Conservatism, for all intensive purposes has been proven a failed ideology that has done nothing but tear America apart at the seams. Then it gets into the core of our nation and starts rotting the core of our democracy. The only purpose it seems to serve is to make the rich richer at the expense of the poor. One effective tactic of the GOP has been to use wedge issues (such as abortion, gay rights, etc) and exploited differences in race to hold onto their corruptive power. Now as voters are waking up to the realities of the fiscal nightmare they created, the GOP is trying to divert our attention by playing on their base's fears of minorities. Naturally, the right wing pundits and conservative elites happily pick up their party's baton.
From The Huffington Post:
The campaign is being conducted by such leading advocates of the right as Charles Krauthammer, Mona Charen, Jeff Jacoby, television hosts like Lou Dobbs, and the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily and the Washington Times.
Krauthammer, for example, makes the case that, "For decades, starting with Jimmy Carter's Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, there has been bipartisan agreement to use government power to expand homeownership to people who had been shut out for economic reasons or, sometimes, because of racial and ethnic discrimination. What could be a more worthy cause? But it led to tremendous pressure on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- who in turn pressured banks and other lenders -- to extend mortgages to people who were borrowing over their heads. That's called subprime lending. It lies at the root of our current calamity."
For those inclined to blame Democratic liberals, this argument is appealing. Neither Krauthammer nor Charen quotes any sources to back up their respective cases, and the only expert cited by Boston Globe columnist Jacoby is Loyola College economist Thomas DiLorenzo. DiLorenzo is most famous as a defender of the Confederacy and for his anti-Abraham Lincoln books, including The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War and Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe.
The argument is so ridiculous, it could only be picked up by the most vile members of our society. Most are afraid to accept the responsibility of advocating and achieving the de-regulation that put us in this mess. Instead of admitting their failures and the utter disappointment that conservatism is as a whole, people like Dobbs, Krauthammer et al. resort to the worst elements of our society.
The entire article by Thomas Edsell at Huffington Post goes into even more detail and sheds the appropriate light that their racism deserves.
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