Lexington's notebook

"Didn't the Republicans campaign all year 'against Washington'?"

Yep, and George W. Bush went to Washington to "cut the deficit".

Eight years and $5.9 billion later, we saw how that turned out.

Whoops, make that "$5.9 trillion".

At any rate, it's an awful lot of money to prove one's hypocrisy.

"Didn't the Republicans campaign all year "against Washington"?"

Ehhh... We've all heard that one before. Even the Goths ended up picking up most of the Roman customs over time.

I'm going to miss the vomitoriums.

Is Washington working well, or is it a mess? Is it clean, or does it need cleaning? I'd say the latter, in both cases.

Given the total mess that the 111th Congress was, I don't really care if they are fearful of how much things get shaken up. They need shaken, badly.

Note well: I am not saying that the Republicans are going to be better, or to instill a reign of righteousness. I am merely saying that the storm that is coming is deeply deserved.

Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum ...

You can always fall back on Cicero to strengthen your patrician backbone: Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system

Well, based on *very* recent history, we can expect the Republicans to stand for lower spending for so long as Democrat is the President of the United States.

Should Republicans control the executive branch, Washington, D.C. can look forward to double-digit percentage increases in spending and new, unfunded entitlements and tax breaks.

I don't see any reason to believe differently, with a majority of the Republicans on Capitol Hill having been part of the tax cut and spend spree of the early 2000s.

This "tax and unemployment benefits compromise" with President Obama was a direct confirmation of my suspicions, made all the more delightful by the fact that the new Republican majority hasn't even taken office yet, but they're already agreeing to "tax-cut and spend" packages like the good old days.

Everything is relative -- for every liberal that sees the barbarians at the gates of Rome, there are conservatives that probably view this like the liberation of Paris, 1944.

Yo LexH,

What did the conservatives do the last time they liberated "Paris, 1944", back in 2000?

That's right, they partied like it was 1999 (per Brookse, above).

(What is it again that they say about doing the same damn thing over and over again but expecting different results?)

It perennially fascinates me how one group or another rails at Washington and its culture, gets elected, gets changed by that culture, and yet fails to step back at the end and tell us all what they learned was wrong and what was right about their former ideas.

Your Visigoths thing was clever, Lex, but as you've noted, the last big tea-party thing in D.C. was the startlingly unpartisan, unvitriolic thing with Glenn Beck in August at the Lincoln Memorial.

In any case, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, Lex! And to everyone I've argued with here, too, or Happy Holidays to those who feel they'd prefer that benediction instead.

Enjoy the weather. Baby, it's cold outside.

How predictable. Republicans haven't even taken back control of the House yet and they are already being assailed for the actions of the lame end of a lame duck Democrat Congressional majority that still doesn't 'get it.' On the bright side, Harry Reid had to flush his trillion dollar Christmas tree down the legislative sewer, no thanks to you Democrats. Over 6500 earmarks and 8 billion dollars of pork, most authored by Democrats, up in smoke. That's a lot of bacon, but still only an appetizer. The fun starts in January.

Barad-dûr.

... I really need to get out more.

I recall reading an analysis long ago (mid-1980s perhaps?) which looked at the nation's experience based on which party controlled Congress and which the Presidency. The best experience seemed to be a Republican President with a Democratic Congress. But the analysis also noted that there were too few years of a Democratic President with a Republican Congress to include that version in the analysis.

Well, the last couple of decades have confirmed that old analysis. And now we have some data (most of the 1990s) on a Democratic President with a Republican Congress. So we now have enough data to demonstrate what a lot of us had long suspected: divided government works ever so much better for the nation than letting either party get control of the whole government. which, ion turn, suggests that the nation as a whole is a lot more moderate than either of the parties which seem office.

Just a Historical correction: The army that did the bulk of sacking of ancient Rome was not the Visigoths, but the Byzantine army led sent by Emperor Justinian, particularly after his masterful general Belisarius was recalled to Constantinople...

I sincerely hope Lexington enjoyed his Yuletide, while visions of sugar plums danced in his head (and not Visigoths)...

Enjoy your Holidays all before the coming onslaught ruins everything for all eternity!

Bush certainly blew it on domestic policy, but the Dems chief complaint at the time was he didn't spend enough. And by the Obama standard the Dems certainly put their deficit spending where their mouths are. Meanwhile we need some legislators that will at least freeze spending increases or reduce them. Starting with getting out of medical care and reducing Social Security. The country needs this badly.

This newspaper routinely bemoans partisanship in Washington. Yet Lexington, like the rest of America's MSM, can't resist reporting Obama "victories," as in "Goths..." The tax bill can hardly be a true victory for a politico who promised higher taxes on the wealthy, yet Lex would insist he beat the GOP. Moreover, he makes it sound like the burden of partisanship is on the GOP: Lex's warning to Republicans could just as easily have read "If the Democrats subordinate everything to their goal of protecting Mr Obama in 2012, they risk striking voters as obstructionist zealots." Leanings such as the latter, however, are not to be found in The New Economist, which seems to go out of its way these days to do its own protecting of its man in the White House.