Republicans and the stimulus package: A lack of credibility

Daniel Larison has an interest post over at his blog "Eunomia" on the current Republican party and the economy. It is worth reading, so I've posted it below:

http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2009/03/07/look-on-the-bright-side

"It seems to me that implicit in a lot of conservative criticism of the stimulus bill, the mortgage plan, and Obama’s cap-and-trade scheme, among other things, must be the odd notion that things would have been very different had McCain won the election. While we can be sure that McCain the crazed earmark-hunter would still be with us (no doubt keeping us safe from volcano monitoring and gang tatoo removal), let us recall that McCain supported cap-and-trade (even if he didn’t necessarily understand what he was talking about when he said so), proposed an insane mortgage bailout plan that pretty much everyone hated, backed TARP and differed from Obama on taxes largely in that he refused to raise any rates. In the end, the main difference turns out to be a disagreement about whether to return the top rate to its Clinton-era level or not. I guess that is a bit more than a dime’s worth of difference, but it isn’t much. Of course, this is why so many Republicans were relieved that McCain lost, because had he won they would have ended up backing a whole host of policies that they are currently denouncing as disastrous. At the same time, we would have had an old, irritable President prone to fits of bellicosity in international affairs and moral grandstanding about any issue he doesn’t understand, and behind him would have been an unqualified VP. However bad things are, remember that they could have been far, far worse."

As Larison notes, as much as the Republicans (rightly in many cases) complain about the stimulus package, it is doubtful that a president McCain would do things much differently if he were in office instead of Obama. Perhaps more importantly, the Republicans don't really have a lot of room to talk after all the problems of the Bush years. Bush and the Republicans in Congress wastefully spent money on pork barrel projects. They spent money like drunken sailors and increased both the size of government and the national debt. Moreover, they got us into the war in Iraq, which has turned out to be an unnecessary disaster that has cost tens of thousands of American and Iraqi lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. Congressional Republicans were also involved in a number of scandals. And last but not least, the Bush administration played fast and loose with civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism.

In short, the Republicans did not act as real conservatives in the first place and certainly were not responsibly with power and money. Unfortunately, so far they don't seem to have learned much from their mistakes during the Bush years. Granted, it hasn't been all that long since the November election. But there has been no indication that "mainstream" Republicans have even began to question the disastrous and fundamentally unconservative radicalism of the neocons. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are still widely seen as authentic spokesmen of conservatism. The rank and file of the Republican party haven't exactly turned to Ron Paul for leadership or to paleoconservative publications such as "The American Conservative" or "Chronicles" for new ideas. I wish I could say there is a chance of this happening in the coming years, but I doubt it.

I suspect that the stimulus package may do more harm than good. It appears to have some good aspects, but will certainly increase the size of the national debt and government all while quite possibly doing little to kick start the economy. Politically, the problem is that the Republicans don't have any new ideas and consequently aren't able to present much of an alternative to what Obama and the Democrats in Congress are doing. Not only are the Republicans intellectually exhausted, but they have very little credibility in the eyes of the public. As skeptical as I am about the stimulus package, Republican (and I include talking heads such as Limbaugh and Hannity here) attacks on the stimulus package look a lot like the pot calling the kettle black. I'm sure the same is the case with much of the public as well. The Republicans are going to have to wander in the wilderness for several years. After the follies of the Bush years, they deserve it, though unfortunately in the meantime Obama and especially Congressional Democrats may do damage of their own to our country and economy.