The zombie “fiscal conservatism” slogan will never die, even though the ones who use it most (Reagan, Dubya) always blatantly cheat when the chips are down. It’s true that if your personal income goes down you should make cuts in your household budget, but that isn’t a national fiscal plan.

FDR campaigned as a fiscal conservative and had to be bullied into mild Keynesianism, and he almost destroyed his Presidency by returning to fiscal conservativism in 1937. Conservatives say that the New Deal didn’t end the depression, WWII did, and they’re right; but when they say that they’re conceding Keynesian economics. Roosevelt only went really Keynesian after the war started.

Unfortunately, Obama started off deep in the hole, since Dubya had already deliberately ballooned the national debt with non-Keynesian spending. The Republicans are authoritarians rather than anarchists, but their governing philosophy is sabotage. They don’t want a stateless society, they want a crippled state. Look at California.

(A response to this post)

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