Comment on Belmont Club "Tin foil hats"

Wretchard I think that you set up a straw man or at least overstate the case when you disparage the argument that Democrats on some level sabotaged the economy as "Tin Foil Hat." While it is unlikely that Soros when in his lair dons nehru suits and cackles like a parody Bond villain while planning the destruction of the United States it is true that he has stated that he looks forward to the day. Also while there are no photographs of him crawling on his belly before doing unspeakable acts of obeisance before his masters beneath an ancient Chinese monastery there is no good argument that I have heard to the effect that acting as if it were true would not produce more effective policy choices.

What is absolutely and indisputably true is that in every Presidential election for the last 76 years when the Democrats were out of power they have sought to convince the American people that the country was in a Recession or headed into a Depression. They have done this with the cooperation of the Media and partisan academics and without regard to either the facts in each case or with consideration as to how their political maneuvering could effect the actual markets. The Republicans have been far less guilty of this vice. Perhaps that is because they assumed, now erroneously, that they are the Party of Wealth and their supporters would be disproportionately hurt by such a tactic. The only question is as to the extent that Democratic obstruction of the Bush administration was timed to ramp up and paralyze it in the year before the election to support that theme.

It is hard to tease out because the opposition to Bush was far more partisan and intransigent from the beginning than that endured even by Reagan. By comparison the hated and about to be impeached Nixon had been handled with kid gloves and courtesy. The refusal over a period of years by the Senate Democrats to allow Bush's judicial appointments to come to the floor for a vote demonstrates a scorched earth willingness to hurt the country that was not tied to any timetable to cause a pre-election crash.