Digby: Creative Conservatism

from OurFuture.org:


Creative Conservatism
Digby

January 25th, 2008 - 7:19pm ET


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Dave Roberts of Grist takes a look at Newt Gingrich's innovative new environmental proposals which, unsurprisingly, looks like another fantastic opportunity for rich people to bleed the taxpayers:

What Gingrich recommends is, in Sean's phrasing, pro-business, not pro-market. He wants to ladle out public money to favored corporations while shielding them from any regulations....This is what passes for conservative in today's party of economic royalists, but it is not conservative in the original sense.

It leaves Gingrich with very little to offer beyond media-friendly rhetoric. Look at the answer he offers Sierra Magazine (in a roundtable well worth reading) on what the next president and Congress should do first:

Americans are concerned about global climate change, but they want legislation that does not expand the size and severity of federal control of business enterprise. American businesses want to be part of the solution, and they have good ideas that are being implemented. Our business community is already ahead of the American government, so government must become a facilitator of innovation. The federal government could enact creative legislation that keeps businesses on task as we work to develop clean and sustainable alternatives to petroleum. Americans will elect candidates who support real changes in energy policy and market-based innovations that will lead the world to import clean American technology.

Rhetorical fluff aside, it seems that "facilitator of innovation" is the key concept here, and in Gingrich's mind, that translates to "dispensers of subsidies and tax breaks."

That would be in keeping with everything we saw the conservatives do for the last few years. From "faith-based" programs to Blackwater and everything in between, conservative businesses collected a very nice tithe from the American taxpayer for the past few years.

It's a testament to the pragmatism and creativity of the right that when they find themselves on the losing side of an issue they always find a way to use it anyway to deregulate business and funnel tax dollars to their contributors — and keep up the fiction that they believe in small government. Clearly, Gingrich sees the new Green Conservatism as another opportunity to use tax dollars to benefit their wealthy contributors without the inconvenience of regulations and oversight. (Plus, he's always thought of himself as something of a "futurist," so this issue this is tailor made for him.)

The truth is that "small government" was always hype. After all, the modern conservative movement was built on the idea of the need to build and maintain a large and very expensive police and military state to combat the commie boogeyman. The GWOT has brought that back with a vengeance. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/creative-conservatism