David Stockman: ‘Today’s Pathetic GOP: Talks Like Barry Goldwater, Spends Like LBJ’

Source:The New Democrat- Mr. Conservative U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater.

Source:The New Democrat

“Here is the portrait of a dysfunctional party: On Tuesday, the House Republicans unveiled a budget that set a goal of spending cuts totaling $6,454 billion. On Wednesday, Senate Republicans defeated legislation to cut spending by $1 billion. On Thursday, House Republicans voted to renew $20 billion per year in farm subsidies.

The 2018 GOP talks like Barry Goldwater and spends like Lyndon Johnson.”

"Former Budget Director under President Reagan David Stockman plays the word association game on "Bloomberg ‹GO›." 

From David Stockman

Source:Bloomberg News- David Stockman was President Ronald W. Reagan's Budget Director.

From Bloomberg News 

"Reaganomics (/reɪɡəˈnɒmɪks/; a portmanteau of Reagan and economics attributed to Paul Harvey),[1] or Reaganism, were the neoliberal[2][3][4] economic policies promoted by U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. These policies are characterized as supply-side economics, trickle-down economics, or "voodoo economics" by opponents,[5] while Reagan and his advocates preferred to call it free-market economics.

The pillars of Reagan's economic policy included increasing defense spending, balancing the federal budget and slowing the growth of government spending, reducing the federal income tax and capital gains tax, reducing government regulation, and tightening the money supply in order to reduce inflation.[6]

The results of Reaganomics are still debated. Supporters point to the end of stagflation, stronger GDP growth, and an entrepreneurial revolution in the decades that followed.[7][8] Critics point to the widening income gap, what they described as an atmosphere of greed, reduced economic mobility, and the national debt tripling in eight years which ultimately reversed the post-World War II trend of a shrinking national debt as percentage of GDP." 

Source:Wikipedia- President Ronald W. Reagan (Republican, California) 40th President of the United States

From Wikipedia 

David Stockman’s line about today’s GOP talking like Barry Goldwater, but spending like Lyndon Johnson, reminds me of Max Boot’s line from his column in The Washington Post yesterday, where he said the Republican Party use to be a conservative party with a nationalist fringe and now they’re a nationalist party with a conservative fringe. Max Boot is a conservative himself and use to be a Republican as well and he made that comment about the modern Republican Party. Well, today Barry Goldwater ( assuming he would be a Republican today ) would be part of that conservative fringe in the Republican Party that is dominated by Caucasian Nationalists, primarily Anglo-Saxon Caucasian Nationalists whose families have been in America since the 1700s for the most part.

The Republican Party, has become a fringe party but not a fringe conservative party. We’re not talking about a party that wants to eliminate the safety net and blow up the New Deal and Great Society. The average Republican voter wants their Social Security, Medicare, and every other government social program and tax credit that they’re entitled to including farm subsidies and other corporate welfare. They just don’t want people who don’t look like them whose families haven’t been in America as long as in some cases are first generation Americans or immigrants themselves, who don’t come from Britain, to collect from those programs that Trump voters collect from.

As much as today’s Tea Party Trumpian Nationalist Republican Party, bashes Food Assistance and other Welfare programs, the overwhelming majority of Americans who collect from those Welfare programs come from Trump states. The Bible Belt, Great Plains, states like Kentucky, West Virginia, all states with high levels of poverty and populations who are eligible for government Welfare in order to help them survive. So when these voters bash these Welfare programs, they’re not so much bashing the programs them self, but people who don’t look like them who also collect from those programs. People from inner cities and places with high levels of poverty in urban America.

In other words, the modern Republican Party, is not a conservative party. They’re Donald Trump’s reality TV nationalist tribalist fascist party, that looks down at anyone who doesn’t look at America the way they do and share their religious and cultural values as Un-American not deserving of the same constitutional rights and privileges as people who voted for Donald Trump and still support him, who’ll defend President Trump at any cost short of going to prison .( Like in Michael Cohen’s case )

Instead of believing in fiscal responsibility and that deficits not only matter but that government is too big, the Republican Party now lives with deficits and are comfortable with size and spending of the U.S. Government, because they don’t want to cut programs that benefit Trump voters. Instead of being tough on dictators and authoritarians, President Trump and his supporters embrace them and embrace the Vladimir Putin’s of the world, because they like authoritarians and authoritarianism and are not fans of democracy. The conservative wing of the Republican Party, is not dead, but they’re on political life support and have now become the fringe wing of a national fascist Republican Party.

David Stockman as he told Bloomberg News, which is linked on this post, said Reaganomics in 1981 was, cutting taxes across the board deeply, while at the same decreasing government spending overall, while increasing the defense budget to win the Cold War against Russia, and deregulating American industry across the board. 

But the reason why Stockman told Bloomberg News that Reaganomics would've worked, if tried, because all the Reagan Administration did in the 1980s was cut taxes deeply across the board and increase defense spending. But the U.S. Government, as well as deficits and the national debt, ballooned under President Reagan in the 1980s. They inherited a 40 billion dollar deficit from President Jimmy Carter in 1981 and gave incoming President George H.W. Bush a 200 billion dollar deficit, when the Reagan's left office in 1989. 

It wasn't just defense spending that ballooned during the Reagan Administration. The Department of Justice to deal with the Reagan expansion of the War On Drugs in the 1980s, rising crime rates, as well as immigration. 

The overall Federal budget ballooned during the Reagan years and so did the deficit and debt. So much for fiscal conservatism, even if you want to Ronald Reagan an economic Conservative, which he was. 

You can also see this post at The Daily Times, on Blogger.