Glenn Beck Advocates Secession

There will always be political fringe, Left and Right, and we don't need to get into the sociological/psychological underpinnings of these minorities here. That said, it does happen that Rush/Fox et al provide a disproportionally loud voice, but ultimately their efforts only serve to further marginalize the Republican party as a whole: The Left points fingers and laughs, the Indies roll their eyes, and the sane Republicans cringe.

You wrote: "Why didn't conservatives get this worked up when their party controlled the White House and they could actually pressure the president to do what they wanted?" Well, that was because "conservatives" were running up the deficit ... a "strategic deficit". On 1/28/03 noted conservative, Fred Barnes, Executive editor of the Weekly Standard, cited a senior administration official on President Bush's plans and hidden resolve. http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/180mky... #6 on his list: "An old notion from the Reagan presidency has come alive again in the Bush White House: the strategic deficit. It was associated with Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, and posits that a budget deficit is a good thing to have because it holds down spending schemes. In other words, spenders can be told, "Nope, can't pay for that. We've got the deficit, you know." The most important fan of a strategic deficit in Bushland: Bush." Per plan, Bush followed Reagan's example in running up greater deficits than in all of U.S. history. The use of a "strategic deficit" to kill government remains the "conservative" plan. On Glenn Beck's FoxNews program on 5/1, Beck called on someone he referred to as a judge, who had three points. One of them was that "We need to starve government into extinction." They are now apoplectic about the failure of their "strategic deficit" plan and the need for further budget deficits to stimulate the economy. They especially hate this because much of the spending is on Democratic priorities, instead of cutting that spending to starve government. What they ignore is why stimulus is needed. It is because of a fairly simple equation: Gross Domestic Product = GDP = C+I+E+G That's: Consumer spending (C) + Investment (I) + Net Exports (E) + Government Spending (G) C: Consumer spending has collapsed because of undermined wages. I: Investment has collapsed due to lack of demand because of those undermined wages. E: Net Exports = Exports - Imports ... we have an annual ~$700B deficit. G: Government Spending is all that's left ... and that's why stimulus is needed. The economy will go further into the ditch without government spending. Unfortunately, compared to the annual ~$700B "trade" deficit alone, a $787 billion stimulus package doesn't look all that big. Considering also collapsed C (Consumer spending) & I (Investment), it's apparent it's not enough. The sad thing is, that unless the U.S. maintains balanced trade, the stimulus will fail. Note that "balance" does not mean "closing off trade" or excessive "protectionism" ... since when did "protecting the U.S. economy" get to be a bad thing? Unfortunately, Obama is not addressing this problem and therefore his economic policies will fail. "Conservatives" will use this failure to say, "We told you so." Even though they are to blame for running up both fiscal and trade deficits. For data on the devastation, google "Jobs & 'Trade' Data Update Mar09".