I think that the motive issue that Douthat raises is deep in the weeds and not really necessary to Chait's thesis-- the important point is the one Douthat concedes, that there's a lot of conservatives knowingly spouting or not contradicting BS economic arguments because they are electorally potent and promise the voters a free lunch while benefitting key constituencies.

But if we are going to discuss motive, we have to separate the motives of various actors, perhaps as follows:

1. There are a lot of people who support tax cuts because they simply want to keep more of their money. (Indeed, middle class voters do this too, often supporting middle class tax cuts.)

2. There are people who believe that cutting taxes increases economic growth. Jack Kemp is a nice example of this.

3. There are people who believe that cutting taxes will eventually force a shrinking of the size of government. Grover Norquist is an example of this.

4. There are also some genuine supply siders, whom Douthat concedes are quite wrong, i.e., people who believe that cutting taxes is a way to FUND the government by bringing in more revenues. Lawrence Kudlow seems to be an example of this.

The problem is, there are many people whose actual position is 1, 2, and/or 3 and who know that position 4 is crazy who nonetheless espouse it, and that's the point of Chait's book.

Nonetheless, what the problem is with Douthat's argument is he seems to ignore the existence of position 1. And to the extent that position 1 is taken a lot of Republican financiers as well as voters, Douthat ignores the existence of another category-- people who don't even believe 2 or 3, let alone 4, but who know that tax cuts will benefit and please people who take position 1 and who fund the party.

Now, how many are in this category, I couldn't say. But I doubt it is zero, and I bet it is significant. Parties, after all, act to please their financiers. And the question I would have for conservatives is whether they deny there are people who are espousing supply side arguments not as a cover for some other public policy argument but simply as a cover for policies that benefit the donors?

On the other hand conservatives would say they intend no "welfare" for the sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll crowd which, they'd probably add, isn't a "class" but is rather an asocial bunch which should be excised from society.

Another way of saying the same thing ---

Conservatives believe that market activities and social/religious activities are and can be kept separate -- see, John D. Rockefeller teaching Sunday School class one day and going out the next to crush his competitors. Or see the nineteenth century mother as moral center of the home and protector/instructor of social values -- outside the home, her husband a shark in capitalist waters.

Thus, for a conservative there's no contradiction between plumping for a free market in economics and a heavy police presence to rid society of its social reprobates.

"But to argue that the Right's goal has been to take money from the poor and give it to the rich is the equivalent of my arguing that the Left's goal is to steal money from the rich in order to punish them for their success. "

I wouldn't mind a reference from Mr. Douthat here; I do not think I will get one (I do not think it exists). In fact the usual argument concerning the right wing redistribution of wealth is not that their goal is to "take money from the poor and give it to the rich"; in fact the argument that Robert Novak and others make and state clearly and repeatedly is that the most productive members of society, the ones that REALLY make it work so wonderfully, need to have incentives and so should not indeed must not, be taxed (why this should apply to inherited wealth, well...don't expect consistency or integrity from this crowd); so the argument from the left despite Douthat's very kind paraphrasing is that the right wing policies do not re-create our society in terms of human and physical capital (this includes obviously housing, medical care, infrastructure, environment, and education) at even the same level as the past and hence create a society which, while producing a strata of super-wealthy, is not creating the conditions for continued economic prosperity. We on the left also criticize the lack of compassion and empathy for our common plight; for the suffering and neediness of our fellow man. What is worse is the mental attitudes on the right that accompany these disastrous economic policies (which are in human terms the impoverishment of large sections of our middle and underclass), the fostering of indifference and cruelty of a hereditary upper class oligarchy. It is out of the bowels of such a class that utterly detestable detritus such as Bush flows. (Has he spoken ever of the common human bond that ties us to the lowest and most deprived? I do not recall it. My impression is that like George Allen, or Pat Buchanan, he has always been a bully, indifferent to people outside his circle, a mean, petty, self-centered, vain, spoiled little man...a danger to all).

Mr. Douthat --

I think you're (deliberately?) missing a rather large point when you say

"There are good points on both sides of this debate, but the point is that it's a debate, ...."

The reality is just the opposite, that the public is being _denied_ any debate, and specifically by the actions of Republicans. It may be true that you and Ms. McArdle, as "insiders", can testify first-hand that there are in fact rational, thoughtful, non-moonbat-crazy economists/thinkers within the Republican party; perhaps you have lunch with them from time to time. But from out here in Voterland we never see these people, we never see evidence of their actions, and so for us they effectively don't exist (a point J. Chait has re-stated here).

Speaking for those of us who don't have blogs at the Atlantic and who don't interview economic advisors, and whose news comes through television, newspapers and the occasional magazine, here is what we see. Every national Republican -- including the President, the party leaders in Congress, all the presidental candidates, and their entire retinues of spokespeople, staff, and sympathetic commentators -- behaves in public as simply a tax-cut zombie.

A debate, as you would like to have it, means talking about trade-offs of various decisions. But on the subject of federal taxes no Republican ever allows such a discussion to take place. Ask any Republican publicly "What are the drawbacks to this tax cut?" they will _always_ answer "There are no drawbacks; tax cuts increase revenue, increase growth, and are always the right thing to do under all circumstances." We've all seen it, over and over: no thought, no evidence, no arguments, just one statement repeated again and again. Debate may take place within D.C. salons and restaurants, but as seen from out here no Republican even admits that debate is even possible; _all_ questions are answered simply with the "tax cuts are always good." From what we can see it's all zombies, all the time.

You and Ms. McArdle can report all you want about thoughtful Republicans, or considered arguments for tax cuts, but in the end it doesn't matter. The Republican party, as seen by the public in rhetoric an as experienced by the public in policy/legislation, talks the moonbat talk and walks the moonbat walk. This, I think, is Chait's essential point, and you have not engaged it at all.

But to argue that the Right's goal has been to take money from the poor and give it to the rich is the equivalent of my arguing that the Left's goal is to steal money from the rich in order to punish them for their success. That is, it's an ideological rather than a factual statement, and one that doesn't address any of the left's actual arguments for higher taxes, any more than accusing the Right of Social Darwinism addresses the conservative argument that the post-Reagan changes to the tax code have led to additional economic growth and meaningfully increased economic freedom - including the freedom to get rich - for all Americans.

It sounds to me like you would just prefer not to address some uncomfortable issues, and would like to keep things on the high mythological plain of academic economic arguments, which whatever their merits ride far above the reasons that actually motivate ordinary people. Of course, this is an empirical question that could only be answered by fairly sophisticated opinion surveying and social and cultural analysis, but I wonder how important a role the economic, pro-growth arguments for tax cuts really play in the psyches of most Republicans.

First, my impression is that Social Darwinism and associated notions still play a prominent, though not often candidly acknowledged part in Republican thought. You can often detect these sentiments squeezing out between the cracks in the rhetorical floorboards. Every so often, a Republican will go off on a pent-up Social Darwinist rant, and has to be shushed by the bosses, and stuffed back down in the basement. But he's still there.

There is also a very important traditional strain in Republican thought that bases its opposition to taxation on ideological commitments to views about the sacredness of property and contracting rights, without regard to whether the preservation of these rights maximizes growth. That was the country's dominant ruling class ideology during the Lochner era. Following the collapse of the Lochner precedents and the New Deal, the Republicans had to look elsewhere for economically respectable arguments to do what they wanted to do on ideological grounds anyway.

The narrative that appeals to wealthy and modestly affluent Republicans is that a bunch of dirty,lazy pinkos and brown-colored layabouts and ne'er-do-wells were ganging up on them for decades to take from them the money that is rightfully theirs. So they don't see themselves so much redistributing wealth upward, as restoring the proper distribution - the one that would have prevailed if the pinkos and coloreds hadn't been ripping them off for decades.

And then of course, we have the religious right. In the days of William Jennings Bryan, the Christian heartland was much more open to government intervention in the economy. But that was before they developed their new self-image as a beleaguered and besieged minority bastion of holiness in an unholy society. Their beef now about taxes is that they see taxation as taking money out of their godly communities, and using it to support the godless, heathen, liberal state of Babylon, and its degenerate Sodomite dependents. I don't think they really care all that much about "growth" and the other preoccupations of economists.

My guess is that for every Jack Kemp true believing prophet of growth through tax cuts, you have about five people who are more strongly motivated by one of the other ideological camps.

"But to argue that the Right's goal has been to take money from the poor and give it to the rich is the equivalent of my arguing that the Left's goal is to steal money from the rich in order to punish them for their success." What strikes me is an asymmetry in this "equivalence." The first half does not talk of "stealing," although I certainly think of it that way. Nor does it ascribe a motive, much less one of punishing the poor and middle class for their failures to survive in this economy, although the bogus moral justification for free markets is indeed part of the conservative ideology. 

So, in effect, it rules out considering i politics or economics who benefits, when that is what politics and economics normally do consider, mocking it as a cover for liberal moral claims that may well be perfectly valid.  

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

Ross Douthat, I had not heard of you before but I find myself agreeing with you. Indeed it proves your point, I suggest, that many commenters respond to you by (1) employing ad hominem argument, (2) caricature (usually multisyllable caricature, like "plutocrat"); (3) to guilt by association (other conservatives are deplorable and fail to debate, you are a conservative, therefore I justify not debating with you by associating you with them), and (4) questioning your motives as another way of avoiding engaging in the substantive debate you invite (like the commenter who sees value in putting "(deliberately?)" before "missing a rather large point" or the one who presumptuously wrote "you prefer not to address some uncomfortable issues"). Thanks for stopping by and endeavoring to participate in some debate.

Great responses.

I think a big reason why many conservatives are viewed as liars, deceitful etc is their failure to deal with topics like this realistically. They like to omit the true motivation behind the "Cut Taxes/Less Government" ideology which is greed. They cry about free markets and less government then call up their men in DC for some gubbament subsidies for their enterprise. I think it is only natural for people to want to protect their position in any situation but doing so at the expense of others becomes an offensive gesture rather than a purely defensive one. The fact that most conservatives will never attempt to see that what helps them hurts others shows how disingenuous they really are. They hate government unless it helps them. They hate socialism unless it helps them. Its one thing to be a thief and its another to be a lying thief.

I think the Republicans have used attacks on character as a fundamental electoral strategy. Indeed, that is beyond debate. They are pioneers in poisoning the American political scene; they've introduced fundamental changes; destroyed the standards of decency.

It is disingenuous to argue that analyzing the motives of Republicans in their pursuit of tax cuts is an attack on character.

It is actually evidence of how ad hominem attacks by conservatives have become building blocks for flawed arguments that Douthat suggests that the progressives are now using the tactics of his side.

I keep returning to this post, hoping for more understanding of "the other guys," and while it won't help that he obviously isn't truly participating here, the more often I read it, the more dishonest it appears. It comes down to an assertion: the right believes lower taxes stimulate the economy for all, and economic regulation impairs our freedom, but liberals can't deal with these, because they're wrapped up in personal attacks on our motives.

But you read Chait and Krugman, and they're all about this as voodoo economics and how it got across, nothing even remotely like the allegation. All a novice has to do is scan the posts and compare the headlines to see who's playing fair. The very accusation that they're saying otherwise is an ad hominem argument. And if they said otherwise, could they be justified?

John

http://www.haberarts.com/