A conservative for higher taxes: Bruce Bartlett's The New American Economy

As part of guest blogging at Library Grape, I received a review copy of economic historian Bruce Bartlett's new book, The New American Economy, which I've finished reading.

The book is well-researched and clearly written; I recommend it to any lay person interested in the history of modern American macroeconomics (1929-present).

I may post a longer review once I've had more time to digest it, but in the mean time here's a diavlog between Bartlett and David Frum, two conservatives who are refreshing in their honesty.

Republican incongruity

Daniel Larison hits the nail on the head:

The faction most responsible for the GOP’s political failure is national security conservatives. Yet within the party, they remain unscathed, their assumptions about the use of American power largely unquestioned, and their gross errors in judgment forgotten or readily forgiven. Among the mainstream right, the foreign policy of the Bush administration is barely a subject of debate. Rather than reorienting Republican foreign policy towards a political center defined by realism, humility and restraint, the GOP’s leadership and activists have redoubled their commitment to Bush and Cheney’s hawkish stances and to a lock-step defense of the Bush administration’s policies.

This situation creates a strange incongruity. In one breath, conservatives will invoke a baseless claim that Bush’s excessive spending lost them the country, and in the next they will defend to the last Bush’s decisions as Commander-in-Chief. Yet these were the decisions that, more than anything else, led to Democratic victories and the GOP’s now toxic reputation. What is more, everyone outside the conservative bubble knows the narrative that mainstream conservatives tell themselves is false, which makes conservative professions of fiscal austerity and continued hawkishness even less likely to win public support.

As much as I would like to see some real fiscal austerity and defense of personal liberty, I'm not so deluded as to think Republican deficiencies in these areas are why they've fallen so low.

National security conservatism is a largely unmitigated disaster, clearly (See: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz) but general incompetence and lowbrow anti-intellectualism bear their share of blame (See: Bush, Palin, Huckabee)