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- In light of the latest news about our Vibrant and Growing Economy, it's worth looking at the composition of all this idle labor that's been sitting around for the past few years. Via Matt Yglesias, the biggest losses were in manufacturing and construction, which isn't surprising, but the policy response has been. I realize the political difficulty of getting a large and well-targeted stimulus out of
Congressthe Senate, but would it have been impossible to get a decent bill whereby the federal government hired people to build and fix stuff? I know, arguing the past, but it's not like the 112th Congress is going to get anything worthwhile done. - Alan Abramowitz surveys recent polling data and confirms the old adage that the American people are ideological conservatives but operational liberals, despite the outcome of the midterm elections. While this isn't shocking, it would be a good opportunity to simplify this a bit and conclude that most Americans are not ideological in the first place. If they were, they would either pair their hatred of government with hatred of government programs, or they would pair their love of government programs with an optimism about government doing stuff. Instead they want government to keep its hands off their Medicare. Oh well.
- Mike Potemra confesses to being "blind-sided" by a National Review reader who wrote in to argue "why a true conservative should not like Reagan," which is quite telling. There was a tension borne in the Reagan years, after all, between Conservatives and conservatives: The former are the "movement" who either participated in or unfailingly believe in the Reagan mythology and studiously ignore all of the contradictions and policy incoherence in Conservative ideology. The latter are the apostates and castoffs who prefer intellectual honesty to boosting the Republican Party.
- Remainders: The fiscal commission was a long, distracting, waste of time; whichever list you look at, conservative activists take cues from a motley crew of hucksters and jerks; and fun with the Sunlight Foundation’s political action committee name generator.
--Mori Dinauer
