Tea Party Tory
Before the Tea Party philosophy is ever even tested in America, it will have succeeded, or it will have failed, in Great Britain.
For in David Cameron the Brits have a prime minister who can fairly be described as a Tea Party Tory. Casting aside the guidance of Lord Keynes—government-induced deficits are the right remedy for recessions—Cameron has bet his own and his party's future on the new austerity. He is making Maggie Thatcher look like Tip O'Neill.
Two headlines Thursday testify that the Tories have seized the Tea Party banner. First was the headline in The Washington Times, "Tea Party Urges Drastic Cutting," that carried a caveat subhead, "Economists Question If Move Is Wise at This Time."
Second was the Financial Times banner, "UK Unveils Dramatic Austerity Cutbacks." The FT story begins, "The U.K.'s conservative-led coalition has announced the most drastic budget cuts in living memory. ...
The sweeping cuts in entitlements and spending far exceed anything contemplated in the U.S., where Barack Obama ... has proposed only a three-year freeze on discretionary spending and Congress is still debating whether to extend tax cuts for the wealthy.
The Tory budget cuts defense 8 percent and military personnel by 7,000. Translated here, that would mean a cut of $60 billion and about 100,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.
By 2015, some 490,000 public-sector employees, 8 percent of the total, will lose their jobs. The rest will have their wages frozen for two years and face a 3-percent-of-salary hike in compulsory contributions to their pension program. The retirement age will rise from 65 to 66.
France is in the 10th day of demonstrations, strikes and riots over President Sarkozy's plan to raise the retirement age to 62.
If Cameron's plans take effect and his projections prove correct, Britain's deficit will fall from 10 percent of gross domestic product to 2 percent.
Writes the FT, "The UK cuts ... over four years are the equivalent of 4.5 percent of projected 2014-2015 gross domestic product. Similar cuts in the U.S. would require a cut in public spending of about $650 billion."
Nothing like that is being discussed here, and even if Republicans capture the House, cuts of that magnitude appear out of the question. The correlation of forces would not permit it.
Consider what seems the best possible outcome, Nov. 2, for the Tea Party. Republicans capture the House by winning 50 seats and come within a vote or two of capturing the Senate.
Should that happen, Democrats, shorn of their centrist wing in the massacre, will be in no mood to cooperate in cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicare, unemployment insurance, food stamps or the earned income tax credit, the party's legacy to the nation.
They will vote against serious cuts with as great a unanimity as Republicans voted against Obamacare. And if the GOP House votes the cuts, Senate Democrats will restore them. And if President Obama thinks they are too severe, he will veto the budget, his veto will stand, and he will run against "Boehner's House" in 2012.
And Obama would do so with conviction. For neither he nor Fed chair Ben Bernanke agree with Cameron that Carthusian austerity is the way to go. They are Keynesians who think that is Hooverism.
Both believe the $1.4 and $1.3 trillion deficits they just ran up prevented the Great Recession from becoming a Great Depression.
Recall. Obama endorsed George W. Bush's TARP bailout of the banks. He enacted a $789 billion stimulus bill, pushing the deficit to 10 percent of GDP. Bernanke doubled the money supply. He has now embraced "quantitative easing." He is going to print billions to buy bonds and inject the money directly into the economy.
Quantitative easing is another bailout of the banks, only this time through the Fed back door.
Hence, the Tea Party faces almost certain disappointment, if not disillusionment.
Why? Because many in the Republican establishment also do not believe austerity is the way to go in a recession. Second, while most Republicans may favor deep cuts, they know that if they vote to cut Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance, but do not get those cuts, they will get the pain but not the benefit and be held accountable, just as Democrats were held accountable for cap-and-trade, which they voted for but did not get through the Senate.
Republicans will come out of this election with a tricky hand to play. They will have the appearance of power, but not the actuality. They will vote for cuts that will not be agreed to by the Senate or accepted by the president.
If the economy is in the ditch in 2012, they will seem ineffectual. If the economy is improving, Obama and Bernanke will claim credit.
By then, however, we will know the fate of the Tea Party Tory who will at least have seen his policy prescriptions put to the test.
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I was following the intense and exciting Prime Minister's Questions debates while Gordon Brown was in power, and I loved the fire in both of them.
Chronicles readers, who admire manners, will be turned off, because this is not mannered talking. It involves a lot of laughing in your opponent's face, berating his character, and making sarcastic jibes at him. But the ferocity with which every issue is attacked and defended makes me realize the superiority of British public debate.
And yet, I had no idea that Cameron was a radical and an extremist.
I followed the exciting UK elections closely enough to know that Cameron presented himself as a moderate and a middle-of-the-road person, and only attacked indefensible wrongs of Brown. I had absolutely no idea that he would end the oppression of the private sector in UK. And he bit back the hands that feed him - the middle class voters, who get the most benefits for less taxes, at the expense of the lower and upper class. And they are still happy he did it.
What amazes me is the intense reading schedule of David Cameron in between his tight hours as a politician, and as a voracious reader, he can give the most erudite criticisms of the problems of our age. And the comparison to the Thatcher is unfair. Thatcher was a social democrat in Tory clothing; she tripled social spending and increased the size of government more than Labour did.
I must say that UK politics is so exciting, it gives politics a good name, unlike the snorefest that is American politics.
And the lesson for Americans is that they should hide their radicalism, pretend moderation, and throw it wide open only when they get into power. eg. i) David Cameron did not show himself to be an anti-war candidate. When he came in, he slashed military expenditures by more than 25% and started the end of British military allegiance to US, and is now on the way to deem the Iraq War illegal. ii) A fellow Tory of his put forth a bill to end fractional reserve banking recently, and to have banks lend only from fixed deposits.
I love David Cameron, I love David Cameron, and I love David Cameron. For the past two years, he has been the most inspiring statesman I have seen. He is a young, pseudo-aristocratic, spoilt, rich brat, and he is a wonderful, wise leader.
Pat
The political shell game can't go on indefinitely. There will be economic collapse followed by fragmenting of the empire. The final result will be for the better.
The cuts are coming here no matter what. The longer the wait, the deeper the cuts. There's no more money.
John @3
The cuts are coming and there is no more sound money with solid monetary foundation. However, the cuts won't occur from fiscal courage on the part of the politicians, rather from an economic implosion.
#3
You are right.
But I think it could be delayed for a long while. Governments have unlimited power of credit expansion and monetary expansion, and they can keep diminishing scarce capital and people's purchasing power, but going broke might take longer.
I also think there is a possibility that vested interests in any rich nation means that other rich nations might want to bail them out.
The only thing certain is that when the cuts come, the people responsible will not suffer in the least and those who are not to blame will take the blows.
Prime Minister Cameron is a gay marriage, gender equality, cultural Marxist, multicultural David Frum follower
... even if Republicans capture the House, cuts of that magnitude appear out of the question
And DO WE KNOW WHY?? Because "conservative" voters are convinced that our bloated and disgraced military is "the only wholesome institution left in the country." I am quoting a fanatically Republican acquaintance--a North Carolinian--almost verbatim.
Dr. Wilson, I hate the post-industrial bourgeois plutocrat as much as you, but one of the reasons they will never suffer is that a large bloc of ordinary Americans accepts the garbage these fruits throw out there and don't search for a real aristocracy.
Distressingly, the acquaintance I just quoted is descended from an admirable plantation-holding family impoverished first by the Civil War and then the Depression but which has pulled itself up very well in recent decades. Unfortunately they have become a family of Freemasons at the same time.
With Mr. Sanjay I hope that the new people coming in have a conversion on the futility of large military budgets and having bases all over the world. There is so much waste in government that real leadership, would attack it in a radical fashion, with nothing but good political consequences. People are fed up with government and the Federal government most of all.
By the way, in the Reagan era, didn't Americans once have enough F-15s to blot out the sun in Moscow?
And doesn't US have a navy larger than the next 10 navies combined? And all of the next 10 navies are of American allies?
Do all the ex-military people here feel a little uncomfortable about military profligacy and the blank cheque to Pentagon? Somebody once said it amounts to $10,000 per family per year.
Prateek,
Even as a US Army veteran, I have a saying for what the military has become: the Department of Housing and Urban Development with guns. What I mean by that is much of the DoD is just a giant bureaucracy with a military face. It has crept into all aspects of military life, but that is nothing new; it started just after WWII. Menial jobs that were once done by buck Privates - chow hall duty, janitorial work - are now performed by companies whose sole purpose to provide overpriced services to the military.
"The Tea Party faces almost certain disappointment, if not disillusionment.
Why? Because many in the Republican establishment ....."
Pat Buchanan
This is a very noble admission from my hero of duopoly dissenters. Pat seems very close to embracing that first article of political faith that Clyde Wilson has known for years --- "THE GOP MUST GO THE WAY OF ALL FLESH, BEFORE THERE CAN BE A RESURRECTION FROM DUOPOLY."
But another very perceptive comment in this very perceptive artcle from Mr. Buchanan is the use of different words to describe the TEA PARTY and THE GOP. Pat knows why the stalwarts have allowed for this pre-election distinction without a difference: So that useful conservatives who have been doing the heavy lifting for the TEA PARTY movement will get "the pain but not the benefit and they can be held accountable" when the stalwarts decide to throw them to the wolves.
I wish Dr. Fleming would compose a three act play (Perhaps five would be better) entitled 'A Comedy of Contemporary Conservatism.' Except for the name, the play would actually be a tragedy involving a remnant of good citizens being betrayed by a duoploy of political leaders who Belloc accurately described in his own age as "all belonging to the same civic organizations, eating the same bad food, golfing at the same clubs, extorting from the same poor populace, and attempting adultery with the same women."
Mr Buchanan has been hoodwinked into completely misreading the situation. As a Brit living in the reality of the situation in the UK, let me assure you David Cameron is in no way a Tea Party Tory.
The supposed cuts in UK public expenditure are actually an increase of £43bn between now and 2015. All that has happened is a redistribution of public spending from various departments to servicing public sector debt and channelling more money into overseas aid.
Cameron has run like a chicken from a genuine austerity drive. The fact is you cannot take Cameron at face value or at his word. Cameron is not a conservative, he is a liberal social democrat who is fully bought in to surrendering UK sovereignty to the European Union and turning his back on NATO in favour of utter reliance on military cooperation with France of all countries.
Thanks to Cameron the UK will be unable to provide even the mediocre level of military contribution delivered in Iraq and Afghanistan. 50% fewer troops than were deployed in Iraq can be deployed in future. An army of nearly 100,000 will only be able to field 30,000 troops and will boast two aircraft carriers smaller than the Nimitz class, but neither vessel will have any aircraft.
Cameron despises the Tea Party and allows his proxies to ridicule and mock the movement. I cannot begin to describe the number of ways in which Cameron is anything but a Tea Party Tory. Perhaps Mr Buchanan needs to recalibrate his conservative radar.
Cameron has run like a chicken from a genuine austerity drive. The fact is you cannot take Cameron at face value or at his word....
Cameron despises the Tea Party and allows his proxies to ridicule and mock the movement. I cannot begin to describe the number of ways in which Cameron is anything but a Tea Party Tory.
Mr. Sharp,
This is precisely the point. There is no such thing as a Tea Party in America either but simply an eclectic coalition of honest men and women working for an organized crime organization called the GOP. I think this is Pat's point when he states :"“The Tea Party faces almost certain disappointment, if not disillusionment.
Why? Because many in the Republican establishment …..”
It is the same for the Tea PartyTorys, it is a disctinction without any difference whatsoever. What can be counted upon in both UK and US is what Dr. Wilson described at post #6P:The only thing certain is that when the cuts come, the people responsible will not suffer in the least and those who are not to blame will take the blows."
Things are not what they appear and perception is not reality,although the ideologues running the party systems would have it so.
Concerning the Tea Party in America, the handwriting is already on the wall. The Republican leadership is warning their Tea Party supporters that there will be no significant short-term changes if and when the Republicans become the majority party again. It will be business as usual. Americans will be stuck with the same old coin: heads, the Democrats; tails: the Republicans. Translation: heads: we lose; tails: they win.
Are there any "Tea Party" candidates who are not running as Republicans (or Democrats)?
Our elections are similar to a Schrödinger's cat experiment except that when the box is opened, the cat is always dead.