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Posted on 05/02/2015 8:09:28 AM PDT by Kaslin
At last count there were about three dozen potential candidates for president on the Republican side. Although Hillary Clinton is the expected Democratic nominee, should she falter, there are probably about a half dozen people ready to take her place. Without knowing who the candidates will be and without knowing who will win the election, can we say today with some confidence what difference a Republican or a Democratic victory would mean in 2016?
Paul Krugman asked this question the other day in The New York Times. His answer: parties matter a lot more than candidates, and if a Democrat is elected you can be sure of four things:
Support for maintaining all major entitlement programs and resistance to any major reform.
Support for maintaining high taxes on high-income Americans.
Keeping the current financial reform regulations.
More action on global warming.
This is one of the very few times when I actually agree with Krugman. But he didn’t go far enough. What would we expect if any of the three dozen potential Republican candidates were elected?
Education reform. Although the Democrats talk about inequality a great deal, it is almost self-evident that for people to climb to a higher rung on the income ladder, we have to improve the public schools. Yet aside from Rahm Emanuel and one or two others, Democrats seem to be owned lock, stock and barrel by the teachers’ unions. Teachers vote and kids can’t vote. That’s about all there is to it.
The irony is that the parents of the children Republicans would most like to help tend to consistently vote for the very Democratic politicians who are opposed to that help.
Entitlement reform. There was a time, not long ago, when there was a bi-partisan understanding that we have promised far more than we can pay for. Bill Clinton was part of that understanding. So was Barrack Obama. In 2008 candidate Obama made a campaign promise to reform Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. He appointed Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles to head a commission to propose solutions. Yet when the report came back, the president ignored it. In all likelihood, the next Democrat in the White house will do that exact same thing.
Tax reform. There was also a time, not long ago, when leaders in both parties understood the need for tax reform. That’s how we got the historic agreement in 1986 to cap the top income tax rate at 28 percent. Now the top rate is almost 40 percent. Our corporate tax rates are among the highest in the world and they are encouraging capital (and jobs) to go elsewhere. I believe that every single Republican candidate will unhesitatingly support tax reform. Democrats may occasionally pay lip service to the idea. But I detect no enthusiasm for it whatsoever.
Incidentally, although Paul Krugman and other critics are fond of saying that Republican tax policy favors the rich, the reason so many Americans aren’t paying any income tax at all is largely because of Republican legislation. As economist Michael Stroup has shown, every Republican tax cut from Ronald Reagan to George Bush has left the total tax system more progressive than it previously was.
Regulatory reform. In 2013 alone, the Obama administration added 80,000 pages of new regulations to the Federal Register (see Sen. Mike Lee’s demonstration of what they look like stacked on top of each other). At a minimum, the next Republican occupant of the White House will favor a cost/benefit approach with a disposition to conclude that unless the benefits of a regulation are convincingly greater than the cost, we probably don’t need it.
Free Trade. It was Bill Clinton who presided over the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994 (NAFTA) and Barack Obama is about to preside over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). But it is not clear that the next Democrat in the White House will be open to trade liberalization at all. Almost any Republican, however, is like to be committed to dismantling other barriers to international trade.
Now if you look over Krugman’s list and my list, you will notice something interesting. With the exception of global warming, the Republicans are the reformers. It’s the Democrats who want to keep things like they are. The Democrats, if you will, are the conservatives - even reactionaries – on the most important public policy issues of the day.
Here is why that’s a problem. For most of the 20th century, the Democratic Party was the party of change. The Republican Party was the party of resistance. Over many years, Democrats developed skills on offense. Republicans developed skills on defense.
Now that the roles are largely reversed, we find the two parties unprepared to assume them. George W. Bush was unprepared to privatize Social Security. And the Democrats in Congress right now are unprepared to resist another trade deal.
Perhaps one difference is voting on gun control bills. No difference in how they voted would have made mass gun confiscation from the people some time ago. Yes, they both can’t balance a budget anymore, and they both concede on the sexual revolution agenda, but gun legislation is a point of difference.
No that’s why they call it the uniparty.
Nope is the simple answer.
In 2012 I refused to hold my nose and vote for Mitt. I voted for Constitution Party because their platform was consistent with what the GOP of my dad an grandfather believed.
I am a Conservative Christian retired Pastor. I don’t care if you flame me or whatever i have voted every election since the 1968. And I vote GOP on the lower offices but I will be damned if I continue to vote for the UNIPARTY at the top of the ticket. If the GOP picks Cruz or Walker at the top of their ticket I would vote for them.
Freegards
LEX
I don’t know. What type of dime?
A plug nickle kind of dime.
The problem is that all these writers suddenly having this divine revelation will be screaming bloody murder that we have to vote GOP ‘no matter what’ because “We gotta get them in there and then we’ll hold their feet to the fire” because “If we don’t then the Dems will destroy America” come the 16 election. Because none of them believe in their statements enough to follow through. Just like most of their readers.
Living in a constant state of deja-vu gets really tiring.
“is almost self-evident that for people to climb to a higher rung on the income ladder, we have to improve the public schools.”
Well, it may be almost self evident, but it’s not true.
There is a chasm between the spirit of The Tea Party and the two political parties and there are precious few candidates who will stay true to that spirit. As of now I see only Ted Cruz and Scott Walker as measuring up among those who can get elected.
Rubio is disqualified by virtue of his declensions in promoting amnesty and that is a shame for a man with so much potential and such a skill to move an audience. Santorum cannot get elected, and Rand Paul is not so bad on foreign affairs and military involvements as many think but he is bad on military preparedness and thus disqualified.
The gulf between the middle-class and the elitists is growing not because there is an absence of redistribution of wealth but because the avenues of advancement for the middle-class have been blocked and these obstacles must be removed. If we don't permit the middle-class to prosper sooner or later the demands to make everyone poor will prevail. Mine is not a populist message, this is a free-market message.
To be honest, there is. The Democrat party has gone full communist, while the Republicans are still just socialist.
There is one party. It is the Billionaire Slave Party.
The emotional exaggeration of media create imaginary differences between Democrats and Republicans even more so in election seasons but both parties are driving us in the same direction with no intention of reversing big government.
There will be austerity measures involving higher taxes and or spending cuts around the edges with liberal sexuality imposed on society and the persecution of those opposed a little speck most people will ignore to their peril.
After the First Amendment is ground down, the Uniparty elites can go for the Second.
Regardless of our own views on religion or sexuality, we must defend those coming under attack and not be divided up like folks in Germany and other places were.
The Uniparty is really the Corporate party with it’s right and left wings.
Quite frankly, the D.C. leaders of the Republican party have given Obama 100% of what he wanted. Big surprise to many FReepers, but not to you or I.
Well, lets see. States with Republican control and Republican governors seem to be better off than states with Democrats in charge. That has to say something. There is some kind of difference here—something. If they parties were the same—the results would be the same. Maybe your talking about the GOP members who have been in Washington too long—they seem to catch Progressiveitis from Democrats.
As Nigel Farage has pointed out, the Corporatist System that controls major political parties benefits the big businesses and big banks, keeping the small businesses down and preventing their growth.
Thats because many freepers are on board with liberalism. I mean, they keep voting for liberal Republicans because they have an R, not for the content of their character or their stated policy. What else would one call that?
Well, maybe both parties, can be considered the two major parts of a small boat winch, hauling in the US (the boat).
The Democrats have largely cranked the handle, tuning the winch, hauling in the boat for decades.
The Depublicans have functioned to cogitate and fail to functionally oppose what the Dems have enacted by acting as the “pawl” of the boat winch...stopping most of everything just to functionally cogitate, as the Dems gather their tools for the next winch action. This is “appawling”.
When the “Conservative Christian” Republican governors caved a month or so ago on the First Amendment in Indiana and Arkansas, I think other questions about economic differences became moot.
Sadly the big corporations will benefit Republican run states with jobs etc. if they are willing to persecute conservative religious people in violation of the Constitution.
THAT’S A NO DEAL FOR ME.
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