The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Left’s Pre-Emptive Excuse-Making

Posted on | October 26, 2010 | 6 Comments

Apparently resigned to the fact that they’re heading for a memorable defeat, Democrats are trying to get a head start on explaining what went wrong:

Mr. President, how did you lose control of the economic message? Only months earlier, the administration had announced a push to remind the public of the positive impact of the stimulus. But the “Recovery Summer” campaign — press releases, big road signs, presidential and vice-presidential events — barely registered, and the “ground zero mosque” controversy dominated the summer’s silly season instead. . . .
The “original sin of the Obama administration,” says former labor secretary Robert Reich, “was to make the stimulus too small while giving out too much of it as tax breaks to businesses.” By most estimates, the stimulus saved or created about 3 million jobs, but it did not keep the unemployment rate below 8 percent, as the White House had projected . . .

So this, from David Corn of Mother Jones, gives us a clear idea of how the Left will interpret the expected drubbing on Nov. 2. The one thing that is ruled out in advance is the possibility that neo-Keynesian “stimulus” simply doesn’t work. 

Liberals simply refuse to accept that their economic theory is wrong, or to examine evidence that interventionism produces more harm than good.

The free-market critique of the New Deal’s failures? Ignored. The lessons of 1970s-era “stagflation”? Ignored.

Burt Folsom? Amity Schlaes? Never heard of ’em.

Ergo, if $787 billion in “stimulus” did not stimulate, then the Left concocts a “what-if” scenario of a $1.5 trillion stimulus that would have worked. The imagined benefits of this hypothetical super-stimulus have the advantage of being non-falsifiable, permitting them to believe that their theory is still viable.

Even the most phenomenal omens — negative yields on Treasury bonds? — are explained away as irrelevant or, if necessary, the liberals whip out their all-purpose response: Blame Bush!

No matter how much misery and failure their policies produce, liberals will never admit that their ideas are wrong.

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Comments

6 Responses to “The Left’s Pre-Emptive Excuse-Making”

  1. kansas
    October 26th, 2010 @ 12:10 pm

    What, Democrats can’t cheat out a victory? I’ll bet they can.