[Thanos]

Bruce_the_vii wrote:

I read an article about the Republican line up for Presidential Candidate for next years election. They said what is need is a practical republican, of which there is a list available, several ex-governors included. It seems to me that is the USA's best chance at fiscal rectitude.

Why? The last President to really seriously tackle the deficit and debt was Bill Clinton, a centrist Democrat. George W. Bush, a right-wing Republican, was one of the most fiscally reckless Presidents in American history and is directly responsible for putting them into most of the mess they're in right now. Republicans right now go after easy targets like the mythical welfare leech moms and completely ignore things like cutting back on defense spending. Or gut Medicaid for the underprivileged while protecting Medicare that GOP-voting seniors love.

I'd really like to know where this stuff about Republicans being good fiscal managers came from. Just on the face of it the last GOP leader to take fiscal issues seriously as a matter of policy, instead of just more politics aimed at simultaneously hurting the despicable poor and energizing the GOP electoral base, was Dwight Eisenhower. Except for possibly George H.W. Bush, who had some good moments, the rest of the Republican Presidents since Ike have ranged from mediocre to outright disasterous on most economic and fiscal issues.

A bunch of craven GOP yahoos catering to the TeaBirchers with a whack of "cut everything! (for those political enemies that we don't like)" nonsense isn't fiscal leadership. Or providing a sound economic plan that will create jobs. It's just more politics to placate the ones that are always going to vote for them anyway regardless of what happens.

[andyt]

Thanos wrote:

I'd really like to know where this stuff about Republicans being good fiscal managers came from.

Same place that says the Conservatives are the good fiscal managers in Canada. They tell us so, call the opposition tax and spend and we believe them.

[Psudo]

Republicans tend to be decent at budgeting, except that they love defense spending. Democrats tend to be good at budgeting in the sense of raising taxes and cutting defense, but not in much of any other way.

The last surpluses were while Clinton was in the White House, that's true. They were also during an era when the House of Representatives were controlled by Republicans on a fiscally conservative tirade, and immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union and the massive release of military pressure that went with it. Republicans Reagan (for accelerating the collapse of the Soviet Union), Bush Sr. (for beginning the defense spending cuts Clinton continued), and Newt Gingrich (Speaker of the House during the surpluses; the House controls spending) deserve as much credit for the budget surplus as Clinton.

[Bruce_the_vii]

Thanos wrote:

Bruce_the_vii wrote:

I read an article about the Republican line up for Presidential Candidate for next years election. They said what is need is a practical republican, of which there is a list available, several ex-governors included. It seems to me that is the USA's best chance at fiscal rectitude.

Why?

All what you said is true, but Obama doenst'show interest in the job. The Economist magazine point out there is a list of Republican governors with pragmatic records. That's the point I tried to make.