It seems that the bulk of the Democrats newly elected to the Congress are, um, rather of the worst sort: conservative and intolerant on social policy, anti-immigrant, economically ignorant, and protectionist. Divided government gives those of us who favor liberty and limited government new opportunities to check the state’s power, but it also presents new challenges. More resources may be necessary to combat the evil of protectionism.
We won’t be able to see the congresses that we are hoping for until the country becomes far more educated in economics and begins to value the freedom of other people. Until then, we will be dissapointed with people who feel perfectly justified in curtailing the civil rights of our fellow citizens, or who support socialist economics.
Unfortunately, yes. As Miguel mentioned in a comment to the last post, it’s hard to see how things may improve with the Democrats in power.
If anything, they will tend to get even worse (except, perhaps, if divided government manages to put a break on some policies, something which is not by any means certain given President Bush’s spending record).
The GOP deserved to lose but expecting anything good from a Democratic majority in Congress is pure wishful thinking.
We should expect even harder times ahead for liberty in the US (and the world).
The rhetoric that is now coming from the Democratic party will lead to its self destruction, if their proposals are carried out.
Their election success was basically from American voters that were dissatisfied with the war in Iraq. It was not because of support for the far left socialist agenda. They, the Democrats, would be smart by announcing plans to withdraw the US military within a year or less and by toning down or completely rid themselves of anti-liberty policy proposals.
It seems now that the Democrats think their victory is a mandate to pass legislation that advances their socialist agenda. Hopefully, the moderate or center majority, pro-liberty pundits, and the president will have the courage to squash many of these nonsensical proposals. I wouldn’t hold my breath, but I’ll wait and see.
The main reason the Democrats won is that Republicans have proved to be corrupt spendthrifts and warmongers. And while the Democrats won a big victory, the margin of victory was small. The Democrats don’t have a mandate for socialism, and if they think they do they’ll fail miserably.
If the Democrats are smart they’ll take lessons from Bill Clinton, or for that matter Richard Nixon, and use their alleged left-wing leanings to let them get away with passing good right-wing reforms (balance the budget, more free trade, improvements in social security finances, etc.) They have more slack to do things than the republicans did.
I don’t expect them to do this, nor to enact socialism. I expect they’ll behave much like the Republicans they’ve replaced, since they’ll be responding to the same special interests, and facing the same incentives. But they do have a window of opportunity.
P.S. A few good things that may come from the Democrats:
The Democrats are threatening to curb warrantless wiretaps and the rest of Bush’s Stalinesque “anti-terrorism.” And Bush’s neocon foreign policy seems on the ropes.