The Obama Landslide and the Future of Fiscal Conservatives
Obama's landslide victory yesterday is a strong rebuke for the last 8 years of mostly Republican rule. One has to wonder where the GOP will go from here.
I am hopeful that the fiscal conservative wing of the Republican Party will find a way to reassert itself. The dominance of the social conservatives and neocons led to growth in spending that made Bill Clinton look prudent.
My fear is that Republicans in the Senate and House will go along with the Democratic majority in order to get their earmarks and bacon for their districts.
Sadly I think the latter scenario is more likely. What are fiscal conservatives to do now?
On the one hand we may find some hope in the Democrats. Here in New York State, Governor David Paterson has shown promising signs about the state budget. But it is far from clear that the state legislature will work with him to keep spending in line.
On the national level, Barack Obama seems pretty sharp. He should look back to Bill Clinton's first two years in office. With the Democrats in control of both houses and the White House, they ran amok. Republicans stormed both houses in 1994 on Gingrich's Contract With America.
If Obama and the congressional Democrats are wise, they will make sure they don't give ammo for another 1994. To do that, they have to avoid the excesses we saw from the Dems in 1993-1994 and from the Republicans from 2002-2006.
But what if the Democrats blow it and spend our money as recklessly as the Republicans have? What do fiscal conservatives do then? If we can't trust the Republicans on this - and they've shown us we can't - and we can't trust the Dems, then we may have to look somewhere else.
I'd like to say we turn to the Libertarian Party. But that route is fraught with problems. The LP, at least in NY, has had trouble keeping a focus on a central theme. I'm optimistic about the current leadership though. Maybe that's the next step.
For now I'm crossing my fingers about Paterson and Obama.
I am hopeful that the fiscal conservative wing of the Republican Party will find a way to reassert itself. The dominance of the social conservatives and neocons led to growth in spending that made Bill Clinton look prudent.
My fear is that Republicans in the Senate and House will go along with the Democratic majority in order to get their earmarks and bacon for their districts.
Sadly I think the latter scenario is more likely. What are fiscal conservatives to do now?
On the one hand we may find some hope in the Democrats. Here in New York State, Governor David Paterson has shown promising signs about the state budget. But it is far from clear that the state legislature will work with him to keep spending in line.
On the national level, Barack Obama seems pretty sharp. He should look back to Bill Clinton's first two years in office. With the Democrats in control of both houses and the White House, they ran amok. Republicans stormed both houses in 1994 on Gingrich's Contract With America.
If Obama and the congressional Democrats are wise, they will make sure they don't give ammo for another 1994. To do that, they have to avoid the excesses we saw from the Dems in 1993-1994 and from the Republicans from 2002-2006.
But what if the Democrats blow it and spend our money as recklessly as the Republicans have? What do fiscal conservatives do then? If we can't trust the Republicans on this - and they've shown us we can't - and we can't trust the Dems, then we may have to look somewhere else.
I'd like to say we turn to the Libertarian Party. But that route is fraught with problems. The LP, at least in NY, has had trouble keeping a focus on a central theme. I'm optimistic about the current leadership though. Maybe that's the next step.
For now I'm crossing my fingers about Paterson and Obama.
Labels: barack obama, fiscal conservatives
posted by Albany Lawyer at 11:46 AM
1 Comments:
Nothing, nothing at all in obama's past show him to be fiscally conservative. I will bet you that Obama's vaunted $250K threshold for getting a tax break declines faster than you can possibly imagine. It's over Johnny!
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