Hope that he'd sway conservative in recognition of the voters who put him in office and in recognition that he pretty much had to if he wanted a second term.

Or, hell, step down from the nomination at the last second recognizing that he wasn't the man for the job.

The hope was a longshot, absolutely, but it was there and it kept things in a different phase than the situation when tea parties were sparked.

There certainly are differences between policies that increase the deficit. Sure they all increase the deficit, but that's not nearly the end of the story.

And no, the current state of affairs doesn't indicate that the boost from these tax cuts was temporary. It only demonstrates how later policies and events separately affected the economy.

It's funny that you simultaneously talk about Republicans as diehard party members who will vote like sheep and then think it's meaningful that they didn't instantly turn their back on their party when they were upset.

Anyway, guess we're done here.

That's a fine theory, but the data show otherwise.

The ultimate example came when the lack of support from the conservative base made the difference between a win and a loss for McCain.

As for my being deluded, again, I watched this stuff unfold in realtime from primary sources on CSPAN. You wouldn't believe how wrong the reports on nightly news, wire services, and certain websites were. I don't claim you're deluded or anything, just uninformed about what was really going on.

Ignoring it? I'm counting on it!

What, exactly, do you think I'm saying lead to the Republicans being voted out of office?

Geez, pay attention.

"you blind fools"? Does that mean you think I'm a Republican?

No, I just believe in knowing my enemies.

Anyway, so you think voters woke up on election day in '06 and decided, "Hey, I wonder who I should vote for? Hm. I don't know about these Republicans, let's vote them out!"

No. Conservatives had been complaining about the Republicans in congress for a long time before, and their complaints had been building for a while. Republican power was in decline long before '06; it just takes a while for even party loyalists to finally give up. Elections like these are lagging indicators.

It's also funny that you talk about Republican leadership and voting as a bloc since a whole lot of their problem during that time period was that they had none at all! They were completely spinning their wheels and letting the Democratic minority stand in their way. Maybe you didn't watch as day after day they tried to get things together on the floor of the congress but failed to get their proposals through. CSPAN is your friend.

In the end this is what really killed them. They spent so badly BECAUSE the had no leadership reigning them in. They didn't act like a party or conservatives, but instead acted like selfish politicians voting money for their districts at the expense of the whole country. And why not? There was no leadership to gather the party against such behavior, so anyone not voting himself money was effectually harming himself.

In the end yes, the conservatives punished Republicans for their spending, and it's unfortunate that such spending has been associated with the Republican party at all since the real story involves the opposite: without congressional leadership there was no real Republican party in congress, just a bunch of congressmen with (R) next to their name.

"While they may have had a short term effect in stimulating the economy"

And that's the only thing I asserted, except that "short term" here means immediate, not temporary. The jobs and economic activity traceable directly back to this policy was real and legitimate, unlike notions of bailouts and subsidies that might cause a boost for a few months.

The deficit is a larger problem than any particular spending or tax cut, and it should have been handled. In the end, though, I don't think it's right to see tax cuts as a cost to government. They're a lack of income, not an outlay, and spending needs to be scaled back to what's coming in, not the other way around.

Really? You think Bush was cruising to reelection despite across the board unpopularity, barely winning the elections when he WAS popular, and a result to the 2008 election that further indicated that the conservatives were willing to sit on their hands when they didn't like the Republican nominee?

That's pretty ridiculous.

As for the war, it was plenty unpopular before the 2004 election. Even so, it was hung on Bush's neck, not on the necks of the congress. After all, they weren't the ones setting strategy and calling shots.

Isn't it obvious?

The moment Obama was elected a single political party had the full reigns of government, and they immediately started proposing and implementing certain policies. The tea parties (which were based on grumblings that had started years before) were in response to these policies which went far, far beyond anything the Republicans had done previously.

To look at it a slightly different way, once Obama was elected the situation changed drastically. While there was a presidential election looming there was a chance for the voters to sway the political landscape in the direction they wanted. Once it was overwith that hope was lost, and the tea partiers used energy to protest that might have otherwise gone into seeking better officeholders.

Even McCain (who lost precisely because many thought he'd do things like spend profligately) represented some hope, in that he might get into office and be fiscally responsible despite his past. The polling explaining his loss is yet another piece of Republicans not giving their leaders a free pass.

The way you see it the USA was a dictatorship.

That pretty much ends any connection you might have had with reality.

In the real world actual, you know, analysis and research showed that Republicans lost support of their base because they stopped governing by the principles that their voters expected of them. The Republicans stopped acting like Republicans, and they were punished.

In the real world Bush was actually reelected based on the Iraq war: the thing you think got the power taken away was actually the thing that preserved it! Easy evidence of this is that the president has much more to do with war strategy than congressmen, so if the war was such a negative then it would have hit Bush harder than the congress. We saw the opposite.

So no. I know it's fun to see the world in ways that jive with your own opinions and create fun drama in those you disagree with, but reality just doesn't bear your perspective out. Republicans lost largely because of things like profligate spending, and that was quite the opposite of a free pass.

But that fallacy is countered by having the rest of the country ready to slap the politicians of the district (who represent a tiny minority) back down when they start demanding the maintainance of a bad program.

On the other hand you seem to be touching a new fallacy here, talking about the inefficiencies of switching vendors and starting and stopping programs as if those things are required parts of the process. In reality vendors and programs are kept unless it's beneficial to modify them, and at that point the overhead of the move is taken into account. Thus this approach gains you flexibility but the costs of switching are only realized if the flexibility is exercised.

Who gave Bush and the Republicans a free pass on spending?

They were VOTED OUT OF OFFICE largely because of their spending habits! That's hardly a free pass!

The economy is not the static thing--the state function--that politicians like to pretend it is. You can't lower taxes, see what happens, and then fiddle with them again.

Right now we have lowish taxes but the real possibility of significant tax hikes in the near future. The economy is taking that uncertainty into account, so the low tax situation of the moment is confounded. On the other hand, there are plenty of examples of lowered taxes leading to economic boosts. Take Bush's "tax cuts for the wealthy" which lowered taxes for a lot of businesses and (as has been verified) directly encouraged hiring and economic gains.

So how many times do you have to do the same thing to realize it's not working? Well first you have to ignore the evidence that it is...

Every business pays quite a lot in payroll taxes.

The availability of loans is a problem as well, but then part of the reason they can't get loans is because the capital to provide those loans is being diverted into the treasury to help fund huge deficits. In effect every small business trying to get a loan has to compete with the US government who also wants the loans but offers sweeter deals.

So whether we're being slammed directly through taxes or through misdirection of capital in the money market, the result is the same: overspending by the US government is draining resources from the economy.

Wow. Such ignorance.

Drop us a line if you ever come back to Earth.