Why are Republican candidates holding so firmly onto Bush administration economic policies, policies even the administration acknowledges have failed?
What does the conversion of Mr. McCain into an avowed believer in voodoo economics — and the comparable conversions of Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani — tell us? That bitter partisanship and political polarization aren’t going away anytime soon.
There’s a fantasy, widely held inside the Beltway, that men and women of good will from both parties can be brought together to hammer out bipartisan solutions to the nation’s problems.
If such a thing were possible, Mr. McCain, Mr. Romney and Mr. Giuliani — a self-proclaimed maverick, the former governor of a liberal state and the former mayor of an equally liberal city — would seem like the kind of men Democrats could deal with. (O.K., maybe not Mr. Giuliani.) In fact, however, it’s not possible, not given the nature of today’s Republican Party, which has turned men like Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney into hard-line ideologues. On economics, and on much else, there is no common ground between the parties.
Paul Krugman points out that "movement conservatism" is still with us.
...The leading Republican contenders have gone out of their way to assure voters that they will not deviate an inch from the Bush path. Why? Because the G.O.P. is still controlled by a conservative movement that does not tolerate deviations from tax-cutting, free-market, greed-is-good orthodoxy.
Gloomy exaggeration? Look at the swivel-'n'-duck movements of John McCain.
...Consider the sad case of John McCain.
Mr. McCain’s lingering reputation as a maverick straight talker comes largely from his opposition to the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which he said at the time were too big and too skewed to the rich. Those objections would seem to have even more force now, with America facing the costs of an expensive war — which Mr. McCain fervently supports — and with income inequality reaching new heights.
But Mr. McCain now says that he supports making the Bush tax cuts permanent. Not only that: he’s become a convert to crude supply-side economics, claiming that cutting taxes actually increases revenues. That’s an assertion even Bush administration officials concede is false.
I don't think an explanation is hard to find. There just isn't that much money in the Republican party's coffers these days -- money seeped away with credibility. The rabid supporters remain. Aside from the "movement" ideologues still snuffling around in think tanks, most of those supporters are bound to be those at the highest income levels. They're the ones who have gotten the most staggering benefits from Bush tax policies. They're the ones who can afford to bankroll candidates. They're the ones who are desperate to maintain a regressive tax system which benefits only those at the very top economic level. They're the ones who offer McCain and the others political security in return for a continuation of Bush economic hell.
