with demands that it approve massive legislation to "stop global warming"
 
and to "establish universal medical care." These government-business-academic experts, i.e. this ruling class, presented their plans as demands because, they shouted,

"the debate is over,"

and opponents are not qualified to oppose. Regardless of these demands' merits, such claims to authority are based strictly on the proponents' credentials. My point, however, is that these credentials are based largely on the government endowing these proponents with positions and money. As President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in his farewell address, such expertise is a circular function of government power. 
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The event for which the decade is most likely to be remembered, namely the "great recession," was a similar phenomenon. When the financial bubble in mortgage-backed securities burst in 2008, the leaders of both parties, and pundits from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal, assured Congress authoritatively that appropriating some $800 billion for the Treasury to buy up "toxic assets" would fix the problem. Three out of four Americans dissented, in part because of widespread recognition that the U.S. government's increase in expenditures from $1.86 trillion in 2001 to $2.9 trillion in 2008, due in part to the war, was unsustainable. Yet Congress bowed to "expert" opinion. But the markets tanked, the fix did not work, and the economic collapse gathered momentum. The subsequent Democratic administration increased spending even more radically, to $3.7 trillion, roughly doubling federal expenses in a decade, and pushed the national debt over $14 trillion—almost equal to America's GDP. By 2011, 40 cents out of every federal dollar spent had to be borrowed. .

As a prescription for salvation, the very same spectrum of experts that had certified the efficacy of bailing out big banks emphasized to Congress that the country needed to borrow more money and pay more taxes. Three fourths of Americans wanted neither to borrow more nor to pay more. The experts labeled them "irresponsible" and even "terrorists."

The markets tanked again, and the great recession got a second wind. The 2010 census reported that in 2009 the inflation-adjusted median family income was $49,445, down from $51,161 in 2001. Although the official unemployment rate at this writing is only 9.1%, a truer measure of America's condition is that only 45.4% of Americans of working age are employed full time—a true definition of depression.....

The CIA announced in 2010 that the president and his advisers had concluded that one Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen in Yemen, was so involved in terrorism that American forces would hunt him down and kill him. Of what capital crime was he accused? By whom? Who convicted and sentenced him? The experts. On the basis of what evidence? Sorry, can't say. Classified. Wartime necessity, you know."...  

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