TPMCafe : Five Aspects of the Conservative State - by Tom Frank
Five Aspects of the Conservative State - by Tom Frank
Everyone's a change-bringer this year. Everyone's a reformer. Even the improbable Sarah Palin tells us she intends to clean up not only Washington but to "stop the greed and corruption on Wall Street" itself. What's more, she wants to do it on behalf of--her own term--the "working class." There are several reasons to cheer for this development. With the Republican standard-bearers now tacitly acknowledging that the Bush administration and the Republican congress were episodes of unexampled misgovernment, much of the right's exculpatory rhetoric can now be dispensed with. The verdict has hereby been reached on Bush, DeLay, Gingrich, and maybe even on Ronald Reagan himself. The case is closed. All that remains is to understand the causes of the catastrophe.
This is an astonishing reversal. It was just ten years ago that CNBC used to run a "CEO wealth-meter" feature so that viewers could track the daily ups and downs of their favorite mogul; today, faced with a $700 billion Wall Street bailout, the public screams for the billionaires' heads. It was just two months ago that, in a review of the book we are preparing to discuss, the New Yorker magazine suggested that to criticize capitalism was the act of a "neo-Marxist"; today, even Republicans are doing it. Things are changing fast.
Labels: Conservatives, Politics, Republicans, The Senate, US Congress
