OpEdNews - Page 2 of Article: For the GOP It's 1933 D�j� vu All Over Again

In recent weeks conservative media figures on TV and radio and conservative Republican lawmakers have attempted to counter media comparisons of Barack Obama to Franklin Roosevelt or assertions in the media that a "New Deal level of government intervention" is necessary to resolve the current economic crisis, by false asserting that Roosevelt's New Deal reforms and programs caused the 1930's economy depression. Assertions that the New Deal rather than Republican conservative governance during the 1920's caused the 1930's depression is flatly rejected by economists and historians. New York Times economic writer Daniel Gross debunks these false assertions writing:

It was only with the passage of New Deal efforts--the SEC, the FDIC, the FSLIC--that the mechanisms of private capital began to kick back into gear. Don't take it from me. Take it from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who wrote the following in [his book] Essays on the Great Depression, "Only with the New Deal's rehabilitation of the financial system in 1933-35 did the economy begin its slow emergence from the Great Depression."...

The argument that the New Deal's efforts "perhaps had prolonged, the Depression," is a canard. One would be very hard-pressed to find a serious professional historian--I mean a serious historian, not a think-tank wanker, not an economist, not a journalist--who believes that the New Deal prolonged the Depression.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the most powerful conservative Republican in Washington, has said he intends to delay Obama's proposed economic stimulus legislation of $1 trillion in spending and tax cuts by demanding that the Democratically controlled Senate hold lengthy committee hearings. McConnell has the ability to use his 41 Republican Senator cloture vote filibuster to block Obama's legislation, should Democrats not acquiesce to his stall tactics.

GOP House of Representatives minority leader John Boehner is also looking for ways to delay Obama's legislation with lengthy House committee meetings. Boehner is using his website to solicit opposition to Obama's new New Deal saying, "if there are any credentialed economists who are willing to say negative things about stimulus plans, please contact me."

Conservatives in the RNC are also working to exert their influence against Obama's new New Deal with a resolution circulated during the last week of December: (PDF of the resolution.)

The Republicans have begun their national introspection over the real causes of their electoral wipe out on Nov. 4, with party "leaders" debating how far right - or left - the party needs to go to regain respectable, if not winning, status. Perhaps the fastest path to respectability is for Republicans to accept responsibility for the current economic problems and join Obama in a true bipartisan venture to rebuild America.

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For the GOP It's 1933 Déjà vu All Over Again