I was reading this article in the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/11/us...within.html?hp and one quote at the end struck me.
It struck me because it seems like things have changed from the old refrains. The Republicans used to stand for a bootstraps mentality, for a mentality of personal responsibility, so that when things turned south it seemed the refrain always was "you can make it, don't blame others for your failures". Now, it seems like the refrain is that everything is the fault of the government, that if you are having trouble making ends meet, or just don't have the luxuries that you would like, it isn't your fault, it's not because you're not achieving enough, it's because govt is hindering you, it's taxing you too much or regulating you too much, and THAT is the reason you're having trouble.
That just seems like an odd shift, and not one that the conservative moral compass has wrestled with yet.
I know that complaining about Big Govt is nothing new, but it seems like the last few years (it was brewing long before 2008 but I think got kicked into high gear when Obama took control, which coincided fairly neatly with the recession and the desire to blame something for it) the complaining about Big Govt changed tenor, it became more than complaining about Big Govt, it became blaming govt for your own lack of success. Just seems like an odd switch, and one that in the long run won't serve the cause well.
On Jodi Baraniak’s stately front porch, not far from the Bud Shuster Byway, Mr. Halvorson made his appeal for smaller government. Ms. Baraniak, a 44-year-old lab technician, fretted about a straining middle class.
“I don’t understand why we’re hurting our own people,” she said, worrying that the government was trying to support too many people on the backs of too few taxpayers. “We’re not communists, are we?”
“I don’t understand why we’re hurting our own people,” she said, worrying that the government was trying to support too many people on the backs of too few taxpayers. “We’re not communists, are we?”
That just seems like an odd shift, and not one that the conservative moral compass has wrestled with yet.
I know that complaining about Big Govt is nothing new, but it seems like the last few years (it was brewing long before 2008 but I think got kicked into high gear when Obama took control, which coincided fairly neatly with the recession and the desire to blame something for it) the complaining about Big Govt changed tenor, it became more than complaining about Big Govt, it became blaming govt for your own lack of success. Just seems like an odd switch, and one that in the long run won't serve the cause well.
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