Contemporary conservatism and its influence on the Republican Party was, until recently, a mystery to me. The practitioners’ bludgeoning style of politics, their self-serving manipulation of the political processes, and their policies that focus narrowly on perceived self-interest — none of this struck me as based on anything related to traditional conservatism. Rather, truth be told, today’s so-called conservatives are quite radical. – John Dean

Since the George W. Bush Administration, old conservatives, have been stating that the Republican Party is no longer their party—the party of the fiscally responsible. There have been many books written on the topic. Some written while George W. Bush was still in office, such as John Dean’s Worse Than Watergate, which outlines the Bush Administration’s secrecy and abuses of power, and the deceptions that led to the invasion of Iraq. Of course John Dean is widely known as a Goldwater conservative and former Counsel to Richard Nixon. Another of Dean’s books, Conservatives Without Conscious, is a harsh critic of the authoritarian conservatives, such as Dick Cheney and Tom DeLay, as well as Religious Right leaders of the Republican Party, who have transformed the Republican Party to no longer hold core Conservative ideals. Victor Gold, a former Goldwater aide and former speechwriter for George H. W. Bush, wrote Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and the Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP. In this book Gold gives a history of the decline of old Conservative philosophies. He described the decline, as happening in the early 80’s, beginning with the rise of the Religious Right and neoconservatives, within the Party.

Time honored values such as balance budgets and responsible spending have been discarded, as evidenced by the Bush Administration increasing spending, while diminishing revenue, though tax cuts. A balanced budget is top priority. Conservative philosophy never included cutting taxes at all costs. If spending was to be increased then there needed to be revenue to pay for those expenditures, via raising taxes or cutting spending elsewhere.

When Republicans begin to openly endorse Democratic candidates, you know that there is something fundamentally wrong with the Republican Party. Colin Powell endorsed and voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. As well as, John Dean. Just recently, October 22, 2013, a San Antonio judge, Carlo Kay, stated that he was leaving the Republican Party. “Make no mistake, I have not left the Republican Party. It left me. I cannot tolerate a political party that demeans Texans based on their sexual orientation, the color of their skin or their economic status.”

Another conservative, a Reagan conservative, who has spoken out against the George W. Bush administration and current Republicans is Bruce Bartlett. Bruce Barlett was a senior policy analyst for George H. W. Bush, was also a former deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department, helped draft the Kemp-Roth tax bill, and has written books about supply-side economics.

In 2006, Bartlett wrote a book, Impostor: How George W. Bush bankrupted America and betrayed the Reagan Legacy, describing Bush as an impostor conservative, much in the same way, he says, that Nixon was, sacrificing conservative ideals for short-term political gains. Bartlett has held to his conservative ideals and not to the changing Republican ideals.

Last December, Bruce Bartlett was interviewed by Thom Hartman. In this interview, he echoed many of the things that other conservatives have said and the things I have been saying about the Republican Party. It is very important to listen to these conservatives that are speaking out about the current state of the Republican Party. The Bush/Cheney philosophy of “deficits don’t matter” and “cutting revenue through tax cuts, while increasing spending” has crippled this country. If Republicans continue down this road, it will be devastating to America.

You can listen to the complete interview, split into two parts, at the following links:

Conversations With Great Minds: Bruce Bartlett, Part 1.

Conversations With Great Minds: Bruce Bartlett, Part 2.

Bruce Barlett and other conservatives have been sounding the warning cry of fiscal responsibility since Bush’s first term, which has been largely ignored. While the Tea Party faction want to blame President Barack Obama for this mess, all the while, pushing for more of the same policies that got us into it. The mantra of Conservatism is fiscal responsibility, with balanced budgets. These conservatives put the blame squarely on those who are responsible for getting America into such massive debt and who are obstructing us from getting out of it—the Bush Administration and Republicans that are pushing for more of the same policies.

The Republican Party through Reagan and the first President Bush didn’t want to abolish the welfare state. They wanted to make it run properly and they also believed that if you were going to spend money, you had to raise the taxes to pay for it. Now, they wanted to cut spending, if possible. They wanted to get rid of waste, fraud, abuse, etc., but at the end of the day, they felt the federal government needed to pay its bills, and every Republican, until George W. Bush was willing to support tax increases to pay for government. … So, these crazy Republicans have actually created the foundation for the very deficits that they claim they are opposed to.

The Reagan Administration drastically reduced the top tax bracket from 70% to 28%. Due to budget shortfalls, George H. W. Bush was forced to raise taxes, making the the top bracket 31%. This was highly unpopular, as he had to break his promise of no new taxes, but it was the fiscally responsible thing to do.

Today, two wars later, there is a many fold greater budget shortfall, but yet Republicans refuse to raise any taxes, not even on the highest tax bracket. Instead, they still endorse lowering taxes. Federal income is far too low, as it is, to lower that revenue anymore, by lowering taxes. Somehow, Republicans think that lowering federal revenue will somehow balance the budget and bring the country onto the road to recovery. Tax cuts have become the Republican party’s new mantra, not balanced budgets.

The mistake people make is thinking that because something worked at that particular time under a particular set of circumstances that it will work forever, under any circumstances, at any time. And all I have said is, Yes, Reagan’s policies worked in the 80’s, they will not work today. We have different problems. Today, tax cuts will do no good whatsoever. It is the worse possible solution to any problem at all. We have a lack of aggregate demand. We need to be hiring people and building public works. That’s what the economy needs. … I don’t believe in cookie-cutter economics.

Laffer’s Curve and Supply-side Economics don’t even propose that you can reduce taxes ad nauseam. There is a medium somewhere between too much taxation and too little. That medium may vary depending on how much the government is spending. For some reason, the Bush Administration felt that taxes could be lowered, while the government was spending more money on two wars. If you want to fight a war, you have to raise the revenue to pay for that war. Simple economics that any head of a household should be able to understand, but a vast majority of Republicans still cannot grasp this simple concept.

It is obvious to most people the true reason why Republicans now push for tax cuts, with no regard to fiscal responsibility—billionaires benefit tremendously from tax cuts. Somehow, this fact is also entirely lost to a vast majority of Republican voters.

Hartmann: Is it time for the Republican Party to let go of that and say that we’re not the tax cut Santa Clauses [referring to Jude Wanniski’s Two Santa Claus Theory] anymore?

Bartlett: They can’t because the billionaires that control the party want tax cuts for themselves. And as long as you got millions and millions of crazy tea party people, who for some reason vote against their own direct economical interest and support the billionaires against themselves, were kind of stuck, unless the Democratic coalition gets stronger, but its gonna be tough, because the Republican will probably control the House until the 2020 redistricting, because of incumbency and gerrymandering. [1]

It is debatable at what point the tax rates become too high and begins to have an adverse affect on the ability to run a profitable business. Was 70% for the top bracket too high for the early 80’s, when it was decreased? Perhaps, it wasn’t. But, what is abundantly clear today, the top bracket can be raised higher. Many responsible super-rich have stated that they could afford to pay and higher taxes and that the responsible thing to do is to raise taxes on the super rich.

A tactic to lower tax rates, thus reducing Federal revenue, in order to induce spending cuts is often referred to as “Starving the Beast.” When the Reagan Administration cut the tax rates in the early 80’s, in order to “starve the beast,” they found that Republicans, as well as Democrats, did not want to cut spending for programs that benefitted their constituents. In an article, Bartlett had this to say about the top tax bracket, during the Clinton administration.

“Republicans are adamant that taxes on the ultra-wealthy must not rise to the level they were at during the Clinton administration, as President Obama favors, lest economic devastation result. But they have a problem – the 1990s were the most prosperous era in recent history. This requires Republicans to try to rewrite the economic history of that decade.” [2]

When President Bill Clinton took office, he came to the realization how important it was to balance the budget and reversed on his campaign pledge of a middle class tax cut. Focusing on deficit reduction and balancing the budget, he raised the top tax rate to 40%. In 1998, he balanced the budget, which remained balance until he left office. Economic growth was sustained throughout the 90’s.

So, we can see that the economy could sustain a top tax rate of 40%. What happened, during the Bush Administration, was an increased spending (two wars) and a reduced revenue (tax cuts across all tax brackets). It should be obvious that if you are going to fight two wars, you would need to increase revenue to pay for it, instead of reducing revenue.

Although, the idea of supply-side economics was that if you cut taxes for the rich, they will grow their business, which would create more taxable income, thus producing about the same amount of tax revenue. In reality that is not what happened. President Reagan even raised other taxes eleven times to offset some of the lost revenue from income tax decreases. He even included the Social Security fund surplus as part of the general spending budget, to help reduce the deficit.

Of course, Reagan himself raised taxes 11 times between 1982 and 1988, increasing taxes by $133 billion a year, or 2.6 percent of the gross domestic product, by his last year in office. Presumably he supported these measures because he thought they would raise growth; otherwise he could have vetoed them.

Why are conservatives, like Bartlett, speaking out against their own Party? There is a reason for this and Bruce Barlett touches on it in his sit-down with Thom Hartman. Bartlett states that the Republican Party has moved farther right. While conservatives like himself have stayed in the same spot, finding themselves far removed from where there party has gone and closer to Democrats, who have also moved to the right.

Barlett puts this shifting movement into historical perspective, by first speaking of Teddy Roosevelt’s progressive movement, to his own conservative ideals and lastly to President Obama’s policies.

Hartmann: Republicans were progressives at that time. Teddy Roosevelt was a progressive.

Bartlett: Today, he [Teddy Roosevelt] would be considered a communist. I’m generally considered on the Left these days, even though I still consider myself to be on the Right. Its just that all the people on the Right have moved so much further to the right. I’m standing still and the Left has moved to the right as well. There’s no real Left in this country. View it in historical context, Obama is really on the center-right. He really is. Anybody who thinks he is on the Left is just crazy. His policies are not even remotely liberal.

The Bush legacy Republicans have continued the movement to the right, abandoning their conservative ideals and pandering to the far-right for political gains, or to pursue their own agendas. Within the Party, the most radical members of this movement has congealed into the Tea Party faction. The GOP is imploding, as it becomes more radicalized, with people abandoning the Party, stating, as Bartlett has, that the Republican Party has left them behind. [3]

Throughout my adult lifetime, since 1980’s, I have watched the Republican progress farther to the right, dragging the rest of the political landscape with them. As Republicans moved further to the right, the Left would also need to move to the right, in order to not appear to be moving farther to the Left, by maintaining same distance from the Right,

We as a country have moved so far to the right that anything center or right of center is now labelled as radical liberalism. For example, reasonable gun control, which Ronald Reagan supported. Reagan saw the need and benefits of having gun control. He supported the Brady Bill. In 1991, Reagan wrote an op ed piece for the NY Times entitled, “Why I’m for the Brady Bill.” Reagan also supported the Assault Weapons Ban. He along with other former presidents wrote a letter urging the House of Representatives to support a ban on military-style assault weapons. The assault weapon ban, that Reagan endorsed and was passed by Congress in 1994, expired in 2004. Today, the effort to pass the same legislation is now labelled as tyrannical.

Bartlett had some very harsh words for the Tea Party faction. Not only are they fiscally irresponsible, their policies have no foundation in reality or facts.

The Republican Party was the Party of ideas and now it is the Party of crazy people, ignorant Tea Party people, who know nothing and are proud of it and who get all their information from specified sources, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, crazy web sites, and nutty ideas circulate within this universe, within this bubble, without any contradiction whatsoever.

Tea Party Republicans will attempt to say anything to further the objectives of their constituents, big businesses. For example, Michelle Bachmann said that the carbon dioxide levels are natural and harmless, contrary to scientific studies.

This year’s government shutdown, illustrates how much control the Tea Party has in the House. It comes down to how the Republican Party has manipulated winning elections. Gerrymandering has created very far right districts that demand their representatives to vote along with the radical factions of the Party or be replaced. Many states are passing new voting laws that would target the voter demographic they intend to suppress, by getting rid of early voting or requiring a photo ID.

Hartmann: Earlier the clip of Paul Weyrich, saying our leverage in the elections go up as the voting populace goes down. This should basically be the Republican Party’s plan.

Bartlett: There’s no question that Republicans hate democracy, when it comes right down to it. They really don’t think poor people—I mean it is very common to hear a Republican say—that the people on welfare should not be allowed to vote. I think there’s an awful a lot of people on welfare, namely the elderly, who receive all their income from medicare, social security, who nevertheless vote Republican and don’t realize that they are the 47% of moochers that Mitt Romney denounced. So, I think, they are fundamentally opposed to democracy, but they are also basically racist. They don’t want anybody other than white people to be able to vote. You saw this with Bill O’Riley’s rant on election night. They are just absolutely horrified that a coalition of Blacks and Latinos and Asians and union members are basically gonna control the country. And I think one reason that they are behaving so crazily is because they are desperate, because they know that the demographic trends are all going against them. And, they’re just holding on for dear life.

Keep in mind the Founding Fathers basically held this view, right? Back in those days, you had to be a male property owner, in order to be allowed to vote. … We have this electoral college system which was, basically, set up just in case the democracy picked the wrong person. So it is kind of baked in the cake.

Although, I have never read Ayn Rand, I had always heard her ideas and values as being radical liberalism. I know that personally, that she was in favor of freedom and equality, including a women’s right to an abortion. So, I was a bit taken back by the Tea Party faction and modern Republicans latching onto Atlas Shrugged. Bartlett touches on that.

Somehow or other, they believe, as Ayn Rand did that the rich are like John Galt. They’re the only ones who are productive. The whole, the rest of us are lazy bums and moochers and they carry us on their backs. Somehow this propaganda has penetrated millions and millions of ignorant fools in the Tea Party, who are the shock troops of this revolution.

It is important for us to listen to the warnings of conservatives that see their Party irresponsibly and recklessly destroying the country for profit and gain.