by Andrew Sullivan says that conservatives are being intellectually dishonest by opposing the Democrats’ $800B spending plan because of the deficits the nation ran under the Bush administration.
There’s a grain of truth in what Andrew says – both Reagan and Bush 43 were big spenders whose policies have contributed substantially to the problems our children will face in a few decades.
But Sullivan, like too many on the liberal side of the fence, refuse to acknowledge their own complicity in the disaster we are now wallowing in, all of which started with the implosion of the home mortgage market, itself caused by overly liberal lending practices encouraged – ne, demanded – by the left, it being discriminatory to deny credit to those obviously unable to pay it back.
Yes, yes, Phil Gramm is the devil for his part in Gramm-Leach-Bliley and never mind that the bill was passed into law with only 8 nay votes in the Senate. Next.
It’s unclear whether GLB had a significant effect on the home mortgage crisis, but what is crystalline is the fact that it was the Clinton Democrats who ushered in the incredibly ill-advised, egalitarian lending practices we now, with both loathing and accuracy, call “sub-prime”.
Indeed, Investor’s Business Daily says:
Bush didn’t pressure lenders to adopt sloppy underwriting standards. Nor did he encourage Fannie and Freddie to underwrite subprime loans to meet quotas for minority lending.
That was done under the previous administration. The groundwork for disaster was laid by Clinton and his social engineers — in this case, former HUD chief Henry Cisneros, now a major lobbyist for Latino homeownership.
During the Bush years, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus fanned the flames of the crisis. Led by Democratic Rep. Joe Baca, whose California district is 60% Hispanic, the caucus teamed up with a lobbyist group that Cisneros advises — as well as La Raza and other inner-city agitators — to pressure Fannie and Freddie into making risky subprime loans
This is where it all began, with foolish liberal activists interfering in the home mortgage marketplace, agitating for the so-called rights of the downtrodden, and forcing lenders into loans that would never have been made in the absence of the pressure applied by left-wing lobbyists.
Moreover, many of these borrowers knew in their hearts of hearts that they had no business taking out such loans, that low interest rates couldn’t last for long, and that their defaulting was very likely. They also believed that they deserved both the loan and the home of their dreams despite not having earned it. This is a result of lack-witted liberal brainwashing of the masses that’s been done using, and in the name of, entitlement dogma.
Where was the conservative opposition to these disastrous polices? Brow-beaten into silence by the billy-club of political correctness. It’s unacceptable to make judgments in today’s political and social environment, no matter how correct or obvious they may be. A judgment is a decision, none of which are allowed lest someone be made unhappy by the outcome, whether justified or not.
Where is the intellectual honesty in that, Andrew?
