Beyond cultural dissonance, what drives liberals so crazy about Bush is that they think, no, know, that deep down he is a very conservative man, with a very conservative agenda, but he refuses to run an overtly ultraconservative adminsitration they can argue and run against. They would love it if he would not only “cut taxes for the rich” but cut spending to balance it out. Instead, he cuts taxes (the rich paying a huge share of income taxes these days, they get the lion’s share of direct benefits from the cuts), while also massively increasing spending on popular domestic programs. Krugman and others figure that the “plan” is to starve the government in the far-off future, when spending needs will grossly exceed tax revenues, resulting in a crisis that will require the gutting of government programs, without Bush having had to pay a political price. I think the “plan” is simply to get George Bush reelected, and that Bush’s advisors don’t give a horse’s petootie (I’ve always wanted to use that phrase in print!) about the size of government, so long as they stay in power. And, contra Krugman, the odds that the huge increase in government under Bush will be undone in our lifetimes is slim, indeed–as with the Social Security crisis of the early ’80s, we could simply have minor reforms with major tax increases, or, as with the current Medicare crisis, we could simply ignore it and spend even more money. I agree that all of this is reckless on Bush’s part, and fiscal conservatives are rightly up in arms, but I’m not sure why Keynesian liberals (not necessarily Krugman) who normally applaud deficit spending during recessions and want permanent increases in federal spending should be upset.
Nothing frustrates ideologues on one side of the political aisle more than when it turns out that their political opponent is not an ideologue, but an opportunist, (or perhaps simply a typical politician with moderately conservative or liberal leanings). The same was true with conservatives and Bill Clinton, whom conservatives just knew was a die-hard ultra-liberal, but who was perfectly willing to end the welfare entitlement when it became politically convenient to do so (and who knows, he may have thought it was a not-so-bad idea). And indeed, conservatives would have had far more respect for a Bill Clinton who had governed as a McGovernite, and liberals would have more respect for Bush if he governed as a Goldwaterite, because then they would be acting according to what their opponents perceive to be their “true” iedological beliefs.
For years, I’ve thought the only significant reason to vote for Republican presidential candidates was their better judicial appointments, and this reamins true, but even here Bush’s political opportunism is manifest. He, like Clinton, has generally avoided nominating prominent but potentially controversial academics who are most likely to dramatically effect changes in the law (unlike Reagan–think Scalia, D. Ginsburg, Easterbrook, Posner, Stephen Williams), while his most controversial nominees have served other political ends, either paying off political favors (Pickering), or scoring political points regarding “diversity” (Rogers Brown, Gregory, et al.)
Anyway, two points to the first liberal blogger to actually give Bush credit for increasing federal education spending by “33 to 68 percent, depending on how you calculate the numbers.” (UPDATE: (Points to Maxspeak, who was early on this, and runner up points to Matt Yglesias). Perhaps he even believes in it! And check out the comments to Yglesias’s post on Bush-hating, to see examples of (1) liberal hysteria over the fact that the Bush administration has (gasp!) evangelical Christians in it; and (2) strained attempts to claim that policies that would be perfectly acceptable or at least debatable if Clinton had pursued them (didn’t the U.S. act unilaterally and with military force in Haiti and to some extent in Bosnia?) suddenly become examples of evil incarnate when pursued by Bush. And here’s a good example of a defense of liberal Bush-hatred; note how early in the post that the author describes Bush’s budget record as “no major spending cuts” when, in fact, spending has gone through the roof, as any good liberal would desire.
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