Conservatives: Mad that party of Wall Street gives money to Wall Street

by: Eric B.

Sun Sep 21, 2008 at 13:18:39 PM EDT

Hilarious:

Thirty-one House Republicans sent a letter to Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, asking them to stop using federal funds to save private firms.

"These massive federal bailouts have exposed taxpayers to literally tens of billions of dollars of new risk," they wrote.

Among the letter's signers were Reps. Tom Feeney and Connie Mack of Florida; John Doolittle and Darrell Issa of California; Jerry Moran of Kansas; Jeb Hensarling, Louie Gohmert and Sam Johnson of Texas; Virginia Foxx and Sue Myrick of North Carolina, and Thad McCotter of Michigan.

They're right, of course, and the proposed bailout plan is especially galling in that it would allow the Treasury Secretary to give money to foreign banks and place that decision off limits to the courts (that is, on top of rewarding greed by removing penalties).  On the other hand, it's hilarious to see conservatives complain that their president turned out to not be much of a conservative but a Wall Street good old boy who's tricked them the last eight years. And, remember, John McCain lost the 2000 nomination in part because the conservative wing considered him "too liberal."

In fact, the entire conservative wing of the Republican Party has been tricked the last 30 years, since the days when Reagan ballooned the size and scope of the federal government through massive increases in defense spending. They're the original useful idiots.

Here's Rep. Thaddeus McCotter in an interview earlier this year.

We had an example, just today. Many Republicans are very well versed in what socialism is, because we had to be... Sovereign wealth funds are where other governments come in and buy up private sector assets in the United States. Now, any time the government buys a private sector asset, it becomes socialized, ergo the private sector gets smaller and socialism gets bigger. It seems to be lost on members of my party that we don't support socialism. We have Republicans out there saying these sovereign wealth funds are good for America, good for the economy, good for prosperity. Well, the United States economy is built around the concept of free people engaged in free enterprise in free markets. Any time the free markets get smaller and free enterprise gets harder, socialism gets bigger.

What makes free enterprise harder is regulation, because it places obstacles between free people engaging in free enterprise.  What most of us understand of the financial crisis is that the root cause was greed enabled by a law approach to regulation.  Conservatives today are claiming that the cause of everything is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which is the stupidest place to lay blame for this, but that's what you get when absolutely everything must positively be the fault of Democrats, but the argument at its heart still rests on the acknowledgement that failed regulation is at the crisis' heart.

That probably helps explain why the blowhard would issue this perplexing statement the other day.

Amidst the acceleration of globalization, free market transactions have TRANSCENDED existing government regulation – i.e., entrepreneurs have moved faster than regulators.

Therefore, to prevent a necessarily swift response from having an unimaginably disastrous result, it is imperative for members of Congress to: publicly, transparently, and co-operatively express their constituents’ economic concerns; and promptly and responsibly enact legislation creating a pro-active, 21st Century regulatory system that brings present stability to our free markets; and that ensures future certainty, accountability, opportunity and prosperity for our free people.

That placing of the word "transcended" in all caps is all McCotter.  Mad that his party -- the party of Wall Street -- plans to bail Wall Street out of a mess of Wall Street's own making after for years calling for less regulation, getting it through a sin of omission, and watching it explode in his (and every other taxpayer's) face; Thaddeus McCotter is now endorsing a solution that is completely at odds with itself ... a free market with a new arrangement of regulation.

Don't say we don't live in exciting times.