Posted by
john on Friday, November 14, 2008 5:37:51 PM
I don't understand how Mort Kondracke can find work. I've heard him at least twice expounding this goofy notion that everything will be fine with BO as president because things will just return to the status quo ante of Good King Billy who, you may recall, waved his magic wand and made everyone prosper (unlike Bad King George, who stole from the poor and gave to his rich friends and Halliburton).
This is the sort of kindergarten logic the Left has been using for years to undermine traditional American values. What, the Republican win in 1994 had no impact on 1990s economic growth? Clinton's lowering of the cap gains tax, NAFTA, welfare reform, and declaring the era of big government over (all done with significant Republican, and minimal Democratic, support), meant nothing? All success was due to higher personal income tax rates?
We, as conservatives, have to start calling out amiable dunces like Mort on all such instances of myth-making and magical thinking. Make them connect the dots on economic cause-and-effect at least at the high school level, or laugh them off the stage. If Saul Alinsky's tactics (the tactics of the dirtbag) are good for the Left, we're going to have to devise our own, more respectable version. If we can't do this, starting with rejecting the silly and/or insidious premises of the central planners and comand-and-controllers, conservatism's walk in the wilderness is going to last the rest of my lifetime - and I intend to live a few more decades. I remember the 1970s all too well. The more we let the Left re-write history, the more we're going to have to repeat the worst of it (did someone else once say something like this?).