- Screw The Moderates

I hear people in the press talking about the ‘moderates’ as if there is some wisdom inherent in a compromise, but I don’t think that way. In his NYTimes piece today Paul Krugman said that he doesn’t think that way either. He believes politicians should do ‘the right’ thing not the moderate thing, and in this case he believes that the right thing is vast amounts of new, totally unsustainable spending, supported by lofty new tax rates on the (evil) rich. You know Krugman, he's always good for a laugh. But I confess, I do agree with him on the idea that moderates aren’t the place to look for the answer.

As I see it, the Democrats believe that we would all be better off if we raised taxes on the rich (everyone who makes more than 250K a year), made some politically expedient cuts to the defense budget, and then borrowed a few trillion more dollars to pay for free welfare cell phones, electric car subsidies, and community organizing.

They aren’t thinking about the unsustainably of that spending, or the fact that it will do nothing (nothing positive anyway) for economic growth. They aren’t thinking about the negative impact on economic growth that those tax increases will have. In fact, they aren’t thinking about anything that extends beyond November, 2012. What they’re doing is the same thing Washington politics has always done. They’re trying to buy votes.

From a perspective like that even keeping federal spending exactly the same next year seems extreme. And the beltway media is happy to oblige that narrative. “The Tea party people are ‘maniacs’ who are willing to risk default to achieve a political goal” according to them. They genuinely don’t see the irony in that statement. The fact is, the exact same thing can be said about congressional Democrats and Obama so long as you replace the phrase “willing to risk default” with the phrase “make default an absolute eventuality”.

I personally get the Tea Party argument in this debate. Our politicians, (particularly our Democrat politicians but both party’s to be fair) have shown no sign changing their behavior in a way that would prevent an eventual default. "And since that’s so," say the Tea Party folk, "why don’t’ we have a default today when there is 2.5 Trillion less of our children’s and grandchildren’s money thrown into the fire." You might not like what they’re saying, but when presented in that light it’s hard to find cause to contradict it.

But those moderates still want ‘compromise’. Or maybe they don’t. Maybe those ‘moderates’ don’t actually exist at all. Maybe they are an invention of the media who are looking for a clean way to complete the narrative. They want the hero to ride in at the last minute, declare everyone a winner, and then go on to the next ‘crisis’. But they don’t want to have to openly choose sides to do it. They want to be subtle and opaque about their spin, so they can live to spin another day.

I don’t personally know any moderates; I only know people who follow the discussion and people who don’t. The people who do follow it all apply their style of reasoning to the question and either end up advocating a liberal or conservative view. You don’t get a lot of cross over in my experience. Either you believe reality is objective and you’re a conservative, or you believe is subjective and you’re a liberal. The two philosophies really are mutually exclusive.

And that means that the moderates are really just the people who aren’t following along in the first place. They don’t see politics as having any direct effect on them. To them, the effect of politics on their lives will always be a surprise. They are the "Rodney King’s” of American politics. They're completely oblivious when it comes to the bigger issues, but being generally nice people they would prefer that everyone just ‘all get along’. And if things go that way (and they often do), they happily chomp down their chocolate ice cream and wonder where that manure like ‘aftertaste’ is coming from. It never occurs to them that rather than having something to eat OR something to spread on the garden, they're getting both together. And it’s they who insisted that the two be mixed.

I personally don’t see the wisdom in compromise. If I think 2+2= 4 and you think 2+2=5, we are no closer to correct if we make if 4.5. Some questions are not a matter of opinion, they are a matter of metaphysical fact. And what we need in this debate is for liberals to realize that our federal budget and our tax policy are not a place where everyone’s ‘opinion’ is equal. There are changes we can make which will help us, and changes we can make which will hurt us. And so far, all the ‘hair of the dog’ proposals we’ve seen from the left will bring more harm to us all than good.