It's magic!

Jonathan Chait has a brief, but very good, blog post entitled "Lamar and the Magic Climate Plan" (where I took the above Willy Wonka image) that points out the problem - er, one of the problems - with Republicans these days:

Lamar Alexander takes to the Wall Street Journal op-ed page to lay out his clean energy vision. It's a lot like the Republican health care vision: let's do all the popular stuff and none of the unpopular stuff it requires.

Well, of course. That's pretty much what we expect from Republicans these days - nothing serious, just propaganda to fool the uninformed. And it's the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, too - which had some of the looniest editorials in America even before it was purchased by Rupert Murdoch (of Fox "News" infamy).

All of Chait's post is well worth reading (and as I say, it's quite short), but I thought the last two paragraphs were particularly good:

This is not the only problem with Alexander's piece. He outlines goals, like increasing conservation and electrifying half the automobile fleet -- but he has absolutely nothing about how to obtain these goals. His electric car plan is literally what you read above: "Electrify half our cars and trucks." Who would do this? How? He does not say. Cars and trucks run on gasoline because gasoline is the cheapest fuel available. If you wanted half the cars to run on electric power, you'd have to change this so that gasoline was no longer the cheapest fuel available. It could be a tax on carbon emissions, enormous subsidies for electric batteries, regulatory fiat, something. Likewise, if you want people to conserve energy, you need to increase the cost of using energy.

I'm not sure how you have a debate with people like this. It's as if you propose that, in order to get your family out of debt, your 23 year old son living at home gets a job, and the son replies that he likes the part of your idea where he gets paid, but let's leave out the part where he goes to work. This is basically Alexander's case. And he's one of the moderate Republicans! Most of them just deny the science of climate change altogether. The moderate position is that we can fix the problem via magic.

You can't debate people like this, because they're not interested in determining the best policies. Their only goal is political advantage. Everything is presented through the prism of politics. Reality is immaterial. Reason is immaterial. Evidence is immaterial. What's important to them is only how it will fly with voters and campaign contributors. Here's another example:

Just a year and a half after they were tossed out of power, at the end of eight long years of criminal incompetence and unmitigated disaster (12 years in Congress), Republicans are working hard to get back in charge. But according to House Minority Leader John Boehner, they've learned their lesson. So, what's the magic plan that will miraculously fix everything this time? It's tax cuts! Yup, the same old obsession they had during the entire eight years of George W. Bush! Still that old magic...

Here's Talking Points Memo:

"You equate the idea of lowering marginal tax rates with less revenue for the federal government," Boehner cautioned. "We've seen over the last 30 years that lower marginal tax rates have led to a growing economy, more employment, and more people paying taxes. And if you look at the revenue growth over those 30 years, you've got a prime example of what we've been talking about."

This is practically the reverse of the truth. In the years after the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush tax cuts, economic growth and employment were significantly lower than they were after Bill Clinton's 1993 tax increases. According to Michael Ettlinger and John Irons of the Center for American Progress, "Over the seven-year periods after each legislative action, average annual growth was 3.9 percent following [Clinton's 1993 tax increase], 3.5 percent following [Reagan's 1981 tax cut], and 2.5 percent following [Bush's 2001 tax cut]."

But beyond the factual contradiction, Boehner appeared to be in denial about the real impact of the Bush tax cuts. Another reporter followed up: "Are you saying that the Bush tax cuts didn't effect the deficits that we're in now?"

Boehner halted for a moment, then shrugged: "The reductions in '01 and '03 were to respond to an economic problem. '01 was done before 9/11. '03 was done in response to what happened to the economy. But that's not what led to the budget deficit. It's not the marginal tax rates. If you look at the problem that we've got here, it's a spending problem, that has grown over the last five or six years. A real spending problem. "

Bush did use the 2001 recession to argue for tax cuts...but only after running for President on a platform of reducing taxes in response to Clinton's budget surpluses. Tax cuts either way. And as for the latter claim--"that's not what led to the budget deficit"--the numbers tell a much different story.

Take a look at this graph from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The Bush tax cuts are in fact the single biggest contributor to the current deficit.

So what, if anything, would Republicans do differently if they got another bite at the apple? The short answer seems to be: very little.

According to Republicans, black is white, up is down, and this time tax cuts really will magically fix everything. Yes, trickle down economics - voodoo economics - really does work, despite all the evidence when we've tried it. You just have to have faith.

And yes, of course, Republicans will drastically cut spending this time. Trust them. Of course, they won't tell us what they'll cut. And when they do propose cutting some specific program, it will have about as much effect on the deficit as spitting at it. But then, their goal isn't to cut the deficit. Their goal is entirely political.

Unless we start getting smarter voters - better informed, more rational, more honest, less gullible, less apathetic, braver - we're going to find ourselves in a world of hurt. Republicans have nothing but the same old ideas that got us into this mess - into all of these messes - in the first place. And they're either cynical as hell or they're crazy enough to rely on magic to fix everything - or both.