If It Slides, It Slides

By Kleinheider Posted on December 4, 2008 at 6:31 pm

Ed Kilgore suggests that some Republican may not mind an economic downturn:

While I am quite sure that Republicans are not about to hoist banners reading “Deflation Now!” a look back at the conflicts over the first “bailout” package and some of the GOP rhetoric surrounding the presidential campaign should make it clear that there is in fact a strong undercurrent of conservative hostility to any sort of relief measures that don’t simply involve tax cuts or deregulation. Those who convinced themselves that the mortgage crisis was caused by ACORN and poor and minority borrowers certainly are in no hurry to succor such Obama-supporting miscreants. More generally, there’s always been a large faction of conservatives who favored the occasional “healthy” recession to wring “excess demand” out of the economy. One of the innovations associated with the GOP’s embrace of supply-side economics was a partial abandonment of that point of view as “root canal” or “Hooverism.” But in the face of an actual recession, like the one St. Ronald Reagan presided over in 1981-83, there was no notable conservative support for any economic stimulus that didn’t focus on high-end or corporate tax cuts.

permalink

Tags: Conservatives, depression, recesssion, Republicans  

Comments