MaxwellDB It's me. I am the product.

Still Insane

In Slate/his FT.com blog yesterday, Jacob Weisberg writes on some new “sanity” displayed by the Republican candidates beginning with Monday’s debate. He’s wrong, and I wonder how it could be that we watched the same debate, but here we go:

The GOP presidential field, while hardly dominated by political giants, appears far less outlandish than one might have predicted. At the first Republican debate in New Hampshire on Monday night, the seven candidates competed not for evangelical or libertarian favor, but for the status of someone plausible to compete with the president for swing voters.

Here are some of the things that did not happen in the debate. No one called Obama a socialist. No one gave ambiguous encouragement to the "birther" faction. While all of the candidates oppose gay marriage, no one bashed homosexuals. With the exception of the marginal former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, no one directly endorsed the Ryan Plan. Two months ago, every Republican in the House backed this plan; now, no one wants to talk about it.

I sincerely hope that avoiding gay bashing and restraining oneself from ejaculating conspiracy theories on the national stage aren’t all it takes to be a serious candidate. These people, nearly all of whom share the same essential platform, give or take some social issues, still hold beliefs that are sharply incompatible with reality. Excessive regulation, not weak consumer spending, for example, is what’s keeping the private sector depressed. Except not. Oh, and health care is best delivered by as free a market (i.e., unfettered by regulations) as possible. Except not. Taxes in America are outrageously high and must be reduced or eliminated outright. Again-- they're not.

Weisberg notes that Mitt Romney has “evaluated the marketplace” and so recognized “the demand for competence rather than ideology.” Apparently, the former governor has risen head and shoulders above his competitors by virtue of a studied near-centrism. I don’t buy it—Romney still, according to his campaign’s website, even, believes that taxes must be cut, regulations slashed, unions bashed, and health insurance left to market mechanisms. Serious ideas to help the working class are conspicuously absent.

We know what works. We can look oversees and, at times, to our own history to see what can stimulate anemic demand, when government needs to intervene to control industry’s negative externalities, how labor and capital can coexist, and how, in a wealthy country, every single person can have access to excellent health care regardless of the size of their bank account.

The Republican party is still brazen in its unwillingness to let facts, data, or precedent get in the way of its ideology. It’s disingenuous to declare some return to “sanity” simple because a primary debate didn’t devolve into hysterics.