So says NRO’s Andrew McCarthy
There is a dismaying symmetry about the debt-limit controversy. Today’s Left creates phony crises to rationalize action on its radically transformative program; today’s Right creates phony rationalizations to avoid addressing actual crises. Incrementally, yesterday’s radicalism becomes today’s norm.
The Right talks a good game about small government, constitutional government. But that is all it is: talk. When it gets down to brass tacks, like now, with our nation sinking into a death spiral of unsustainable, incalculable debt, the Right’s solution is to grow government while trusting that government will constrain government — at some future date, of course. And when someone has the temerity to say, “No, enough,†mainstream Republicans, aided by some in the conservative commentariat, are as quick as the Obama Left to marginalize that someone as an “extremist.â€
So it was that Sen. John McCain, the very model of a progressive Rockefeller Republican, lambasted a surging GOP presidential hopeful, Rep. Michele Bachmann, for her uncompromising stance on the debt ceiling. By McCain’s Big Gummint lights, Bachmann is an extremist for refusing to indulge the notion that we should inflate by $2,500,000,000,000 (that’s not a typo) the credit line of a bankrupt nation that is officially $14,300,000,000,000 in the hole. (The true debt is more like $130,000,000,000,000 if we look beyond Uncle Sam’s Enronesque accounting practices.) And mind you, the $2.5 tril is just what’s necessary to get us through President Obama’s reelection, McCain’s 2008 campaign having already done its bit to ensure Obama’s election. Once the president’s second term is won, there would be nothing but trillions more in debt and debt-ceiling raises until, sooner rather than later, creditors stop the music and the country collapses.
And therein lies the problem: we have the squishy Republicans who tend to freak out when a Conservative actually espouses actual *GASP* conservative (also known by the term Classical Liberalism, as opposed to today’s liberalism, which is closer to fascism) positions and demands that we implement said conservative positions, they are termed radical and extremist. And we are told that we have to capitulate, make peace in our time, and have a “discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will.” Basically, give the Progressives what they want and get nothing back but promises of unicorns and elves in every pot.
The squishes need to man up, and choose a side. Make sure to read the whole thing.
