On 2010-11-03, at 2:59 PM, c b wrote:
> Marv Gandall:
>
> Frank Rich had a good piece on Sunday about the tea party Republicans,
> rightly observing that "whatever Tuesday’s results, this much is
> certain: The Tea Party’s hopes for actually effecting change in
> Washington will start being dashed the morning after...Trent Lott, the
> former Senate leader and current top-dog lobbyist, gave away the game
> in July. 'As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them'.”
>
> Rich's conclusion, however, is that "the tempest will not be contained
> within the tiny Tea Party but will instead overrun the Republican
> Party itself" once "the Republican establishment’s panacea of tax cuts
> proves as ineffectual at creating jobs, saving homes and cutting
> deficits as the half-measures of the Obama White House and the
> Democratic Congress."
>
> ^^^^^^^
> CB: And you can't even be sure that your "full-measure" program would
> be effectual in reducing unemployment before years passed. Your
> favorite example- FDR's full measures -didn't end Depression levels of
> unemployment for several years after they were instituted.
>
> Give a historical example where civilian Keynesian full measures
> immediately ended a Depression.
The Depression didn't end "immediately", nor was that the expectation. But the New Deal focused on direct job creation from the beginning and unemployment fell steadily from 1933 until it was interrupted by the recession of 1937-38 following the Roosevelt administration's retreat on government spending.
By contrast, the stimulus enacted by the Obama administration was inadequate given the size of the economy, and a large chunk of it was directed at tax cuts for small business rather than emergency job-creation projects. While the unemployment rate would undoubtedy have been higher without the stimulus, it has still risen from 5% to nearly 10% since Obama took office.
But what has any of this to do with Rich's comments on the tea party or my gloss on them?