Bad Idea

This is great. Never let go of a bad idea. Never ever ever. And when the bad idea blows up into some sort of Bliblically devastating pox on all possible houses, back up an inch. But never more than and inch.

I think it was Josh Marshall writing recently that Democrats don't understand that even when they suffer a clear loss, the Republican fall-back is an inch behind the line, and the next one is an inch behind that. There is no possibility of an overall 'we were wrong' statement from Rightists.

And here's why.

Modern conservatism is faith-based and results-oriented. That means that once a result is decided upon, everything else falls into place behind it. Take the tax cuts for instance. The Rightists want them as a result because they and their constituency (corporations and the affluent) wants them. Therefore, every policy and every circumstance that arises becomes a reason to cut taxes. When the Junta came to power, tax cuts were a way to give the surplus back to taxpayers. When the surplus quickly disappeared, tax cuts morphed into a way to grow the economy and jobs.

Since the economy has grown without jobs, tax cuts are cast as the thing that prevented the situation from getting worse. Like, things are bad but without the tax cuts we'd be eating switch grass for breakfast.

Which is an infinitely unprovable assertion. It's faith-based. They want something to happen, they lie and cheat and steal to make it happen, but everything's okay because we have faith in the means and result.

Liberals live in the real world. For a liberal, when a proposed policy doesn't work, it needs to be re-thought. The outcome is what it is. It's an outlook based on the scientific method. If the evidence says your approach is wrong, than the approach is wrong - not the evidence.

Perhaps that's because the goal are transparent - and worthy. When Bubba wanted to reduce the deficit, he set policies to do that. If the policy didn't work, he tried something else. He did research into best methods and approaches. How can government expenditure be curtailed? What is a real fix that really works?

In contrast, the goal that Georgie talked about was not really his goal at all. He talked about boosting the economy when he really meant enriching the rich. So whatever else happened did so by accident - but the rich getting richer has been no accident.

And since everything else was entirely accidental - who cares? The Junta hates 'policy.' They don't do 'research.' They have faith in methods and they've predetermined what their results will be called - no matter what the results really are.

That's why Katrina was such a revealing moment for them. Everything else they do is shrouded in secrecy. Even the Medicare drug plan was ushered through Congress in the dark of night, with key information kept from lawmakers. Everything about Iraq and the 'War on Terra' is an ultra-secret.

By keeping it secret, they can say anything they want to about it - like that things are going well. Sure. If there's no other information out there, who's to say what's a lie? So their labels become reality.

That's why they've bought and stolen the media. If their lies aren't maintained in the media, they can't use their own labels. Reality labels get applied.

But when people on the Gulf Coast died on TV and the government failed utterly and in the most callous possible way, people saw that the label 'success' was meaningless coming from these guys. "Heckuvajob Brownie" was a huge failure.

My point in all this (and I did actually set out to make a point) is that to admit a broad failure for Reactionaries is to self-repudiate their faith. To say that the Iraq war was a gigantic systematic debacle by liars and war profiteers is to repudiate their beliefs to a core level.

For a liberal mistake, like their health care proposal, saying that the Clinton 1993 plan was a bad on does not tear down a belief system. If you peel away the layers of that mess you get to an err in approach and an inadequate response to health industry money that beat it. You do not get down to "we shouldn't have universal health care."

But start peeling away the layers of conservative mistakes, and you go someplace different. Start peeling away at the tax cut and you see that they are regressive, unfair, and disastrous to the nation. If you go there, you can't be a conservative. So you can never go there.

Peel back the layers from the Katrina disaster. You get down to the conservative belief that government should not provide people that sort of support. But reality clearly shows that only government can provide primary disaster relief. If you follow the reasoning, you can't stay conservative. So you never go there. You blame Heckuvajob Brownie, but you never solve the fundamental problem - which will lead to another disaster.

Peel back the Iraq attack, and there's nothing left but a neocon pipe dream of regional transformation. That dream, which required the jettisoning of reality and all rational thought and plans - has brought us to a Vietnam in the desert with even broader repercussions for the country. You can't follow reason, or else you leave the conservatives behind.

That's why every retreat is an inch. Okay, Iraq is a disaster but I'd still vote for it. Iraq is a disaster but it's somebody else's fault. Iraq is a disaster because the Junta didn't follow real conservatives rules.

The inch-back fall-back is in full swing now. Nothing is actually being re-thunk by these guys. They're just adjusting their faith to wrap a few undeniable realities around it.

They will never accept that they were wrong about anything, because to do so repudiates all their beliefs right down to the core. The dangerous ones are those - like Karl Rove - who understand that everything they believe is wrong but keep pushing it for the wealth and power.