Entries associated with the tag "Brad Delong":

Brad DeLong has made a stab at how to classify conservatives by their degree of honesty. The discussion at his blog refines it some (and some commenters think conservatism has always been just a con), but here's the first take:

"Class of 2000: People who in 2000 said, 'George W. Bush is not qualified to be president, and we should be really worried about this.'

"Class of 2001: People who in 2001 said, 'I supported Bush in 2000, but George W. Bush is not listening to his honest conservative policy advisers, and we should be really worried about this.' John DiIulio

"Class of 2002: People who in 2002 said, 'I supported Bush in 2000 and 2001, but 911 has unhinged the administration; it's detention and other policies are counterproductive; it needs to be opposed.' Richard Clarke

"Class of 2003: People who in 2003 said, 'I supported Bush over 2000-2002, but enough is enough. That's it. I supported the invasion of Iraq because I was certain there was evidence of an advanced nuclear weapons program--otherwise invading Iraq was just stupid. Well, there was no advanced nuclear weapons program. Invading Iraq was just stupid. Plus there's the Medicare drug benefit. These people need to be evicted from power.' Tim Barnett, Bill Niskanen

"Class of 2004: People who in 2004 said, 'I've been a Bush supporter. I'm a Republican and a conservative, but I've had enough: I'm voting for Kerry.' Andrew Sullivan, Bruce Bartlett, Brent Scowcroft

"Class of 2005: People who in 2005 said, 'I voted for Bush in 2004. But I made a mistake. A big mistake.'

"Class of 2006: People who in 2006 said, 'I know I supported Bush up to last year, but that shows I'm not the brightest light on the clued-in tree.' Rod Dreher, Andrew Samwick

"The class of 2007--people who are now opposed to Bush only because they think Bush will drag the Republicans down in 2008--doesn't count."

This seems like a good idea to me. The point is to acknowledge that there's a stream of thought that isn't liberal that has many good points and is worth debating with -- and to distinguish legitimate heirs to that stream from worshippers at the golden calf that is W. But however -- DeLong lifts a perceptive comment by John Emerson that calls into question the whole project.

A similar stratification of conservatives by the time of their acknowledgment that human-caused climate change really is a catastrophe in the making would be useful.

Former Clinton administration official Brad DeLong -- who regularly ends blog postings by calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney -- wrote the following in 2003:

"My two cents' worth -- and I think it is the two cents' worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994 -- is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn't smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly.

"So when senior members of the economic team said that key senators like Daniel Patrick Moynihan would have this-and-that objection, she told them they were disloyal. When junior members of the economic team told her that the Congressional Budget Office would say such-and-such, she told them (wrongly) that her conversations with CBO head Robert Reischauer had already fixed that. When long-time senior hill staffers told her that she was making a dreadful mistake by fighting with rather than reaching out to John Breaux and Jim Cooper, she told them that they did not understand the wave of popular political support the bill would generate. And when substantive objections were raised to the plan by analysts calculating the moral hazard and adverse selection pressures it would put on the nation's health-care system . . . "

On October 5, the chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, Ed Lazear, told the Washington Times, "We do not say the tax cuts pay for themselves." (Hat tip to Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal.)

Last night on American Public Media's "Marketplace" program, reporter Nancy Marshall Genzer reported on the deficit created by Lazear's boss: "President Bush says if Congress will make his tax cuts permanent, they'll boost the economy and help to reduce the deficit." She did not mention that the chief executive's own economist had publicly refused to eat this baloney.

It's not as though Genzer missed breaking news. Bush has been ignoring the fact that his tax cuts reduced government revenue -- according to his own experts -- since at least 2003, as documented by political scientist and blogger Brendan Nyhan (who quit writing for the American Prospect blog after editors complained he criticized too many liberals) in his ongoing series, "Bush vs. His Economists."

Bush is good at ignoring expert advice. It's good politics for him to do so, since the platform of starving and shrinking the government still doesn't command majority appeal. But what's in it for Nominally Public Radio and the rest of the media, that they allow this big lie from the Reagan era to live on unchallenged?