The conservative movement is dead, long live the conservative movement

[30ashopper]

In late October 2008, New Yorker staff writer George Packer reported "the complete collapse of the four-decade project that brought conservatism to power in America." Two weeks later, the day after Mr. Obama's election, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne proclaimed "the end of a conservative era" that had begun with the rise of Ronald Reagan.

And in February 2009, New York Times Book Review and Week in Review editor Sam Tanenhaus, writing in The New Republic, declared that "movement conservatism is exhausted and quite possibly dead." Mr. Tanenhaus even purported to discern in the new president "the emergence of a president who seems more thoroughly steeped in the principles of Burkean conservatism than any significant thinker or political figure on the right."

Peter Berkowitz: The Death of Conservatism Was Greatly Exaggerated - WSJ.com

Great WSJ piece today by Berkowitz. People wonder about the origins of the tea party, and commentators like Beck. You have to remember just a few short years ago media far and wide had proclaimed the end of the Reagan era. I think the meteoric rise of figures like Beck and the rise of the TP have a lot to do with how people reacted to the idea of a new progressive era in American politics.

I think the reason why liberals claim this is a reaction to a black president is due to their lack of understanding of conservative principals. Berkowtz hits this nail on the head:

Progressives like to believe that conservatism's task is exclusively negative?resisting the centralizing and expansionist tendency of democratic government. And that is a large part of the conservative mission. Progressives see nothing in this but hard-hearted indifference to inequality and misfortune, but that is a misreading.

What conservatism does is ask the question avoided by progressive promises: at what expense? In the aftermath of the global economic crisis of 2008, Western liberal democracies have been increasingly forced to come to grips with their propensity to live beyond their means.

It is always the task for conservatives to insist that money does not grow on trees, that government programs must be paid for, and that promising unaffordable benefits is reckless, unjust and a long-term threat to maintaining free institutions.

But conservatives also combat government expansion and centralization because it can undermine the virtues upon which a free society depends. Big government tends to crowd out self-government?producing sluggish, selfish and small-minded citizens, depriving individuals of opportunities to manage their private lives and discouraging them from cooperating with fellow citizens to govern their neighborhoods, towns, cities and states.

 

[Bob]

National debt at end of Carter administration 900 billion.......National debt at the end of Reagan administration 2.8 Trillion

 

[ATXcombo]

National debt at end of Carter administration 900 billion.......National debt at the end of Reagan administration 2.8 Trillion

Granted I was not even alive at the end of the first Bush administration, but from what I have read about Reagan, he gave up on the national debt early in his first term.

From Dinesh D'Souza's Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader (Pg. 104).

"I did not come here to balance the budget-not at the expense of my tax cutting programs and my defense programs."

He said that in 1981.

 

[idlewind]

National debt at end of Carter administration 900 billion.......National debt at the end of Reagan administration 2.8 Trillion

National debt at the end of Bush 43 administration 10.6 trillion.........National debt after 20 months of Obama administration 13.2 trillion

 

[30ashopper]

National debt at end of Carter administration 900 billion.......National debt at the end of Reagan administration 2.8 Trillion

Economies of scale. Debt can grow, as long as gdp growth is faster. You reduce the size of the debt as a percentage of gdp when this happens. GDP growth under Reagan went from -2% in 1981 to over 7% in 1985.

Raw GDP under Carter, grew from 2.0 trillion, to 2.7 trillion. Under Reagan, it grew from 2.7 to 6. Reagan did that in the midst of the most severe recession since the great depression.

It'll be interesting to see if Obama, with his "grow government, increase taxes, increase debt" policies will be able to top Reagan's excellent economic record.

 

[30ashopper]

 

[Lynnie]

Here's a great chart outlining debt to GDP per President, but also includes House and Senate control makeup.

How you like those differences now?

National debt by U.S. presidential terms - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[30ashopper]

Here's a great chart outlining debt to GDP per President, but also includes House and Senate control makeup.

How you like those differences now?

National debt by U.S. presidential terms - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reagan should have done better in his second term. Clinton with a republican congress clearly had a great record. Maybe we'll get something similar with Obama after the next election or two?

 

[futurebeachbum]

Here's a great chart outlining debt to GDP per President, but also includes House and Senate control makeup.

How you like those differences now?

National debt by U.S. presidential terms - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What really hits home with me, having been a taxpayer since the Ford days, is how rarely you see the debt quantified against GDP.

Based upon my recollections of how bad things were under Carter, it is really surprising that it was actually the lowest ratio of debt to GDP. Maybe there is a level of government spending that is too low (relative to GDP.)

If you look up US GDP history its apparent that in the post war period it continued to grow until 2008-2010 when it actually declined a bit and flattened out.

This is a significant difference compared to all previous post-war recessions. All of the prior recessions had a growing GDP to help end them. This time we don't and that implies (to me) that we are going to be in this recession a lot longer as a result.

 

[Lynnie]

Yes, numbers are just numbers and mean nothing unless they are measured and consistently measured. This is when you can see trends and extract data.