Open Thread: GOP Now the Reformers, While Dems Defend Status Quo
Amazing what two years can do. Barack Obama's promises to stir up Washington and reject the status quo seem like distant memories. We imagine they'd elicit a chuckle from most Americans if uttered today. In his latest Washington Post column, Charles Krauthammer writes that “Obama's Democrats have become the party of no.” Real cuts to the federal budget? No. Entitlement reform? No. Tax reform? No. Breaking the corrupt and fiscally unsustainable symbiosis between public-sector unions and state governments? Hell, no. We have heard everyone – from Obama's own debt commission to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – call the looming debt a mortal threat to the nation. We have watched Greece self-immolate. We can see the future. The only question has been: When will the country finally rouse itself? Amazingly, the answer is: now. Led by famously progressive Wisconsin – Scott Walker at the state level and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan at the congressional level – a new generation of Republicans has looked at the debt and is crossing the Rubicon. Recklessly principled, they are putting the question to the nation: Are we a serious people? But why the shift from “hope and change” to the “party of no”? Washington Examiner columnist Tim Carney estimates that Democrats simply misunderstand the brand of populism to which most Americans ascribe: The Left has misread the postbailout populist sentiment all along, assuming public anger was directed at the rich. But American anger, I suspect, is directed not at some people who have money or success, but at those who profit through cronyism and their connections to power. In other words, anti-bailout anger is not anger at the rich, but anger at those unfairly getting rich — at the taxpayer's expense. Is that what's behind this shift in partisan roles? Where do you see the cause?
More:
Open Thread: GOP Now the Reformers, While Dems Defend Status Quo
Posted by
on February 25, 2011. Filed under