Hi clo,
I really don't understand what has happened to the right. Maybe, as David Frum has written, the more moderate Republican economics simply evaporated in the current crisis. And so the true believers have sought solutions amongst those who propound the brutalist Austrian/libertarian model.
These folks are the "you" in my post to D&O, in which I was pointing not at him (unless he wishes it) but at the folks who came up with the strange hyperinflation thesis (which cat also propounded). The folks who could not foresee that in an economy with spiralling unemployment, house price collapses, shrinking demand and a credible central bank there is no pricing power for consumer goods. The folks who think the unemployed are to blame for the fact that the economy is jobless. The folks who think we should stand on the principle that folks on a million a year must be protected at all costs, but who would happily raise the tax on the poor. The folks whose aim is to protect the banks and let taxpayers pay the price fror their failures. The folks who have forgotten that this crisis was caused not by the government but the failures and excesses of the financial industry. The folks whose disastrous policies created this catastrophe.
At this point, the Republican party looks morally and intellectually bankrupt to me. If the American people give them the presidency, I guess they will deserve the consequences of their decision. But it will be a historic tragedy all the same.
I don't think they are capable of doing something that hopeless.
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