Arnold Kling vents:
De Rugy and the others also mention my other frustrations. First, that the Republican Party betrayed libertarians so badly on this issue. Second, that the media portrayed opponents of the bailout as unserious and ideological. Bernanke, Geithner, and Paulson were hailed as saviors, even though they could just have easily been portrayed as bumblers. The whole thing was portrayed as government having no choice but to come in and clean up the private sector’s mess, rather than an ill-conceived attempt to stop markets from adjusting to a mess that was created by a combination of market failure and government failure. Third, that even though much of the public instinctively and correctly opposed the bailout, it sailed through without costing Congressmen their seats.
The one upbeat commentator is Len Gilroy. He thinks that the high level of indebtedness of government will force politicians to scale back spending and to privatize. I’m sorry, but he comes off sounding like Mary Poppins on laughing gas.
As a commenter notes, the only hope is that a lot of non-libertarians are outraged, too. I hope it doesn’t end in riots, but I hope it ends.
I think the betrayal goes even farther than that. I think the bailout jettisoned a lot of core conservative principles too, at least as I understood them back in the days of “supply-side” economics.
In the last several years conservatives have been exhorted to “reach out” to various constituencies by “addressing their concerns,” all of which are specific and short-term and would be addressed both more effectively and with better long-term results simply by applying the principles that such “outreach” proponents constantly insist be jettisoned. Back in 1999 when I first heard the phrase “compassionate conservative,” I like many of my ilk feared it would prove to be a double misnomer.
We didn’t want to be right, but we were. And so here we are, in Bailout Nation.