NRCC Throws in the Towel on Mark Sanford

From Politico:

Blindsided by news that Sanford’s ex-wife has accused him of trespassing and concluding he has no plausible path to victory, the National Republican Congressional Committee has decided not to spend more money on Sanford’s behalf ahead of the May 7 special election.

What's more remarkable about this story is that Republican voters actually wanted him back in elected office.  A fiscal and moral fraud yet they think he's the one to elect to office to showcase their perceived values.  It's nuts.

Hey, remember that time we went to war with the army we had---not the army we might want or wish to have at a later time

Kennedy School of Government at Harvard places the all-in costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the $4 trillion to $6 trillion range when all is said and done with "the largest portion of that bill is yet to be paid."  Yep, the smartest thing George Bush ever did was invade Iraq.

So how does a very fiscally responsible, very conservative administration embark on such policy?  Easy answer.  They told the public that the war would cost $50 billion and "go relatively quickly. Weeks rather than months."-- Dick Cheney, March 16, 2003.

That it would largely pay for itself  "from oil revenues, recovered assets, international trade, direct foreign investment…”  -- Donald Rumsfeld, March 27, 2003.

That Iraq was a country that could "really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."-- Paul Wolfowitz, March 27, 2003.

It would be a "cakewalk."  That's what we were told.  That's what we were led to believe.  Nothing they told us turned out to be true.  Every bit of it was a lie told by madmen with a psychopathic hunger for war.  Yet the one thing we can never ever do in America is call the people who instituted this policy fiscally irresponsible and big government spenders.  Oh no, that label is solely reserved for Democrats or people who oppose the Very Serious, Very Fiscally Prudent, Very Conservative GOP.  That's just how it is.

No Coin

The idea of minting a $1 trillion coin to evade the fiscal frauds in the GOP is funny.  It looks funny, sounds funny, it even has a funny smell to it.  So making fun of it is what comedians should do.  However, I don't think the coin idea was ever meant to really happen.

What I mean by that is I don't think Krugman wanted it to happen.  I think he wanted the president to keep it in his arsenal for negotiating purposes.  Make the frauds in the GOP think you'll do it if they continue to act like total idiots and threaten to destroy the country if we don't govern like they want.  The whole episode truly rings of FDR and his negotiating style.  If someone tried, and the GOP did many times, to back FDR into a corner and threaten the country, FDR would embarrass them.  Printing a coin to make the GOP a laughing stock would have been child's play to him.  He may never of followed through, but he sure would have had everyone believing he would.

I also think that's Krugman's greatest complaint with this administration.  They reveal their hand way too fast and try to comfort the fiscal frauds rather than kicking them to the curb.  And I'd have to say I'm starting to quickly move in Krugman's favor on that.

Bill Bennett Plays Imaginary Fiscal Conservative

As always, we are forced to take the tough-talking, fiscal stewards of the Republican Party very seriously.  After all, they pride themselves as the last bit of fiscal sanity in an age of out of control spending that has caused huge amounts of debt to pile up.  Except that spending and the deficit have actually shrunk and leveled off, they would be right.

Very Serious Fiscal Conservative Bill Bennett writes:

If $16 trillion of national debt and the huge deficits each year aren't spending problems, then what is? The United States most certainly has a spending problem. For the president to insist otherwise is dumbfounding but at the same time entirely consistent with his policies.

Eeeewwww Bennett is so tough.  He is such a fiscally responsible person that he surely must know the "huge deficits" he claims to be so concerned about were created by George W. Bush and the GOP.  Barack Obama has shrunk the budget deficit from Bush's all-time high.  As for the debt, no president could have inherited a $1.4 trillion budget deficit and kept debt from piling up.  No one.  If Bush and Bennett's Republican Party had not left President Obama the worst financial situation in history, maybe Bennett would have something to complain about.  But the facts are Obama did not create the debt problem, the deficit problem, the unemployment problem, the GDP problem, or the spending problem.  He inherited all of it from Bush and since Obama has taken office, every single category has gotten better.

But enough of my rant.  Let's see just how fiscally responsible Bennett truly is.  In order to do that, we must look at raw spending data.  So, again, the trusty little graph we've used over and over again shows us just how fiscally insane Bill Bennett really is.

Clearly, as anyone with eyes can see, when spending was increasing at the most rapid rates since WWII, Bill Bennett never complained, never warned about fiscal doom, never did anything.  Over $1 TRILLION of new spending was added to the budget in 7 years and Bill Bennett was silent.  What would cause Bennett to justify such huge spikes in spending then but now be sooooo concerned about spending when it has slowed at the lowest rates in 60 years?

Easy answer actually.  Bill Bennett doesn't care about spending.  He doesn't care about deficits or the debt.  Bush doubled the federal debt and Reagan tripled it and Bennett never said a word.  But Obama inherits over $1 trillion of debt every year and Bennett is stroking out pretending he actually cares.

This is modern Republicanism.  They love spending.  They love debt and care not one bit about deficits.  They just don't want Democrats doing the spending.  Bush increases spending, crashes the economy, issues 8 tax payer funded bailouts and Republicans loved it.  As you can see from the chart, they couldn't get enough of it.  Not until a Democrat takes the White House does spending level off.  And it is with this leveling off that Republicans like Bennett first call it a crisis.  It's truly insane.

However, more must be said of CNN for letting Bennett pretend to be fiscally responsible and trash the president.  In order to be remotely considered "fair" the whole country is forced to accept people who believe the Earth is flat as Very Serious People.  We're all doomed as long as the media doesn't give a rip.

When Adding Over $1 Trillion of New Spending Wasn't a Problem

Shortly after being reelected Speaker of the House, John Boehner told his chamber that an anchor of debt was destroying America.

The American Dream is in peril so long as its namesake is weighed down by this anchor of debt.  Break its hold, and we begin to set our economy free.  Jobs will come home.  Confidence will come back. 

Sure debt isn't anything to brag about.  But how did we get our debt?  When Republicans took full reign of power in 2001, there was a huge budget surplus with a federal debt of just over $5 trillion.  When George W. Bush left office, he had created a $1.4 trillion deficit and more than doubled the nation's debt to $11.3 trillion.  And during that time, John Boehner and his caucus never said one single word.  In fact all they did was pass unfunded bill after unfunded bill never once worrying about what it would do for future policy makers.  And certainly John Boehner and his fiscal fraud caucus never said one word about an anchor of debt imperiling the nation.  Want proof?

As you can see, there is a huge uptick in government spending right up until 2009. Those are the George Bush years.  The years when spending huge amounts of money, while cutting revenue, waging two unfunded wars and raising not one single penny to pay for anything was considered Super Patriotic.  Tough Guys governed us then.  They called themselves Fiscal Conservatives and any dissent against their Super Patriotic Spending was considered treasonous.  They spent like drunken sailors.  And they are the same people telling us today that spending is out of control and an anchor of debt is destroying our FREEDOM.

But now, now that spending has actually leveled off and shrunk as in the case last year, it's a huge problem that is all Obama's fault.  Except there's one problem with that.  It was the Republicans led by George Bush that added over $1 trillion of new spending in 7 years time.  Barack Obama did not set baseline spending at $3.5 trillion.  The GOP did.

Since Barack Obama has been president, spending as increased by 1.4% the slowest spending increase in 50 years.  Now that Republicans are no longer in power they once again get to pretend to be fiscal hawks that want to set this country Free. Free of the debt and fiscal disorder they created but don't want anyone to actually stop and think how we got in this shape in the first place.

*Update:

BP indirectly makes a good point in the comments section.  John Boehner once again weeps like a little sissy girl after being sworn in as Speaker.  This wouldn't be such a big deal if he wasn't leader of the political party that prides itself as being the epitome of gun toting manly men that want to bomb every country with a name they can't spell.  So here ya go all you tough-talking super macho endless war loving Republicans.  This is the guy you have to go to if you want something...he's your MAN...

hahahahahahhahahahahahha