Monday, March 09, 2009

Come see victory, in the land called fantasy



The American Conservative sometimes has reasonable things to say. Daniel Larison, for example, is readable:
Conservatives seem to have spent the last year rapidly regressing from cheering on lame politicians who could at least intelligently recite their platitudes (Romney) to worshipping pseudo-populists who could not even do that (Palin) to elevating random guys who didn’t like taxes (the Plumber) to rallying around a radio host who makes Romney’s own brand of Reagan nostalgia and three-legs-of-the-stoolism seem deep and meaningful by comparison. Of course, there isn’t that much substantively different between Romney’s opportunistic recitations and Limbaugh’s boilerplate, but at least with Romney you knew that he was capable of saying something else and would have said it if he had thought it was to his advantage. The boilerplate is not only all Limbaugh knows how to say, but if you pressed him to elaborate on any of it he would just repeat himself.

But this masturbatory fantasy from Pat Buchanan is really, well, near delusional:
Not only is Barack running a deficit four times as large as Bush’s largest, he has called for $1 trillion in new taxes on America’s most successful, who have already seen their savings and pensions ravaged.

He wants a cap-and-trade system to deal with a global-warming or climate-change crisis many scientists believe is a hoax. He is going to provide health care for all, including immigrants, millions of whom arrive uninsured every year. He is going to plunge scores of billions more into education, though education has eaten up the wealth of an empire, as SAT scores sink further and further below the apogee of 1964, before LBJ and the feds barged in. He is going to ask Congress for authority to spend another $750 billion rescuing the banks.

He is going to find the cure for cancer. He is going to ensure every kid gets a college education. He is going to drop half of all wage-earners off the tax rolls, while the top 2 percent, who already pay 40 percent of all income taxes, are forced to cough up more.

Obama is misreading the election returns. When America voted to cancel the White House lease of Mr. Bush, it did not vote Barack Obama a blank check.

By misinterpreting his mandate, Obama has accomplished something John McCain could not — unite the Republican Party and instill in it a new esprit de corps. For the Obama budget is an insult to the core belief of the party — that free people, not coercive government, should shape the character of society.

Taxes on the most successful, who make the MOST FUCKING MONEY? Quelle surprise! I won't bother beyond saying that the proposal is for taxing the upper crust at the Clinton-era level. We're not exactly talking Scrooge economics here.

And Pat? Saying this:
climate-change crisis many scientists believe is a hoax

puts you squarely in the camp of those who firmly believe that they can fly, that gravity is only an opinion.

Seriously, America did vote Barack Obama a "blank check", and no one on the immediate horizon can:
unite the Republican Party and instill in it a new esprit de corps

no matter how hard Rush tries.

Pat, sometimes you make sense. This time, you FAIL.

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