HOW MANY REPUBLICANS DOES IT TAKE TO UNSCREW A NATION?:

Shrillary Strikes Again: Is George W. Bush trying to "undo the New Deal"? (Larry Elder, Front Page)

Undoing the New Deal? Does she not see the steam blasting from the ears of principled conservatives flatly astonished by President George W. Bush's and his Republican colleagues' willingness to spend, spend and spend? During Bush's term in office, excluding defense and homeland security, non-war government expenditures increased at a rate faster than under former President Bill Clinton. By this time in his term, Reagan vetoed over 20 bills, President George W. Bush, none.

Hillary Clinton, not surprisingly, is right and the Stupid Party wrong on this one. The New Deal stood for the proposition that the government will take on the responsibility of providing for your every need. President Bush--though the process actually began with the Republican Congresses paradigm-shifting Welfare reform--is moving the country in a radically different direction, towards a system where the individual will resume the responsible, to the maximum degree feasible, of providing for his own social services--health care, unemployment insurance, education, mortgage, retirement, etc. (The operating title for this new system is apparently the "Ownership Society", ownership evoking yesterday's bit of de Tocqueville.) Now, conservatives, not known for their intellects, are terribly confused about all this, because the Welfare State which took 70 years to build wasn't reconstructed yesterday, which is apparently their test of someone's bona fides.

However, the Ted Kennedy's and Hillary Clinton's, far smarter and more sensitive to even tiny shifts in the zeitgeist than we Neanderthals, are well aware of what's going on. Mr. Kennedy actually figured it out after helping pass the wolf in sheep's clothing that is the No Child Left Behind Act. Nothing better illustrates the lag in Conservatives' comprehension than their continued belief that the NCLBA represented a Republican defeat. More recently, the Medicare reform--which included means-testing, MSA's and a series of other measures that Republicans have been pushing futiley for a quarter century--has been greeted as some kind of secret socialist coup by the Right, but Democrats fought it because they recognize that little reforms and the executive rule-making powers have a tendency to lead to sweeping change over time. And, at this point, time is on the GOP's side--whether they recognize it or not.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 11, 2003 9:33 AM