The Wages of Sin

Well, the Republicans, through years of incompetence, warmongering cruelty, corruption, and what James M. Buchanan calls "pragmatic drift," have given the Democrats a gift that their own socialistic policies could never have earned for them: bone-crushing power.

Nice work, fellas. Such is your reward for losing your principles, your bearings, and your soul.

The next big question is whether the Democrats will show any self-restraint at all in wielding this unearned gift of theirs. Early signs are bearish.

For one thing, it's not their way. When Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, by similar margins and with similar majorities in both houses, he began by trying to push through one of the most gluttonously pork-larded budgets that had ever been seen. It took, as I recall it, a filibuster by Republicans in Congress to stop it. (This is why I was looking so closely to see whether the Demos would get a filibuster-proof Senate. Thank God they didn't.) Then he tried to, in effect, nationalize the health care industry. Again, failure, but not for lack of trying.

Second, and much more ominously, the Demos and their spokespundits are making it very clear that think they won because the voters suddenly fell in love with their policies, that this is a "repudiation of the free market." Unfortunately, there is a grain of truth in this. Since 1929 (though not before that) American voters have had a habit of running to the government for help during hard times. That they are running, not to safety, but to greater danger, is a lesson that they have not learned. Yet.