I think the problem is that you are unwilling to budge on anything.
Correct. Regardless of what the electorate says, I'm not going to change my core belief system for the sake of a fleeting congeniality. I've had to compromise enough by voting for the lesser of two evils just to save this country financially (if not philosophically). To his credit, he was drastically less evil, but all the same.
A fundamentally flawed approach cannot work in any form, be it diluted or otherwise.
Coolidge, Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, Bush. In every instance, cuts in taxes were followed by subsequent economic growth. Clinton even moreso because he also cut down on welfare policies....Or rather, the GOP congress compelled him to.
You're so stuck on trying to rationalize the gains through an analysis of the respective environments their reigns occupied that in doing so, you blatantly ignore an established trend.
How about really holding politicians' feet to the fire rather than just writing them off as lost causes?
See, here's the biggest problem with what you're saying: you believe that the politicians can be used to tame government. But in reality, they are themselves functions of government. We can argue all we like that they're functions of the people's whim, but as soon as they're apart of the institution, they're inherently geared towards its growth. Even the most well-intentioned politician can't change the glutinous nature of the government since he is, by definition, apart of the government. I mean, how do you think our small government republic ballooned into the ravenous monster it's become in the first place?
Even supposing the politician was one that I trusted, there's no way that he'd be able to spend my money responsibly since, as Friedman pointed out, no man spends money as carefully as he spends his own.
The problem here lies with the principle of giving them money at all. An infinite amount of money spent on the government is not going to make our problems go away. Just ask the income tax, the payroll tax, the capital gains tax, the estate tax, the corporate tax, and whatever other unjust taxes you can think of. The more money you take away from the citizen, the less potent it becomes since the longer it's outside of the market, the less capital reinforcement it'll receive. There's zero incentive to invest whatever money they have left.
I'd dare say the problem isn't that they are naturally prone to screwing the citizenry. And, even if they are, it really seems we're more than willing to take it so--again, just assuming they are--can I blame 'em? And, I'm really starting to think that not being able to get the majority of 536 elected officials to agree on something as simple as righting the ship says a whole fuck load more about us than it does about them.
It does and doesn't. One of the big problems here is voting blocks. The left has been working like a mofo over the past century at carving the electorate into smaller, more compartmentalized groups. As a result, they either guarantee favor with one block or simply deny the right any gain in another. And because the electorate has become so modular, it makes it easier to package and sell whatever special interest that meets a given block's fancy.
But I don't necessarily blame the people who are apart of these blocks for the cognitive dissonance involved. I blame the people who control the flow of information within these blocks far more. As much as I'd like to, I can't expect everyone to be like Thomas Sowell and have the mental fortitude to break away from the hive mind. I've learned that being able to truly think for yourself is as precious a phenomenon as free societies.
Rather than thumping your chest and championing the rightness of your position--since, you know, a lot of folks disagree--engage in some conversation and be willing to work with others to get something done. If it is your way or the highway...then off you go and may you find what you are looking for.
If the issue here is whether or not the compromise all on its own is what's causing the problem, then why on earth would I want to operate on the premise of quid pro quo? That's largely the reason we have uninformed electorates and government run amok.
