Political Irony › The Three Big Lies Underlying the Republican Brand

"...(D)iscussions are meaningless unless the Republicans understand the fundamental reasons why their “brand” is so far in the toilet that even Joe the Plumber couldn’t reach it. Fundamentally, there are three main components of the Republican brand, and all three of them are lies. Big lies.

--Lie #1 (and most easily disproved) is that Republicans are the party of fiscal conservatives and smaller government. Around 20 years ago something killed off the “GOP deficit hawks” to the point where, starting with Ronald Reagan, all Republican presidents have run up record national deficits. Dubya’s spending has gone through the roof, and not just because of his two wars and the creation of the huge new Homeland Security Department. He also added expensive Medicare prescription drug benefits, a mission to Mars, and other new spending.

--Lie #2 is that Republicans are the party of social conservatives and religious fundamentalists. But despite talking big about banning abortion and gay marriage, the Republicans have done little to actually promote the causes that social conservatives hold dear. The problem here is that the Republicans have become addicted to using issues like abortion to mobilize their base. If the Republicans actually succeeded in making abortion totally illegal there would be a huge backlash, which would then mobilize the Democratic liberal base against them. Also note that the Bush administration used their power over judicial appointments and federal prosecutors to pursue political ends, not the ends desired by social conservatives. In short, the Republican party is using social conservatives.

--Lie #3 is that Republicans are the party of big business and free markets. But after eight years of deregulating business after business, just to have each of them collapse in turn (ending with the worst economic meltdown since the great depression) it is clear that Republican policies are not good for business, not even big business. If the Republicans actually believed in free markets, they wouldn’t have prohibited the government from negotiating Medicare drug prices. And they certainly wouldn’t have responded to the financial meltdown by nationalizing the biggest banks and insurance companies.

Regulation is not the opposite of free markets. The purpose of good regulation is to level the playing field, and thus create a free market with open competition (rather than a closed market where only big established players with government connections can compete). By favoring their cronies (such as big oil) the Republicans helped kill competition from new energy sources and new modes of transportation, but we now see that this has done more harm than good to Detroit automakers and big oil companies, not to mention hurting other businesses as energy prices soared."