Scott Brown and the breakdown of the GOP.

Today Scott Brown raised over one million dollars, an impressive feat for a Massachusetts Republican.  Of course one's amazement dissipates upon discovery of Brown's legislative record.  Brown not only wrote and supported socialized medicine in Massachusetts, but spoke out against ending the income tax while supporting every fee hike under the Romney administration.  But if you have been reading this blog for any extended period of time you already knew that!  Today we are going to get philosophical, because as my latest piece suggests about the danger of voting for Brown - people DO NOT GET IT.

Now most of Brown's support stems from him being their perceived 41st vote to stop ObamaCare and impulsively this may sound like a good idea.  However ObamaCare will most likely get accepted by Pelosi as is and it will be on Obama's desk before you can say RINO.  Another alternative, Democrats will simply stall for an extra week or so and cram some version of ObamaCare down our throats.  They have done it before and they will do it again.  Similarly if ObamaCare does get passed it will allow States to utilize nullification and bring back state power while allowing candidates to run on a platform of repeal.  Repealing ObamaCare would serve as a much more significant and game changing event in American politics as opposed to killing it now.  Remember, HillaryCare died in 1994 only to come back in the form of ObamaCare, if this returns against in the future it will pass without question.

Another less mentioned point is that Brown will stop Cap and Trade.  Would be nice, but Cap and Trade is pretty much dead in the Senate as is, without the need for a 41st vote.  Not only have liberals used up all their precious political ammunitions, but this bill was dead on arrival and was nothing more than a symbolic gesture by Pelosi in anticipation of Copenhagen.

So we have a terrible candidate pretending to be a fiscal conservative and two frivolous reasons at best.   Yet there is something more sinister going on here and an aspect that all Americans need to be made aware of.

For this we turn to F.A. Hayek and his epic work, Road to Serfdom.  Hayek writes the following in discussing what happened to Germany before Hitler came to power.

We have already mentioned the most significant - the increasing similarity between the economic views of the Right and Left and their common opposition to the liberalism [classic] that used to be the common basis of most English politics.  We have the authority of Mr. Harold Nicolson for the statement that, during the last Conservative government, among the backbenchers of Conservative party "the most gifted...were all socialists at heart"

What can we learn from this?  Those that do not learn from history are destined to repeat it and it is truly astonishing that Hayek writing this in the 1940s was so prescient in predicting the future trend of Democracies.

If you are to examine the current Republican party as a whole you will find that on economic matters the substance is fundamentally the same as the Democrat party.  Of course the rhetoric may sound "pretty" and designed to woo those partial to conservatism their actions speak louder than words.  Let us examine just two quick examples.

787 Billion Stimulus package:  It is true that most Republicans formed together and voted against this horrendous bill and only 3 liberal Republicans in the Senate allowed this vomit to become law - but it was the discussion that proved to be instrumental.  Virtually all Republicans who spoke out against it; McCain, Graham, Kyl, Ensign and others were correctly slamming the particular bill as nothing more than a pork list designed for special interests.  However their proposals were not much different with price tags varying anywhere between 400-500 billion!  There was no discussion of NOT providing a stimulus or cutting government spending!  Fundamentally speaking the rhetoric was identical and collectively nobody questioned the insane idea of government spending and government created jobs.  Not only has government spending always failed to stimulate the economy, but it has a detrimental effect by siphoning money out of the private sector or even worse, adding on to the national debt.  As we can see from the current stimulus and the small stimulus passed under Bush, the stimulus either fails entirely or each job costs absurd amounts of taxpayer money!

Medicare Modernization Act of 2003:  This piece of legislation was primarily championed and passed by the Republicans and signed by Bush.  With one swift move Republicans tacked on more than 15 Trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities on top of an already broken system known as Medicare.  Touted as the largest expansion of Medicare since it's inception in 1965 it occurred under a Republican majority in Congress!  Instead of examining and realizing the damage caused by Medicare to the private insurance market and attempting to undo the damage done by LBJ's great society they went ahead and expanded it!   They did throw in Health Saving Accounts, but that is literally the equivalent of them handing us a bowl of human excrement and proudly announcing that a diamond is on the bottom and we are allowed to fetch it out - without using our hands.

We can probably examine several examples including Reagan saving Social Security and Bush empowering Department of Education with NCLB, but you get the idea.  Conversation has shifted so dramatically to big government and spending that the Conservative party no longer exists.  Our RNC chairman proudly announces that the GOP is the conservative party, but if Hayek was still around he would most likely conclude that the Democrats and Republicans have become increasingly similar.  Of course the Republicans can still proudly claim to be the party of strong national defense and being pro-life, but with bankruptcy around the corner - who the hell gives a damn?

This is the lesson we must learn from the January 19th special election.  Scott Brown represents a trend in a direction we must avoid at all costs, a direction we have been drifting to for the past three decades.  Reagan ran for his first term promising to make Social Security voluntary and shutting down departments of Energy and Education.  Imagine for a second if a presidential candidate ran today on a similar platform?  He would not even make it out of the primary!  Why?  Because simply put the conversation, mindset and mood have shift and merged into the center.   Instead of identifying the core of the problem - that is - the loss of our opposition party, Republicans cheer like crazy over Brown raising almost a million dollars today.  What the hell are you celebrating?

Hayek saw the writing on the wall 60 years ago and warned us, are we capable of listening?