Is a Bad Economy Part of the GOP Plan?

There was an excellent editorial the other day in the Mankato Free Press about how Republican budget cuts and no tax increases on the rich is bad policy. I wonder if anyone has said this. I'll say it:

Bad policy is the Republicans' intention. Pain and general collapse is their objective.

They want to drown government in the bathtub; they've said it often enough. It's their goal. They'd like to be rid of democratic government because it inconveniences them. It regulates them. And, who knows, it might wake up and tax them again at the rates it taxes the rest of us.

("Taxes are for little people" Leona Helmsley)

The Republicans also do NOT want the economy to recover before 2012. An economy that only recovers for the rich has its uses. As long as they are sitting on their cash and the middle and working classes are afraid to spend or don't have jobs, and as long as government, the only entity that can spend in a deep recession, is cutting back, the economy will stall. That has been their goal. They are achieving it.

Republicans despise government so much they want it NOT to function. If enough people lose confidence in government they will vote to dismantle it, and the vacuum can be filled by corporations and private operators. Unregulated of course. They do have their eye on the ball.

The GOP and their rich clients have been hoarding cash to ride out another recession that they can blame on Obama. The end result will be an economy more like Mexico's, with a very rich and powerful upper class and a vast, poor, obedient, fearful working class that is grateful to work for whatever is offered. Think of the American population as a huge labor pool for hiring off the back of a truck.

This isn't a far fetched scenario. It's radical, but the modern Republican Party is radical. It can't be called conservative because it is systematically attacking the strong institutions and fair practices that worked well for the best fifty years in American history. The engine of the economy during those best fifty years was a prosperous, confident, secure working and middle class.

I might even go further than radical and describe this new Republican Party as vandals. Greater Minnesota needs to recognize what their cynical strategy will do to rural communities.