Instapundit On Democrat’s Golden Opportunity
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Economy, General PoliticsNote to Democrats: get fiscally responsible and the votes will follow:
Driving in to work this morning, I heard this guy talking on the Hallerin Hill show, and he noted that he votes for the Republicans because of their stance on money and taxes, but that he agrees with the Democrats on a lot of other issues. If the Democrats would just lose their hostility to the idea of people getting rich, he said, they’d have his votes and millions of others.
Will the economy will be THE issue in 2008?
Or perhaps it’ll be our massive deficit?
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November 10th, 2005 at 2:20 pm
Ordinarily, I would laugh and say “Dems, fiscally responsible? Yeah right.” But Clinton’s budgeting, coupled with Bush’s wreckless spending create a plausible argument. At minimum, everything’s relative. Compared to GWB, Hillary can do a fiscal conservative makeover.
November 10th, 2005 at 4:22 pm
I’m not convinced this is such a golden opportunity for the Democrats. It certainly helps them, but to really win over moderate voters the Dems will also have to get several other monkeys off their backs. Monkeys with names like Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan.
By 2008 I believe the “war on terror” will have been largely replaced in the public consciousness by something closer to Newt Gingrich’s “Long War” concept (covered recently on Donklephant), and that this Long War against Islamic supremacism will be at or near the forefront of the presidential campaign. To the extent that it is, simply being associated with the anti-war/blame-America-first crowd – which the Dems can hardly avoid in a two-party system that funnels all political discourse into either the “Democratic” or “Republican” stream – will be a serious liability for the Dems in general, and whoever wins their 2008 presidential nomination in particular.
November 10th, 2005 at 4:42 pm
The Democrats carry two viruses in their bloodstreams: pacifism and Marxism. Not all Dems, maybe not even most Dems, but enough that it sets off alarm bells in a lot of people.
For their part the GOP carries strains of theocracy and plutocracy, equally disturbing.
All of which tends to leave a war-mongering, regulated-capitalist, atheist like me without a home.
November 10th, 2005 at 5:16 pm
LOL, Michael (’pacifism and Marxism’). Good to see you haven’t lost any of that razor-sharp wit.
November 11th, 2005 at 1:55 pm
“The Democrats carry two viruses in their bloodstreams: pacifism and Marxism. Not all Dems, maybe not even most Dems, but enough that it sets off alarm bells in a lot of people.”
And actually not any Dems, but enough that if we try really, really, really hard to pretend, then we can convince ourselves. Much like the existence of leprechauns.
I really have to wonder; where have you guys been for the last 13 years? You talk about Democrats and Republicans and fiscal responsibility as if this were the 1970s. The last time that the Republicans were “fiscally responsible” was quite literally before the lot of you were born.
Ah, the folly of the self-appointed centrist. . .
November 11th, 2005 at 3:12 pm
Good joke Rob. Keep the comedy coming. ;-)
November 13th, 2005 at 4:24 pm
There’s two ways to be fiscally responsible: tax increases and spending cuts.
The Dems are only interested in the first; and tax hikes usually have a nasty way of reducing employment — since rich taxpayers invest more into job creation (so as to get richer!) than mass consumption (coneheads?) voters wanting another dose of gov’t given OPM (other people’s money).
The Dems don’t want to cut any budgets — except the military! during wartime! Like they did in 1974 (giving the world the Killing Fields of SE Asia.)
November 13th, 2005 at 7:46 pm
The Dems are interested in both and have said as much. They just don’t want to make cuts in education funding. They’d like to make cuts elsewhere. It’s the current Administration’s brand of conservatism that isn’t interested in doing either.