When Sarah Palin became the Republican nominee for Vice President, columnist Kathleen Parker was (and remains) one of her harshest critics. Parker became one of the leading voices for elitism within the American right. Unlike most of the others, however, she did her best to preserve her credentials as a bona fide conservative . . .
. . . until, that is, this morning.
In her latest syndicated column (we’ll use the WaPo – it’s MSM, but it is local), Parker focuses on the efforts of limited-government folks in Utah to rid themselves of U.S. Senator Robert Bennett. I myself thought Bennett an unusual target, until I noticed that Bennett voted for TARP. Parker noticed it, too, and spend several paragraphs defending the debacle:
Never mind that a Republican president proposed the bailout, or that many Republicans and free-marketers felt TARP was crucial to keep the economy from capsizing. For those who have forgotten, the point was to prop up the credit system to keep enough money flowing so that the “free market” didn’t collapse entirely.
What was the alternative? What might have happened without TARP? As Mitt Romney, who supported TARP, has said, “We were on a precipice. . . . Now we can sit back and say, ‘Oh, it wasn’t so scary.’ Well, frankly, it was a very scary time for a lot of people. And that’s something which was resolved.”
. . . Would all those running against TARP now have voted against it had they been in Washington with the full weight of economic collapse on their shoulders?
This triggers several responses, most of them involving the digestive system switching gears. I’ll steer clear of those, and stick to the important point: those of us who opposed TARP did so because we did not feel it would fix the problem.
Perhaps, Kathleen didn’t realize this, having been in the panic-infected hothouse of Washington and all, but there were several economic and financial experts who were immune to the panic, and realized that the “cure” of the bailout was simply another strain of the disease.
What Ms. Parker has done with this column is give elitism a bad name. She has revealed herself to be completely ignorant of economics, but arrogant enough to assume she knows better than the rest of us.
In the meantime, she has also revealed herself to be far too much a friend of government interference in the economy to be considered a true member of the right. She is, in fact, a squish.
My fellow rightosphere writers who themselves are critical of Palin should remember this before quoting Parker too frequently.
Filed under: Economics, Government Waste, Media, National Politics, Republicans, Spending
[...] Cross-posted to VV [...]
I find Parker to be an unusually (for these times) sane conservative voice. If defense of Bennett identifies her as a “squish”, we really have had the bottom fall out of the conservative movement, only to be left with some kind of zombie pod-type creatures unfit for public service.
TARP wasn’t perfect. It was slammed together in an instant. Emergency governmental measures almost never pass any ideologue’s purity tests. It wasn’t the program that would have been constructed if we had had a couple of years to think about it. But, on balance, it averted a catastrophe. The conservatives who constructed it probably were mighty annoyed that they found themselves backed into that box, but I give them credit for performing well in the interests of the economy under great pressure.
Scott, it was worse then that. Paulson rushed TARP through as fast as possible to achieve his goal of no oversight. He clearly stated no oversight. Then he torpedoed his privet sector competition Lehman Brothers, then bailed out his buddies at Goldman Sachs and gave the TARP money, no stings attached, to the mega banks (who didn’t want it at first) to buy up all their weaker competition. The government funded the hostile take over and through reckless deregulation caused it to take place at a fire sale price. Only a blind ideologue could not see the appearance of impropriety here.
Let’s look at this guy’s background:
Paulson was Staff Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense at The Pentagon from 1970 to 1972.[8] He then worked for the administration of U.S. President Richard Nixon, serving as assistant to John Ehrlichman from 1972 to 1973, during the events of the Watergate scandal for which Ehrlichman was convicted, and sentenced to prison.
He joined Goldman Sachs in 1974, working in the firm’s Chicago office under James P. Gorter. He became a partner in 1982. From 1983 until 1988, Paulson led the Investment Banking group for the Midwest Region, and became managing partner of the Chicago office in 1988. From 1990 to November 1994, he was co-head of Investment Banking, then, Chief Operating Officer from December 1994 to June 1998.
Most of the last administration was comprised of ex-Nixon affiliates; card carrying members of the minion. They were evil men with long resumes of evil deeds. Borrow and spend tax later blaming the other guy nightmares from hell. As conservatives we need to address the corruption that is destroying this country but first we must clean out our own house.
TARP and the oher Bush/”Obama initiatives pulled us from the brink of economic disaster….end of story……….btw, do you guys really believe in Sarah??? i mean, really!!!! Anyone of you is smarter and better informed than she is…………you cant deny that……she does read sound bites very well………and say things she doesnt understand……tell me i am wrong!@!