…… In the improbable candidacy of Donald Trump, the Republican Party got what it deserved. After all, its job in the context of American political democracy is to function as the nation’s fiscal guardian. Yet that role hardly fits the GOP’s new presidential nominee and erstwhile constructor of hotels and casinos, who now promises to build the greatest ever walls, roads, bridges, military and other accoutrements of national greatness.
But then again, the GOP has been derelict on the fiscal front for most of the last for 35 years . Instead, it has become a gang of neocons, social cons, tax cons and just cons. Perhaps Trump is merely the ultimate expression of the latter.
The first two of these contemporary GOP factions – the neocons and the social cons – aggrandize the size and role of the state. This extends from the uninvited policing of the worlds’ neighborhoods and nations to the unjust intrusion into domestic family, religious and social life.
The ‘tax cons’ correctly recognize that private enterprise, not the state, generates prosperity and wealth and that tax barriers and disincentives to production, investment and work should be lowered whenever possible. But they fail to heed the great Dwight D. Eisenhower’s fundamental rule for fiscal governance now that the cat of Big Government is out of the bag.
This post was published at David Stockmans Contra Corner on August 15, 2016.
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