In terms of starving the beast, when the day comes that the Chinese (or the Saudis, or whoever is holding the debt) demand that we clean up our act and start redeeming in sellable commodities, if our financial house is not otherwise in order we will have no choice but to massively cut goverment spending and put the working class on 100 hour weeks.  I think that the Radical Right knows this and is counting on it.

or will drive the country into some kind of economic crisis and lose power.

Again, those who owned real, liquid assets did quite well during the Great Depression.  Those who are controlling the actions of the Radical Right are only worried about the fate of the top 0.25%, and are transferring as many real liquid assets to that class as they can.  Hmmm - maybe they know something?

In fact, the trefecta would be to leave the Democrats in the White House when the storm hits - the Radicals get the cash and the mansions, the Demos get the blame.

Nahhh - couldn't be.

sPh 

Good for the GOP, maybe, but if I were Bush I think I'd prefer that Rove model my presidency on one that didn't end in assassination...

Matthew's premise is simply wrong.

You can cut taxes AND cut the deficit simultaneously.  We see proof here: "The US budget shortfall fell to $35.3bn (£19.4bn) in May, down 43.5% on the $62.5bn seen during the same month last year, thanks to a continuing surge in tax revenues. This year's deficit was the smallest May shortfall since the $27.9bn seen in May 2001, which was also the last year the government ran a budget surplus. This is a much better outcome than almost anybody was forecasting; it follows a series of US tax relief packages between 2001 and 2003, making the lower deficit all the more surprising to most analysts."

We simply need to continue to cut taxes in a manner designed to encourage growth, and to hold the line on spending to the extent possible consistent with the war.

Hmmm ... build up an empire based soly upon manipulation of the perception of markets, game the system at every turn to produce not goods or services but massive paper windfalls, slip an iron gauntlet over the invisible hand, perform illicit end-runs around the actual laws of supply and demand, raiding pension funds for risky (and crack-addled) investment schemes ...
Now, I'm not the first to point out the parallels between Rove's methodology and those of Kenny Boy and his cronies at Enron; but no one has really been talking yet about how Rove may well engineer his own market crash.
The Rove-De Lay-Bush GOP is bankrupting itself in the same way Enron did. Precisely the same methods. Hopefully with a less catastrophic result.

Economic collapse would be an effective way to create a police state.

Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Lenin, Mao, and just about all the other tinpot dictators that ever lived have used economic hardship as a way to total power.

We were very fortunate in 1932 that we got FDR because he actually seems to have believed in the American ideal.  We could just as easily have fallen prey to someone like Hitler. 

An economic collapse even close to the scale of The Great Depression will be far worse today.  Most of the population then either lived on farms or were related to farmers.  They could and did grow a lot of their own food.  That's not true any more and there are so many more people now. 

Just thinking about it is frightening.

.

I'm sure that, by "permanent", we're talking a generation - max.  Nobody thinks Karl Rove wants a GOP majority from 1994 until 2368.  More like something akin to what the Democrats had from 1932 until 1968, I suppose.  I mean, as a Republican, I would certainly settle for my "permanent majority" to last about 36 years.

by my count republicans have been in control of the US agenda since nixon in '68, almost 40 years now. that was the year george wallace invented the so-called reagan democrat. this can go on, and get a lot worse, for many years to come. since the democratic party, or at least its establishment and elected officials, no longer believe in regulating capitalism for the benefit of the 80% of the people w no liquid net worth, they have no lens thru which to view the world or appeal to voters. we're toast

"One can spin out a variety of scenarios, but I think it's hard to escape the conclusion that the emperor has no clothes here. You can't build an enduring majority on the basis of an unsustainable set of policies. Either the GOP will lose power while advancing this agenda, will pull the trigger on big-ticket spending cuts and lose power, or will drive the country into some kind of economic crisis and lose power."

The alternative is that Bush or his successor will use a combination of fiscal crisis,  military crisis, and  McCarthyism as a pretext  invoke the Patriot Act and lead the US to "guided democracy".

Democrats assume continued normality (i.e. "are reality-based"), but that's a risky assumption.

"The point is not to describe reality, but to change it".

Re: Most of the population then either lived on farms or were related to farmers.  They could and did grow a lot of their own food. 

I could be wrong, but I think that by the 1930s a majority of the population was urban, not rural. And the urban populace actually lived in the cities, not suburbs or exurbs. Also, a large swath of the country had become unfarmable in the 1930s due to the Dust Bowl. And nowadays at least we do have Unemployment, Food Stamps, Medicaid and similar priograms which would buffer (and to some extent even prevent) a Great Depression type of event.

I have to agree - it's a money thing, not a philosophical goal. Remember who we're talking about, here. I think one of the biggest mistakes we frequently make is to give these guys too much credit. 
When Reagan signed the law that opened Savings & Loans to plunder (his knuckle-headed quote as he put down the pen: "I think we hit the jackpot!") the flag he was waving was all about free enterprise, etc., etc.. But the vultures all standing behind him, responsible for putting it in place, were the very people who would soon run off with millions of tax dollars in their pockets. How convenient that before they make their "killing" they reduce the taxes for the richest tax bracket. How convenient.
Bush and Cheney are not idealogues, never have been. They're in the business of making money, for themselves and their friends. They don't care what happens five years down the road, because they will have made their millions already and retired to Brother Jebs golden coast. All the hoopla drummed up by their handler - Rove - is window dressing, the come-on from a bunch of  carnvial hucksters. And they're going after the same rubes and suckers that P.T. Barnum went after decades ago. The religious right, and the right wing hardcores, are just the easiest marks, low hanging fruit. 
Bush came from an oil industry background with oil industry friends. Cheney came from the largest corporation in the world with profits in war and oil. Any surprise, then, that we're at war in a country full of oil? Any surprise that the price of oil has gone up, and stayed up? It's all about the money folks. The Republicans who actually mistrust these guys have gone along for the ride because, hey, it works, and wow, if you disagree you get screwed.
Despite the promotional material in the brochure, this Ponzy scheme is not intended or expected to go on "permanently."

"or will drive the country into some kind of economic crisis and lose power."

I have looked at the electoral politics of 1890-1930 and I seem to remember you have also. The above is not a safe assumption. The South did not turn Democratic in 1932 because of the Depression, and will very likely not switch parties in the coming Depression.

If there is one. With so much of the economy tied up in real estate, it could be a very slow crash, as real estate bubbles take a long time to reverse.

And if the American economy crashes, the world will crash with, and I really don't have a clue what we would be looking at.

bob mcmanus

I hate to pat myself on the back. (I really don't but one is expected to be humble when trumpeting ones prescience.) Here is what I posted back before the election:

"You can shoot me if you want to for thinking these thoughts, but maybe its better if George II wins again. If Kerry gets elected he'll have to face Bush's war, his deficit and sundry other messes, which could all go really bad on Kerry's watch, for which he will get the blame.

"If Bushie wins again he and the Repuglicans will get the blame and from where I sit it looks like it could be bad enough to put Dems back in office for years to come. Perhaps enough excrement will hit the rotating blades before 2006 that the Dems will win control of congress and investigate the doo doo out of the Bush government. Wouldn't that be fun?"

"America finally got universal health care when the obstructionist Republican Party collapsed completely in 2006-08." (Entry from 2050 Encyclopedia Gallactica)

One good motive the Bushies have for staying in power is to keep out of jail. The parallel with Jacques Chirac is instructive rather than exact: Chirac's alleged offences were committed as Mayor of Paris, and amounted to conventionally corrupt city machine politics, while those of the Bushies are both more serious and were committed, like those of Nixon, in the exercise of presidential power. The alarming feature of this picture is that a malefactor in power, like Macbeth, may dig himself in deeper into crime even knowing his ultimate fate. The next Democratic nominee could be fighting smears and lies far worse than Swift Boat, and voter fraud on a bigger scale than Florida 2000.

In regards to the 1930s, farming was already in crisis in the 20s and many farmers promptly lost their farms when the banks foreclosed on them. And as for having country cousins it's hard to see how that did anyone living in a city a lot of good. A resident of say, Detroit, fresh out of work, wasn't going to be supplied with fresh produce by cousins living down in the hill country of eastern Kentucky. The only people who might have benefited from such connections were people living in the small rural towns whose farming kin were close at hand (and many of those small town people may have had their own gardens too).
As for the GOP eradicating the New Deal safety net, that's about as likely as George Bush dancing in his undies at the next Miami White Party. Their attempt to meddle with Social Security has sunk like a stone. And there are no proposals on the table to change unemployment insurance.