The main stream media, both “left” and “right”, are nothing but partisan hacks. The Republicans don’t have any ideology further than hating the Democrats and vice versa. When Bush exploded the debt and bombed anything that moved, the “leftwing” pundits wailed and the “rightwing” pundits cheered. However now a Democrat is in the white house war is no longer quite so conservative and debt is a real problem. I have seen a lot of “conservatives" ranting that the war in Libya is poorly planned an unconstitutional over the last few days. Considering the low integrity and high influence of brainless partisan hacks like Bill O’reilly and co, I am wandering if Obama’s war in Libya could revive an anti-war sentiment in the GOP, or whether this brief flirt with paleoconservatism will die out if a Republican wins in 2012.
Of course the Rs and Ds are just names. Both want to expand government and the best way to do this is to blow things up and kill “BAD” people that normally happen to have different melatonin levels in the skin and believe in different supernatural beings.
All true comments(,although I think your being a bit harsh on the tea party). but any thoughts on whether american conservatives will shy away from neocon foreign policy after a term or a two of obama?
I think the conservatives are just as much pro war as ever. I think their argument is that Obama is changing his agenda and story with regards to Libya. They think this proves his imcompetence. And the guys on Fox can laugh at how unmacho and untough on terror he is. But otherwise: bombs away. The irony is not that they are against it – which they aren’t – but that Bush did this same thing. Which something people learned in Vietnam war rhetoric. Change strategies and goals every day so you can deny anything when some official statement turns out to be a lie. Just smush everything together as if there is a coherent ideology.
I’m not sure about the debt. I think the tea partiers are mainly for reducing taxes. The main goal is to reduce taxes on the wealthy with the hope that more productivity can later shoot more money into the pockets of Washington. It’s all supply side. Which is to touch ‘taxes’ and deficit, but not the debt per se. Or indebtedness in general. They see a crisis for the state in terms of a debt. And their solution is to ‘reward’ the rich by allowing them to hire more serfs to work and feed the beast in Washington. It’s basically the idea that this works better if there fewer regulations and less taxes. Then the leviathan can give the cattle more room to graze, so it can stuff its fat face and further rule the globe.
The debt got there to begin with because of this thinking. You can keep growing the leviathan steadily and efficiently on less taxes and incentive schemes and easy money.
None of them want to cut off the major entitlements or decentralize power. Or live within their means, god forbid.
The GOP were anti-war, somewhat, when Clinton was in power and he decided to bomb the Balkans. Then they found that they liked blowing shit up when their guy got into power. So to answer your question, no.