Fiscal conservatives

Discussion in 'West Mall' started by Uninformed, Jul 2, 2009.

  1. Uninformed

    Uninformed 5,000+ Posts

    Do middle class and upper middle class fiscal conservatives have a place in the Democrat Party? How do you envision a fiscal conservative fitting into the party, if the person emphasizes business growth over social issues?

    PS We can talk about the Republican Party in another thread.
     
  2. TahoeHorn

    TahoeHorn 1,000+ Posts

    I think they do if they have a more compelling interest. For example a fiscal conservative who is in the alternative energy business will find that government programs that benefit him directly outweigh his interest in being fiscally conservative. Or maybe you're an auto executive at GM or an insurance executive at AIG who bleeds fiscal conservatism. The Dems may well have an appeal which overwhelms your fiscal conservatism. [​IMG]
     
  3. THEU

    THEU 2,500+ Posts

  4. NameAlreadyInUse

    NameAlreadyInUse 500+ Posts

    I don't think dems can pick up fiscal conservatives, at least not when they are just as happy to spend our money as the fiscal conservatives that were recently removed from ensconcement.

    What they can pull are people like me, fiscal conservatives who are so fed up with the family values ******** that they can't make themselves vote for Republicans anymore. If the dems can do a good job of speaking to that group, they will be all right. If they can't, the Reps will be in charge again sooner than dems will want.

    I'll stay over in my libertarian corner, though, because I hate overspending and I hate republican intrusiveness into my life.
     
  5. Wild Bill

    Wild Bill 1,000+ Posts

    I don't know, THEU. To be fair, I know a lot of people who will vote Democrat every time because they are turned off by the religious right of the party, yet they are business people who seem to be fiscal conservatives. These same people are telling me they are unhappy with the spending of the current Admin. Obama is not Clinton, and he does not have a Repub House to keep him in check either.
     
  6. Uninformed

    Uninformed 5,000+ Posts

    Personally, I am different from NAIU in that I am socially ambivalent. I see his point, though, in that the Pubs are anti-his group. I suppose that if Pubs were anti-my group, I would be much, much less ambivalent.

    It was much better under Reagan where the party stance appeared to be (gov't should stay out of abortion and marriage). Dems pushed both those issues and Pubs obliged them in the debate and made it front and center of their platform.

    With that said, there is nothing in the Dem platform that would appeal to fiscal conservatives. And by moving the poor closer to the middle class and moving the $100K people back down to the middle class, there will be a large lower middle class and a small elite class similar to European countries. This is if Dems continue with their current direction. I think most upper middle class fiscal conservatives see this trend and they hate it. I have several relatives who voted for Obama who absolutely hate the direction of government. However, they still have reservations in supporting Sarah Palin and, therefore, can't say that they made a mistake at the ballot.

    The best the Dems can do is say, "Bush did it too". For whatever reason, it has not resonated that Bush's spending had much to do with a Dem. Congress. This despite the fact that the prescription drug plan which added so much to Bush's spending was done as a compromise to socialized medicine and pales in comparison to the socialized medicine plan of Obama and the Dems. In any case, the Dems have been successful with the approach, "Bush did it too".

    Anyway, with that said, I am unclear whether I want to support Pubs or Libertarians. Five things are at play.

    1. A Pub majority would do better fighting Dems than a Pub minority plus a few Libertarians and a Dem majority.
    2. I agree more with the Libertarian position than the Pub position.
    3. There is a dearth of strong Pub presidential candidates although Dems have the same issue.
    4. There are no good Libertarian candidates. They are all fringe.
    5. I am not convinced the American people are ready for fiscal responsibility. And there may be more people who want handouts than people who believe there is strength in individual responsibility.
     
  7. Wild Bill

    Wild Bill 1,000+ Posts

    I agree with your last 5 points with the exception of #4. I think we are getting better Libertarian candidates than we did say 4 years ago. We'll see how it goes for the 2010 midterms. Anything is better than these clowns who are running up record deficits. I don't know how we recover from this.
     
  8. DeadHorse

    DeadHorse 1,000+ Posts

    What do you mean by "fiscal conservative?" Do you mean the borrow and spend crowd or the balanced budget crowd?

    If you mean the balanced budget crowd, then the answer is yes. The last balanced budget we had was during a Democratic administration and the Blue Dogs main issue is a balanced budget.

    How the Republican Party gets the label as the fiscally responsible party despite all evidence to the contrary is a great mystery to me.
     
  9. Wild Bill

    Wild Bill 1,000+ Posts


     
  10. DeadHorse

    DeadHorse 1,000+ Posts


     
  11. AustinBat

    AustinBat 2,500+ Posts


     
  12. Uninformed

    Uninformed 5,000+ Posts

    I disagree 100% dead. Blue Dog Dems are irrelevant as long as their silence allows other Dems to dominate the political agenda. Blue Dog Dems should be screaming bloody murder regarding the current Dem direction. Their silence is deafening. It is allowing Obama and Pelosi and Reid to jam through budgets and programs that will ruin america. In fact, Blue Dog Dems should be considering leaving the party as it obviously doesn't represent them.
     
  13. Wild Bill

    Wild Bill 1,000+ Posts


     
  14. Sooner in Korea

    Sooner in Korea 250+ Posts

    Fiscal responsibility would require:

    -politicians to campaign on taxing the mob more and at the same time providing fewer services

    -an initial decrease in GDP (ceteris paribus)


    Not easy to get elected on the above platform.
     
  15. tropheus

    tropheus 1,000+ Posts

    a balanced budget can still be out of line with fiscal conservative values. what you need is a balanced budget with smaller government and lower taxes in order to be a true fiscal conservative. neither party can do that, but the Republican party is a much easier party to influence toward that goal than the Democratic party.
     
  16. mop

    mop 2,500+ Posts

    good to see you tropheus! how have you been? email me the answer to that question.

    neither party seems remotely fiscally conservative any more....it is just that Republicans spend like drunken sailors while Democrats spend like crowds of drunken sailors......

    i think we are toast honestly. not sure how we can make it much longer.
     
  17. UT Spring Branch

    UT Spring Branch 500+ Posts


     
  18. NameAlreadyInUse

    NameAlreadyInUse 500+ Posts


     
  19. accuratehorn

    accuratehorn 10,000+ Posts

    There are plenty of people who consider themselves fiscally conservative in the Democratic Party. Current events have comspired to shift policy away from low spending, as the Kensyian model is being used, ala FDR. That doesn't mean that once the economic crisis starts winding down there won't be plenty of elected Democratic officials who want a balanced budget and an effort made towards reducing defecits, like during the Clinton era.
    It's the economy, not a lack of fiscal conservatism.
    Plus, that's a nebulous term, where one person can always say, "I'm more fiscally conservative than you" and it doesn't really have a definable meaning.
    Democrats believe it is the correct policy to increase spending during a depression/recession, and reduce spending and the defecit during good economic times. I agree with that policy, although it is scary to see the defecits increasing so alarmingly high.
     
  20. DeadHorse

    DeadHorse 1,000+ Posts


     
  21. Sooner in Korea

    Sooner in Korea 250+ Posts


     
  22. GT WT

    GT WT 1,000+ Posts


     
  23. MojoMan

    MojoMan 1,000+ Posts

    It is not even clear to me that fiscal conservatives have a secure place in the Republican party. I am a fiscal conservative, and the last eight years was truly shocking on that score. As the Republican party works through its identity issues, this will probably be the most important open question that it has to answer. Are Republicans going to be committed going forward to fiscal conservatism? If the answer is no, then I am going to be increasingly interested in third party conservative candidates.
     
  24. DeadHorse

    DeadHorse 1,000+ Posts

    If a 3rd party were to emerge that supported sound management of government without big agendas (no big tax cuts, big spending increases, or big tax increases) AND promised to leave everyone along in their private lives, I'd send them money.

    So, basically, I want someone that will manage the government effectively and efficiently while letting gay people marry.
     
  25. Fievel121

    Fievel121 2,500+ Posts

    I consider myself a fiscall conservative Democrat and here is my take.

    a) I beleive in the Keynsian model of having deficits during recession. Although I don't like the amount of current and future debt, and I'm certainly not thrilled with some of the places the spending has gone, I beleive in the long run deficit spending will pull us out of the recession faster. I understand that is debatable, but this part of kensian theory doesn't make me less fiscall conservative.

    b) Right now there is no fiscally conservative party that could win a national election. Financially, the biggest difference I see between the republican and democrats is the democrats spend the money on domestic infastructure and edcuation. Republicans spend it on Defense. Either way, its deficit spending. I personally think the Dems deficit spending will grow the GDP faster than the Republicans.

    c) Just because I tend to vote Democrat for President, doesn't mean that I don't vote for an opposite party canidate for Congress

    d) I said during the election year that the best thing that could happen was getting the crap kicked out of them. Now that just need another Newt to pull that party back to what it really is suppose to be. Maybe iff they do that I'll vote Republican again like I did in 2000. ( I also voted Republican in the midterms of '98 my first year voting)
     
  26. Summerof79

    Summerof79 2,500+ Posts

    Looking at a two party system one party's President's budgets are responsbilty for a lot more of the debt than the other party. Legislation is made law in two ways 1) with the signature of the President of the United States 2) the Override of a Presidential veto by congress.

    Fiscal Conservatives are as welcome in the GOP as they are in the Democratic Party.

    What's funny about these posts to me is that the current largesse in spending is the result of Rebublican mismanagment and stupidity by and large. These levels of spending would NEVER have been tolerated without Bush's unnecessary desire to raise the deficit each and every year he was in office.

    and yes Chet Edwards is a very good example
     
  27. UT Spring Branch

    UT Spring Branch 500+ Posts

    So you are saying that Obama raising the debt to god awful levels is Bush's fault???

    Of course Obama could reduce the deficit if he would just quit trying to "fix" things
     
  28. accuratehorn

    accuratehorn 10,000+ Posts

    You do all realize the only reason Bush didn't produce his stimulus package bill was he had arrived at lame duck status and let it slide to the next administration?
    There would certainly have been one had Bush been in office for another year or more.
     
  29. Oilfield

    Oilfield Guest

    Stimulus package? Get serious. You mean the giant giveaway to democrat constituencies? How's that "stimulus" working out so far?

    What was our famous "blue dogs" voting record on Porkulus? That would tell me if they have any credibility.
     
  30. LonghornCougar

    LonghornCougar 1,000+ Posts


     

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