RNS Quote of the Day: 01/21/10

One more statist who just doesn’t get it. He foresaw the win by Brown, but he refuses to see they why.

It’s also striking that most conservatives, through a method that might be called the audacity of audacity, have acted as if absolutely nothing went wrong with their economic theories. They speak and act as if they had nothing to do with the large deficits they now bemoan and say we will all be saved if only we return to the very policies that should already be discredited.

…..

The president’s supporters comfort themselves that Obama’s numbers will improve as the economy gets better. This is a form of intellectual complacency. Ronald Reagan’s numbers went down during a slump, too. But even when he was in the doldrums, Reagan was laying the groundwork for a critique of liberalism that held sway in American politics long after he left office.

Progressives will never reach their own Morning in America unless they use the Gipper’s method to offer their own critique of the conservatism he helped make dominant.
EJ Dionne – 01/18/10

“Policies that have been discredited”? Which policies would those be?

There hasn’t been anything one could reasonably call a fiscally conservative policy in this country since Cleveland’s first term. Bush’s tax cut was squat and no one who could be considered seriously viable for the Executive Branch today is even talking about ridding our nation of the scourge of progressive taxation.

As for the left never reaching their “Morning in America”, they never will until they begin to see the country and its citizenry as something good that deserves to be revered. The “Blame America First” crowd doesn’t deserve a Morning-Time until they straighten out their worldview (which will never happen, because in their minds, America has always and will always be wrong).