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Digby has an extended piece up deconstructing the principle-free composition of today's Democratic Party. We know what Republicans are for: low taxes approaching Zero for everyone but working stiffs; a giant military-industrial-energy complex that guarantees enough profits to guarantee enough political donors to guarantee the Republican Party/Tea Party survives; and Sharia-like social engineering based on The King James Bible.
Democrats, especially ConservaDem senators Michael Bennet (notice the constituent support SS team) and Mark Udall have taken up Republican budgetary and economic principles, abandoned proven Democratic/Keynesian principles, and have become Tax Collectors for the Austerity State that has been embraced by Conservatives and Republicans everywhere. At the link to Mark Udall he is still pushing that inane and absolutely worthless "Balanced Budget Amendment".
Here's Digby getting to the point about Social Security, Austerity, and ConservaDems:
[T]oday, at a time of great economic turmoil and insecurity, the Democrats have taken on the role of tax collector for the austerity regime. We know the Republicans aren't serious about any of this. ("It's yer muneee!" - GWBush)
They will gin up a war in a New York minute if they need some stimulus and most of the country will shout "hooyah," when they do it.
Just look at their campaign. Despite Ryan's dystopian hellscape plans, they are running as the protectors of Medicare and protectors of the weak and vulnerable --- and half the voters believe them. They have fashioned an entire brand that says "government is horrible except for what it does for me personally" and it works.
The Democrats, meanwhile, are bragging about how much they're willing to slash everybody's benefits out of some deluded belief that this is what people want to hear. But it's not.
People want "freedom plus groceries" and as far as they can tell, that's what the Republicans have on offer.
Digby quotes another blogger on the optically illusive principles:
Democratic spending is buried in the indirect incentive changes and obscure tweaks of the tax codes. But there is no ideal or purpose important enough that people are willing to say "screw it, we'll come up with the money somehow - the sweat of our brow tomorrow, for the debts we incur today."
Revenue neutrality, offsets, CBO estimates - those are the buzzwords of Democratic fiscal policy.
The dull, mind-numbing repetition of wonkspeak is not just a policy program, it is a totemic incantation, hoping to make something real out of the apparition of a party without projects.
And a party without principles I might add.
Digby highlights and expounds on today's Principle-Free Democrats and in the process describes our own Senators Udall and Bennet to a 'T'.
They are too fearful to be true Democrats à la Truman or FDR. They are politically cowed by big business and too beholden to The 1% Club - members of which they are firmly a part of, if not now then surely at the end of their terms during which they will earn a cool $Million-plus: $1,020,000 to be exact.
By doing this our senators are in effect pulling a Bain on the American people and the Citizens of Colorado. They call themselves Democrats, but all evidence points to the contrary. And they carry on even as smarter Republicans abandon Paul Ryan's austerity budget.
If you don't believe my conclusions here, take a closer look at what Harry Truman and Franklin Roosevelt did when times were tough just like they are today. They would say what I say; it would carry the weight of history and the knowledge that austerity is a principle that doesn't, and will, never work.
Here's Rachel Maddow describing the ConservaDem phenomenon as it occurred in real time. Watch it below:
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