The Republican Playbook - - Nothing New

On a recent Washington Journal Jeb Hensarling, member of the House from Texas, epitomized the quintessential Republican, excluding of course the extreme conservative wing that feeds on the claptrap offered up by Rush Limbaugh, Michele Malkin, Ann Coulter and the rest of the hot-air crowd. With his more measured, albeit hollow rhetoric, Hensarling articulates his party's centrist and bewildering position that the old is actually new, and that what failed in the past can be the engine of success in the future.

Republicans claim they lost recent elections because they abandoned their principles of smaller government, reduced spending and lower taxes. It seems not to matter that people at the top became wealthier from the Bush tax cuts but failed to create jobs, undertake innovative ventures or do much other than buy luxury goods and second or third homes and maybe even squirrel away some of that governmental largess in secret Swiss bank accounts. Had it been otherwise the country wouldn't be in crisis mode and we would all be luxuriating in the deep pools of prosperity that would have trickled down around us.

It was the beleaguered "little guy" who saw jobs outsourced, lost health-care benefits and watched pensions disappear and private retirement funds hit the skids. At the same time health-insurance costs soared and home values deteriorated. But Republican politicians like Hensarling keep up the relentless drill about conservative values. And what one hears from them most often is that the housing market fell apart because ne'er-do-well buyers indulged in sub-prime mortgages for homes they couldn't afford. It isn't noted as often that lending institutions thought they'd hit the mother lode when they bundled iffy loans into security derivatives they labeled Triple-A investments feigning stunned disbelief when their pyramid schemes backfired.

Hensarling maintains the country's economy suffers from three things - - taxation, litigation and regulation. And he describes a "Democrat trifecta" of debt, spending and a lower standard of living for the next generation. Business taxes are too high he says without mentioning those dummy corporate addresses that shelter income in the Caymans and elsewhere. Basically, lower-echelon workers are the ones that absorb the impact of lower wages and the loss of health benefits while corporate executives earn huge salaries and depart with enormous retirement packages. But in the Republican playbook, criticism of executive salaries is an assault on Capitalism. Score another one for corporate greed.

And what is his solution to the country's economic plight? It's simple: "zero out" capital gains taxes for two years and lower tax brackets across the board. There you have it. Hensarling claims investors are "sitting on the sidelines" waiting for a more favorable financial climate, but with a few adjustments they'd be climbing all over each other to get back in the game. He points to John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan as examples of how lowering taxes begat larger revenues and revived the economy. Of course Reagan left a huge deficit behind so perhaps his economic policies weren't cause for celebration after all. Besides those were the good old days compared to what the country faces now.

As Alcee Hastings of Florida pointed out on the House floor, in supporting a mortgage relief bill; it isn't only irresponsible home-buyers who are on the brink of financial ruin. In the face of a "global set of circumstances" he said even working families who have played by the rules are increasingly at risk, and when neighbors lose their homes, entire neighborhoods and communities are jeopardized. As for the "gentle lady" from North Carolina, Rep. Fox, who kept referring to a "welfare mentality" and "rewarding bad behavior" Hastings responded that the bill wasn't about "welfare", but about extending a helping hand to struggling neighbors during a time of great economic upheaval.

Addressing the country's problems isn't simply about working through conflicting ideologies; it's about rethinking some long-held beliefs and coming to grips with the realities of a new and complex environment. Old-School syndicated columnist Cal Thomas, theorizes that the founders thought everyone should do for himself and says we have become a society of "food stamps and welfare" to help those who "don't succeed".

How extraordinary it is that so many people profess to know what "the founders" were thinking and how their thoughts affected the daily lives of our forbears. I can't be sure, of course, but I'd be willing to bet that back at that simpler time, in the early days of the republic, people in the community reached out to help their neighbors in times of need.