Compassionate Conservatism

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

In a speech before Wall Street’s movers-and-shakers, President Bush engaged in the Orwellian doublespeak that has plagued his administration and its many followers among the loyal Republican rank-and-file.

“History has shown that the greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market - but too much. We saw this in the case of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Because these firms were chartered by Congress, many believed they were backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. Investors put huge amounts of money in Fannie and Freddie, which they used to build up irresponsibly large portfolios of mortgage-backed securities. When the housing market declined, these securities plummeted in value. And it took a taxpayer-funded rescue to keep Fannie and Freddie from collapsing in a way that would have devastated the global financial system. There is a clear lesson: Our aim should not be more government - it should be smarter government.”

What the outgoing President fails to grasp is that the current financial crisis proves beyond all doubt that government is incapable of acting “smart.” The decisions of congress and the Bush administration to pressure the mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to purchase sub-prime loans from the nation’s banks, clearly demonstrated the mental deficiencies of the leviathan state. It further demonstrated that governments make decisions based on cunning and not reason.

Issuing bad loans was a product of crude political calculation and not sound business practice. In other words, Democrats used OPM (other people’s money, i.e., taxpayer funds) to buy votes. The majority of Republicans saw “affordable housing” as a bipartisan expression of George W’s “compassionate conservatism.” Was there ever a clearer marriage made in hell?

As sub-prime defaults increased, the economic ill wind it fostered toppled the globe’s economic house of cards. The desperate and befuddled bailout packages authored by the Bush administration – and augmented by the Democratic-controlled congress – demonstrated (as if further proof was needed) the foolishness of the bipartisan Three Stooges approach to dealing with our nation’s grim economic reality. Is it reasonable to expect the purveyors of serial stupidity to restore the “full faith and credit of the United States Government” when their every action all but assures its continued erosion?

Oxymoronic “compassionate conservatism” (i.e., big-government conservatism) was handed its head this last election in favor of big-government Liberalism. In absence of the conservatism of limited government and individual liberty, Republicans gave the voters a Hobson’s choice – which party offers us the least offensive formula for national suicide?

On January 20th the Republican Party enters the political wilderness. The question is whether they will find the moral compass to lead them out of the dry desert valley of moral confusion and climb once more to the sunny uplands of truth.

--Mr. Curmudgeon