Friday, March 27, 2009

The Road to Republican Recovery

Not everyone is laughing at the Republican not-really-a-budget (which might as well have been written by not-really-Joe the not-really-a-plumber). Jennifer Rubin, for example, thinks it's just swell:

While they have yet to spell out exact figures or provide the comprehensive budget itself, the “Republican Road to Recovery” does preview their plan and goes some distance toward shooting down the Democrats’ spin that Republicans have “no ideas.”
Ideas? How about this one: "Limits the Federal Budget from Growing Faster than Family Budgets"--a task the Republicans have made more difficult in recent years by making sure family budgets don't grow at all. Really, how can they say Republicans have no ideas?

Of course, when you look at the details vague pronouncements in the not-really-a-budget (no stimulus spending, no bailing out the financial system), a common thread emerges: these are measures that are 100% guaranteed to make things worse.

That might seem...what is the word...crazy, but it really isn't. To understand this plan, or plan-to-have-a-plan, you just have to reorder the words in the title: the 'recovery' they're after isn't ours, it's theirs. Let's say it passes, unemployment shoots up to 25%, and the whole financial system collapses. Step 3: Republican profit!!!

In other words, this document amounts to an acknowledgment that they're pinning their hopes on catastrophe. Everything they say or do has to be understood in the light of that reality.