Thursday, February 14, 2013

Sen. Marco Rubio, the tea partiers, and their alternative to Obama's center/left social capitalism

Sen. Marco Rubio, the tea partiers, and their alternative to Obama's center/left social capitalism
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Rubio's SOTU response has become a late-night comedian's dream.
His move to drink from a water bottle has become "the slurp heard 'round the world."
His political message was warmed over tea party nostrums...small government, reduce spending, give more power to the states, yada yada.
I describe how Obama's social capitalism SOTU speech is a centrist/liberal call for ameliorating the inequality and distortions that the private market produces.
It was not a progressive/populist blueprint.
Rubio's response does nothing to ameliorate the private market distortions.
It's the old mantra from the 'ol gibber's notebook.
As Reagan often said, "Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other."
and"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"
Rubio, and the tea partiers, favor the so called "sequester" because it will reduce fed. spending by over a $1 trillion in one year.
It's the Norquist, Reagan "starve the beast" strategy.
Reduce spending, and make the fed. govt. small enough to be drowned in a bathtub.
The "sequester" is what Obama called a manufactured crisis.
But the reality of the power in DC will have the military-industrial-Congression complex (MIC) shifting the budget cuts to domestic spending.
If the "sequester" is made law, the discretionary domestic, non-military spending will go down to a level not seen since the 195ies Eisenhower era.
 

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