Fiscal Conservativism Isn't Republican

This is the hat tip to John Cole's Balloon Juice for finding the graph and his article - an ex-Republican point of view. I've been making the point over the past while that we're not looking at a George W Bush economy, that we're looking at nearly 30 years of Republican propaganda taken as accepted knowledge regarding both their fiscal conservatism and how their ideas work. The graph clearly shows that following Jimmy Carter the deficits essentially exploded under Republicans. That is exactly right, Republicans, St Ronnie Reagan directly followed Jimmy Carter and exploded the deficit. The first time a significant trend of reduction occurs is under the Republican punching bag Bill Clinton.

George W Bush's first budget starts out slightly above where St Ronnie did in deficit amounts. The Republican "all time worst?" Jimmy Carter ran most of his show below the closing of the Ford administration. You've got Republicans swimming in a sea of red ink, every time, and they want to talk about fiscal conservatism. Can you bet where this is going to go?

Where it has already gone is the screeching by the RNC ilk that their mistake was going away from their fiscal conservative roots. They have to return to their roots... There are no roots except when a Democrat wants to do something that might, just might benefit the ordinary citizen. The Republican response is that it will trickle down from the wealthy investors to the ordinary citizen and that increased tax revenues will cover the lost revenues. Oddly enough, the graph shows that no such thing occurs with tax revenues and spending deficits.

The RNC talks about their new hero, the future, Saxby Chambliss:

WASHINGTON – Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Robert M. “Mike” Duncan released the following statement tonight.

“When voters in Georgia reelected Saxby Chambliss to the United States Senate today, they selected a strong, conservative leader who shares their values and could be trusted to uphold the Republican principles of lower taxes and a strong defense. His reelection sends a clear message that the Republican Party and our core conservative principles are alive and well.

Well, a broken military doesn't sound like a "strong defense" and then lower taxes seemed to have happened for the 'uber' wealthy and, um, deficits...

The RNC's I'm a Republican because: lists a bunch of rather strange sounding things but in the context of this article:

I BELIEVE government must practice fiscal responsibility and allow individuals to keep more of the money they earn.

I BELIEVE the proper role of government is to provide for the people only those critical functions that cannot be performed by individuals or private organizations, and that the best government is that which governs least.

I BELIEVE the most effective, responsible and responsive government is government closest to the people.

I'm pretty sure that not much of what "I believe" has to say here has had anything to do with Republicanism for a really long time.

In regard to Obama's public works project Bob Geiger provides this little gem:

"Anyone who has talked to the American people knows that while they are hurting, they don't believe that more Washington spending is the answer," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner.

As Geiger notes:

And we also know that after years of supporting hundreds of billions of dollars on George W. Bush's war for nothing in Iraq, the Republican party will balk at anything that will actually help the American people and fall back on their old stand-by of tax cuts for the wealthy trickling down to the little people.

These are your tools if you're an activist, show the lies for what they are and when Democrats do something right, tout it to the heavens. Winning in 2010,12,&16 depend on changing the narrative - and when it is this full of holes the job isn't a real problem, just work.