Pawlenty vs FDR

Sustained five percent growth? One might ask when we could possibly find an example of that sort of growth in American history.

From "Pawlenty’s 5 Percent Growth Solution Makes Historical Sense"

"So, yes, the U.S. economy has indeed shown an ability to grow at an average of five percent over a 10-year period. The problem for Pawlenty, and for many other modern-day politicos who believe they know the secret to rapid growth, is that all this growth came under Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In the 1930s, as Roosevelt and his allies saved American-style capitalism from its own gaudy excesses and pathetic failings, Republican opponents, business interests and trade groups stomped their feet. They accused FDR of being a Socialist, of burdening the economy with regulations, of scaring investors by fomenting uncertainty, of hampering investment by instituting a new safety net, of placing restrictions on a bankrupt Wall Street and banking system. These crazy Keynesian schemes would never work. Why, they would turn the U.S. into a weak clone of the U.S.S.R., unable to compete in global markets, lead, or stand up to external enemies. (Plus ca change. . .)

Of course, the exact opposite happened. In the 1930s and 1940s, the U.S. economy (and its stock market) got back on its feet, rediscovered its capacity to grow, expanded and then led the world to victory over Fascism."

Sadly, Pawlenty is no FDR. Despite all the Republican grumbling about President Obama, sadly, President Obama is no FDR either. But who knows? Maybe there's a chance we voters will get our act together in 2012 and elect a Congress full of FDRs in response to what the Republicans have been trying to do. That's the only way we'd be likely to see that sort of sustained growth any time soon.

The Sprint Towards Insanity

Wow. And we thought things were getting a bit nutty in the 2010 elections. One has to wonder, since the Democrats have adopted so many of the Republican ideas (e.g., cap-n-trade, etc.) years after the Republicans brought them up: For 2016 will the Democrats also embrace something like what's going on in the Republican party today?

Michael Tomasky said it well, in "The Lies and Lunacy in Tim Pawlenty's Economic Plan", "The Republicans have lost any connection to earth, and the Democrats are afraid (with a few noble exceptions) to tell the American public the truth."

It is in this context, that perhaps we shouldn't be entirely surprised that among the notable celebrated likely serious contenders for the GOP Presidential nomination are Santorum, Romney, and Gingrich. Santorum is so far right-wing that he's been known to make other conservatives nervous. Romney is best known for a plan from which he's desperately trying to disassociate himself and claim it wouldn't be good for the country. And Gingrich has that remarkable contradiction of championing the "Defense of Marriage" while himself going through wives like tissue during cold-n-flu season.

In a nutshell, the GOP is running a bowl of mixed nuts.

Ah, but there's Pawlenty, right? For quite some time, most of what we heard about Pawlenty was that he might be a bit boring ... that he lacked charisma. Perhaps he's not so boring after all. He's put forward a "plan" that's more or less total fiscal insanity. That's some exciting stuff. You can't be entirely boring when you put forward a plan that ridiculous. Then again, it does rather come across as the natural extension of the direction in which Republican policy has been heading.

As Tomasky put it,

"The lie, which one hears from Republicans on cable television on a daily basis, is that “we spent our way into this crisis.” Yes, federal spending has gone up significantly in the last decade. But increased spending wasn’t as decisive as decreased revenue. The truth can’t be said often enough: We did not spend our way into this crisis; we de-taxed our way into it."

If folks take that lie and base their world around it -- around the madness that cutting taxes would always be good and couldn't possibly be the real cause of deficits -- then they're going to come up with some really absurd plans.