Another Warning to Republicans

On the one hand, Republicans could use a warning here.  Look guys, I want to warn them, be careful before you declare the President to be an elective dictator who can only be held accountable at elections every four years.  After all, what if the office falls to a DEMOCRAT again some day.

The honest answer, I suppose, is to say don't worry.  We're taking measure to ensure that never happens again.

But are you sure that's what you want?

After all, Democratic Presidents serve a useful function.  They allow Republicans to freak out about deficits and demand massive, MASSIVE spending cuts as the only way to avoid bankruptcy.  Those are some pretty major deficits we are running right now, with all the tax cuts you have made.  Presumably you really do want to freak out about them and call for massive spending cuts.  But that will hardly do so long as Republicans hold the White House.  For that you need a Democratic President and you can go back into the debt apocalypse mode again.

Or maybe you are prepared to allow major deficits indefinitely rather than endure a Democrat in the White House.  But consider, eventually there will be a limit to these deficits.  We don't know when it will come, but sooner or later debt service will start eating up so much of the budget that it really will crowd out everything else and then we will have an actual fiscal crisis on our hands.  Hurray!  I mean that is the real purpose, after all, isn't it, to starve the beast?  And that at long last you can roll back the New Deal because you will have no choice.

But -- trust me on this one -- you really, REALLY want a Democrat in the White House when the beast starts seriously starving.  The reason you have not been able to roll back the New Deal so far is that doing so is HIGHLY UNPOPULAR.  Whoever, rolls back the New Deal is going to pay a steep electoral price for it, possibly for the next generation.  Now maybe you're OK with that.  Maybe you figure that once you have bankrupted the federal government, it will be safe to entrust it to Democrats because they won't be able to actually do anything.

But assuming you want to hold onto power, you are really going to want to have a Democrat in charge when the fiscal crisis finally hits.  Then you can roll back the New Deal AND let the Dems take the blame.