Conservatives have to read David Brooks this morning. I'm convinced that he really understands what Huckabee's win means for conservatism. Right-wingers who are convinced it reflects nothing more than the enthusiasm of Evangelical voters are missing something deeper. Excerpt:
Huckabee understands much better than Mitt Romney that we have a crisis of authority in this country. People have lost faith in their leaders’ ability to respond to problems. While Romney embodies the leadership class, Huckabee went after it. He criticized Wall Street and K Street. Most importantly, he sensed that conservatives do not believe their own movement is well led. He took on Rush Limbaugh, the Club for Growth and even President Bush. The old guard threw everything they had at him, and their diminished power is now exposed.Third, Huckabee understands how middle-class anxiety is really lived. Democrats talk about wages. But real middle-class families have more to fear economically from divorce than from a free trade pact. A person’s lifetime prospects will be threatened more by single parenting than by outsourcing. Huckabee understands that economic well-being is fused with social and moral well-being, and he talks about the inter-relationship in a way no other candidate has.
In that sense, Huckabee’s victory is not a step into the past. It opens up the way for a new coalition.
A conservatism that recognizes stable families as the foundation of economic growth is not hard to imagine. A conservatism that loves capitalism but distrusts capitalists is not hard to imagine either. Adam Smith felt this way. A conservatism that pays attention to people making less than $50,000 a year is the only conservatism worth defending.
Amen to that! Brooks doesn't think Huckabee has what it takes to go the distance nationally, and believes that McCain will be the eventual nominee. We'll see. Regardless of how that all ends up, Brooks is certainly right that Huckabee might not be the right man this year, but what he represents is the future of conservative politics and the GOP.
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And people are missing the biggest reason of all for divorce, Arguments about Money/Bills/Finances - which is where the health of the economy really comes into play. No jobs = increased domestic abuse, child abuse,abortion rates, divorce.
Now that is an interesting point to be made about what could be causing higher divorce rates in red states. Someone should correlate divorce rates and mortgage defaults. (Actually, almost anything would be better than mortgage defaults right now, as there's totally unrelated randomness going on there as housing prices collapse, but I can't think of anything that demonstrates 'family-destroying financial difficulties' better, offhand.)
Unfortunately, conservatives won't like the way to fix that either, which is societal safety nets.
Sure. The average family scraping by on 35,000 a year will be greatly aided by scrapping the only progressive tax we have--the federal income tax--and replacing it with a regressive 20+ % national sales tax.
Though truth be told, the administrative absurdity of the proposal guarantees its never being taken seriously.
"Unfortunately, conservatives won't like the way to fix that either, which is societal safety nets."
Conservatives have no problem with safety nets. We just don't like it when they're allowed to become hammocks.
"Well who's espousing smaller government right now? Surely you won't say the Republicans!"
And therein lies the problem. As someone once said, both parties are heading for the same cliff -- it's just that one's doing it at 100 mph while the other's going 65.
Good metaphor there, Rob. From my POV, both parties are in the same speeding cart, looking to the sides, backward, anywhere but forward.
I have no sympathy for any sub-prime mortgage holder. The single cause of the entire mess in our economy (yeah, big brush sweeping generalities day today) is the ubiquitous notion that we are entitled to unearned rewards. Borrowing money is the American Dream now (with the national debt as the biggest justification in human history), and until people decide to wake up they will continue to have nightmares... and deservedly.
In the meantime, my wife and I are paying for my children's college debt, so long as they demonstrate fiscal responsibility in their lives. Our eldest gets it very well, our middle child is getting there, and our youngest at 15 has a couple of lessons to learn yet.
Conservatives have no problem with safety nets. We just don't like it when they're allowed to become hammocks.
No, conservatives say they have no problems with them, but where, exactly, is the Republican support for any sort of medical bill safety net? Until recently, medical bills caused something like a third of all bankruptcies, although it's entirely possible that mortgage payments have overtaken them.
I have no sympathy for any sub-prime mortgage holder. The single cause of the entire mess in our economy (yeah, big brush sweeping generalities day today) is the ubiquitous notion that we are entitled to unearned rewards. Borrowing money is the American Dream now (with the national debt as the biggest justification in human history), and until people decide to wake up they will continue to have nightmares... and deservedly.
Sub-prime mortgage (And thinking sub-prime is the problem is, in fact, a problem. The whole market's going down, not 'sub-prime'.) holders don't need sympathy. Sure, there's going to be a rough ride for them, but we don't need to help people make another $1800 payment on a $650,000 loan on a house they bought for $400,000 and is now worth $250,000.
What we need to do is tell them best option for them is to walk out the door and never look back, and find one of those $250,000 houses that was foreclosed on by the bank and buy that instead with a $350,000 loan. (Maybe they can even buy their own house! Just kidding...somewhat.) And they won't get one with an insane adjustable rate loan because the normal payment schedule is something they can afford.
When the housing market collapses, it's the banks that are going to be selling near-worthless houses at auction and people who were foreclosed on are happily going to wander up and buy them dirt cheap. People are in for a rough ride, but, for most of them, the solution is to get shaken off, rent for a bit, and walk back in the front door in two years and laugh as they pick up a better house for less.
Even if they have un-loanable credit, that just means others will buy those houses and rent them to those people. Rent prices follow housing prices anyway, and right now rent prices are dropping like a rock, ahead of housing prices. (As a lot of home sellers are still delusional about what their house is worth and let it sit on the market for four months before realizing it's 35% too high, whereas people who rent out places are know that property sitting empty is loosing them money, and better 500 a month now than 600 a month four months from now.)
Call it karma, if you believe in that. Call it 'jingle mail'. It'll be real big over the next two years.
The only thing we need to worry about is banks attempting to rewrite lending laws so that you are liable for any loaned amount in excess of what your foreclosed house sells for. I'm sorry, but that's not how loans with collateral work. If I fail to pay off the loan, you get the collateral, not a penny more or less. If the value of the collateral has gone up or down, well, pick better collateral next time.
Banks will eventually try to assert that 'immoral' people are ripping them off, which is very funny considering I've never heard of a bank offering to erase part of a loan if the property value dropped. Or give money back if they foreclosed on a house and it sold for more than the remaining loan. So apparently it's only 'unfair' if they're left holding the short end of the stick.
Anyway, expect that concept mysteriously showing up in the future, how we can 'stop jingle mail', which is actually 'how to make homeowners instead of banks and the real estate industry pay for the absurd housing bubble that banks and the real estate industry caused to make as much money as possible'.
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