Rand Paul: Without change, GOP will "not win again in my lifetime"

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Skadi said:
fair enough, if not Keynesian then what are these folks running our government? Besides corporatists.
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With some few exceptions, they are politicians, far more than they are economists of any stripe or corporatists. I used to work in politics, as a Democrat operative (until the party became wedded to abortion). Politics is a skill set all its own, both in getting elected and in functioning once one is elected. When it comes to economics, I think most of them are guessing, based on what they have heard here or there, and on where the political winds seem to be blowing. In my opinion, it is a mistake to characterize most of them as adherents of any particular economic school of thought.
 
Skadi said:
fair enough, if not Keynesian then what are these folks running our government? Besides corporatists.
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They don’t have a philosphy. They’re just short termists, doing whatever it takes to fix the immediate problem temporarily without regard for the long term cumulative effects of that.
 
Ridgerunner said:
With some few exceptions, they are politicians, far more than they are economists of any stripe or corporatists. I used to work in politics, as a Democrat operative (until the party became wedded to abortion). Politics is a skill set all its own, both in getting elected and in functioning once one is elected. When it comes to economics, I think most of them are guessing, based on what they have heard here or there, and on where the political winds seem to be blowing. In my opinion, it is a mistake to characterize most of them as adherents of any particular economic school of thought.
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Do you know the BBC series, “Yes Minister”?

There’s so much truth in that.
 
Cirdan_XII said:
They don’t have a philosphy. They’re just short termists, doing whatever it takes to fix the immediate problem temporarily without regard for the long term cumulative effects of that.
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I disagree, they seem to cling to philosophy regardless of the realities on the ground. (A fact which can frustrate electoral aspirations). Just consider Ryan’s recent statement about inner city work ethic. If you believe something hard enough, reality is just a dispensable footnote. THAT is the real reason for lack of change.
 
seekerz said:
I disagree, they seem to cling to philosophy regardless of the realities on the ground. (A fact which can frustrate electoral aspirations). Just consider Ryan’s recent statement about inner city work ethic. If you believe something hard enough, reality is just a dispensable footnote. THAT is the real reason for lack of change.
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I wouldn’t call that clinging to a philosophy. I would call that cynically playing to his support base. Having a philosophy means believing in that philosophy and aspiring to be true to that philosophy even if that means taking the stony and narrow road and maybe alienating some of your supporters. This is the opposite, ignoring facts to gain popularity. It’s populism.
 
Cirdan_XII said:
I wouldn’t call that clinging to a philosophy. I would call that cynically playing to his support base. Having a philosophy means believing in that philosophy and aspiring to be true to that philosophy even if that means taking the stony and narrow road and maybe alienating some of your supporters. This is the opposite, ignoring facts to gain popularity. It’s populism.
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It seems to me Ryan really believes in his economic and moral philosophy. Romney is another matter: I’m still not certain what he believes and I don’t think he knows either.
 
meltzerboy said:
It seems to me Ryan really believes in his economic and moral philosophy. Romney is another matter: I’m still not certain what he believes and I don’t think he knows either.
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It’s very difficult to know what any given politicial believes when it comes to economics. I’m not learned in economics, but I have read some of it. There are two different parts to it, assuming the economist in question is trying to be objective. There is the almost endless data analysis and the mesne conclusions to be drawn from it. Tall weeds indeed, and nothing most politicians are ever going to talk about if they even know much of it, because the public is simply not interested in such things. Then there are the overarching conclusions those analyses support or fail to support. Sometimes politicians talk about those, though they still risk boring their hearers when they do it. Now and then, some bit of it will actually turn into the buttress of a “position statement” like the “Laffer curve” which nobody really understood but which some felt supported a particular political approach. It did attain a positive and negative currency among some.

But no matter what, it’s rare that any politician is able to employ whatever economic ideas he has to the full.

Regardless, it still seems to me the likely important issues in the 2014 and 2016 elections are going to be “jobs, economy, jobs, economy, jobs, economy Obamacare, jobs, economy.” Or at least it seems to me they should be.
 
meltzerboy said:
It seems to me Ryan really believes in his economic and moral philosophy.
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Not so sure. The key word here is change.

Why would people seek change? Maybe they had a road to Damascus moment and realized everything they’d done so far was wrong. Then change may come from the heart.

But more often it’s that they look around them and see that what they’ve done so far is sending them up the creek without a paddle and decide they need to do some PR to appear more sympathetic and connected. In that case the change is part of the cynic gamble. It’s not too different to some mega corporation deciding to change its logo.
 
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