Interview: Jay Cost Discusses Spoiled Rotten
Jay Cost is, of course, the proprietor of the Weekly Standard’s popular “Morning Jay” column. As the subhead of Spoiled Rotten makes clear, his first book focuses on “How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic.” During our interview, recorded on the day of the Supreme Court’s rather “taxing” ruling on ObamaCare (and due to the Fourth of July holiday and our recent server issues, postponed until today), you’ll hear Jay discuss:
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Where both sides go from here after Judge Roberts’ ruling. - How the Democratic Party evolved from a party that at least paid lip service to reform, but is now the party of special interests.
- How the 1960s and the Carter-era transformed liberalism.
- The rise of the New Left in the 1960s and their strain of what James Piereson dubbed “punitive liberalism,” also in the Weekly Standard.
- How Bill Clinton tried to bring his fellow Democrats back to the center, and why his reforms were rejected by his successors on the campaign trail in their presidential bids in 2000, 2004 and 2008.
- How much of the rhetoric of today’s left, such as environmentalism, “investing in America” and “stimulus” are all merely smoke screens for corporatist cronyism.
And much more. Click here to listen:
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One only has to look at some of the smaller cities around the country right now that are declaring bankruptcy, like Scranton, PA. After years of promising the unions whatever they wanted in exchange for votes, the cities are now finding out how unaffordable a deal like that really is. Obama is doing the same thing, but on a national level. Obama’s years as a union hack for SEIU has served him well and he knows how to reward his base. Trouble is, more and more Americans are growing resentful towards unions (as the recent election in Wisconsin showed) and Obama’s strategy of giving the unions whatever they want may now backfire on him in November. We can only hope.
All riiiiiight! I’ve been following Jay from his RCP days with the Horse Race Blog.
And dammit, yes! The Repubs can defund these monsters. I was just reading Vodkapundit’s lament about the difficulty of undoing stupid regulations. Surely, just folding up the ol’ wallet and cutting off the kids’ allowance is the answer.
“…the Once Noble Democratic Party…”
I stopped reading right there. What planet is this guy from? The Jackass Party has been riddled with every sort of liar, crook, thief, thug, malcontent, traitor, slaver, Marxist, and outright tyrant since the early 19th century. How far back do you have to go to find anything admirable about such as these? The Marxocrats have been the enemies of liberty and freedom for a very long time.
Marxism in the early 19th century, before Karl Marx. I can’t wait to see the crony’s in the new Romney administration. Sheldon Adelson, anyone?
In what universe was the Democrat party ever ‘Once Noble…’?
(PS FDR years is the wrong answer)
I just finished the book and think that it is an important book and has something new to say:
– That the set of clients now comprising the Democratic Party has reached the point where government in anything apporaching the public interest is impossible.
– That this situation has been in place in the Congress for decades, but not including the presidency until now.
– That the effect of all these clients is that perhaps 20% of the country is in effect telling the rest of us what to do.
– That Obama is not at all unusual. We would have endured much the same result had Mondale or Dukakis been elected
– That Carter and Clinton were probably the last centrist Democratic presidents. The southern Democratic part that created their political identities is no more.
But Mr. Cost does not address the key question: why does not an aroused citizenry recognize what is going on and rise up to change things. The answer to this unasked question is that the most important of all the clients — the media, the organs of information — manipulates the public by diversions, distortions, and flat out lies.
When someone honest, with integrity, steps forward to run for congress or higher office, everybody thinks he is surely crooked, the cause of all of our problems. Wasn’t he the guy who objected to the entire high school boys’ classes getting football uniforms? All 200 hundred of them. You know how that turned out, of course they got the uniforms, we don’t want to hurt a kid’s feelings rejecting him for the team. Rejection is bad! How he learns to cope with rejection is somebody else’s problem. It’s taken care of in fast food places all over the country in later years, when a guy walks in with a gun and starts shooting customers for old grievances.
It’s not our fault it’s the Super Bowl, Dummy! “…the media, the organs of information — manipulates the public by diversions, distortions, and flat out lies.” Whoa there! How can the media manipulate 50% of the voters who can’t read newspapers, never watch the evening TV news, turn the TV on only when football is on?